Celebrating Miss Marple and Sleeping Murder

Shedunnit

A panel discussion held at the International Agatha Christie Festival exploring the enduring legacy of Miss Marple and the significance of h

Key takeaways

• Miss Marple utilizes her status as an underestimated elderly woman to gain access to diverse social settings for information gathering.
• The character acts as a 'stealth feminist' by protecting young women from the era's social stigmas and slut-shaming.

Main topics

• Miss Marple's detective methods
• Feminism in Christie's work

Notable quotes

She thrives on being underestimated, right?

Conclusion

The episode highlights how Miss Marple remains a foundational and inte

Transcript preview

Speaker 8 (0:06) Welcome to She Done It, I'm Caroline Crampton. Speaker 8 (0:09) 2026 marks 50 years since the final Miss Marple novel, Sleeping Murder, was published. But, as She Done It listeners well know, the conversation about Agatha Christie's most unassuming yet deadly sleuth is very far from over. At this year's International Agatha Christie Festival, held in Agatha's birthplace of Torquay, Devon, I got to take part in an event that dissected the reputation and background of Miss Marple as both a woman and a detective. and I'm delighted to be able to share the recording with you now. Joining me on the panel was Professor Michelle Kazma from Florida State University and the historian Rachel Trethui, with the journalist Sarah Ransom acting as chair. The first voice you'll hear is hers. You'll also get to hear the full audience Q &A at the end. Listen out to see if you can spot another well-known voice from the world of Christie podcasting. Speaker 3 (1:13) Michelle, I'd like to start with you and I'd like to start with Miss Marple and ask you really, why does Miss Marple work so brilliantly as a detective? She's got no official position, has she? No police powers and often appears to be underestimated. Speaker 5 (1:30) Well, I think like many of us, she thrives on being underestimated, right? And her superpowers are... She can gain access to a wide variety of social settings in order to get the information that she needs, make the change she wants to be in the world. She is a lot more physically vigorous than people ever manage somehow to give her credit for. And of course, we even see that at the end of Sleeping Murder, where she runs up the stairs with a syringe of soapy water. to get at the perpetrator. And sometimes people say, how's Miss Marple out there running up a flight of stairs? Well, I would say, look at a Caribbean mystery where she's army crawling around on the ground in order to spy in a window. Look at the mirror cracked and she's taken off on a walk to the development, regardless of how far it's going to be, because she wants to go and find out. And I think her physicality, her access, and also her ability to use logic, she's not nearly as Twittery as people might imagine. They Speaker 3 (2:36) underestimate her actual peril. But obviously, Caroline, if you had to explain Miss Marple's appeal to someone who'd never read a Christie novel, what would you say? How would Speaker 4 (2:47) you describe that? Speaker 3 (2:48) I Speaker 4 (2:49) think we're quite used to, in detective novels, thinking about the least likely suspect. And Miss Marple is the least likely detective. When she wants to, blends into the background. And so she can move through different social settings, different spaces, be different things to different people. And I think that's incredibly appealing. I'm imagining this person I'm talking to has maybe watched some crime, like contemporary procedurals on TV, Law and Order, something like that. So this is not like that. This is not people busting in through the front door to ask questions. This is a little old lady sitting in the corner knitting with her ears wide open. Speaker 3 (3:24) And she does do a lot of knitting, a lot of gargling, doesn't she? She's always done that. And I've been thinking about this a lot. And I wonder, it does seem to me that in some ways she's a bit of stealth feminist, that she hides this lethal intellect behind those knitting needles or behind the gargling gloves. Speaker 4 (3:42) Yes, she does. I don't know if she would ever have used that word. I don't think Christy herself would ever have used that word either. But the actions speak louder than the words, perhaps. She is particularly, I'm thinking of a pocket full of rye. She's very caring and protective towards young women, especially young women in precarious states of employment and so on. All things that we would associate, I think, with an older feminist today. And Rachel, from your perspective, with your Speaker 3 (4:09) story as header, how would you view Miss Marple in the context of the time and the way she's passed the seat there and now? Speaker 2 (4:19) I don't think she is a feminist, as we would call it, feminist. I think she is a Victorian in some of those attitudes that, like Agatha and her grandmother, a clever woman didn't appear clever. So she knows she's equal of any man, but you wear it very lightly. And I think the appeal of Miss Markle is her wisdom. She has this underlying wisdom and also this sort of detachment so that... She can stand back and see things without passion. And that's really reassuring the characters. I mean, like in Sleeping Murder with Gwenda, she calms the situation down. Gwenda's afraid she's going mad. And his mum goes, no, dear, let's start from the most basic premise that something happened real. She is this reassuring matriarchal figure without being a mother. Speaker 3 (5:08) That's really interesting. And I'm also interested in the way you define her, obviously, the early. ladyboarders. So Michelle, I wonder if you've got a few on why Agatha Christie made Marple an elderly woman rather than a young girl. What was it about being an older woman that made her so attractive in this role? Speaker 5 (5:28) I think obviously you've covered some of that in your book as well. And so I won't tread on that ground. And instead, what I will offer is in addition to the fact that she had, you know, strong older women figures in her life, I would say. older women are so much less threatening. They're not likely to, you know, wreck your home, steal your husband, whatever it is that they are perceived in any way to be much less threatening. And so I think that's part of the reason. And I wanted to add something about feminism, if I may. You said that Ms. Marple really comes to the defense of these younger women quite frequently. And that's really one of my absolute favorite moments at the end of Sleeping Murder. I promise, still no spoilers. But everybody else in the book, really, including the main characters, basically try to slut shame poor Helen