In contrast, Mabelle is unable or unwilling to conform to social expectations and conventional constructions of femininity. The story illustrates this through its depiction of her peculiar allure and unhappiness. Neither vampish nor aggressively sexual, Mabelle appears vulnerable and ethereal, qualities which the story suggests are seductive and mesmerizing to men. Satterthwaite perceives that she has “something much more elusive and intangible than beauty…. She had the quality of enchantment.”44 However, Mabelle’s otherworldliness and isolation also render her pitiful, as Satterthwaite recognizes.45 This impression leads him to devise the phrase “the bird with the broken wing” for her, a term evoking traumatized femininity. There is a question over Mabelle’s family background, a further reference to her traumatic past which serves to isolate her from the rest of the party. Mabelle’s family has suffered a series of devastating tragedies and deaths, making them seem cursed by ill fortune.46 Jessica Gildersleeve, in her discussion of Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” makes a point about female isolation and the vulnerability it engenders, which is also valid for “The Bird with the Broken Wing” and its depiction of Mabelle as “a warning about the vulnerability of the independent woman who enters a relationship without the knowledge, support, or capacity for surveillance offered by an extended familial or social network.”47
Mabelle’s music is used to illustrate the contrast between private creativity and public spectacle, and women’s problematic position in relation to agency in the arts—a theme also treated in “The Face of Helen” and “The World’s End.” At the evening gathering at Laidell, Mabelle is asked to perform for the guests. However, when Mr. Satterthwaite passes her room upstairs, he discovers that she has not returned to the guests downstairs, but instead is sitting alone in the windowsill, playing her ukulele to herself. Mabelle’s playing is regarded merely as entertainment for others, whereas for her, the music appears to signify her abjection by her family’s legacy of self-destruction and death. To underline this association the musical instrument is used to murder Mabelle, as Keeley strangles her with one of its strings. It is Satterthwaite’s affinity with music and artistic understanding that enables him to make this discovery, and Keeley’s lack of musical understanding that leads to his undoing. Christie thus uses music and art as a strategy through which to foreground the contrasting masculine positions presented by the cultured Satterthwaite and the scientific Keeley. “The Bird with the Broken Wing” offers a poignant image of the ethereal Mabelle hypnotically playing her ukulele alone in a room upstairs, evoking a dream-like sense of unreality. The music she is playing is defiantly traditional and quaint, eschewing more fashionable music forms such as jazz.48 The tension within Mabelle’s character is evident: as a married woman having an affair she could be seen as a seductress; yet, she is not described in overtly sexualized terms. Rather, Mabelle’s ethereal sexuality and solitary nature render her vulnerable and, ultimately, a victim.
“The Bird with the Broken Wing” suggests that excessive passion in women is dangerous and leads to emotional damage and erasure of self. As in “The Face of Helen,” Mabelle is without female companionship and wholly dependent on her relationships with males. This male dependency and lack of female bonds, the story suggests, places women in a position of vulnerability, an aspect which signals danger in a crime narrative. Makinen argues that Christie’s young modern women seek new ways of redefining marriage for themselves that will empower them and allow them to retain agency.49 To some extent, Madge’s character is an embodiment of this agency, whereas Mabelle continues to rely on male control and ultimately succumbs to it. The fragments of text remaining from Mabelle’s burnt letters to Roger Graham suggest her emotional dependency on him. Satterthwaite’s role is to provide the symbolic link between these two female characters. He is sympathetic to both women and communicates an understanding of their predicaments and their choices. With his “practised eyes,” Satterthwaite is positioned on the edge of conversations and the social sphere in both country houses. He remains a marginalized figure, until he steps in able to solve the mystery, but it is his outsider position that enables him to see and understand.
