Julien Nicolet 3M7
Gymnase Auguste Piccard
November 14, 2005
Comparing and contrasting two popular British
detective story writers, Agatha Christie and
Ruth Rendell
Teacher in charge of the subject : Deirdre Wandfluh-Colahan
Julien Nicolet, gymnase Auguste Piccard, 3M7
Introduction
In this research paper, I am going to compare detective stories written by
Agatha Christie, who wrote a multitude of books during the Golden Age of
British detective stories, and detective novels by Ruth Rendell, who is a
modern author. My work will be divided into three main chapters :
comparing detectives, English society and English humour.
The principal subject will be comparing detectives. Agatha Christie has
two main ones : Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. They are very different
in many ways. First of all, Miss Marple is English, whereas Poirot is
Belgian. Secondly, Miss Marple appears to be more of an “amateur”
detective than Poirot. I will start out by comparing their personalities,
environment, the people they work with, before contrasting them with
Rendell’s Inspector Wexford. Unlike Christie’s protagonists, he is a
policeman. And of course, he lives in a very different period. The Golden
Age of British detective stories, which is the period during which Agatha
Christie writes, takes place between World War One and World War Two.
Ruth Rendell’s first crime novel, From Doon with Death, was published in
1964. But the stories I am going to study happen in the seventies and
later.
This chronological difference made me realise the necessity of studying
English society and the way it has evolved. In this chapter I will analyse
classes, the consequences of the characters’ place in society and their
importance. I will also study typical English habits, language expressions
and highlight those which have survived up until now and those that are
considered as old-fashioned. It is interesting to notice that, in spite of the
fact that Christie’s stories were written about seventy years ago, she is
still one of the most popular detective story writers. Her style is, in some
ways, ageless. Yet we do notice that technology has improved a lot
nowadays, for example with the use of mobile telephones and computers.
This has a direct impact on the detective’s techniques, ways of proceeding
and instruments he uses.
And finally, my third chapter will be a study of English humour. It is
famous all over the world and has been for over the last hundred years.
There again, things have changed between Christie’s time and that of
Rendell. Do people still enjoy Agatha Christie’s humour as much as they
enjoy her plots ? This is a question I asked myself, and to find out the
answer, I will present, in my research paper, a few interviews of readers.
They will explain why they think Agatha Christie is old-fashioned or why
she still makes them laugh. Some will also give their opinion on Ruth
Rendell’s humour and compare it to other modern detective story authors.
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Chapter One
Comparing Detectives
Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot
Hercule Poirot is Agatha Christie’s most famous detective. He is a retired
Belgian policeman, and now works as an independent detective. He lives
in England, but most of his cases happen abroad, for he travels a lot. As he
says himself, he is an ‘international detective’. Christie writes during what
is called the Golden Age of British detective stories, which is between
World War One and World War Two. Of course, habits, customs, mores
were very different back then, and Poirot, although he appears as a very
sympathetic character, is influenced by some of them that sometimes are
considered today as shocking, for instance racial connotations.
Nonetheless Agatha Christie remains one of the top detective story
writers and people still enjoy reading her. In spite of some old-fashioned
expressions, the plots keep impressing us, for they are extremely well
constructed in each book.
Death on the nile
Hercule Poirot is on vacation in Egypt. He goes for a cruise on the Nile.
There has been a murder on the boat : the young and beautiful Linnet
Doyle, one of the richest women in England, was on her honeymoon with
her husband. There are very many aspects that would make one think
that it was Jacqueline de Bellefort, the victim’s best friend, who murdered
her out of jealousy, starting out with a big ‘J’ written in blood above
Linnet’s bed. Is it as simple as it looks ? All depends on whether we use
Poirot’s definition of simple or not, for this case is far from being easy to
solve...
Themes : - Poirot’s personal habits
- Poirot’s way of interviewing people
- the role played by the people around the detective
Hercule Poirot has this particularity : he is not English. What is
interesting is that Christie is an English writer, describing a character
coming from a different country and culture than hers, Belgium, and who
has a critical eye on British life and society. He often speaks to himself in
French, using expressions such as ‘nom de nom de nom !’ or ‘eh bien’. He
is a very neat little man. He likes everything to be kept in its place, and we
find that aspect of his personality when he works on his enquiries. He
dresses very neatly, always arrives on time and has everything organized
in advance when he travels. His little moustache, with curly ends, is
always perfectly presented. He only talks when there is a need to, and is
very efficient when he does. He is often compared to a cat by the narrator,
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especially because of his eyes. At the beginning of Death on the Nile, page
15, he observes two young lovers in a restaurant. Everything seems to be
fine between the two of them. They look happy. Yet after a little while of
further observation, Poirot notices that the girl seems fonder of the man
than he is of her. As he says, ‘one that loves and the other who lets himself
be loved’. That little detail will be useful later in the story (nearly every
episode in Agatha Christie’s novels are part of the main plot). Poirot was
there at the right moment to hear the phrase pronounced by one of the
two lovers that will give him useful information for later. One could
perhaps criticize Christie for making some coincidences a bit hard to
believe.
Like Wexford, Poirot, when he talks to someone, makes comparisons to
biblical stories, political events or philosophical sayings. On page 44, he
alludes to King David in the Bible.
On page 48, ‘love is not everything’, says the old bachelor ! Yet he seems
to understand it quite well. On page 50, in the same conversation, Poirot
talks to Jacqueline de Bellefort about evil. He warns her about it, tells her
to be very careful not to let evil take hold of her, for if it does, it will be no
longer possible to get rid of it. This is another common point between him
and Wexford : they both work on the psychology of people. They study it,
try to understand it and, as in this case, try to solve the problem.
On page 71, Poirot speaks these words : ‘You have chosen, Mademoiselle,
the dangerous course... As we here in this boat have embarked on a
journey, so you too have embarked on your own private journey --a
journey on a swift-moving river, between dangerous rocks and heading for
who knows what currents of disaster...’. He uses a metaphor with their
cruise on the Nile to predict, in some way, the trouble ahead. Poirot often
predicts what is going to happen, even if he is not able to do anything to
prevent it. We will find this particularity in Miss Marple as well, but not in
Wexford.
Poirot is a very proud, self-assured person. He does not hesitate to
compliment himself when the opportunity is given to him. On page 78,
Christie writes, ironically : ‘ “I am a detective”, said Hercule Poirot with
the modest air of one who says “I am a King” ‘. Humour in her books has
often to do with Poirot’s behaviour. On page 91, the detective says : ‘...I am
constantly in the habit of being right...’. Just a few lines below, as if he had
not made himself important enough, he says : ‘... I, Hercule Poirot, I’m
afraid...’, meaning that if he is afraid, the matter is very important. On
page 120, he seizes another opportunity to boast : ‘I, I have the eyes which
notice...’. He is even sometimes big-headed : on page 198, he says :
‘Because I am Hercule Poirot I do not need to be told’, or on page 206 : ‘See
how clever Hercule Poirot is’ !
On page 114, Poirot comforts Jacqueline who is crying because her friend
Linnet has been killed. Wexford could not have done such a thing as
patting someone on the back when he is on duty, for he is a policeman and
they are not allowed to.
