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Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Agáta Kišová
Children in Selected Novels by Agatha
Christie
Bachelor‟s Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt.
2013
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I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
…………………………………………….. Author‟s signature
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I would like to thank my supervisor, PhDr. Lidia Kyzlinková, CSc., M.Litt., for the professional advice
she gave me and for the endless patience she had with me.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Table of contents ............................................................................................................... 4
1 Introduction ............................................................................................................. 5
2 The Detective Story ................................................................................................. 7
2.1 A Brief History ................................................................................................... 7
2.2 Golden-Age Detective Fiction ............................................................................ 8
2.3 Agatha Christie ................................................................................................. 11
3 Children in Crooked House ................................................................................... 14
3.1 Introduction....................................................................................................... 14
3.2 The Plot ............................................................................................................. 14
3.3 Josephine........................................................................................................... 16
3.4 Eustace .............................................................................................................. 21
3.5 Other childlike characters ................................................................................. 23
4 Children in Evil Under the Sun ............................................................................. 26
4.1 Introduction....................................................................................................... 26
4.2 The Plot ............................................................................................................. 26
4.3 Linda ................................................................................................................. 28
5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 35
6 Works Cited ........................................................................................................... 39
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1 INTRODUCTION
“One of the luckiest things that can happen to you in life is to have a happy
childhood.” (An Autobiography 13). This is the first sentence of one of the so-called
“English Queens of Crime”, Agatha Christie‟s An Autobiography, which she had been
writing for fifteen years, until October 1965. The book is a record of Christie‟s life,
from her childhood to elder age, as well as a description of the English upper middle-
class lifestyle at the end of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. “I
had a very happy childhood.” (An Autobiography 13), Christie says. She skilfully
captures the feeling of childhood in her autobiography, and the aim of this thesis is to
look at the way she depicts children in two of her other novels.
The novels this thesis will be dealing with are Crooked House (1949) and Evil
Under the Sun (1941). In each of these books the children are in a different situation:
Crooked House is a story of the murder of a wealthy patriarch and it takes place in a
family mansion. In Evil Under the Sun the murder victim is a retired actress who is on
holiday with her husband and his sixteen-year-old daughter. Therefore, Crooked House
deals with upper-class children and Evil Under the Sun with an upper middle-class
teenager. Additionally, each of these books features a different detective: Evil Under the
Sun is a Hercule Poirot story and the investigation in Crooked House is led by an
amateur detective Charles Hayward, whose father is an Assistant Commissioner of
Scotland Yard. Each of these detectives has a different approach to solving the crime
and the thesis will also deal with their approach towards the children in the story.
Children in detective fiction are not a very common theme. In various Sherlock
Holmes novels, the detective uses his “Baker Street Irregulars” – a gang of street
children who help him with gathering information about people, whom Holmes calls his
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“unofficial force” (Doyle). However, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle does not give the reader
any background of the children, he does not seem to care about them, and he just uses
them to help his Great Detective do his work. In the so-called “the Golden Age
detective fiction”, however, mystery stories started to focus on domesticity rather than
on an almost perfect, thinking machine detective, which provided more space for
children as regular characters in the stories.
In her autobiography, Christie speaks about a game she used to play with her sister
Madge when she was a little girl – the “Elder Sister” game. The elder sister was “mad
and lived in a cave at Corbin‟s Head, but sometimes she came to the house” (An
Autobiography 54). When Madge played the elder sister part it made Agatha frightened
and terrified, but she always wanted her sister to play the game with her – “she wanted
to be pleasurably terrified” (Guardian 20 April 1989 qtd. in Light 88). The pleasure of
being frightened as a child may offer an explanation why she was interested in mystery
stories in the first place, and why she used so many nursery rhymes as titles or parts of
her novels; Hickory Dickory Dock (1955), One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940) or
Crooked House – to “remind us of both the terrors and the magic of the nursery”. (Light 88).
The first chapter of the thesis introduces detective fiction in general. The first part
of the first chapter examines a brief history of the genre, the second part deals with the
Golden Age of detective fiction and the last part comments on Agatha Christie‟s life and
her approach to writing detective stories. The second chapter examines Christie‟s
depiction of children in Crooked House, with a brief introduction of the plot and then
the actual analysis in the later parts of the chapter. The third chapter is organised in a
similar way; the book examined is Evil Under the Sun. The last chapter of the thesis
concludes the findings established in the previous parts of the thesis.
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2 THE DETECTIVE STORY
2.1 A Brief History
Detective fiction is one of the most popular genres worldwide. Traces of the
detective story can be found in Sophocles‟s Oedipus Rex or in one of the tales
Scheherazade tells in One Thousand and One Nights. However, presumably the most
recognised detective fiction nowadays is the one written in western countries at the end
of the nineteenth and in the beginning of the twentieth century (James 6).
Edgar Allan Poe‟s short story The Murders in the Rue Morgue is considered to be
the first detective story in the English-speaking world. With its publication in 1841
began the history of the detective story as it is known today. It features the first “Great
Detective”, the brilliant but eccentric C. Auguste Dupin, dim-witted policemen, and the
story is narrated in first person by a close personal friend of the detective: a trend which
is later seen in the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle or Agatha Christie. Poe thought of
his stories as tales of “ratiocination”, where the primary concern of the story is to find
the truth by carefully observing the facts and then making a conclusion at the end of the
story.
As P. D James points out, the very first detective novel in the English language
was Wilkie Collins‟s The Moonstone, an epistolary novel written in 1868 concerning a
theft of a precious diamond in an English country house (James 4). In the novel, there
are several ideas which helped establish the genre of the detective story, such as the
setting in an isolated place, numerous red herrings, the least likely suspect being the
culprit and a final twist in the plot.
In 1887, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created Sherlock Holmes, a detective whose
ability of “deduction”, as Doyle calls his method of solving the crime, is well known
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around the world. The name of Doyle‟s famous detective became a synonym for a
person of great intellectual ability, and the character of Dr. Watson, Holmes‟s sidekick,
inspired writers such as Agatha Christie or Rex Stout to have their great detectives
accompanied by sidekicks, who became narrators of the stories. However, the best
known detective stories were created in what is called the Golden Age of Detective
Fiction.
2.2 Golden-Age Detective Fiction
Golden-Age Detective fiction is defined as a period in the 1920s and 1930s when
authors such as Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery Allingham, Ngaio Marsh and Agatha
Christie created their most famous novels. The period starts in 1920 with the publication
of Christie‟s The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and ends in 1937 when Dorothy L.
Sayers‟s Busman’s Honeymoon, the last novel featuring her Great Detective Lord Peter
Wimsey, was published (Trodd 129). The publication of Philip Van Doren Stern‟s 1941
article “The Case of the Corpse in the Blind Alley” was called “an obituary for the
Golden Age” by author Julian Symons. (Symons 149).
