Jane Marple

A nice little passage from The Thirteen Problems (1932) that draws attention to Marple’s essential Victorianness. Compare this to the way Poirot is framed as a creature of modernism, with his natty suits and foppish, soldierly mien. Here, Christie piles on the Victorian objects — Jane Marple never loses her Victorian aspect, despite carrying on well into the 1970s. The old-fashionedness of Jane Marple always reminds me, strangely, of Clarissa Dalloway, especially Clarissa at Bourton, a late Victorian girlhood that gave way to a palpable, anti-modern Virginity. Like Clarissa Dalloway, Jane Marple thinks often about her girlhood, when she seemed to be on the precipice of romance, but unlike Clarissa, Miss Marple remains her own woman:

“His [Raymond West] Aunt Jane’s house always pleased him as the right setting for her personality. He looked across the hearth to where she sat erect in the big grandfather chair. Miss Marple wore a black brocade dress, very much pinched in round the waist. Mechlin lace was arranged in a cascade down the front of the bodice. She had on black lace mittens, and a black lace cap surmounted the piled-up masses of her snowy hair. She was knitting – something white and soft and fleecy. Her faded blue eyes, benignant and kindly, surveyed her nephew and nephew’s guests with gentle pleasure” (3).