Recurring Themes in the Work of Agatha Christie and Her Life's Influences on Her Writing

3194 Words7 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Research essay about women's rights

Agatha Christie wrote most of her books with the same recurring themes. One of the themes that Christie has in her books is feminism. The definition of feminism is the belief in the need to protect rights, and opportunities for women to be equal to those of men. It is also saying they can go through life without having a man in their lives and living as independent women. Anti-feminism is the opposite of feminism and says women are all the same and do need a man in their life. Christie uses feminism and anti-feminism to view women during the twentieth century in the three books.

First, Agatha Christie does not just use feminism but she also uses sexism in the book, Death on the Nile. Sexism is the discrimination because of gender. An example of sexism is when Jackie, Linnet’s best friend who helps plot her death, and Linnet, the first character who is killed on the ship, are in a discussion in the beginning of the book about Simon Doyle who is engaged to Jackie at the time of this conversation. Jackie tells Linnet how her life would be over without him. Jckie claims, “Linnet, I shall die if I can’t marry him! I shall die! I shall die! I shall die…” (Christie, Death 11). This shows sexism because Jackie says her life would be over without a man. She shows sexism because she is proving the theory right; that women cannot live without men. Jackie is dependent upon Simon because she is obsessed with the idea of marrying him. Jackie proves that the theory of sexism is right since she is not able to go through life without a man to take care of her. In addition, this is foreshadowing the fact that Linnet steals Simon away from Jackie and so Jackie wants to emphasize before that happens how much she needs Simon to survive...

... middle of paper ...

...hemes of feminism, stereotypes, and socioeconomics. Christie shows the fact that her motives in most of her books are similar. The overall message about Agatha Christie is that she writes her books based on what she knows. Cathy Luzmore, author of Agatha Christie’s Influences on her Writings, concludes, “These travels inspired not only Murder on the Orient Express, but also Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile, Death Comes as the End and Appointment with Death.” With two of the three books in this paper, she gets her ideas about where the books will take place from her own travels. The third book, The Body in the Library, is reflecting upon the life style Agatha Christie had grown up in which was the middle class society in England. Overall, Christie shows that growing up the way she did, contributes to the successful woman she became.

Show More
Related

  • Feminism in The Things They Carried by Tim O´brien

    1301 Words  | 3 Pages

    To understand feminism in the novel, one must first understand the feminist lens itself. OWL Purdue describes the lens as “the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women” (Purdue). Feminism acts as both a commitment and a political movement that wants to end sexism in all forms. Most feminists generally disagree on many topics of the subject, however all have one common goal. These aspects affect The Things They Carry in a plethora of ways, mostly due to the fact that gender roles is a main theme. There are negative and positive aspects of the feminist lens. Positive contains the empowering of women and equality, whereas negative pertains to oppression and unequal rights. Both are covered in The Things They Carried from sex symbols to battle tor...

    Read More

  • Elizabeth Blackwell: The Ideology Of Feminism

    94 Words  | 1 Pages

    The ideology of feminism is that women should be treated as potential intellectual equals and social equals to men. Feminism also, by its nature, embraces the belief that all people are entitled to freedom and liberty within reason-including equal civil rights-and that discrimination should not be made based on gender, sexual orientation, skin color, ethnicity, religion, culture, or life style. Feminists -and all persons interested in civil equality and intellectuality are dedicated to fighting the ignorance that says people are controlled by and limited to their biology, Elizabeth Blackwell is considered an important

    Read More

  • Women's Issues in The Awakening by Kate Chopin, The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Souls Belated by Edith Wharton

    1014 Words  | 3 Pages

    These women authors have served as an eye-opener for the readers, both men and women alike, in the past, and hopefully still in the present. (There are still cultures in the world today, where women are treated as unfairly as women were treated in the prior centuries). These women authors have impacted a male dominated society into reflecting on of the unfairness imposed upon women. Through their writings, each of these women authors who existed during that masochistic Victorian era, risked criticism and retribution. Each author ignored convention a...