Poirot has a very professional way of working when he interviews people.
As I said previously, he likes everything to be in order as it should be. He
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has a lot of experience and techniques to ‘trick’ people while questioning
them. On page 124, he talks to Fleetwood in such a way that the latter
ends up saying ‘That’s a dirty lie’, before Poirot has even said what it was.
Most of the time, the most important question comes at the end. On page
127, the last is also the most indiscreet one. But Poirot has the habit of
putting all emotions aside in such a case. For instance, on page 199, he
calls on Miss Otterbourne, who has just lost her mother, whereas the
detective’s assistant, Race, finds that behaviour embarassing. In fact, the
assistant is especially there to underline how clever Poirot is. On page
139, Race notices only the easy things, such as the fact that Pennington
was nervous, whereas Poirot brings the important information :
Pennington told them a lie. And on page 142, Poirot puts a stress on the
little details neglected by his assistant in his summary of their knowledge
of the crime : ‘Why was the pistol thrown overboard ?’.
Another technique, used by Poirot on page 168, is to look at one person’s
reactions whilst talking to another. On page 190, Christie says that Poirot
eyes are cat-like, and it is as if he paralyses his prey with them.
On page 201, Poirot comes up with such a well-detailed theory for the
events that the reader believes him. But he knows that this theory is not
correct. He only wants to show Mr. Allerton that it seems very likely to
have happened that way.
At the end of his argument with Mr. Fanthorp, Poirot sees the sudden sag
in the other’s shoulders and knows he has won.
David Suchet as Hercule Poirot
Source : : www.sherlockmagazine.it/rubriche.php/28
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Agatha Christie’s Miss Jane Marple
Agatha Christie has created different detectives for her numerous novels,
and Jane Marple is the second main one after Hercule Poirot. Miss Marple
is an old, gossipy woman, as you might find anywhere in England at her
time. She is tall, slim, very affectionate and hospitable. She enjoys having
tea, spending time talking to people about common topics and also
gardening. Perhaps the main difference between her and all the other
little elderly woman around the country is that she has a passion for
mystery and crime. When something happens near where she lives such
as a murder, she clearly feels the need of ‘putting her nose’ into it. Like
Poirot does, she has a certain capacity to predict danger, and when danger
comes, she wants to solve the matter.
Sleeping Murder
Gwenda and Giles Reed have just married in New-Zealand, where they
used to live. They want to move to England, and so Gwenda leaves to buy a
house there. She finds a very nice one in a little town near the sea. Friends
of hers invite her to see a play, and that is how she comes to meet Miss
Marple, who is an aquaintance of theirs. All of a sudden, in the middle of
the play, hearing a phrase pronounced by the actor, Gwenda panics and
runs back home to her friends’ place. Next morning Miss Marple tries to
find out what caused this panic, and she and Gwenda realize that it is the
awakening of an old story. The story of a murder that has been sleeping
ever since Gwenda left England as a child...
Themes : - Miss Marple’s character and passions
Miss Marple is an old English woman, and therefore she has some
characteristics you will find in many other old women. She is very
grandmother-like, in the sense that if a younger person is in need of help
or affection, Miss Marple will give the necessary comfort. At the same
time, she can appear very grave when she suspects something bad is
about to happen. At the beginning of the story, Gwenda has come back
home in a hurry from the play to her friends’ house instead of to her new
one and gone to bed without changing, for she was frightened. About
what? We do not know at first. All we know is that she began to scream
when the actor pronounced the sentence : ‘Cover her face. Mine eyes
dazzle, she died young...’ (Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster. The Duchess
is killed by her brother Ferdinand). Nonetheless, Miss Marple’s first
concern is to come to Gwenda’s room and make sure she feels better. She
brings her hot water bottles and a cup of tea. She comforts her and calls
her ‘my child’, which is typical for an old lady in Britain. That is the first
impression we get of her : a nice and comforting grandmother.
The next morning Miss Marple keeps the same, gentle attitude towards
her, only she now asks whether Gwenda has an idea of what might have
caused this shock. Right away we understand that the old lady feels quite
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concerned about the matter. Hearing the phrase pronounced by the actor,
Gwenda had a vision : she had seen a girl, dead at the bottom of the stairs
at her new house. A man was standing above her. He had strangled her
and pronounced that very sentence. When Miss Marple asked who was
dead, Gwenda’s answer came out quickly and spontaneously : ‘Helen’, but
she could not recall who that person was. As the conversation goes on,
Miss Marple’s role is gently transforming itself in that of a detective who
questions a victim, even if the situation does not resemble it very much.
Her first reaction is to warn Gwenda not to try and find out the answer to
this mysterious crime, the same way Poirot advised Jacqueline de
Bellefort not to open her heart to evil, in Death on the Nile. Both he and
Miss Marple warn people when trouble is near.
In spite of Miss Marple’s warning, Gwenda wants to find out about this
murder and tries to go back into her memories about her youth, with her
husband’s help, for Giles has just arrived from New-Zealand. Miss Marple
will try to find information on her side too, and as the story goes on, they
will consult each other for summaries of their knowledge. Miss Marple
very often uses her gossipy old lady side of character to obtain
information, for instance about people and their background, for people in
little towns such as the one the Reeds live in often remember past events
very well. Given that it is not her job to be a detective and she is not being
paid to play the role of one, we understand she works on her inquiries out
of passion for crime and mysteries.
Actress Joan Hickson as Miss Marple
Source : www.agathachristie.bravehost.com/ missmarple.htm
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Ruth Rendell’s Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford
Chief Inspector Reginald Wexford lives in a little English town called
Kingsmarkham. He belongs to that category of people whom it is difficult,
as Rendell puts it, to consider as middle-aged or “elderly”. He is big and
heavy. Never in his life has he had a handsome face, but his gentle,
tolerant expression almost makes it look attractive.
During his enquiries, we learn a bit about his private life, for it has an
effect on his mood and sometimes on his behaviour, especially in Kissing
the Gunner’s Daughter. Rendell illustrates many of his thoughts and
preoccupations. Wexford likes to understand people : why they do or say
certain things. He is like an amateur philosopher. He has colleagues with
whom he shares his theories and ideas. His closest collaborator is Michael
Burden. Wexford is quite open-minded. In Some Lie and some Die, it is
striking to notice the difference between his tolerance towards (and we
can say interest in) pop music versus Burden’s revulsion to it. They both
have children, but the education Burden gives to his is quite different to
the one Wexford’s daughters have received. The death of Burden’s wife
has narrowed his mind quite a bit. But in the later books, when he has
remarried, we notice the influence his new wife has on him, on his way of
thinking and analysing things. He feels much more concerned about social
matters. And he has got closer to Wexford’s tolerance. Nonetheless,
neither of them is easy-going. They do their job as professionals and never
let themselves be intimidated by the people they interview. They are not
particularly well-known, nor do they try to be. Wexford hates press
conferences. There are always the same boring questions to which he has
to give vague, dull answers.