The main characteristics of the Golden-Age detective story are in contrast with the
realism of the late nineteenth century detective fiction. While the nineteenth century
detective story was set in cities such as London or Paris and the detective was mostly
just a thinking machine, in the detective fiction in the Golden Age the setting is usually
an isolated house (either by the surroundings or by weather conditions, such as in
Christie‟s Hercule Poirot’s Christmas) in the countryside, with an emphasis on well-
developed characters and conversations between them. The number of characters was
usually rather low, which was necessary for the reader to get to know all of them well.
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According to Alison Light, the absence of great violence was welcomed by the readers,
who were hungry for light reading after the First World War (Light 66). The main goal
of reading the story is solving the puzzle, who committed the crime and how.
Most of the authors who wrote in the Golden Age were British. In 1930 they
formed the Detection Club, a club for mystery fiction writers, which still operates
nowadays and which had its own set of rules and an oath to follow:
Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes
presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them
and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine
Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God? (qtd. in
Goodman 193).
The set of rules the authors swore to follow was established by Father Ronald Knox,
and it is known as the “Ten Commandments” of detective fiction (Smith). It includes
rules such as “The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story,
but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow” or “No
accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition
which proves to be right.” The ninth rule, “The stupid friend of the detective, the
Watson, must not conceal any thoughts which pass through his mind; his intelligence
must be slightly, but very slightly, below that of the average reader,” caused controversy
in 1926, when Christie published her The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, where the sidekick
(and also the narrator, therefore someone whose thoughts the readers are allowed to
know, thus breaking the first rule), is in fact the murderer.
There were many authors writing detective stories in the Golden Age, however,
probably the most famous (among female writers) are four authors who were dubbed
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the “Queens of Crime”: Dorothy L. Sayers, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham and
Agatha Christie. Their works were, according to Anthea Trodd, more than just a
masterly constructed mystery and they often broke the “rules”, as mentioned above.
(Trodd 129-130).
With the outbreak of the Second World War the popularity of Golden-Age
detective fiction started to decline. The readers wanted the stories to be more credible
and authentic, which gave way to the American hard-boiled school, which, according to
John Scaggs, had three characteristics: “Californian setting”, “American vernacular”
and “the portrayal of crimes that were increasingly becoming part of the everyday
world of early twentieth-century America” (Scaggs 57). Authors such as Dashiell
Hammett or Raymond Chandler created detective stories where the protagonists were
tough, cynical detectives from the streets who were not afraid to confront the criminal
themselves with their fists: a trend which was not seen in the Golden-Age detective
fiction. Raymond Chandler was not a big fan of the Golden-Age style detective fiction,
he even wrote a critical essay The Simple art of Murder where he said that murder
should go back to the “alley” where it belongs.
[Detective stories] do not come off artistically as fiction. They are too
contrived and too little aware of what goes on in the world. […] But if
the writers of this fiction […] wrote about the kind of murders that happen,
they would also have to write about the authentic flavor of life as it is lived.
(Chandler 4)
In spite of the view of Chandler and other hard-boiled detective fiction authors, the
detective stories written in the 1920s, 1930s England remain among the most popular
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ones ever written and Agatha Christie is frequently considered the true queen of the
genre.
2.3 Agatha Christie
Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller was born on the 15th
of September 1890 in Torquay,
where she spent her whole childhood. She was the third child of Frederick Miller, who
was American and “a very agreeable man” (An Autobiography 13), and his English wife
Clara Boehmer. She was educated at home and, while she was encouraged to write from
an early age, her mother believed that “[n]o child ought to be allowed to read until it
was eight years old.” (An Autobiography 24). During the First World War Christie
volunteered as a nurse, and this experience later served her as inspiration for her first
novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, where the killer uses poison to murder his victim,
as well as for numerous other stories which she wrote.
During the First World War, Agatha married Archibald Christie, who was an
officer in the Royal Flying Corps. However, the marriage did not last (following her
husband‟s infidelity, Christie even disappeared and was found eleven days later in a
hotel in Yorkshire, where she was staying under a different name – she never explained
her disappearance and there is no mention of it in her autobiography) and in 1930, she
married Max Mallowan. Mallowan was an archaeologist and Christie often
accompanied him on his expeditions, which provided her with inspiration for her later
novels such as Murder in Mesopotamia or Death Comes in the End, which takes place
in ancient Egypt.
In 1956 Christie was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire
and in 1971 she was promoted Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.
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She was president of the Detection Club from 1957 until her death in 1976. Agatha
Christie died of natural causes at the age of 85, leaving behind 66 novels and numerous
short stories which have become classics of detective fiction.
As mentioned above, Christie‟s first novel was The Mysterious Affair at Styles,
published in 1920. She went on to have a very successful writing career lasting for fifty-
six years (her novel Sleeping Murder was the last one to be published - posthumously,
even though it was written thirty-five years earlier), some of her prominent works are
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, Ten Little Niggers (which featured no detective and
almost no detection at all) or Murder on the Orient Express (where the murderer is
actually almost everyone on the train). Soon enough she found her own unique style of
writing, but in the beginning of her career she “borrows freely from Conan Doyle”
(Light 68), especially in the collection of short stories Poirot Investigates (1925), where
Poirot runs around hunting criminals and has adventures very similar to the ones of
Sherlock Holmes.
As of her detectives, Christie created many of what are now classic stereotypes of
great detectives. Her most famous one is arguably Hercule Poirot, a former Belgian
police officer, who is described as “an extraordinary-looking little man […] [whose]
head [is] exactly the shape of an egg […] [and] his moustache [is] very stiff and
military” (The Mysterious Affair at Styles 21) by his friend and sidekick Arthur
Hastings. Poirot is also described as a very neat man, and Hasting says this of him: “The
neatness of his attire was almost incredible; I believe a speck of dust would have caused
him more pain than a bullet wound.” (The Mysterious Affair at Styles 21). Poirot often
speaks of the necessity of having “little grey cells” in order to solve crimes. He uses a
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lot of French words when he speaks – Christie was fluent in French because she spent
her teenage years in Paris, being educated in three pensions.
Christie‟s other famous detective was Miss Jane Marple, an elderly spinster who
lived in the village of St. Mary Mead, and who had a unique talent for discovering and
solving crimes. Miss Marple‟s technique of solving crimes is based on her lifetime‟s
experience with human nature; she always seems to find similarities between the
characters of the people involved in the crime in question and someone else from her
past, for example in the short story Tape-Measure Murder the murderess and the victim
remind her of two of her cousins, and this helps her solve the crime. In her
autobiography, Christie describes Miss Marple as “[…] the sort of old lady who would
have been rather like some of my step grandmother‟s Ealing cronies – old ladies whom
I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl.” (An Autobiography
449).
