Miss Marple - Character

Character

The character of Miss Marple is based on Christie's grandmother and her cronies, but there is no definitive source for the derivation of the name 'Marple'. The most common explanation suggests that the name was taken from the railway station in Marple, Stockport, through which Christie passed, with the alternative account that Christie took it from the home of a Marple family who lived at Marple Hall, near her sister Madge's home at Abney Hall. Agatha Christie attributed the inspiration for the character of Miss Marple to a number of sources: Miss Marple was "the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my grandmother's Ealing cronies – old ladies whom I have met in so many villages where I have gone to stay as a girl". Christie also used material from her fictional creation, spinster Caroline Sheppard, who appeared in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. When Michael Morton adapted Roger Ackroyd for the stage, he removed the character of Caroline replacing her with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice: Miss Marple was born.

The character of Jane Marple in the first Miss Marple book, The Murder at the Vicarage, is markedly different from how she appears in later books. This early version of Miss Marple is a gleeful gossip and not an especially nice woman. The citizens of St. Mary Mead like her but are often tired by her nosy nature and how she seems to expect the worst of everyone. In later books she becomes more modern and a kinder person.

Miss Marple never married and has no close living relatives. Her nephew, the "well-known author" Raymond West appears in Vicarage, his wife Joan (initially Joyce), a modern artist, in The Thirteen Problems. Raymond overestimates himself and underestimates his aunt's mental acuity. Niece Mabel, widow of the mysteriously dead Geoffrey Denham, stars in the 1927 short story "The Thumb Mark of Saint Peter". Miss Marple also employs young women from a nearby orphanage, whom she trains for service as general housemaids after the retirement of her long-time maid-housekeeper faithful Florence. In her later years, companion Cherry Baker, first introduced in The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side, lives in.

Miss Marple solves difficult crimes because of her shrewd intelligence, and St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has given her seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature. Crimes always remind her of a parallel incident. Acquaintances may be bored by analogies that often lead her to a deeper realization about the true nature of a crime. Although she looks sweet, frail, and old, she fears neither dead nor living. She also has a remarkable ability to latch onto a casual comment and connect it to the case at hand.

Miss Marple has never worked for her living and is of independent means, although she benefits in her old age from the financial support of Raymond West, her nephew (A Caribbean Mystery, 1964). She demonstrates a remarkably thorough education, including some art courses that involved study of human anatomy through the study of human cadavers. In They Do It with Mirrors (1952), it is revealed that, in her distant youth, Miss Marple spent time in Europe at a finishing school. She is not herself from the aristocracy or landed gentry, but is quite at home among them; Miss Marple would probably have been happy to describe herself as a gentlewoman. In They Do It With Mirrors (1952), it is mentioned that Miss Marple grew up in a cathedral close, and that she studied at an Italian finishing school with Americans Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline "Carrie" Louise Serrocold. (Ruth, prevailing on Miss Marple's long affection for them, arranges for Miss Marple to investigate Ruth's belief that Carrie Louise is in danger of her life.) Miss Marple may thus be considered a female version of that staple of British detective fiction, the gentleman detective. This education, history, and background are hinted at in the Margaret Rutherford films (see below), in which Miss Marple mentions her awards at marksmanship, fencing and equestrianism (although these hints are played for comedic value).

Christie wrote a concluding novel to her Marple series, Sleeping Murder, in 1940. She locked it away in a bank vault so it would be safe should she be killed in the Blitz. The novel was not published until shortly after Christie's death in 1976, some thirty-six years after it was originally written.

While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is mentioned in "At Bertram's Hotel", where it is said she visited the hotel when she was fourteen and almost sixty years have passed since then. Excluding "Sleeping Murder", forty-one years passed between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's son. At the end of The Murder at the Vicarage, the Vicar's wife is pregnant. In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, it is mentioned that the son is now grown and successful and has a career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a vacation after illness in A Caribbean Mystery or finding in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side that because of poor eyesight she can no longer knit.