Some Lie and Some Die
Ruth Rendell’s first novel, From Doon with Death, came out in 1964. Ever
since then, she has known an increasing success with each book. She first
published Some Lie and Some Die in 1973, and it is one of Wexford’s early
mysteries. It takes place in the South of England during the peace-andlove period, of many pop-rock open-air festivals. The fashion demanded
that youth wear long hair, flowery-coloured shirts, bell-bottomed trousers.
A strong anti-war, pacifist and also “love-your-neighbour” movement was
blowing in the wind, and what is ironic in the story is that the rock star in
the book turns out to be a really venomous, self-centered, selfish young
man.
Themes : -Wexford’s relationship with Burden
- Wexford’s open-minded point of view on things versus Burden’s
conservative point of view
- Wexford : a cultivated, “self-educated” philosopher
- Wexford’s way of proceeding with the people he interrogates
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The book starts out with Inspector Burden looking out the window at the
crowd of young people walking in the streets in the direction of Sundays
Park, where a three-day pop festival is about to be held. Wexford is sitting
in a chair near Burden, listening to him complain about this invading
mass of people and the trouble it is going to cause. He patiently waits for
him to finish, and finally says, page 10 : ‘Anyone not in the know would
think you are talking about rats. (...) Why can’t you expand your mind a
little ? They’re only a bunch of kids come to enjoy themselves’. So already
at the beginning of the story, we notice that the two detectives have a very
different point of view about the festival.
Wexford, as Chief Inspector, but also because he is older by two decades
than Burden, does not hesitate to contradict him, sometimes mocking him
a little and sometimes almost scolding him. But because they are like
friends, Burden can tease him back. For instance, in Chapter Two, while
they are walking amongst the hippies in Sundays Park, Burden orders a
hot dog from a young boy, who calls him “dad”. This makes Wexford laugh,
on page 22 : ‘...How do you like being my contemporary?’. But then the
latter involuntarily shoves a young girl, and she calls him “grandad”. So of
course, Burden seizes the opportunity, and says : ‘Contemporary ? We’re
three nations, young, old and middle and always will be’. Even though he
still calls Wexford “sir”, they visibly have a relaxed relationship.
Looking at all those young people dancing and singing at the concerts,
Wexford feels a few times a desire to return to his youth. He regrets the
fact that, back when he was a child, he used to think that it was wrong to
be young. He says, still on page 22 : ‘We couldn’t wait to be older so that we
could compete with the old superior ruling people’. Back then he thought
that to be old meant to have experience and know many more things. That
was what he understood from the adults telling him : ‘You wouldn’t
understand at your age, you’re too young’. But now, watching all these
young people around him, he realizes that they know everything, are
responsible for fashion, clothes and speeches, and “the old ones are too old
to understand”. He regrets not being able to enjoy the music, for he is too
old for that too ! Nonetheless, he shows interest in it. He listens carefully
to the lyrics, respects them and tries to understand their meaning.
One evening Burden and he are walking along near the quarry that cuts
the wall around Sundays Park, and they see a couple making love in the
bushes. Burden finds it scandalous that they behave like that in a public
place, but Wexford does not see, or interpret it in the same way. He
watches them and notices the beauty of the scene. On page 25, Ruth
Rendell describes it for us with poetic adjectives and metaphors, such as :
‘...they made one with their surroundings...’, ‘...her face cut cristal in the
moonlight...’, ‘Bathed by the moonlight, enfolded by the violet night...’. We
can tell Wexford is cultivated, for he compares them not only to Adam and
Eve, but also to Venus and Adonis (another example of his knowledge of
the Greek mythology appears at the end of the book, when he talks about
the three Fates). His fascination for the scene has no erotic aspect. Indeed
his feelings are described as a “primeval awe”. “A man and a woman alone
at the beginning of the world” are the words in his mind. This beautiful
cohabitation between nature and the human bodies comes out in the
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sentence : ‘Silver flesh entwined, encanopied by an ever-moving, shivering
embroidery of leaf shadows...’. All this beauty and perfect harmony
awakens a sort of magical sensation in the detective : ‘...the pressure of
procreating, urgent nature, that is the presence of the god’.
Although unable to hold back a shiver, he does not share his feelings with
Burden, who probably would not understand them at all, or at least not in
the same way. Instead, he just tells him to come away : ‘This is a private
place’, says Wexford, which could be a parody of the other’s words, but
that is, in my opinion, a way of leaving the couple in peace.
Not only does Wexford have the authority to tell Burden what to do, he
also sometimes takes Burden’s place as John and Pat’s father. Burden is
always looking at his watch in the evening to check that he will not get
home too late so that the children are not alone. He worries a lot about
them. Too much, in Wexford’s opinion. In Chapter Thirteen, he makes fun
of him a little bit one evening, when Burden says, on page 112 : ‘What
about Pat ? She’ll have to get her own tea. She’ll have to walk to her
dancing lesson. John’ll be all alone.’. Rendell likes to describe things in
details, especially when they have to do with people and their feelings. Her
books are filled with psychology. She tells us that Wexford’s answer is
formulated ‘in a tone that is usually described as patient, but which, in
fact indicates an extreme degree of controlled exasperation’. He says : ‘He
is six feet tall. He is fifteen (...). Why can’t he escort his sister to her
dancing class?’, so he is basically giving Burden a lesson of “how to be a
good parent”, only he says it in a friendly way. He adds, joking this time :
‘Taking it for granted, of course, that if she walks three hundred yards
alone on a bright summer evening, she’s bound to be set on by
kidnappers’.
Even when he is at Burden’s own home, Wexford allows himself to play
the role of the parent. In the same chapter, he asks Pat to play a song
again, just as Burden tries to make it specifically clear he does not want to
hear it. The children like Wexford, especially John who, as Rendell
describes it, ‘is always pleased to see the Chief Inspector whom he regards
as an ally and friend of oppressed youth’. Being quite cultivated, Wexford,
in Chapter Seventeen, helps John on the French Revolution (which
Burden did not manage to do). In return for his aid, the detective asks him
for some information about Godfrey Tate, a close friend of Vedast’s, the
rock star, about whom John has read a lot.
We do not know much about Wexford’s past and education, but we do
know he reads quite a lot. During the years he has been doing his job, he
has had the opportunity to have many contacts with all sorts of people
and study the way they lived. When Ruth Rendell gives us extracts of his
thoughts, we can tell he is a man of experience. For example, near the end
of the book, Mr. and Mrs. Peveril are proven to be innocent. Mr. Peveril is
known to have been unfaithful to his wife many times. But at this point in
time, he says he is going to take her on a good holiday because she needs
to relax after all she has lived through with the police interviews. Wexford
knows that the ‘uxoriousness’ is not going to last, for such changes of
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attitude do occur in marriage at times of crisis, ‘but it is only in romances
that it becomes a permanency’, as it is said on page 149. He knows this,
having studied and seen many couples and the way they get along,
depending on the circumstances.