    Read More

  • Feminism: Crystal Eastman

    696 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminism is the public support for or recommendation of women's rights on the grounds of political, social, and economic equality to men. In a more simple way of stating it, women rights equivalent to those of men. Before suffrage begun, women were strictly to act as women should, or what they were expected to act like. They were expected to take care of the children, cook, and clean. Not only were they supposed to do house work, but they also couldn’t vote or own any property. On August 26th, 1920, after 72 long-lasting years of fighting, and prolonged anticipation, women finally won their rights to be treated equally. There have been, and still are, many feminists in this world. One very prominent feminist is Crystal Eastman.

    Read More

  • Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood

    1338 Words  | 3 Pages

    Margaret Atwood’s novel, Alias Grace, nominated for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Novel, depicts a young 16 year old girl who is found guilty of murdering her employer and his lover in conspiracy with James McDerrmott. James McDermott is put to death by hanging, but Grace is brought to prison because she is of the “weaker sex.” This is a reflection of the construction of femininity and masculinity of the mid and late nineteenth century. A social issue of the Victorian age was women being treated as subordinate to men. Queen Victoria says, “Victorian ideology of gender rested on the belief that women were both physically and intellectually the inferior sex”(YILDIRIM). Women were seen as highly susceptible to becoming mentally ill because of this belief. Women were subject to only be “housewives.” The novel, Alias Grace, accurately shows the construction of this gender identity through society, sexuality, and emotion while challenging it through Grace’s mother and Mrs. Humphrey.

    Read More

  • The Yellow Wallpaper By Charlotte Gilman And Everyday Use By Alice Walker

    2277 Words  | 5 Pages

    What is Feminism? How does feminism affect the world we live in today? Was feminism always present in history, and if so why was it such a struggle for women to gain the respect they rightly deserve? Many authors are able to express their feelings and passions about this subject within their writing. When reading literary works, one can sense the different feminist stages depending on the timeframe that the writing takes place. Two such works are ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’ by, Charlotte Gilman and ‘Everyday Use’ by, Alice Walker; the feminist views within each story are very apparent by the era each author lives in. It is evident that a matter of fifty years can change the stance of an author’s writing; in one story the main character is a confident and strong willed young woman looking to voice her feminist views on the world, while the other story’s main character is a woman trying to hold on to her voice in a man’s world which is driving her insane.

    Read More

  • The Pros And Cons Of Feminism

    605 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminism is the belief that women should have political and social equality that is equal to the male society. Feminism is also the belief that women should receive the same opportunities as men in their personal decisions involving their careers, politics, and expression. It is thanks to these beliefs that many authors base their works on feminism. According to Anne-Marie Kappeli, feminist texts reflect the author’s views on women in society. In addition, most of the authors who write feminist texts are women. Feminist texts often relate to the oppression of power towards women and they also point out the unfairness and deficiencies of equal opportunity in society. Feminism also is used to create an interesting story. It is typical that in feminist stories, the main character is often a heroine who struggles with the oppression of the male society.

    Read More

  • Relationship Between Men and Women: Jane Eyre and The Handmaid's Tale

    1786 Words  | 4 Pages

    Sourced in Eagleton, M. (1996) Feminist Literary Theory: A Reader. Electronic Information Edwards-Capes, Kirsty (2012) Gender and Sexism in Charlotte Bront’s Jane Eyre, available from http://www.cbc.org/e http://kirstycapes.co.uk/post/19688269684/gender-and-sexism-in-charlotte-brontes-jane-eyre 18 th December 2013

    Read More

  • Kate Chopin's The Story of an Hour and Feminism in the 1800s

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, feminism is defined as the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism is a major part of the short story, “The Story of an Hour” by Kate Chopin, which is a story that portrays women’s lack of freedom in the 1800s. Women had no rights, and had to cater to all of their husband’s needs. The main character in “The Story of an Hour” is a woman who suffers from heart trouble, named Mrs. Mallard. When Mrs. Mallard was told about her husband’s death, she was initially emotional, but because of her husband’s death, she reaped freedom and became swept away with joy.