Kennedy, to use a modern term. They actually refer to her as sex crazy. And Miss Marple not only resists that, she actually is not subtle. She stops, she puts her foot down, and she says, No, that is not what happened here. And she actually says, you know, she wanted to have a good time, which is fine, but also it is not appropriate for these people to be projecting these behaviors onto Helen Kennedy. And I love her complete unwillingness to brook this bad behavior toward Helen Kennedy. On Speaker 2 (7:03) the older woman part. I think there's a real biographical reason why Miss Marple appears when she does. I think it's no coincidence that Miss Marple first appears in a story in 1927. That's a year after Agatha's mother, Clara, dies. And that's eight years after her grandmother, Auntie Granny, dies. And I think that Agatha was very shaped by the matriarchal influences in her life. It influenced how she heard things very orally. She was hearing women. gossiping away and talking to each other. And I think she wanted that still in her life. And I sort of see Miss Marple as a way of her giving a final gift to her granny, because Auntie Granny in Agatha's autobiography had been this amazingly powerful woman who ran her own home in Ealing. She had this Victorian house. She had a whole household where she's very involved with her maids. having majors around and all that sort of thing and a really full life. And then at the end, as she gets towards 90 in the First World War, she moves down to Torquay, to Ashfield, and lives with Agatha and Clara. And she's a diminished figure. And Agatha writes so poignantly about that, about her sort of rose-leaf cheeks, tears running down them because she can't knit very well anymore. She drops stitches. She becomes suspicious. And I sort of see Miss Marple. as her final gift to her grandmother, of giving her back agency. But Miss Marple is the most switched on person ever. Age hasn't diminished her at all. And to be honest, I think Miss Marple should be an ambassador for age concern. Because, I mean, she's a wonderful, wonderful role model for older people. She's wise, she's active, and she is so much more switched on than most young people. Speaker 8 (8:54) Can I also just... add a little bit of context of where we are in the golden age of detective fiction when Miss Marple first appears, you know, 1927, late 1920s. Detective fiction is incredibly popular. There are a lot of people writing it and writers are searching for ways to be interesting and original and stand out. And I think an older woman detective does just that. So there's a little bit, I think, of Christie thinking with her commercial hat on, what will stand out? I already have Poirot. I already have a younger woman in Tuppence. what can I add to my stable that will keep publishers coming back? I Speaker 6 (9:28) think Speaker 8 (9:28) all of that, it's really Speaker 6 (9:29) interesting, isn't it? And I was also thinking while preparing for this that there's a fascinating contrast between her apparent gentleness and the way that she behaves and the darkness of the crimes that she investigates. I mean, Caroline, you looked at some of this, I know, and I wonder what your take on that is because it's such a contrast. It is Speaker 8 (9:52) and it isn't. I think it is for the reader when we allow ourselves to think of Miss Marple as vulnerable and elderly and therefore weak or whatever. But Miss Marple herself is very matter of fact about this. You know, she talks about evil all the time. She talks about it in Sleeping Murder. And she's often the one in books to remind other characters that no, no, evil is real and it exists and it's all around us. So I think of her as being. Not of the evil, of course, but she knows it well. She's seen it a lot in her life. And therefore, it's perhaps not that surprising that it's often to be found where she is. Speaker 6 (10:30) Michelle, I wondered if you could give any insight as to why Agatha saved sleeping murder as Miss Marple's final send-off. Obviously, it was written during World War II, but held back for decades. And I just wondered what your thoughts were on that. Speaker 5 (10:49) I don't know why it was that one, right? I mean, because in, I mean, right, I mean, she had to have one that she saved back and that was the one that got saved back. And then therefore that was the one that got kept saved back. And it, it, it leads to, you know, the, the sort of funny anachronism, the Colonel, poor Colonel Bantry is resurrected, which, okay, that leads to a, you know, but it's not awkward. It's fine. We understand as readers what's going on. But it also means, as Gray Robert Brown reminded me the other day, right, is that Ms. Marple kind of gets two send-offs, right? Because she kind of gets a send-off at the end of Nemesis as well, where when we see her walk out of the lawyer's office, there's clearly a goodbye there. But of course, we never get the... extent of a final farewell with Marple than we get with Poirot. And of course, people have talked a lot about that as well, her unwillingness in either of those endings to actually to poor Miss Marple. Speaker 6 (11:49) And how much, Caroline, I wondered what you think about Miss Marple as being a trailblazer. Was she a trailblazer or was she an amalgamation of things that have been steaming along the track and gradually kind of ended up being a Miss Marple, but as an amateur detective? Speaker 8 (12:09) I think the latter. I think what Rachel was saying about all of the influences in Christie's own life. I think that's absolutely true. She was drawing on these older women figures that she knew. But then in fiction as well, there are some very interesting female amateur detectives in the 19th century, such as created by Anna Catherine Green, for instance, in America. And there are a few others as well. I'm sorry, I'm blanking on the names. But there are a few other sort of lady detectives of different kinds. Not that I'm aware any older ones. They tend to be more sort of younger, adventuring women. But I think the different positions that they end up in, and we know that Christie was a big fan of Anna Catherine Green, for instance, I think some of that ends up in Marple. So I see her as a continuation of a tradition that Christie then put her own twist on. Speaker 6 (12:58) From your point of view, Rachel, with your historian's hat on, do you see the involvement or the involving of this older woman and the importance of it and her as the trailblazing detective? Speaker 2 (13:10) I think, you know, like you've mentioned, Caroline, that... really, she was doing something that was being different again. You know, she was positioning herself in a different place from, say, you know, her friend but also rival, Dorothy L. Sayers,