Another favourite pair of detectives Christie created were Tommy and Prudence
“Tuppence” Beresford. The couple mainly appear in Christie‟s espionage novels such as
The Secret Adversary or N or M?. Unlike other detectives of hers, Christie lets the
Beresfords age in real time: they are in their early twenties in The Secret Adversary and
in their seventies in Postern of Fate, the last book Christie wrote.
Christie also created numerous detective characters, who only appear in one or two
books she wrote. Some of them are Eileen “Bundle” Brent in The Seven Dials Mystery,
Bobby Jones and Frankie Derwent in Why Didn’t They Ask Evans? or Charles Hayward
in Crooked House.
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3 CHILDREN IN CROOKED HOUSE
3.1 Introduction
“[T]he crooked child of the little Crooked House” (Crooked House 301)
Agatha Christie described her 1949 novel Crooked House in her autobiography
as one of the two she was satisfied with the most (An Autobiography 538), the other one
being The Moving Finger. The title of the novel comes from a nursery rhyme:
There was a crooked man and he went a crooked mile.
He found a crooked sixpence beside a crooked stile.
He had a crooked cat which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together in a little crooked house. (Crooked House 32).
The usage of nursery rhymes is typical of Christie‟s work, but here it may foreshadow
the fact that one of the most important characters in the novel is a child.
In a number of ways, however, the novel is not a typical Christie book: the “detective”,
35-year-old Charles Hayward, does not really solve the crime but is rather an observer
of the events and learns the truth from a letter left to him, and the crimes in the book are
committed by a child.
3.2 The Plot
The story is set in a big family mansion near London called “Three Gables”,
where the family of the wealthy Greek businessman, Aristide Leonides, resides.
Hayward is in love with one of Leonides‟s grandchildren, the clever and beautiful
Sophia Leonides, whom he had met in Cairo. When her grandfather dies, Sophia tells
Charles that he was poisoned with his eserine-based eye medicine which he took in the
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form of an insulin injection, and that she cannot marry him until the murderer is caught.
Charles‟s father is an Assistant Commissioner of Scotland Yard, and therefore Charles
has direct access to the details about the murder and also to the house. There, he meets
Sophia‟s family – her parents, the melodramatic actress Magda Leonides and the cold,
somewhat stuck-up, historian Philip; her clumsy uncle Roger and his scientist wife
Clemency; her grandfather‟s young wife Brenda, whom nobody in the family likes; her
great-aunt Edith de Haviland, who was the sister of Aristide‟s first wife; and her siblings
– her 16-year-old brother Eustace and her sister Josephine, who is twelve years old.
Other residents of the house include Laurence Brown, a private tutor to the children,
and Janet “Nannie” Rowe, who takes care of Josephine. The Leonides family hope that
Brenda, who is rumoured to be having an affair with Laurence Brown, is the killer,
because they think of her as a gold-digger and also, if someone who is not a direct
member of the family was the murderer, it would prevent a scandal.
When after the initial investigation the police have no prime suspect, Charles
agrees to help his father and Chief Inspector Taverner, who is in charge, with the case
and becomes a guest in the house. Each member of the family had a motive and an
opportunity, none of them have an alibi, and the police are clueless. Aristide Leonides
died a very wealthy man and, according to his will, all the members of the family inherit
a lot of money. The situation gets complicated when a new will turns up, where Aristide
wishes to leave all his money to Sophia.
Meanwhile, Charles investigates by talking to the family members. The most
talkative one is Josephine, who claims that she knows who the murderer is. She is very
well informed about other things going on in the house as well (for example she knows
about the affair between Brenda and Laurence and knows where their love letters are
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hidden) and boasts about her knowledge. It does not take a long time until she is hit on
the head by someone in an attempt of murder. She survives and while she is in the
hospital, the police arrest Brenda Leonides and Laurence Brown, because they find the
love letters and decide there is a case.
When Josephine comes home from the hospital, Brenda and Laurence are already
gone and the whole family think that the case is over. However, not long after
Josephine‟s return, someone poisons her cocoa, Nannie drinks it instead of her and dies,
and the family realise that the killer is still among them. Charles is afraid for
Josephine‟s life and tries to persuade her to tell him what she knows, but she refuses.
Later, Edith de Haviland takes Josephine out in a car and they both die in an accident.
After Edith‟s death, Charles discovers two letters which she wrote. One of them is
addressed to Chief Inspector Taverner, where Edith confesses to the murders of Aristide
Leonides and Nannie. The second one is intended only for Charles and it is revealed that
the real killer is Josephine. She killed her grandfather just because he did not want to
pay for her ballet lessons.
3.3 Josephine
Josephine is the twelve-year-old murderess who appears in this novel. After she
wakes him up from his nap and scares him, Josephine‟s physical appearance is
described by Charles like this: “The face still had its goblin suggestion – it was round
with a bulging brow, combed-back hair and small, rather beady, black eyes. But it was
definitely attached to a body – a small skinny body.” (Crooked House 107). She is
described as a very unattractive child by Charles (“She was a fantastically ugly child
with a very distinct likeness to her grandfather.” (Crooked House 108).), by Nannie
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(“She was always a plain little thing.” (Crooked House 225).), and by even her mother
(“My baby – my funny ugly baby. I used to call her a changeling and make her so
angry.” (Crooked House 224).). Her calling Josephine a changeling resulted, according
to Nannie, in “[turning] the child sour” (Crooked House 225).
Throughout the whole novel, Josephine pretends to be playing detective. This may
result from her feeling like an outcast and preferring to be on her own. She frequently
listens behind closed doors and writes everything she learns in her diary. Even though
Nannie criticises her for her actions (“„Don‟t do that,‟ I‟d say, „you‟ll get lead
poisoning‟[…]” (Crooked House 226)), Josephine continues to spy on people, because it
makes her feel superior to others and she can show how clever she is. She seems to like
Charles and informs him about what she has found out. Therefore, Charles has an
impression of Josephine as a strange child who finds out about everything that goes on
in the house. “Josephine isn‟t quite the ordinary child. She knows a good deal about
people,” (Crooked House 278) he says towards the ending of the novel. This is repeated
throughout the entire novel, not only by Charles, but also by other characters. Laurence
Brown, the tutor, describes her as “a very intelligent child, but difficult.” (Crooked
House 92). Brenda Leonides says about Josephine: “Sometimes I think that child isn‟t
right in her head. She has horrible sneaky ways and she looks queer… She gives me the
shivers sometimes.” (Crooked House 99).
When Charles first meets Josephine, the two talk about a play where her mother
played the biblical figure Jezebel. Josephine‟s cruel nature unravels there when she
says: “I mean, Jezebel wasn‟t wicked like she is in the Bible. […] That made it dull.
Still, the end was alright. They threw her out of the window. Only no dogs came and ate
her. I think that was a pity, don‟t you? I like the part about the dogs eating her best.”