Conventionally, detective fiction has tended to portray female characters in victim roles as a means of interrogating the gender coding of crime. In “The Bird with the Broken Wing” the motif of the bird foregrounds the association of female with victimhood in crime fiction, but also specifically echoes the ways in which this motif has been used by women writers in literary fiction. As Ellen Moers shows, nineteenth- and twentieth-century women writers often employ the bird as a complex metaphor for female entrapment and resistance within patriarchy.50 Mabelle’s appearance and her musicality both underline her association with birds. The motif of the bird is central both to the story’s crime plot and to its investigation of femininity. A bird with the broken wing is trapped and defenseless, an easy prey for an opportunistic killer. Christie’s story shows how the motif of the bird serves to bridge the genres of crime writing and literary fiction, and to reflect critically on contemporary social and cultural change. Both Madge and Mabelle represent female acquiescence to the marriage plot; however, they occupy contrasting positions in the romance narrative. Both positions illustrate the compromises and pressures women face in having to make choices that limit them, between accepting a marriage of class compatibility and social convenience or, as in Mabelle’s case, the pain of emotional dependency and victimhood.
The Woman Artist: “The World’s End”
The story “The World’s End” further interrogates the objectification and victimization of women. This is achieved by countering these compromised female characters with alternative depictions of femininity which also reflect a renewed preoccupation in Christie’s contemporary society with the woman artist. Contrary to “The Face of Helen,” “The World’s End” does not present the female artist figure as the passive object of the male gaze or a victim of crime. Exploring the gender-political implications of these representations and their linguistic and contextual significance, my analysis of this story foregrounds Christie’s complicated engagement with the woman artist and her contemporary society. My discussion of “The World’s End” focuses on Christie’s treatment of the themes of female artistry and the gender politics of creativity explored in the story.
“The World’s End” depicts Mr. Satterthwaite on holiday in Corsica with his friend, the Duchess of Leith. In Corsica, he meets a young female artist called Naomi Carlton-Smith, a relation of the Duchess who is also staying at their hotel. The Duchess asks Naomi to show them her paintings, which are experimental in style to the Duchess’ great dismay. Ignoring the Duchess’ criticisms of the work, Satterthwaite is impressed by Naomi’s paintings and purchases one of them. The next day, they go for drive in the mountains and reach a remote village, referred to by Naomi as “The World’s End.” Here, they meet the well-known popular actress Rosina Nunn and her travelling party eating lunch while sheltering from bad weather.51 The rather unfocused Rosina Nunn regales her companions with the story of the theft of her precious gemstone. It transpires that the thief accused of stealing the gem is Naomi’s fiancé, who is a playwright and now in prison. However, it is revealed that Rosina mislaid the gemstone herself within a wooden Indian box, meaning that Naomi’s fiancé is innocent. At the end of the story, Naomi paints Mr. Quin in accordance with her own artistic and aesthetic principles. In this complicated and fascinating story, Christie sets the narrative abroad, situating her portrayals of femininity against a background of cultural displacement. As Alison Light has explained, Christie employs such settings to examine how characters respond when removed from their daily surroundings and known contexts, and confronted with cultural difference.52 Moreover, in “The World’s End,” Christie depicts Naomi, a modern young woman, independent, travelling the world, driving a car, and pursuing her creative ambitions.53 However, she is also depicted as harboring secret trauma and wounds that render her vulnerable. In “The World’s E
nd,” the setting of Corsica enhances and problematizes the association of otherness with exile and marginalization, themes which are at the heart of this story.
The story’s interrogation of femininity is presented in a series of confrontations between female characters. The Duchess of Leith, Satterthwaite’s travel companion, has a loud and demanding personality and represents upper-class snobbishness and feeling of entitlement. This is most evident in her attitude towards Naomi, but can also be seen in her treatment of her maid. The Duchess displays a rather callous and dismissive stance towards her maid’s wellbeing when the latter is taken ill on the boat journey.54 The description foregrounds the oppression of working-class women and the disregard with which they are treated by the households and individuals they serve. Christie exposes this through the use of subversive humor. By mocking the Duchess’ snobbish attitude and mannerisms, she portrays her as a figure of fun. However, she also hints at the humanity secretly harbored by the Duchess who wants to be seen publicly to dismiss her maid’s illness but who brings her food when nobody is watching. This contradictory portrayal illustrates the unsustainable and damaging divisions between women caused by a class-ridden patriarchal society.