Wexford likes to ask himself existential questions. That is why I referred
to him previously as an ‘amateur philosopher’. In Some Lie and Some Die,
he meets a young student in philosophy and gets along well with him. His
name is Louis Mbowele. He is African. They share discussions that have
sometimes nothing to do with the rest of the story, for instance about the
African’s native land, Marumi. They meet in Chapter Nine. Louis comes to
see Wexford at his office to bring him information about the crime. It is he
who, in a way, brings the key to the mystery to Wexford. It is thanks to
this information, brought to Wexford in riddles, that the policeman finds
out who has killed the victim and why. Louis talks about the psychology of
Dunsand, and with the details he reveals about his past, what he has been
through, Wexford understands that Dunsand is the murderer, but is not
“responsible” for the crime in some way. Indeed this is a difficult,
philosophical question which he asks Tate, a close friend to the rock star,
near the end of the book, page 187 : ‘Who kills, Mr. Tate, the one who holds
the knife, the one who says “stab!” or the one who sends the victim to the
appointed place ?’. In this story, Zeno Vedast is the one who sent Dawn,
the victim, to the place where she got killed, only he did not know it would
turn out that way. He was ‘playing a game’, and it did not go the way he
thought it would. He might not be recognized as the murderer by the
court. Nonetheless, he is undoubtebly the one responsible for the girl’s
death. The very last sentence in the book is pronounced by Wexford to
Burden. He says, on page 192 : ‘Let them be his judges’, meaning : ‘Let the
young, Vedast’s fans, judge whether he still deserves to be considered as
their star, their idol, or not’.
Another aspect about Wexford is that he is very close to us readers. In the
sense that he has human reactions, some of which are perfectly useless.
He has temptations, just like us. For instance, he once in the story has to
resist the temptation of taking another helping of sugar in his drink. How
often does that happen to us ? In Chapter Eight, a little devil speaks in his
head and he asks Mrs. Peckham to stay during the interview, ‘more to
irritate Mrs. Stonor than because he thought her mother would be able to
furnish them with information’, says Rendell.
He is perfectly conscious of his age (around sixty years old), and if he
sometimes wishes he were younger, he certainly does not try to act like it.
In Some Lie and Some Die, the character Martin Silk is the contrary of
Wexford : he lets his hair grow to be in fashion, wears t-shirts and jeans
(although he is very rich), spends a lot of time with young people and
criticizes the older generation. It makes him look a little ridiculous. In
Chapter Ten, when Wexford sees him, Silk’s hair reminds him of a
nineteenth-century statesman. He makes a pun by saying, on page 169,
that Silk is like an ‘éminence grise’ to Vedast. Silk says to him on the next
page : ‘You’re not together. Who is, at your age ? The hung-up generation’.
To this, Wexford answers : ‘If I belong to it, so do you. We’re the same age.
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Only I know it, I accept it. You don’t’. He gives a good lesson about ‘how to
accept one’s age’ to Silk, and the latter almost looks offended after this
speech, for it was as if it hurt him to realize he was no longer an
adolescent.
Wexford likes provoking a reaction in the people he is talking to,
especially when they are suspects. That is a technique often used by
policemen: it is a way of getting information out of someone without he or
she noticing it or at least who does not intend to give it. At the end of
Chapter Twenty, page 175, Wexford says something, and Rendell writes
that he is ‘pleased at the unease his words have provoked in Nell, pleased
by Tate’s cringing’.
Wexford also likes talking in a dramatic way, especially when a case is
about to end. On page 177, he says : ‘If you hadn’t gone, Dawn Stonor
would be alive today, making wedding plans with her fiancé’. He is in fact
quoting his own words : not two pages before, he tells them : ‘If you hadn’t,
Dawn might be at this moment making wedding plans with her fiancé’.
This repetition not only gives a dramatic tone to his speech, it also
underlines his arguments to defend his point.
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter
This book came out in 1992, which is nearly twenty years after Some Lie
and Some Die was published. Yet the first book I read by Rendell was
Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter. One of the main differences between her
detective novels and Christie’s is the fact that we ‘enter’ much more into
the detective’s personal life. I said previously that Rendell is an author
who likes working around psychology. One of the main differences, in my
opinion, between Christie’s books and Rendell’s is that Christie works
really hard on the plot. They are all very twisted, one wonders how she
manages to find a different ‘twist’ for every one of the books she writes.
Rendell does not work on the plot that much. If she does not neglect it, she
at least spends less time on it than on the development of the characters,
whom she ‘makes’ so believable that you could imagine meeting them.
Wexford has reactions that we understand, for we can easily compare
them to our own. In Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter, more than in Some
Lie and Some Die, the author gives us many extracts of Wexford’s private
life. The story is a sort of parallel between the policeman’s life and his
inquiry. And of course, the policemen have new tools which did not exist
yet in the seventies, like computers and mobile phones. The murder (for
there are always murders in these stories) happens in the huge house
(called Tancred House) of a famous, rich writer, on the outskirts of
Kingsmarkham. One evening, this writer (called Davina Flory), her
husband, her daughter and her granddaugther are having dinner in that
house. Three of them are killed. One has survived and seen everything :
the granddaughter, Daisy Flory.
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Themes : - Burden’s new wife and life
- Wexford’s personal life, the connections with his job
- Wexford’s way of proceeding with the people he interviews
In this book we get to meet new colleagues whom he did not know in Some
Lie and Some Die, or that Rendell just did not mention, for instance Barry
Vine and Karen Malahyde. There are also some we already knew, such as
Martin, who is killed at the very beginning of the story. And of course,
Wexford’s ally and friend, Michael Burden, who no longer calls him ‘sir’
but ‘Reg’. Sylvia, Wexford’s eldest daughter, has a house-warming party in
Chapter Twenty Four, and invites Burden and his wife, for they are good
friends of the Wexford family. In this book, Burden is married to his
second wife. He has changed a lot, especially thanks to her. For one thing,
he has a third child. Pat and John, whom he had with his first wife and
whom he worried about all the time in Some Lie and Some Die must have
grown up and left to live their lives on their own. Burden and his new wife,
Jenny, live with their young son Mark. Jenny has had a very big influence
on Burden’s opinion about life, his interests and especially his tolerance.
The police install their working center in the stables, for they have a lot of
work to search the whole area around Tancred. Looking at the immensity
of the house and property, Burden thinks about the number of homeless
people all around England and how all these really luxurious houses solve
no problems. It is his wife who taught him to think like that. Rendell tells
us, on page 60, that he would never have thought like that before he had
married Jenny.
Wexford is married to a woman called Dora. They have two daughters :
Sheila and Sylvia. In spite of himself, Wexford has always had a
preference for Sheila, and Sylvia knows it. Once she tells her father that
she is sure he will not come to her house-warming party. That remark
worries him. He wishes he felt the same for both his daughters, but he is
only human, and one cannot control one’s emotions. Nonetheless he
makes sure he does not miss this party. That is the only moment in the
whole story where we learn anything about Sylvia. Most of Wexford’s
preoccupations are all about Sheila and her new boyfriend, Augustine
Casey, a thirty-year-old writer, with whom he has a very difficult
relationship. Wexford can easily tell, every time he talks with him, that
Casey despises him and his tastes, for instance in books : Casey looks at
Wexford’s bookshelf, picks out one after another and shakes his head at
his conventional taste. From page 102 to 104, in Chapter Nine, Wexford
and his wife have an argument about him. Dora defends Casey for her
daughter’s sake. For Wexford, the point is clear : either Sheila forgets
about her boyfriend or it is the end of her relationship with her father !