(Crooked House 110). This may also show certain hostility towards her mother, who
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played Jezebel. Josephine is able to hate a person for most trivial reasons, so it is quite
possible that she bears a secret hatred of her mother who calls her a changeling, as
mentioned above. After all, it is written in her diary that her only reason for murdering
her grandfather is that he would not pay for her ballet lessons, a motive which,
according to Charles, is “pitifully childish and inadequate” (Crooked House 299).
In spite of her being the ugly, selfish and strange child in the family, Josephine seems to
be loved by most of the household. When she is injured and goes to the hospital, her
mother (who does not seem to love anyone more than herself and dramatic scenes)
expresses regret that she called Josephine a changeling, and the grief on the part of her
sister (her voice breaks when she is explaining to the police how she found Josephine)
and Nannie (who is found crying in the kitchen) is deep and clear.
Josephine‟s character is an evil, selfish one. In her, the worst characteristics of
the Leonides family were combined.
She had had an authoritarian ruthlessness of her grandmother‟s family, and the
ruthless egoism of Magda, seeing only her point of view. She had also
presumably suffered, sensitive like Philip, from the stigma of being the
unattractive – the changeling child – of the family. Finally, in her very marrow
had run the essential crooked strain of old Leonides. She had been Leonides‟
grandchild, she had resembled him in brain and cunning – but where his love
had gone outwards to family and friends, hers had turned inward to herself.
(Crooked House 297).
This description of her character implies an intelligent but also very cunning
personality. Josephine‟s selfishness is so big that not only does she want to have
everything her way, she also does not hesitate to get rid of any obstacles that would be
in her way. The only person who knew her true character was her grandfather. “[He] had
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realised what none of the rest of the family had realised, that Josephine might be a
source of danger to others and to herself. He had kept her from school life because he
was afraid of what she might do.” (Crooked House 297). Josephine, however, wanted to
go to school and to have her ballet lessons, so the only possibility she saw was to
murder her grandfather. Her diary entry about her decision to kill him is very clear
about the motive. “Grandfather wouldn‟t let me do bally dancing so I made up my mind
I would kill him. Then we should move to London and live and mother wouldn‟t mind
me doing bally.” (Crooked House 299). Neither does she hesitate to murder Nannie
because she simply hates her. Concerning the motive for Nannie‟s murder, Josephine
writes this in her diary: “I hate Nannie… […] She says I am only a little girl. She says I
show off. She‟s making mother send me abroad… I‟m going to kill her too […]”
(Crooked House 300). Other reasons for killing Nannie might be Josephine‟s fear that
Nannie would suspect her because of her experience with children (“I think that Nannie
knew, had always known, that Josephine was not normal.” (Crooked House 297).) or the
fact that after she returned from the hospital, Brenda and Laurence had been arrested
and the case was over, which dissatisfied Josephine who was hungry for attention.
In spite of her motives being very childish, the cold-bloodedness with which her
crimes were planned and also her attempt to make someone else the scapegoat make
Josephine a very unchildlike character. Even though there are several cases of child
murderers, such as the one of Constance Kent, who is referenced in the novel (Crooked
House 145), a child murdering adults is a particularly shocking image. Charles
Hayward‟s father says this about child murderers:
A child, you know, translates desire into action without compunction. A child is
angry with its kitten, says “I‟ll kill you,” and hits it on the head with a hammer –
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and then breaks its heart because the kitten doesn‟t come alive again! Lots of
kids try to take a baby out of a pram and “drown it”, because it usurps attention –
or interferes with their pleasures. (Crooked House 144-145).
Josephine kills because of hatred, just like a “regular” child murderer, but when it
comes to the “heart-breaking” part of the process, she does not feel that way at all. On
the contrary, she is very satisfied with herself. The only moment when she acts like a
child her age is towards the end of the novel, when Edith de Haviland wants to take her
out in a car. “As Josephine looked mutinous, Edith added: „We‟ll go into Longbridge
and have an ice cream soda.‟ Josephine‟s eyes brightened and she said: „Two.‟”
(Crooked House 282). This may be Christie‟s attempt to make Josephine seem more like
a child and therefore make the discovery of her guilt even more horrifying, or to show
Josephine‟s selfishness and greediness one more time.
Although Josephine is the killer, Christie manages to make the reader think that
she is just an unpleasant child, who likes to play detective and know everything about
everyone, but who is harmless. This may largely be because of the common perception
of children as pure, innocent beings. Charles Hayward made the same mistake, because
“[He] had never considered her because she was a child. But children have committed
murders, and this particular murder had been well within a child‟s compass.” (Crooked
House 295). When Charles‟s father talked about characteristics which murderers have in
common, he said that most murderers are vain and they want to talk. (Crooked House
146). Josephine was the only character who fitted this description. “Her vanity, her
persistent self-importance, her delight in talking, her reiteration on how clever she was,
and how stupid the police were.” (Crooked House 295). But because she was a child,
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and only because she was a child, she was never considered a suspect. In Josephine,
Christie created a character who was pure evil and beyond repair.
3.4 Eustace
Eustace Leonides is the sixteen-year-old brother of the killer Josephine and of
Charles Hayward‟s girlfriend Sophia. He suffered from a light case of infantile paralysis
which made him rather bitter, but in spite of his illness he was considered an attractive
young man (and Sophia an attractive young woman, which made Josephine feel left
out), which is commented on the novel. “The most beautiful thing in the room to look at
was Magda and Eustace. […] They sat together on the sofa – the dark, handsome boy
with a sullen expression on his face […]” (Crooked House 166). The first time Charles
Hayward (and, through his eyes, the reader) encounters Eustace, is after a Latin lesson
with his tutor. The police come in to question Laurence Brown and Eustace asks if they
want him to go away. “His voice was pleasant with a faintly arrogant note.” (Crooked
House 90), says Charles Hayward. This in a way foreshadows Eustace‟s character as
depicted in the book: he, like his voice, is rather pleasant but a bit arrogant. Also in the
same chapter, Eustace acts rather morbidly, a character quality which is not seen in him
later in the book. “Just as he went through the door he caught my eye, drew a forefinger
across his throat and grinned.” (Crooked House 90). This may be Christie‟s attempt to
make the fact that he and Josephine are siblings more visible.
When it comes to Eustace‟s attitude towards his tutor, Brenda Leonides tells
Charles that “Eustace is always sneering at [Laurence]” (Crooked House 99), which
would suggest that he dislikes him. However, later in the novel the reader finds out
Eustace‟s view from his own lips.
22
“Do you like him, Eustace?”
“Oh! he‟s all right. An awful ass of course.”
“But not a bad teacher?”
“No, as a matter of fact he‟s quite interesting. He knows an awful lot. He makes
you see things from a different angle. […]” (Crooked House 194).
Therefore, what may be seen as dislike is probably just teenage revolt against
authorities. “Behind Eustace‟s scornful and rather ill-tempered manner there was, I
perceived, an inquiring and able mind.” (Crooked House 195). Another reason for
Eustace to not be entirely happy with his tutor might be that he is forced to be taught at
home, when he would rather be in school. He expresses it himself when he says: “It‟s
pretty thick to have to stop at home and do lessons with a rotten kid like Josephine.”