The Duchess’s encounter with Naomi and her criticism of the latter’s paintings serve to further foreground the contradictions of feminine identity, and class- and generational conflicts between women. This encounter also highlights the discriminatory and snobbish dismissal of their work endured by experimental women artists during his period.55 The Duchess represents an older aristocratic class. She has financial means but needs a chaperone to travel with and lacks style.56 In contrast, Naomi is young and developing a unique artistic vision. She is one of Christie’s “bright young things, independent, adventurous women.”57 The conflict between these two female characters is framed by differing notions of artistry, appearance and class. Christie’s descriptions of Naomi’s physical appearance, intelligence and clothing draw attention to the character’s bohemian style, while she sits alone in the hotel restaurant, suggesting social indifference or isolation. Recognizing her relation, the Duchess proclaims that Naomi is of modest means but inordinately proud, travels alone and generally resists conforming to conventional female stereotypes.58 The stubbornly independent Naomi has also made controversial choices about who she mixes with. Again, the Duchess serves as the mouthpiece of conservative social disapproval of Naomi and her fiancé who is also an artist: “Mixed herself up with a most undesirable young man. One of that Chelsea crowd. Wrote plays or poems or something unhealthy.”59 However, in what could be seen as an act of compromise, Naomi’s artistic involvement and potential threat to the establishment is lessened when she is portrayed as being consumed by depression over the false imprisonment of her fiancé.
In their confrontation over artistic standards, the Duchess once more serves as the mouthpiece of normative values, through her dismissive comments about female artistry and avant-garde experimentation. On seeing Naomi’s paintings, the Duchess dismisses the abstract, experimental work, and addresses Naomi rudely, using the patronizing term “child.” The Duchess concludes, “It seems quite easy to be an artist nowadays…. You just shovel on some paint.”60 She criticizes the paintings for their technique, and scorns their lack of adherence to realist representation and their garish and extreme use of color. The Duchess’s implication is that these paintings and the use of thick paint and bold brush strokes are unfeminine. The Duchess goes so far as to complain that one of the paintings gives her “the creeps”: the painting in question is in experimental style described as “queer vorticist” depicting a pear as “a swirling mass of evil, fleshy—festering.”61 Throughout the Duchess’ tirade, Naomi remains composed and self-assured. With Naomi in “The World’s End,” Christie depicts a female artist struggling to be understood, at a time when women artists were marginalized from mainstream culture and their contribution to technical experimentation was diminished by that same culture. Echoing Virginia Woolf’s portrayal of the painter Lily Briscoe in her 1927 novel To the Lighthouse, whose art is also spoken of dismissively, Christie’s portrayal of Naomi shows Christie critically engaging in cultural- and gender-political debates around women and creativity, and employing crime fiction as a form as a forum for the examination of these questions.62 Importantly, Satterthwaite is on the edge of the social scene listening in on the Duchess and the actress. His intervention diffuses the confrontation between Naomi and the Duchess, as he effectively sides with the former. Christie uses Satterthwaite’s character as an illustration of an audience that is open-minded enough to understand what Naomi is attempting to achieve in her art. When Satterthwaite the “connoisseur” with the “practised eyes” sees the merit and artistry in Naomi’s paintings, he asks to purchase one of them, choosing one that combines vivid hues with a strict formal structure. Expressing his happiness at the purchase, Satterthwaite states that one day the painting will be worth a considerable sum of money.63 This exchange portrays Satterthwaite as a sympathetic, non-predatory male who is able to see beyond the restrictive gender codes of the time, and who identifies with the female artist and is supportive of her endeavors.