During the argument, we notice once again that Wexford is cultivated, for
he makes many allusions, such as comparing Casey’s way of despising
Wexford’s books to the Roman Emperer turning his thumb down for the
gladiator in the arena to be killed. And to support his own opinion of
Casey’s ugliness, he quotes Burke. Nonetheless his wife, who may have
read less than him, still manages to win the argument, in the sense that he
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is forced to accept the reality that Sheila might live with Augustine Casey,
for she has fallen in love with him.
Casey is one of Rendell’s almost comical characters. She gives us a whole
description of his behaviour in the restaurant, when he is invited out for
dinner by the Wexford family. And the more we read about him, the more
we feel like Wexford. We imagine ourselves in the latter’s place, having to
live with this man as a son-in-law, not being able to see one’s daughter
without seeing him... That is also an example of our feeling closer to the
character of Wexford than to Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot.
At the beginning of his inquiry, when he talks to Daisy about the
massacre, Wexford feels a strange feeling for the girl. He knows it is love,
but what kind of love is it ? He has already taken her once in his arms,
although he is a policeman and his job is not to comfort victims (a big
difference with Poirot, who is an independant detective and who is allowed
to comfort them. He often expresses it with a tap on the back, which is a
mechanical way of showing one’s emotions). Daisy’s real father is on the
list of suspects, and of course, the reader imagines what kind of love it
must be, given the title of the book : Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter. But
Wexford has not kissed Daisy, and her father has not yet been proven to
be guilty. On page 206, Chapter Fifteen, Wexford thinks the whole thing
over and realizes that he does not desire her sexually, nor would he want
to have her as a lover. She is seventeen, going on eighteen, which is much
closer to his daughter’s age than to his. He is going through a period where
Sheila practically ignores him. In fact, his feelings for Daisy resemble
rather the one he feels for his own daughter. Daisy is ‘replacing’ the lack
of love his favorite and youngest daughter used to give him. He is playing
the role of Daisy’s father, and she is pretending to be his daughter. Yes,
this is how he first interprets it. But later on in the story, he goes and
interviews the real father. That event changes his mind totally. On page
291, he realizes that this experience with Daisy taught him ‘the huge
division between love and being fond of someone’, as Rendell writes. ‘Daisy
had been there when, for the first time in his life, Sheila defected. No
doubt, any amiable pretty young woman who was nice to him would have
served the purpose’.
In Chapter Twenty-three, Wexford interviews a friend of one of the
victims, Mrs. Garland. Rendell gives us a very good physical description of
her but it is in fact what Wexford sees and thinks. For instance, ‘she
looked remarkably young for forty-four, or if not exactly young,
remarkably smooth-faced’, which tends to prove that it is the policeman’s
thoughts we are reading, and not a simple description by Rendell. Had it
been her description, there would not have been suggestions or
estimations.
Wexford does not wish to make interviews more difficult than necessary
for the people he is questioning. For instance, at the beginning of this
chapter, when Mrs. Garland phoned, he could tell she was crying and
decided to come to her place for the interview instead of her coming to the
police station. He also lets her have a glass of whisky. On the other hand,
he wants the job to be done well and efficiently. The shock of learning of
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the death of her friend and her family has a tendancy to make Mrs.
Garland act more like a child than like an adult, at least in the way she
speaks. For instance, when the policeman asks her to answer a precise
question, she says ‘Do I have to’, in the way a child would to his parent.
Wexford adapts himself to the temperament of the people he is
questioning. On page 319, he refuses to serve her a second glass of alcohol,
for he wants her to be in good shape, so to speak, for the rest of the
interview. He is firm, and when she asks him : ‘What is wrong with that?’,
he answers : ‘I’m not in the business of answering your inquiries, Mrs.
Garland. I’m here so that you can answer mine. I’m doing you the courtesy
of coming here. And I want you capable of answering. Is that clear ?’. This
last sentence makes Wexford sound more like a father than a policeman.
Ruth Rendell, source :
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/02/29/1077989432836.html?f
rom=storyrhs
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Summary of the comparaisons between Wexford, Hercule
Poirot and Miss Marple
Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha Christie’s two main detectives,
have this common point which they do not share with Wexford : they are
independent and work more out of passion for crime than in the interest
for money, as they are retired. Wexford is a policeman, and so he does not
have a close, social approach with the people he interviews. However he
studies people’s attitudes, habits and character just as well and it is in
Ruth Rendell’s novels that we find out the most about people’s
backgtrounds, lives and deep, private thoughts.
They each have their way of interviewing people : Miss Marple does it as
an old lady would at a tea party, just having what would seem like an
every-day discussion. Hercule Poirot is very detective-like, although he
also has his own personal methods. He likes everything to be taken step
by step, without neglecting any point or assuming facts without being sure
of their evidence. And of course, Wexford asks his questions just like a
policeman would, only we can easily tell that he knows precisely why he
asks them.
One is an old English lady, living in her little town with her quiet
humdrum life when not on crime business, one is a little retired Belgian,
who enjoys travelling, and one is a policeman, who works mostly in his
own region in England and who also has a family life outside his work. All
three are our detectives and their enquiries entertain us in their own
specific way.
Agatha Christie (1891-1976), source : www.naafa.org/ hall_of_fame/
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Chapter Two
English Society
An Outline Of The Class System In England
English society has been based on a class system for centuries, and
England is one of the last European countries of the 20th century to be
organized in such a way. To understand English society, one has to
understand the class system, for it is very present and very visible in
every-day life. One originally belongs to a class by birth but can change
one’s position through a profession or by earning more money. Here is a
short outline :
a) At the very top of the scale, there is the Aristocracy. People belonging
to this class are mostly nobles. They usually come from an important and
famous family, and have a title. People right below nobility in position and
birth are the gentry.
b) Then comes the Middle Class (chiefly the merchant or trading class),
which we can divide into three main parts :
- the upper middle class, which includes doctors, army officiers, people
with a high position in the Church or who have a lot of money (in this last
category you might find factory owners).
- Middle middle class, which includes shop owners, lower liberal
professions
- Lower middle class
Ruth Rendell and particularly Agatha Christie write stories that happen
in the Middle Class, for that is where they come from and where they have
chosen to place their detectives. Hercule Poirot, being a foreigner, does
not belong to English Society, but if I were to place him on the class scale, I
believe it would be in the middle middle class, just like Wexford, perhaps
just a bit above him.
c) We finally get to the Working Class, which involves the biggest
percentage of people in England . They are the people who are ‘engaged in
manual or industrial labour’, as it is explained in ‘The Concise Oxford
Dictionary’. In detective novels, they are the gardeners, the servants or
the farm labourers in the villages. They have fairly important roles in
Agatha Christie’s novels but she will never make a murderer out of one of
them.