    Read More

  • An Analysis Of Laura Mulvey's Visual Pleasure And Narrative Cinema

    793 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminism fundamentally is a critical approach towards gender bias and social campaign for equal rights of all, irrespective of their gender. Feminist point of view in films came into existence due the inadequate and incorrect representation of women. (Shodhganga inflibnet) The concepts like femininity and masculinity are often misrepresented in films. (Smelik, 1999)

    Read More

  • A Brief Overview of Feminism

    565 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminism can be roughly described as a movement that seeks to enhance the quality of women’s lives by impacting the norms and moves of a society based on male dominance and subsequent female subordination. Although feminist literary writings began to gain popularity in the 20th century, feminist characters have been around for ages. “Feminist criticism’s self transformations over the past several decades as it engages with both critiques from within and encounters from without- encounters with psychoanalysis, Marxism, Post-Structuralisms, ethnic studies, post-colonial theory, and lesbian and gay studies- have produced a complex proliferation of work not easily subsumed to a single description. (Rivkin 527)”. According to Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan in their essay “Feminist Paradigms”, feminist criticism includes several other ideas. Gayle Rubin, author of “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex”, also adds: The literature on women- both feminist and anti-feminist- is a long rumination on the question of the nature and genesis of women’s oppression and social subordination.”

    Read More

  • Perception And Social Standing In Agatha Christie's The Murder Of Roger Ackroyd

    849 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Murder of Roger Ackroyd was first published in 1926, and is one of many of Christie’s Hercule Poirot Mystery novels. In this novel, we obtain a deeper understanding of the impact social standings has and the influence it has on how people perceive you. The mystery takes place in an era where social class was extremely divided, and it is shown throughout the novel how a character’s social class can hinder or help. Even when the characters are faced with a crime, and the person who did it is unknown, social class still plays a magnificent role in unraveling the explanation of who would have committed something as dreadful as murdering a man. The Murder of Roger

    Read More

  • To what extent is feminist criticism helpful in opening up potential meanings in “The World’s Wife”?

    981 Words  | 2 Pages

    Feminism as defined by Tyson is “the ways in which literature (and other cultural productions) reinforce or undermine the economic, political, social, and psychological oppression of women" NEED TO DO INTRODUCITON PROPERLY

    Read More

  • The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination

    2189 Words  | 5 Pages

    Beginning Gibert and Gubar’s piece about the position of female writers during the nineteenth century, this passage conjures up images of women as transient forms, bodiless and indefinite. It seems such a being could never possess enough agency to pick up a pen and write herself into history. Still, this woman, however incomprehensible by others, has the ability to know herself. This chapter of The Madwoman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination, titled “The Queen’s Looking Glass,” discusses how the external, and particularly male, representations of a woman can affect her so much that the image she sees in the mirror is no longer her own. Thus, female writers are left with a problem. As Gibert and Gubar state, “the woman writer’s self-contemplation may be said to have begun with a searching glance into the mirror of the male-inscribed literary text. There she would see at first only those eternal lineaments fixed on her like a mask…” (Gilbert & Gubar, 15). In Charlotte Brontë’s Villette, the narrator and heroine Lucy Snowe is faced with a great deal of “reflections” which could influence her self-image and become detrimental to her writing. However, she is aware that the mirrors she finds, whether the literal mirror of the looking glass or her reflection in other characters’ ...

    Read More

  • Decoding the Misinterpretations of Feminism in English Language

    818 Words  | 2 Pages

    It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.” Word feminism began to evolve from this point. Words such as man hating patriarchy. Misogynist, femini-nazi thrived. The dictionary and connotative language of feminism is similar to when people speak about African Americans. The African American author Ossie Davis and his piece The English Language Is My Enemy is a prime example for what the English languages structure is made for. The language now was made to oppress blacks and lift whites, but also not oppress woman and life

    Read More

More about Recurring Themes in the Work of Agatha Christie and Her Life's Influences on Her Writing

Open Document