Christie’s Naomi is a complex and multifaceted woman who plays a central role in “The World’s End,” but who is not a victim of crime or a passive object. This move is signaled through the depiction of Naomi’s mobility, and specifically her car. Naomi has travelled to Corsica to paint but also, the story suggests, in order to escape a stifling social scene back in Britain, and drives up to their destination in the Corsican mountains in the small car she has purchased. This portrayal presents an important image of self-reliance and modern femininity. Melissa Schaub has commented on this aspect of the modern woman, arguing that “the changes in women’s personal freedom [can be seen in] their depictions of women in motion.”64 Naomi is precisely the kind of new female character that Christie explores in her work, which Makinen describes as “living ‘otherwise,’” who acts like an “intrepid female adventurer,”65 traveling alone and devoting herself to her art. Naomi has self-determination and artistic ambition; however, she is also defined by her relationship to her absent fiancé and the crime he is accused of having committed, and is confined by the narrative’s insistence on the destructive dimension of her feelings for him. Naomi’s engagement is a narrative ploy added to make her character more palatable and acceptable to a conventional mainstream readership because it insists on the centrality of the heterosexual romance plot for women. As Makinen says: “One of the main ways of making the women sympathetic and available to reader identification was to make them the subject of a romance element.”66 In this respect, Naomi is comparable to Woolf’s characters who “demonstrate the lack of acceptance and the struggle to achieve self-sufficiency afflicting women outside the marriage plot.”67
The portrayal of Naomi as a painter and independent traveler exemplifies Christie’s efforts to resist one-dimensional characterization of women in fiction and culture. “The World’s End” leaves us with the image of Naomi having produced a sketch of Mr. Quin, and seemingly experiencing a newfound optimism. This upbeat mood is caused not only by the revelation that fact her fiancé is innocent, but no doubt also by the encouragement and support she has received in her art from Satterthwaite. Naomi’s determination to look forwards her future, and more specifically to stay true to her artistic vision, reflects Mary Evans’s point about Christie’s own positive view of the modern. Evans states that “throughout Christie’s work … is a robust articulation of the many optimistic possibilities of the modern. Christie is not a pessimist about any aspect of the modern … she maintains optimism about human achievement and human relations.”68 “The World’s End” presents a re-examination of feminine positions, highlighting possibilities for agency and creativity afforded to younger women of means and with connections, such as Naomi. Christie subtly embeds her story’s subversive message regarding class and gender inequality and the arts within a mystery plot, couch
ed by a heterosexual romance, and observed by Mr. Satterthwaite’s “practiced eyes.”
Seeing Differently
The stories I have examined here focus on the problems faced by young women, both upper-class and of more modest financial means, in negotiating a patriarchal culture which frequently threatens to marginalize, curtail, or harm them. Their differing responses to these pressures are evident in the stories’ explorations of emotional excess and creativity as a site for resistance. I have also examined Christie’s use of Mr. Satterthwaite as a male protagonist who sees differently, and who negotiates reality “with practised eyes,” due to his fluid or ambiguous masculinity and peripheral position in the social gatherings described in the texts. In all three stories, the non-judgmental Satterthwaite provides a mediating, sympathetic male position in relation to the female characters, rather than a sexual menace or threat. Satterthwaite presents an alternative masculine position which mirrors the questioning of femininity and its construction in the Mr. Quin stories discussed here. In all three stories, Satterthwaite is depicted on the edge of social gatherings, observing conversations but identifying with those individuals occupying marginalized positions, typically women. In these stories, Mr. Satterthwaite, with his acute observational skills, becomes adept at noticing important details or pertinent aspects which are frequently overlooked and deemed insignificant by others. His observations not only prevent crime or solve crime, but importantly also enable him to provide a reassuring and empathetic presence for the young, isolated and troubled female characters depicted in the stories. Through his intuitive abilities and empathetic nature, Satterthwaite thus offers a counter-representation to the somewhat stereotypical masculinities often encountered in crime fiction, and to the invisibility of ageing characters in crime fiction and culture more broadly.69
The Ageless Agatha Christie Page 11