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Ruth Rendell’s Portrayal Of Society In Two Different Historical
Contexts
“Some Lie and Some Die” was written in a period of the Twentieth Century
when many resistance movements against war, abuse of power and
capitalism, were organized in different places all over the world, such as
in Europe, in the United States and also in Australia and New-Zealand. The
story happens only five years after May 68, a year during which French
students refused to study and took over colleges and universities in order
to make things change. In Vietnam, the Americans were still fighting the
war. Many people, especially the younger generation, demonstrated in the
streets against it. It was also a period during which music was evolving
very fast, particularly in England. There had been Woodstock, a festival
organized in the United States in 1969 where many English rock bands
played and became even more famous, in front of a crowd of half a million
hippies, in a peace-and-love spirit. The festival that happens in this book
at Sundays Park reminds us in many ways of Woodstock. Burden’s
character in this story represents an interesting reflexion of the conflict
between the younger generation and the older one mostly in the Middle
Class. Wanting to change the world and ‘make it a better place’ is in
fashion. It is part of the hippies’ ideology (The Aristocracy and the
Working Class are pratically not affected by it). Many older people think
of them as ‘freaks’. Wexford is part of the exception that does not. He
believes that his generation has to learn from its children, to listen to
what they have to say and understand why they think differently.
“Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter” happens nearly twenty years later. In
the 1990s, the time of the hippies has pratically disappeared. England has
lived through punk (Rendell makes an allusion to the movement with the
mention of a grafitto on which it is written ‘Pistols Rule’. ‘Sex Pistols’ was
one of the first famous English punk bands), technology has moved
forward very fast and society has changed quite a bit, although the class
system has remained very similar. Again, there is a conflict between two
generations : during the whole story, Wexford is concerned about the
choice his daughter made with her new boyfriend, called Augustine Casey.
The detective disapproves, for he does not get along well with Casey.
We notice a difference in technology, as I said previously. The policemen
have mobile phones and computers. Ruth Rendell does not give much
information on the scientific procedure of analysing the corpses, but she
describes the damage done to them very well. Unlike Hercule Poirot, who
is totally indifferent when he sees a corpse, the policemen who are sent to
the place where the massacre happened are paralysed by the scene before
their eyes, as they enter the room at Tancred House. Ruth Rendell gives
us a three-page description of that scene, where the main themes are
blood and the colour red. It is absolutely beautiful and horrible at the same
time. I chose those two adjectives that appear contradictory, for I believe
that it is the effect Ruth Rendell is trying to make the reader feel : a strong
contradiction in his senses and emotions. It is a mixture between
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admiration before the beauty of this colour red that covers all the
furniture in the room and the revulsion and disgust before such
substance, the symbol of death. Agatha Christie does not use the morbid
aspect of blood very much, for she prefers concentrating on the plot in
itself. It is quite the same thing about sex : Rendell talks openly about it
with pratically no censure, whereas Christie either avoids the subject or
treats it in a more superficial way. She and Ruth Rendell are aiming for a
wide public, meaning that even the young read their novels, but where we
see an evolution in society is that people nowadays demand blood,
violence and sex.
Davina Flory is an old, very rich writer (upper middle class) who, in her
time, was considered as very extravagant in her way of treating sex. She
is killed at the beginning of the story. She has had quite a ‘wild’ life with
men, and she wishes to prolong this life in that of her granddaughter,
Daisy, who is then just eighteen. The latter will reveal herself at the end as
being wild too, but in another way.
What is interesting is that one of the murderers is a foreigner : he is
American. Most of Ruth Rendell and Agatha Christie’s murderers are not
foreigners. And what is more, he committed the crime with Daisy, his
English ally, but the stakes were different for each of them. Capital
punishment was abolished in England in 1959, whereas it is still enforced
in some states in America. Thanny Hogarth, the American murderer,
comes from one of those states. If the story were to continue after the end
of the book, Daisy would be condemned to life imprisonment, whereas
Thanny would be sentenced to death !
Agatha Christie : Has Society Changed in Fifty Years ?
As previously noted, Agatha Christie, born Mary Clarissa Miller, is one of
the (if not The) most popular detective story writers of her time. She
wrote seventy-seven detective novels and is known as the Queen of Crime.
She published her first book, “The Mysterious Affair at Styles” in 1920,
introducing for the first time Hercule Poirot to the public. “Postern of
Fate” is the last novel she wrote before her death in 1976. Born in 1890,
the world she lives in as a child is very different to the one she lives in at
the end of her life. Yet in her novels, the changes are not as significant.
And also she tends to set up her plots in such a way that one could not tell
exactly what part of the century it happens in. There are very few signs of
modern technology.
I read one of her latest books : “Nemesis”, a Miss Marple case, published in
1971. It is interesting to compare it to Ruth Rendell’s “Some Lie and Some
Die” , which came out only two years later. The world of which Christie
writes is pratically the same as the one in “Sleeping Murder”, which was
written during the Golden Age of British detective novels. Besides the
mention of cars, there are very few differences, whereas in “Some Lie and
Some Die”, Rendell illustrates current political movements, musical
tastes, fashion at the time. Christie pratically never speaks of politics in
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her detective novels. As to music, it is absolutely non-existant in
“Nemesis”. I also noticed that in this story, each time there is an allusion
to ‘what is the world of today’ (which is in fact the world of the early
1970’s), it is pratically always pejorative. For instance, at the beginning of
the novel, on page 8, Miss Marple criticizes the newspaper ‘The Times’ for
not being as practical as it used to be to find information, due to the excess
of advertisement. On page 19, a man says : ‘She’s elderly, I gather, and
much more punctilious than the young scatter-brains of today’. On page
78, Miss Marple talks about her village and says : ‘It used to be a very
pretty old-world village but of course like everything else, it is becoming
what they call developed nowadays’. We clearly notice the tone of
nostalgia in the way she says this. On page 110, a doctor says : ‘Girls, you
must remember, are far more ready to be raped nowadays than they used
to be’ ! All these examples tend to show that society might be changing
(although very few changes appear), but not for the best, on the contrary !
One must not forget that the mentality in between the two world wars was
quite different to that of today, and some things Christie says for instance
about foreigners might appear as shocking nowadays. There are often
foreigners on the list of suspects in her novels. Why ? Because they are
‘different’, and one cannot predict what is in their head. The mention of
the word ‘negro’, that appears for instance on page 14 in “Death on the
Nile”, is no longer accepted for it is considered as politically incorrect. On
page 31, Christie compares a group of Egyptian shopkeepers to a ‘human
cluster of flies’, which is very discriminatory ! On page 68, Christie writes:
‘It wasn’t as though he had the ordinary Britisher’s dislike -and mistrustfor foreigners’, which is a good example of the mentality back then.
As I have said, Agatha Christie does not give us a lot of sex or violence in
her novels. These two particular subjects are avoided, often in quite subtle
ways. For instance, when Hercule Poirot finds a corpse under a bed,
Christie will drag our attention to ‘how it happened’ more than the result
of the murder. As to sex, when the subject appears, it is very quickly
deflected. For instance, on page 37, in “Death on the Nile” , Mrs.
