Miss Marple's Resigned Conservatism
Agatha Christie's beloved series on murder and secrets in 20th century Britain is also a deep, melancholy, and insightful rumination on lost and eternal things.
“One must accept change, I suppose.”
“Life really is a one-way street.”
Miss Marple
There’s a lot of discussion about what literature contributes to humanity nowadays in the age of short form video and AI summaries. After all, you can tl;dr plot summaries in seconds and get the gist of a story with a few clicks. Why bother reading the whole thing?
Part of the answer may lie in the fact that good literature is not just a good plot or characters - it is the whole experience of losing yourself in another world, of feeling like you’re right there with the dramatis personae, and of understanding or appreciating their perspective on life within the context of the story, not as detached, critical analysis or a meme-worthy gif.
Such is the case with the casual, sometimes barely noticeable social commentary that runs through the Miss Marple detective series, written by Agatha Christie and still timely today.
Change Is Inevitable - But Is It Good?
Outwardly, Marple herself is nothing unique. Born in the Victorian era, she is devoutly religious, never married, tends to her gardens, and has a nosy and inquisitive tendency to understand “human nature.” This last attribute in particular stands her in good stead to solve the many mysteries she has to solve.
But Marple is more than that. She is an old woman with values, beliefs and attitudes which no longer seem to hold much sway as time passes. We see this already in the first story, A Murder At The Vicarage, when the carnage from WWI is already undermining the close-knit ties and old families that once characterized her quaint little town of St. Mary Mead.
The subsequent stories only deepen this dislocation: post-WWII Britain is a disorienting place, filled with new housing developments, emerging new elites like money men, movie stars, and foreign (European) immigrants displacing the old and more dependable military officers, religious leaders, and families that gave Britain a much more stable and familiar feel.
The sexual revolution, the gradual secularization of the country, and the increased intervention of the state (the books are filled with mentions of onerous taxes), all make Britain feel a strange and alienating place, indeed.
The counterpoint to all this is of course the Victorian Britain that existed when Marple was young and whose values she still adheres, too - belief in the good and bad of human nature, of old “family values,” and an era which seemed to espouse beauty and stability.
Neither Nostalgia Nor Year Zero
Throughout the books, Marple tries to navigate this world as best she can, and her approach to it all is fascinating and instructive for those of us trying to gain our bearings in an even more turbulent era.
For a start, Marple accepts that change happens, like it or not. Multiple comments note this matter-of-factly, out of an air of resignation or just acceptance that “that’s just how it is.”
Nor does Marple, or indeed Christie as narrator, pretend the Victorian era was perfect. Marple often compares bad people and even murderers to people she’d known in her village over the years, including those who no doubt adhered to the old ways.
Alongside asides on the beauty of Victorian architecture, Christie often notes how the old buildings now feel out of place or even worthy of being condemned; their ownership by new people unfamiliar with the old customs and ways of running a house lead to a sense of something not quite fitting.
When Miss Marple tours London streets to see what happened to the old storefronts and streets, she approves of some of the changes and deeply disapproves of others.
Change happens, but whether any of it is good is always a matter for individual judgement and discernment.
The Old and the Eternal
Where Marple stands her ground to the last is not the passing fashions of an age - after all, Victorianism was once modern and fashionable, too. Rather, it is the insistence that the eternal values enshrined in the Victorian moral code still hold sway.
Perhaps the most important of these is Marple’s and likely the author’s insistence that not only is human nature the same in every age - so is the existence of evil, in the plain, ecumenically religious sense.
Doctors and others may speak of criminals and murderers merely having some genetic or biological defect or bad upbringing or whatnot, but Marple and Christie will have none of it: Evil exists, and many if not most of the murderers in the series fit the bill. They are calculating, often unrepentant, and fully deserving of their fate.
The world may condemn Marple as “old fashioned” for her adherence to values like justice, the persecution of wickedness, and belief in things like souls and eternal life and even - gasp! - sexual propriety, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true or worthy of being advocated.
This, in the end, is the conservative sensibility - not a rigid philosophy or ideology, but a flexible sensibility - of Miss Marple and Christie herself. It is a deeply human and understandable approach, one which both wrestles with and accepts the present, trying at all times to differentiate between fashions and foundations.