(Crooked House 195). Concerning his attitude to Josephine, Eustace does not seem to
care much about her. He says she is “[j]ust a silly kid” (Crooked House 195) and when
asked if he would not miss her if she went to school in Switzerland, Eustace replies:
“Miss a kid of that age? […] Of course not.” (Crooked House 196).
Eustace reveals his impression of his whole family to Charles when they are
talking to each other. He is frustrated with his mother and father (“I don‟t see why I
should have to be burdened with such peculiar parents.”), about his uncle Roger he says
that he is “so hearty it makes you shudder”, Clemency, according to him, is “a bit
batty”, Edith is “not too bad but she‟s old” and Sophia “can be pretty sharp sometimes”.
The fact that his step-grandmother Brenda is only a few years younger than him “makes
[him] feel an awful ass” (Crooked House 196). This is typical teenage perception of the
world, he feels like no one understands him, like no one is really worth of his praise.
Charles feels this is typical as well, when he remembers his teenage years. “I had some
comprehension of his feelings. I remembered (very dimly) my own supersensitiveness
23
at Eustace‟s age. My horror of appearing in any way unusual or of my near relatives
departing from the normal.” (Crooked House 196).
Eustace‟s temper is seen when he learns that his grandfather left all his money to
Sophia. He “[trembled] with some violent emotion” and cried in front of the whole
family: “How dare grandfather do this to me? How dare he? I was his only grandson.
[…] It‟s not fair. I hate him. […] I wanted him to die. […] I wish I was dead…”
(Crooked House 243). This, again, is typical teenage perception of the world, where
nothing is fair and nobody understands. However, when he says that he wanted his
grandfather to die, it shows a certain lability and unstableness in Eustace‟s character.
He is also a person who “broods terribly”, according to Sophia. (Crooked House 244).
On another occasion, Sophia says about Eustace that “[s]ometimes he seems to hate us
all.” (Crooked House 180). This, again, is probably just a natural feeling of a teenager
towards the outer world.
3.5 Other childlike characters
Besides Josephine and Eustace, there are several more characters in the novel who
have childlike features. The most prominent one would be Magda Leonides, the mother
of the Leonides children. Magda is an actress, who is only interested in dramatic scenes
in which she is the centre of attention. She does not take care of her children much;
rather she is being taken care of. “„Mother,‟ said Sophia, „has to be looked after the
whole time. You never know what she‟s up to!‟” (Crooked House 181). This puts Sophia
in the position of the mother in the house (of course, she is helped by Edith de Haviland,
another motherly figure, and Nannie). Magda does not care about the education of her
children either. When asked whether Laurence Brown is a good teacher, she replies: “I
suppose so. I really wouldn‟t know. Philip seems quite satisfied.” (Crooked House 72).
24
Edith de Haviland expresses her opinion on Magda‟s parenting when she says: “Don‟t
know why actresses have children.” (Crooked House 48). Sophia Leonides also admits
that her parents are a “queer couple”. “They‟re not like mother and father,” she says.
(Crooked House 180). And Charles Hayward‟s opinion of Magda is clear when he says
to his father about her: “She‟s rather childish. She – she gets thing out of proportion.”
(Crooked House 268). Magda‟s judgement when it comes to theatre is also a bit
childlike: she does not consider whether she would be good in the role, she just wants to
play it because she can.
Another childish character in the novel is Roger, the eldest son of Aristide
Leonides. He is in charge of the family business Associated Catering and makes a
complete mess out of it, to the extent that the company is going bankrupt. Roger does
not want help from his father, but he is terrified of what Aristide will think of him when
he finds out. Roger lives in the shadow of his father, afraid of what he might think if
Roger and Clemency moved out of the house and started a new life without Aristide.
Roger loves his father unconditionally, just like a young child loves its parents. “Roger,
I thought, had loved his father better than he would ever love anyone else, better even
than his wife, devoted though he was to her.” (Crooked House 255). According to
Charles, “it‟s a relief to be with Roger because he‟s simple and positive, and hasn‟t any
reservations in the back of his mind.” (Crooked House 267). Another childish
characteristics of Roger is his clumsiness: he stumbles over chairs and his movements
are described as ones of “a large amiable bear” (Crooked House 238) or “a large
friendly dog”. (Crooked House 132). The inability to disagree with his father makes
Roger seem like a weak man who always needs someone to take care of him and make
his decisions for him. After the death of his father, the person in charge of Roger is his
wife Clemency.
25
The portrayal of children in Crooked House is a disturbing one, which makes the
reader realise that there is evil in everyone. Josephine Leonides is a cleverly plotting
murderess who does not hesitate to get rid of anyone who stands in her way. Her brother
Eustace is portrayed as a fairly regular teenager but for his fits of rage. And other
characters, such as the children‟s mother, are so incapable of acting like adults that they
cause harm to other people. Not only is there a bit of evil in everyone, according to this
novel there is also a bit of a child in every person.
26
4 CHILDREN IN EVIL UNDER THE SUN
4.1 Introduction
“It’s awful to be sixteen – simply awful.” (Evil Under the Sun 39)
Evil Under the Sun was written in the middle of the Second World War. In her
autobiography, Christie states: “I never found any difficulty in writing during the war as
some people did; I suppose because I cut myself off into a different compartment of my
mind.” (An Autobiography 506). It was during the war that some of her finest novels
were written, among them One, Two, Buckle My Shoe (1940), The Moving Finger
(1942) and The Body in the Library (1942). Evil Under the Sun is a typical Hercule
Poirot story: the setting is an almost isolated island, the characters are ordinary people
on holiday (almost all of them, however, have secrets), and Poirot solves the case thanks
to seemingly insignificant details, to which the police do not pay attention.
4.2 The Plot
The story is set in Jolly Roger Hotel in Devon. The retired actress Arlena Stuart
goes to the hotel with her husband Kenneth Marshall and his sixteen-year-old daughter
Linda. Arlena is a beautiful woman, who flirts with every man around her, this time
with the handsome Patrick Redfern, who is at the hotel with his wife Christine, who is a
former schoolteacher. Other guests include Mr Horace Blatt, who is too loud, too
friendly, and avoided by everyone, Reverend Stephen Lane, who is a rather fanatical
clergyman, dressmaker Rosamund Darnley, who has known Kenneth Marshall since
they were children and is still in love with him, Emily Brewster, an athletic spinster,
Major Barry, a retired army officer who likes to talk endlessly about India, the
Gardeners, an American married couple, where the husband speaks too little and the
wife too much, and, of course, Hercule Poirot.