Otterbourne talks to Poirot about her book, “Under the Fig Tree”, that
talks about sex. But we know no detail of what she means by sex, nor does
she give any example.
And we finally get to the class system. It is very visible in Agatha
Christie’s novels. Her characters, with few exceptions, are always situated
in the working class or in the middle class. Her two detectives, Miss
Marple and Hercule Poirot, can be easily considered as part of the latter
class. Between the two wars, more than today, people had servants to help
them in their every-day life. Even people that were not particularly rich.
The servants are part of the working class. They are the gardeners, the
house-maids, the nurses, the cooks and so on. They do not seem to be
paying any attention to what is said in a conversation whilst they are
serving the meal, for that is the attitude that they have been taught to
adopt. Yet they often turn out to be very useful witnesses. Some of them
even witness murder. Poirot and Miss Marple often come to them for
information. Christie underlines the fact that they are from the lower
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class by making them speak a rather bad English. They often make
mistakes such as putting a ‘don’t’ instead of a ‘doesn’t’ and they use a
simple vocabulary. Christie will never make murderers out of them.
To conclude, each of Ruth Rendell’s books seem to mirror a period, unlike
Agatha Christie’s, which are practically intemporal, as if they all
happened during the golden age of British detective stories. I believe that
it is one of the reasons why her name and novels have survived long after
her death and are appreciated even today. She is still considered as the
Queen of Crime. Rendell has also become very famous, and she continues
to write. Will her novels continue to have the same success after her
death, in the same way as Christie’s novels did ? I think they will indeed
because each book is specific to its period and it will be interesting to
travel in time thanks to them. But I doubt she will acceed to such a
universal position as Agatha Christie.
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Chapter Three
English Humour
“Humour”, in English, is an ambiguous word, for it has two main meanings
that are quite different : the first one is a synonym of “mood”. The other
one has a much more difficult definition, so hard to define that no one has
ever actually totally managed to ! That is the one I wish to talk about. We
say, “to have a good sense of humour”. What does that mean? I find it
easier to explain the result of it : it is meant to awake a feeling of
amusement or even laughter. If one has that capability to make people
laugh, then one has a good sense of humour. Then, depending on how
witty one can be, one has either a bad, good, or very good sense of humour.
One of the reasons why I enjoyed reading British detective stories was
because of the humour in them. Of course, one does not read detective
novels only because they are amusing. But one can enjoy them even more
if they include that sort of “bonus” that awakes a different emotion in you
than the usual tension created by the suspense. You find it in awkward
situations, sarcasm or even stupidity. Poirot, for instance, is an amusing
character, for he is so peculiar : he is fanatically fussy, excentric and bigheaded. I chose to study this subject because English humour has been
famous throughout the world for over a hundred years.
A little bit of history...
English humour is unique to England. Perhaps it is due to the insularity of
the country. For centuries the meaning of humour evolved in different
ways, depending on the country, and that is why it was difficult to give it a
definition. It is interesting to notice that the Académie Française waited
until 1932 to finally accept the definition the British had given to
“humour”, which has a comical connotation. But during the hundred and
fifty years before that, the English were isolated with their own sense of
what humour meant to them, and had made a tradition out of it. A
contemporary writer of Shakespeare, Ben Jonson (who lived from 1572 to
1637), notes in his book “Every man out of his Humour” the duality in
English people : sad optimism and happy pessimism. It is difficult to know
for sure where this duality of temperament comes from, but it is
interesting that it plays a role in the history of England. That is why you
find it also in British detective novels, in some more than others. I wanted
to know what other readers thought of that humour, so I interviewed a
few of them.
Interviews
Of course, it was obvious that those who had read the most novels had a
clearer opinion on Agatha Christie or Ruth Rendell’s writing. I could tell
that those who had read fewer books, or who had read them a really long
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time ago had more trouble giving details on what they thought.
Ann Whiting, an American housewife and reader of 50 years of age, who
has “devoured” most Agatha Christies and every Rendell featuring
Wexford, finds both writers amusing but for different reasons. “I prefer
Christie”, says Ann, “for she is more light-hearted. Rendell is a different
type of entertainment : more of a comment on society and on her
protagonists, Wexford and Burden”.
- Who is your favorite detective, Poirot or Miss Marple ? Why ?
“Poirot. I suppose because he is such a ridiculous character, with all his
affectations about order, his moustache, being dressed so neatly, and his
vanity. He makes a great contrast to the English people, who are the
potential criminals.”
- Do you find Agatha Christie particularly amusing or not more than any
other British detective story writer ? Is she old-fashioned ?
“I do find her more amusing than many (like Josephine Tey, P.D. James,
Ellis Peters, Anne Perry). I don’t think her plots are out-dated, but of
course, the world she describes has changed. But it is interesting that she
uses Poirot as a caricature of “foreign-ness” and, in so doing, creates a foil
for English society.”
- Do you find Ruth Rendell’s detective novels amusing ? Why ? Which type
of humour would you consider it to be ?
“Yes, I do find her amusing. Very dry humour, and very well observed :
she draws very clever and believable personalities. For instance, in Some
Lie and Some Die, the princely African revolutionary Philosopher is
totally believable, recognizable !”
I then interviewed Dennis Roshier, who is English, 50 years old, works as
an administrator and who has read about fifteen Agatha Christies and two
or three Ruth Rendells. His opinion on Christie was pretty precise but he
had more trouble expressing an opinion about Rendell, whom he didn’t
remember as being “amusing” at all. “I enjoyed reading her because of the
suspense”, explains Dennis. “But I prefered Christie for the plots.” And his
favorite detective is also Poirot : “I like the humoristic side of the
character”. I asked him whether he thought Christie was old-fashioned,
and he said that when he had read them, quite few years before, he had
thought they were original for their time. But now, he would probably find
them old-fashioned, indeed.
Margaret Hilweg is a French-speaking person, aged 28 and who studies at
university. She has read a few Christies and one Rendell in English.
Having read only one book of the latter, it was difficult for her to say if she
thought Rendell was amusing or not : “No, I don’t think I found her
amusing. Maybe it is because of my English, which isn’t perfect, but I
thought she was more of an entertainment for the suspense. But neither
she or Christie seemed very amusing to me.”
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This last interview tends to show that, if you have not a very good
knowledge of the language and also of English society, you will not
understand the jokes the same way, or even notice them. I have myself
noticed that the more I read British novels, the better I get to know the
society and the humour that goes with it. I noticed that Christie’s way of
putting humour in her novel had always to do with the story, and even the
plot. Ruth Rendell seemed to make more jokes, but they seemed to me
more like “breaks” in the story for a little laugh. I will analyse them
separately and draw comparisons...
Agatha Christie’s Humour
I have noticed that often, when Agatha Christie comes up with humorous
passages in her novels, it has to do with the story itself. For instance, if a
character is funny, because stupid, she will use that aspect of him or her
later on in the story. I would say her jokes are more discreet than those of
Rendell. In my opinion, the novels with Hercule Poirot are the most
amusing, because of the mistakes he makes when he talks, putting French
expressions in his speech ; he is obsessively neat and tidy ; he is not the
least bit modest ; he has a tendency to talk ironically to people, or rather
to put things in a way that only he can understand.