In an age where everyone seeks to live life according to pre-prepared checklists, often composed by AI or on a whim on social media, we could all do a lot worse than spend our afternoons listening to and reading the Miss Marples of the world, not as a character to be consumed but a literary friend giving us the best advice in the world.
the answer may lie in the fact that good literature is not just a good plot or characters - it is the whole experience of losing yourself in another world, of feeling like you’re right there with the dramatis personae, and of understanding or appreciating their perspective on life within the context of the story, not as detached, critical analysis or a meme-worthy gif.
Such is the case with the casual, sometimes barely noticeable social commentary that runs through the Miss Marple detective series, written by Agatha Christie and still timely today.
Change Is Inevitable - But Is It Good?
Outwardly, Marple herself is nothing unique. Born in the Victorian era, she is devoutly religious, never married, tends to her gardens, and has a nosy and inquisitive tendency to understand “human nature.” This last attribute in particular stands her in good stead to solve the many mysteries she has to solve.
But Marple is more than that. She is an old woman with values, beliefs and attitudes which no longer seem to hold much sway as time passes. We see this already in the first story, A Murder At The Vicarage, when the carnage from WWI is already undermining the close-knit ties and old families that once characterized her quaint little town of St. Mary Mead.
The subsequent stories only deepen this dislocation: post-WWII Britain is a disorienting place, filled with new housing developments, emerging new elites like money men, movie stars, and foreign (European) immigrants displacing the old and more dependable military officers, religious leaders, and families that gave Britain a much more stable and familiar feel.
The sexual revolution, the gradual secularization of the country, and the increased intervention of the state (the books are filled with mentions of onerous taxes), all make Britain feel a strange and alienating place, indeed.
The counterpoint to all this is of course the Victorian Britain that existed when Marple was young and whose values she still adheres, too - belief in the good and bad of human nature, of old “family values,” and an era which seemed to espouse beauty and stability.
Neither Nostalgia Nor Year Zero
Throughout the books, Marple tries to navigate this world as best she can, and her approach to it all is fascinating and instructive for those of us trying to gain our bearings in an even more turbulent era.
For a start, Marple accepts that change happens, like it or not. Multiple comments note this matter-of-factly, out of an air of resignation or just acceptance that “that’s just how it is.”
Nor does Marple, or indeed Christie as narrator, pretend the Victorian era was perfect. Marple often compares bad people and even murderers to people she’d known in her village over the years, including those who no doubt adhered to the old ways.
Alongside asides on the beauty of Victorian architecture, Christie often notes how the old buildings now feel out of place or even worthy of being condemned; their ownership by new people unfamiliar with the old customs and ways of running a house lead to a sense of something not quite fitting.
When Miss Marple tours London streets to see what happened to the old storefronts and streets, she approves of some of the changes and deeply disapproves of others.
Change happens, but whether any of it is good is always a matter for individual judgement and discernment.
The Old and the Eternal
Where Marple stands her ground to the last is not the passing fashions of an age - after all, Victorianism was once modern and fashionable, too. Rather, it is the insistence that the eternal values enshrined in the Victorian moral code still hold sway.
Perhaps the most important of these is Marple’s and likely the author’s insistence that not only is human nature the same in every age - so is the existence of evil, in the plain, ecumenically religious sense.
Doctors and others may speak of criminals and murderers merely having some genetic or biological defect or bad upbringing or whatnot, but Marple and Christie will have none of it: Evil exists, and many if not most of the murderers in the series fit the bill. They are calculating, often unrepentant, and fully deserving of their fate.
The world may condemn Marple as “old fashioned” for her adherence to values like justice, the persecution of wickedness, and belief in things like souls and eternal life and even - gasp! - sexual propriety, but that doesn’t mean they’re not true or worthy of being advocated.
This, in the end, is the conservative sensibility - not a rigid philosophy or ideology, but a flexible sensibility - of Miss Marple and Christie herself. It is a deeply human and understandable approach, one which both wrestles with and accepts the present, trying at all times to differentiate between fashions and foundations.
In an age where everyone seeks to live life according to pre-prepared checklists, often composed by AI or on a whim on social media, we could all do a lot worse than spend our afternoons listening to and reading the Miss Marples of the world, not as a character to be consumed but a literary friend giving us the best advice in the world.