27
On the morning of her murder, Arlena paddles alone to Pixy Cove, a cove on the
other side of the island than the hotel. She meets Hercule Poirot on the way and asks
him not to tell anyone where she is going, because she wants to be alone. Poirot does
not believe this; Arlena‟s face looks like she is meeting a lover (presumably Patrick
Redfern). Meanwhile, the teenage Linda Marshall has been shopping and returns to her
room with a parcel in her hand. There she is met by Christine Redfern who asks Linda
to go sketching with her. On the beach, Patrick Redfern is obviously looking for Arlena
and later joins Miss Brewster on her daily row around the island. When they reach Pixy
Cove at quarter to twelve, they see a tanned body lying in the sand, face hidden by a hat,
but otherwise obviously the body of Arlena Stuart. Patrick Redfern stays with the body
while Emily Brewster paddles away to get help.
The police question everybody. Kenneth Marshall, the first suspect, was typing
letters in his room. Linda Marshall was with Christine Redfern on another beach and
they came back to the hotel at quarter to twelve, when the body was discovered.
Rosamund Darnley was reading on a beach close to the hotel (and was seen there by
Miss Brewster and Patrick Redfern). Stephen Lane and Major Barry were not on the
island and Horace Blatt was sailing. At noon, Kenneth, Rosamund, Mr Gardener and
Christine went to play tennis.
The questioning provides two interesting details: someone threw a bottle out of a
window in the early morning and at noon, someone ran a bath. Nobody admits it was
them who did these things, so Poirot knows they are significant. He also searches for
details of any strangulation cases in the area. Back at Pixy Cove, the police find among
other things a pair of scissors, a broken pipe, and, in Pixy Cave, heroin. Therefore, there
might have been another motive for killing Arlena: drugs. Poirot then organises a picnic
28
to see who of the hotel guests has vertigo. Christine Redfern, who previously claimed to
have it, does not seem to. Meanwhile, Linda Marshall attempts suicide back in the hotel.
She writes a note to Poirot, confessing to the murder of her stepmother. However, Poirot
reveals that she only thought she had killed Arlena, because she made a voodoo doll of
her and burned the doll.
The real killers are Christine and Patrick Redfern. The body which Patrick and
Emily Brewster discovered at Pixy Cove was not Arlena but Christine, who used
artificial suntan to make her body seem tanned (and threw the bottle out of the window).
When Emily Brewster went to get help, Christine hurried to the hotel while Patrick was
killing Arlena who was hidden in Pixy Cave. This was a very clever plan because
Arlena was actually murdered after her body was discovered. Patrick Redfern also
killed another woman before the events of the novel, Alice Corrigan, when he was
married to her. Christine was the one who discovered her body and fetched the police;
the manner of the murder was the same. The motive for killing Arlena was gain: she
was giving Patrick large sums of money and the couple of murderers were afraid that
her husband would find out.
4.3 Linda
Linda is the sixteen-year-old daughter of Kenneth Marshall and the stepdaughter
of Arlena Stuart. She is portrayed as a confused and misunderstood teenager who hates
her stepmother. Her physical appearance is written from her own point of view early in
the novel.
She disliked her face very much. At this minute it seemed to her to be mostly
bones and freckles. She noted with distaste her heavy bush of soft brown hair
29
(mouse, she called it in her own mind), her greenish-grey eyes, her high cheek-
bones and the long aggressive line of the chin. Her mouth and teeth weren‟t
perhaps quite so bad – but what were teeth after all? (Evil Under the Sun 38)
This self-criticism is typical of teenagers of Linda‟s age. As Linda puts it, “One
[doesn‟t], somehow, know where one [is].” (Evil Under the Sun 39). This is quite
similar to the feelings of Eustace in Crooked House, when Sophia says about him that
he “seems to hate [them] all” (Crooked House 180). Not only does Linda hate her
stepmother, of whom she says “She‟s a beast – a beast…” (Evil Under the Sun 39), she
also hates herself.
Linda‟s attitude towards her stepmother and Arlena‟s view of Linda is a well-
developed part of the novel. Linda‟s opinion is shown in the beginning of the novel.
“Stepmothers! It was rotten to have a stepmother, everybody said so. And it was true!”
(Evil Under the Sun 39), she says. Having a stepmother like Arlena, who “hardly
noticed the girl” (Evil Under the Sun 39), must have been a particularly bad experience
for the sensitive teenager. As of Arlena‟s attitude towards Linda, the reader only learns it
through Linda‟s eyes, but because of Arlena‟s personality, Linda‟s perception is
probably accurate. The fact that Arlena‟s opinion of Linda is not shown from her point
of view might suggest that she really hardly noticed her. “But when she did, there was a
contemptuous amusement in her glance, in her words. The finished grace and poise of
Arlena‟s movements emphasised Linda‟s own adolescent clumsiness. With Arlena
about, one felt, shamingly, just how immature and crude one was.” (Evil Under the Sun
39). From this description of her behaviour, Arlena probably thought of Linda as a
clumsy and somewhat laughable human being who was not really worth her attention.
The hatred which Linda feels for her stepmother is deep, the way children hate. “You
couldn‟t be happy when there was a person there you – hated. Yes, hated. She hated
30
Arlena. Very slowly again that black burning wave of hatred rose up again.” (Evil Under
the Sun 42-43). It is an all-consuming, extreme emotion that Linda is very much aware
of, even though Christie states earlier in the novel that “[Linda] wasn‟t very good at
sorting out her emotions and labeling them.” (Evil Under the Sun 40). She is, however,
able to put a label on her attitude towards Arlena.
The hatred Linda feels for her stepmother is so big that she decides to do
something about it. Her thoughts about what to do are expressed in the beginning of the
novel: “I‟d like to kill her. Oh! I wish she‟d die…” (Evil Under the Sun 40). She goes
and buys a book about voodoo and all the necessary equipment, and performs a voodoo
ritual on the day Arlena dies. When she hears about the murder, she experiences feelings
of great guilt, convinced that it was her who killed her stepmother. The way she acts
during her first interview with the police suggests guilt as well. When she comes for her
interview, she is “breathing heavily and the pupils of her eyes [are] dilated” and she
looks like “a startled young colt” (Evil Under the Sun 131). She is terrified of what she
thinks she has done. “Linda considered herself guilty.” (Evil Under the Sun 307), Poirot
says to Rosamund Darnley towards the end of the novel. The feeling of guilt is quite
understandable and is very different from the feelings of Josephine Leonides of Crooked
House. Both of the girls think they have committed murder, but Josephine does not feel
guilty at all. Linda‟s feelings, on the other hand, suggest that she is in fact innocent and
incapable of physically harming a person. “But you know, M. Poirot, it‟s just the same
as if I‟d killed her, isn‟t it? I meant to.” (Evil Under the Sun 315). This is what Linda
says to Hercule Poirot at the end of the novel, still feeling guilty. But Poirot reassures
her that “[t]he wish to kill and the action of killing are two different things.” (Evil
Under the Sun 315). What Linda did was, according to Poirot, childish but also very
31
helpful to her, because “[she] took the hate out of [herself] and put it into that little
figure” (Evil Under the Sun 315). Linda admits to him that she felt better after
performing the ritual, which suggests that she only needed an appropriate outlet for her
hatred and anger, but did not really mean to kill her stepmother. Poirot‟s attitude
towards Linda is one of a fairy godfather; he helps Linda understand her own feelings
and realize that she is not as bad a person as she thought she was. He also gives her
advice about how to forget the whole history: “Then do not repeat to yourself the
imbecilities. Just make up your mind not to hate your next stepmother.” (Evil Under the
Sun 316).