In Death on the Nile, page 52, he is talking to Simon Doyle, who says to
him : “Linnet’s been brought up to believe that every annoyance can
automatically be referred to the police”, and Poirot answers : “It would be
pleasant if such were the case”. In this type of moment, he is usually
talking to himself more than to the person in front of him. On page 78,
they are on a boat, on the Nile. Mrs. Otterbourne emerges and nearly falls
into Poirot’s arms : “So sorry”, she apologizes, “Dear Mr. Poirot -so very
sorry. The motion -just the motion, you know. Never did have any sea legs.
If the boat would only keep still....”. She clutches at his arm. “It’s the
pitching I can’t stand.... Never really happy at sea...”. And then she
complains to him about her daughter and says she wants to go and get
her. But Poirot offers on page 79 to send for the daughter and adds that
the sea is too rough and that Mrs. Otterbourne might be swept overboard.
There again, it is as if he is saying to himself how silly she is ; she does not
even notice that he is making fun of her ! This is a typical example where
Christie has created an amusing situation, one which is useful to the story
line, because Poirot now has an excuse to go and speak to the daughter.
On page 90, Poirot is talking to Race : “There passes itself something on
this boat that causes me much inquietude”. In this one phrase, he makes
three mistakes of French directly translated into English : “passes itself”
instead of “happening” ; “causes me” which you would not say in English ;
nor would you say “inquietude”, but “worry”. It is interesting if you are a
French-speaking person because you can notice this kind of mistake easily
and put it in its context in French. You find the same mistake on page 142,
when Poirot says “I pose myself one question”, instead of “ask myself”.
On page 206, Poirot says : “I like an audience, I must confess. I am vain,
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you see. I am puffed up with conceit. I like to say : ‘See how clever is
Hercule Poirot’ ” (the grammatical mistake is done here by Poirot !). The
fact he recognizes his vanity and feels quite fine about it makes it even
more comical, and Race adds : “Well, just how clever is Hercule Poirot ?”.
A good example of English sarcastic humour.
Miss Marple is also amusing in her habits. When she is not working on a
case, she corresponds to the gossipy old lady type. But when she is
working on one, she sometimes takes advantage of that side to get
information. In Sleeping Murder, she often uses that “technique” to help
out Gwenda and Giles in their inquiry. But she is a kind and entertaining
old woman, and people in the books, as much as the readers, enjoy
“spending time” with her. Given her age, it happens that she forgets
events or names, and she is perfectly aware of that. For instance, in
“Nemesis”, she is trying to remember the name of a person and believes it
is “Mrs. Bishop”. When she finds out, on page 11, that the real name is in
fact “Mrs. Knight”, she realizes her confusion comes from chess and says :
“I shall be calling her Miss Castle next time I think of her, I suppose, or
Miss Rook. Though, really, she’s not the sort of person who would rook
anybody”. Miss Marple makes a double joke just with that word “rook”.
On page 66 of the same book, there is a scene which I find quite amusing :
Miss Marple is beginning a conversation with another lady about
gardening, and a foreign man tries to join in, placing at first remarks such
as : “Flowers very pretty, I like very much”. But then Miss Marple, being a
passionate person about the subject, takes off “full speed” about some
technicality. The other lady participates actively in the conversation,
being very familiar to gardening herself, but the foreign man “relapses
into smiling silence”.
Ruth Rendell’s humour
The jokes she puts in her novels do not have to do so much with the story
line as with the development of the characters, for this is one thing she
works on a lot. Detective Wexford is much closer to us readers, than is
Hercule Poirot. Unlike him, Wexford makes mistakes, is not always very
sure of himself and even puts himself sometimes in embarrassing
situations. He also likes to tease his colleague -and friend- Burden, who
teases him back. On page 66, Wexford says : “What happens to the mauve
garment ? They had no drinks for her to splill, ate nothing for her to drop,
made no love to -er, crush it. (I put it like that, Mike, to save your delicate
sensibilities)”, somewhat between teasing and making fun of him.
Sometimes, the comic aspects come from the attitude of the characters,
for instance when Burden is determined to like nothing at the festival. Or
the attitude on page 50 of Mrs. Peveril, who is an excessively neat person :
“D’you mind not sitting on that cushion ?”, she says, “I’ve just put a fresh
cover on it”. On page 71, because Mrs. Peckham is so old, she makes funny
mistakes like mixing up Zeno Vedast with John Lennon !
Later in the story we meet this character, Louis Mbowele, a young student
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in philosophy, with a strong personality. He teases Wexford and ironically
answers, on p.79, to the question : “Was there anything else in the river?”,
by “Fish, and sticks and stones and a hell of a lot of water”.
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Conclusion
In addition to being entertaining and intellectually stimulating, the British
detective novels tell us much about English society. The humour the
English people use teaches us many things about their character, ways of
thinking and of seeing themselves. Rendell uses a very direct way of
criticizing her own society. She is very lucid, whereas Christie uses the
caricature of a foreigner (Hercule Poirot) to comment on it.
Agatha Christie published her first books during the Golden Age of British
detective novels, when Britain was an imperial world power. She
continued to write up until the 1970’s. Yet the world she describes is preWorld War Two. Rendell’s plots and characters reflect a post-imperial
Britain, with ethical questions and uncertainties. Wexford and his wife,
Dora, confront and debate these issues.
The skill of the British detective novelist is in the ability to show us events
and conclusions unraveling in the mind of the detective as a person, while
allowing the larger context of British society to unfold and be commented
upon. On one level, the novels merely entertain ; on another, they raise
essential and universal questions about the nature of justice.
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Bibliography (in order of appearance in the text)
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Death on the Nile, 1984 (1956), Fontana/Collins
Books, Great Britain
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Sleeping Murder, 1984 (1976), Fontana/Collins
Books, Great Britiain
- RENDELL Ruth, Some Lie and Some Die, 1989 (1973), Arrow Books,
London, Great Britain
- RENDELL Ruth, Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter, 1993 (1991),
Warner/Mysterious Press Books, New York, USA
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Nemesis, 1986 (1971), Fontana/Collins Books, Great
Britain
- http://librapport.org/document.php?iddocument=232 : on this site I
found Nadim EL GHEZAL’s Theoretical analysis of English humour
Books visible on the photograph, on the front page of the paper :
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Nemesis, same as above
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Death on the Nile, same as above
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Sleeping Murder, same as above
- CHRISTIE Agatha, Murder on the Orient Express, 1960 (1934), Pocket
Books, New York, USA (I read this book but did not use it in my paper. It
has got many spelling mistakes)
- RENDELL Ruth, Some Lie and Some Die, same as above
- RENDELL Ruth, Kissing the Gunner’s Daughter, 1993 (1991), Arrow
Books, London, Great Britain (in my paper, I refer to the page of “Kissing
The Gunner’s Daughter” published by Warner books -as mentionned
above- but chose this edition for the front picture because I prefer the
cover)
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