Her relationship with her father seems to be a fairly good one, but Kenneth fails
to see what he is really doing to Linda by being married to Arlena. He “[supposes]
Arlena and Linda aren‟t very good for each other” (Evil Under the Sun 54) but he thinks
more about the fact that he married Arlena and therefore cannot divorce her (because he
is too chivalrous) than about the happiness of his daughter. In his words “[i]f you marry
a woman and engage yourself to look after her, well it‟s up to you to do it.” (Evil Under
the Sun 55). Concerning Linda‟s opinion of her father, she thinks of him as a man who
has changed since he married Arlena. “It was something [Arlena] did to people. Father,
now, Father was quite different… […] Father at home – with Arlena there. All – all sort
of bottled up and not – and not there.” (Evil Under the Sun 40). She is afraid that he will
always be like this. “Day after day – month after month. […] Life stretched before her –
endless – in a series of days darkened and poisoned by Arlena‟s presence. She was
childish enough still to have little sense of proportion. A year, to Linda, seemed like an
eternity.” (Evil Under the Sun 40).
32
The only people who Linda approves of are Rosamund Darnley and Christine
Redfern. Rosamund, according to Linda, was “sensible”. “It was not the adjective that
Poirot himself would have selected for Rosamund Darnley, but he realized that it was
Linda‟s idea of high praise.” (Evil Under the Sun 316). Linda is quite happy about the
thought that Rosamund will be her next stepmother. She does not clearly say that she
likes her, she just says that she “[doesn‟t] mind her” (Evil Under the Sun 316). This may
be because of the difficulties she has with “sorting out her emotions”, as mentioned
above. Another description of Linda‟s feelings about Rosamund is written early in the
novel. “She had a kind of funny amused face – as though it were amused at herself, not
you.” (Evil Under the Sun 41). This is in contrast with Arlena, who always seemed to
consider Linda laughable. The reason why she likes Rosamund is also gratitude that she
treats her with respect. “Linda so seldom felt like a real human being that she was
deeply grateful when anyone considered her one.” (Evil Under the Sun 42). Rosamund‟s
opinion of Linda is a good one as well. “I like Linda – very much. There‟s something –
fine about her.” (Evil Under the Sun 54), she says to Kenneth Marshall. Another
moment when her affection for Linda is apparent is when they walk together after the
inquest about Arlena‟s murder. Linda calls her name and “[t]he mute appeal in the girl‟s
unhappy face touched her. She linked her arm through Linda‟s and together they walked
away from the hotel […]” (Evil Under the Sun 235). The reason why Rosamund likes
Linda may also lie in the fact that she is the daughter of Kenneth, who Rosamund is in
love with.
Christine Redfern is one of the villains in this novel; however, she appears to
like Linda. This is then negated as the story progresses, because she and Patrick choose
Linda to be their scapegoat and Christine even, in a way, provides Linda with her
33
sleeping pills which Linda then uses for her suicide attempt. In spite of this, in the
beginning the reader has an impression that Linda and Christine have a mutual
understanding and affection for each other. This is, again, only seen from Linda‟s point
of view. “She liked Christine Redfern. She and Rosamund Darnley were the only
bearable people on the island in Linda‟s opinion. Neither of them talked much to her for
one thing. […] That, Linda thought, was sensible. If you hadn‟t anything worth saying
why go chattering all the time?” (Evil Under the Sun 59). This shows that Linda likes to
be left alone with her thoughts most of the time, in the manner of a typical teenager.
This idea is further developed when Christine asks Linda to go sketching with her (to
make Linda her alibi). “She liked being with Christine who, intent on her work, spoke
very little. It was, Linda thought, nearly as good as being by oneself, and in a curious
way she craved for company of some kind.” (Evil Under the Sun 76). However, Linda is
aware that the sympathy between her and Christine Redfern is “probably based on the
fact of their mutual dislike of the same person” (Evil Under the Sun 76). In spite of the
sympathy between herself, Christine Redfern and Rosamund Darnley, Linda feels like
she is never really understood by anyone. “You don‟t understand in the least – and
Christine doesn‟t understand either! Both of you have been nice to me, but you can‟t
understand what I‟m feeling.” (Evil Under the Sun 236), she says to Rosamund while
they are walking together. The feeling of loneliness and misunderstanding is, again,
typical of children Linda‟s age.
Linda Marshall is portrayed as a typical sixteen-year-old child, who does not
quite know what to think about the outer world and herself. Most of the time she wants
to be left alone with her thoughts and ideas and she does not feel understood by anyone.
34
These feelings are not different from the feelings of any teenager, be it Eustace
Leonides in Crooked House or Linda Marshall in Evil Under the Sun.
35
5 CONCLUSION
The genre of the detective story has been capturing the readers‟ attention since the
publication of Edgar Allan Poe‟s The Murders in the Rue Morgue. From the stories of
Sherlock Holmes to those of Hercule Poirot, the readers have been enjoying detective
mysteries for more than a century. The Golden Age of detective fiction, in the 1920s and
1930s, produced a number of detective story writers, most notably the Queens of Crime.
One of them was Agatha Christie, two of whose novels have been analysed in the thesis.
In both of the novels examined, Crooked House and Evil Under the Sun, children
play a huge part of the story. The way in which they are portrayed suggests that Christie
was an empathic person who knew how children and teenagers feel. She captures the
feelings of childhood and adolescent age very well and in a way which is relatable to.
All the children in the novels examined are loved by their families (except for the
mutual dislike of Linda Marshall and Arlena Stuart) and the people surrounding them,
but they do not feel that way. They feel like outcasts or burdens to their parents and
stepparents and that makes them act the way they do. While in Crooked House
Josephine is the murderer, Linda in Evil Under the Sun does not murder anyone but
thinks that she did. Their perception of the world is in one way very similar to each
other‟s: both feel like outcasts in their families, Josephine because she is the ugly child
and Linda because her stepmother does not notice her. On the other hand, their
characters are very different: Josephine murders her grandfather and does not
experience any feelings of regret or guilt, but Linda, when she is convinced that she
killed her stepmother, is so paralysed with guilt that she attempts to commit suicide.
The reader feels deep compassion for the children in the novels, which is a
cleverly developed part of the plot. While Linda Marshall deserves the reader‟s
36
understanding, Josephine Leonides is an evil character who plots against the people in
the novel to achieve what she desires: something which is not seen in the characters of
children much. Josephine acts more like an adult than like a twelve-year-old child. In
contrast, Linda is portrayed like a typical sixteen-year-old teenager who experiences
confusion and feelings of being misunderstood.
Parallels can be found between the behaviour of Linda Marshall and Eustace
Leonides, too. They share a hatred of the world surrounding them, probably just because
of their age. Their characters are similar in the way that they are both bad-tempered and
frustrated with their families.
The parental figures in the stories do not really know how to deal with their
children. In Crooked House, Magda Leonides does not seem to care much about either
of her children and is only interested in herself, much like her husband Philip, who is
not even seen talking to Eustace of Josephine. Kenneth Marshall in Evil Under the Sun
understands that Linda‟s unhappiness is caused by the fact that he married Arlena Stuart,
but rather than thinking about the well-being of his child, he thinks about the happiness
of Arlena and his duty as a husband, not as a father.
In Crooked House there are several characters who act in a more childish way
than the children in the story. As mentioned above, Josephine Leonides is one of the
characters who (for the most part of the novel) do not act or think in a childish way at
all. It is her mother Magda who is the true, spoilt child in the story. It is not the same in
Evil Under the Sun, where the only character who acts in a childish way is Linda. This
may demonstrate Christie‟s attempt to make a difference between the guilty child and
the innocent one: acting and thinking like an adult makes Josephine a character more
prone to being cunning and evil. Another difference between the two main child
37
characters is that Josephine plays detective, she pretends to be investigating the murder
on her own, while Linda does not seem to want to have anything to do with it. This is
due to the fact that Josephine answers the description of a typical killer perfectly (with
her constant need to talk about the crime and to show off), while Linda is too scared that
it might have been her who is responsible for the death of her stepmother. Josephine
knows she is the killer and it gives her great pleasure to watch the police as they come
to the wrong conclusion about who the culprit is.
The detectives‟ attitude towards the children in the novels is a very different one
as well. Charles Hayward does not seem to be too worried about Josephine and takes
her only for a silly, if somewhat morbid, child. His surprise at who the killer is is
genuine, because he did not consider her at all, not only as the murderer, but also as a
real human being. Hercule Poirot, on the other hand, acts very kindly towards Linda,
because he knows she is a troubled teenager who needs sympathy and compassion. He
is worried about her and at the end of the book he even gives her his advice.
In Josephine Leonides and Linda Marshall, Agatha Christie created two well-
developed main characters without whom the stories would not have been the same.
Josephine‟s evil and cunning personality is a great surprise to the reader and because
she is the killer, she is essential for the novel. Linda Marshall‟s dislike of her own
persona is described very typically of a child her age and the hatred of her stepmother
helps the reader understand the personality of the victim, which, according to Hercule
Poirot, is crucial to solving the murder. “Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of
the character and circumstances of the murdered person.” (Evil Under the Sun 111).
As the thesis through the two novels examined testifies, Agatha Christie was not
only an exceptional writer of mystery stories; she was also able to create very well
38
developed characters, of elderly, middle, or very young age. Christie‟s portrayal of
Josephine Leonides in Crooked House is a particularly disturbing one. Her empathy
with Linda Marshall, on the other hand, is very visible in Evil Under the Sun and, when
Poirot talks to Linda at the end of the novel, it is as if it was Christie herself speaking
through the mouth of Hercule Poirot and giving advice to all adolescents in the world.
In conclusion, Agatha Christie, the acknowledged English Queen of Crime and
one of the most famous representatives of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction in
Britain, can always provide something unexpected: This time the reader can find out
that this writer is capable of impressively detailed studies on teenage children, who due
to unhappiness and the troublesome world around them either contemplate or
successfully and ruthlessly commit murders.
39
6 WORKS CITED
Doyle, Arthur Conan. The Sign of the Four. 20 April 2013. Web.
<http://www.gutenberg.org/files/2097/2097-h/2097-h.htm>
Chandler, Raymond. The Simple Art of Murder. 1977. 20 April 2013. PDF File.
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%20philip%20marlowe%20-%20the%20simple%20art%20of%20murder.pdf>
Christie, Agatha. An Autobiography. London: HarperCollins, 1993. Print.
---. Crooked House. London: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
---. Evil Under the Sun. London: HarperCollins, 2001. Print.
---. Hickory Dickory Dock. London: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
---. One, Two, Buckle My Shoe. London: HarperCollins, 2002. Print.
---. The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. London: HarperCollins, 2011. Print.
---. The Mysterious Affair at Styles. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1973. Print.
Goodman, Lizbeth. Literature and Gender. London: Routledge, 1996. Print.
James, P. D. "Introduction" The Art of Murder. A British Council Exhibition Brochure,
The British Council, 1993, 2-12. Print.
Light, Alison. “Femininity, Conservatism and Literature Between the Wars.” Forever
England. London: Routledge, 1991. 61-112.
Scaggs, John. Crime Fiction. London: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Smith, Kevin Burton. “Father Knox‟s Decalogue. The Thrilling Detective Web Site. 15
April 2013. Web. <http://www.thrillingdetective.com/trivia/triv186.html>
Symons, Julian, Bloody Murder: From the Detective Story to the Crime Novel: A
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History. London: Faber and Faber, 1972. Print.
Trodd, Anthea. “Crime Fiction.” Women's Writing in English, Britain 1900-1945.
London: Longman, 1998. 129-136.
41
RÉSUMÉ
The aim of the thesis is to demonstrate how Agatha Christie depicts children and
teenagers in two of her novels, Crooked House and Evil Under the Sun. The thesis is
divided into three main chapters. The first one introduces detective fiction and Agatha
Christie herself, and is mainly focused on the history and principles of the Golden Age
of detective fiction. The second chapter analyses the depiction of children in Crooked
House and the third chapter examines children in Evil Under the Sun. The children are
looked at from various points of view and their relationships with their parents, siblings,
and the detective figures are examined. Additionally, the part of the thesis dealing with
Crooked House also examines other characters in the novel who behave in a childish
way.
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RESUMÉ
Cílem této bakalářské práce je ukázat, jak Agatha Christie zobrazuje děti a
adolescenty v knihách Hadí doupě a Zlo pod sluncem. Práce je rozdělená do tří hlavních
kapitol. První z nich se zabývá detektivní fikcí a samotnou Agathou Christie, s důrazem
na historii a principy zlatého věku detektivky. Ve druhé kapitole je analyzováno
zobrazení dětí v Hadím doupěti a třetí kapitola se zabývá dětmi ve Zlu pod sluncem.
Děti jsou analyzovány z různých úhlů pohledu a práce zkoumá také jejich vztahy
s rodiči, sourozenci a postavami detektivů. Část zabývající se Hadím doupětem navíc
zkoumá další postavy v knize, které se chovají dětsky.
