Miss Marple


Jane Marple, better known as Miss Marple, is a fictional character in Agatha Christie's crime novels and short stories. Miss Marple lives in the fictional English village of St Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Often characterised as an elderly spinster, she is one of Christie's best-known characters and has been portrayed numerous times on screen. Her first appearance was in a short story published in The Royal Magazine in December 1927, "The Tuesday Night Club", which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems. Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930 and her last appearance was in Sleeping Murder in 1976.

Origins

Marple is based on friends of Christie's step grandmother, Margaret Miller. Christie attributed the inspiration for the character to multiple sources, stating that Miss Marple was "the sort of old lady who would have been rather like some of my step 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 the novel for the stage, he replaced the character of Caroline with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice; thus, Miss Marple was born.
It is popularly believed that Christie may have taken Marple's iconic character's name from Marple railway station, through which she passed, while a letter – ostensibly from Christie to a fan – appeared to prove that the name was inspired by a visit to a sale at Marple Hall in the same town, near her sister Margaret Watts' home at Abney Hall. The letter has been established as a fake as the auction had been held after the date of publication of the first Miss Marple story.

Character

Marple makes her first full-length appearance in The Murder at the Vicarage. In this early portrayal she is a gleeful gossip, sharp-tongued, and not always sympathetic. The residents of St Mary Mead respect her but often find her nosiness and habit of assuming the worst in others tiresome. In later novels, however, Christie softened her character: Miss Marple becomes a kinder, more thoughtful figure, though still an astute observer of human nature.
Marple's method of detection rests on shrewd intelligence and long observation of village life, which she believes reveals the full range of human failings. She frequently interprets new crimes by recalling past incidents and she has a talent for recognising the hidden significance of apparently casual remarks. At times she is aided by her friend Sir Henry Clithering, a retired Metropolitan Police commissioner, who supplies her with official information.
Marple never married and has no close family apart from her nephew, Raymond West, a “well-known author.” He appears in several stories with his wife, the artist Joyce Lemprière and is portrayed as overestimating his own intellect while underestimating his aunt’s. Following the retirement of her long-time maid Florence, Miss Marple occasionally employs girls from a local orphanage to train as housemaids. She also endures a brief period with the tiresome Miss Knight as her companion, before settling in later years with Cherry Baker, first introduced in The Mirror Crack’d from Side to Side.
Although of independent means, Marple is not wealthy and relies in her old age on financial support from Raymond. She is a gentlewoman rather than a member of the aristocracy, yet moves comfortably in upper-class circles. Christie hints at a broad education: in They Do It with Mirrors, Miss Marple recalls growing up in a cathedral close and attending an Italian finishing school with Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline “Carrie” Louise Serrocold.
Christie was notably inconsistent about Marple's age. In 4:50 from Paddington, Miss Marple claims she will be “90 next year,” but in At Bertram’s Hotel she is implied to be about 75, having first visited the hotel some sixty years earlier at the age of fourteen. Across the 41 years between her first and last novels—excluding the posthumously published Sleeping Murder—she does age, though not in a strictly realistic fashion. Miss Marple herself sometimes shows frailty, such as needing a holiday after illness in A Caribbean Mystery, yet she is vigorous again in Nemesis, set only sixteen months later.
Marple's wider family is mentioned only in passing. She has a sister, Raymond’s mother, and a large network of cousins and nieces, including Mabel Denham, accused of poisoning her husband in The Thumb Mark of St Peter.

Miss Marple series

  1. The Murder at the Vicarage
  2. The Body in the Library
  3. The Moving Finger
  4. A Murder Is Announced
  5. They Do It with Mirrors – also published in the United States as Murder With Mirrors
  6. A Pocket Full of Rye
  7. 4.50 from Paddington – also published in the United States as What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!
  8. The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side
  9. A Caribbean Mystery
  10. At Bertram's Hotel
  11. Nemesis
  12. Sleeping Murder – published last but written and set in the 1940s.

    Miss Marple short story collections

Miss Marple also appears in "Greenshaw's Folly", a short story included as part of the Poirot collection The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding. Four stories in the Three Blind Mice collection feature Miss Marple: "Strange Jest", "Tape-Measure Murder", "The Case of the Caretaker", and "The Case of the Perfect Maid".
The Autograph edition of Miss Marple's Final Cases includes the eight in the original plus "Greenshaw's Folly".

Continuations by other authors

  • Marple: Twelve New Stories. A collection of stories written by 12 different authors.
  • Murder at the Grand Alpine Hotel. A new novel by Lucy Foley.

    Books about Miss Marple

  • The Life and Times of Miss Jane Marple – a biography by Anne Hart
  • Agatha Christie's Marple: Expert on Wickedness – by Mark Aldridge

    Stage

A stage adaptation of Murder at the Vicarage, by Moie Charles and Barbara Toy, was first seen at Northampton on 17 October 1949; it was directed by Reginald Tate, starred the 35-year-old Barbara Mullen as Miss Marple, and after touring, reached the Playhouse Theatre in London's West End on 14 December. Having run till late March 1950, it then went on tour again.
In July 1974, Mullen returned to the role in another national tour of the same play, culminating 12 months later when the show opened at London's Savoy Theatre on 28 July 1975. At the end of March 1976, the Miss Marple role was taken over by Avril Angers, after which the production transferred to the Fortune Theatre on 5 July. The role then passed to Muriel Pavlow in June 1977 and to Gabrielle Hamilton late the following year; the production finally closed in October 1979.
On 21 September 1977, while Murder at the Vicarage was still running at the Fortune, a stage adaptation by Leslie Darbon of A Murder Is Announced opened at the Vaudeville Theatre, with Dulcie Gray as Miss Marple. The show ran to the end of September 1978 and then toured.

Films

Margaret Rutherford

played Miss Marple in four films directed by George Pollock between 1961 and 1964. These were successful light comedies, but Christie herself was disappointed with them. Nevertheless, Agatha Christie dedicated the novel The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side to Rutherford.
Rutherford presented the character as a bold and eccentric old lady, different from the prim and birdlike character Christie created in her novels. As penned by Christie, Miss Marple has never worked for a living, but the character as portrayed by Margaret Rutherford briefly works undercover as a cook-housekeeper, a stage actress, a sailor, and criminal reformer, and is offered the chance to run a riding establishment-cum-hotel. Her education and genteel background are hinted at when she mentions her awards at marksmanship, dancing, fencing, and equestrianism, although these hints are played for comedic value.
Murder, She Said was the first of the four British MGM productions starring Rutherford. This film was based on the 1957 novel 4:50 from Paddington, and the changes made in the plot were typical of the series. In the film, Mrs. McGillicuddy is cut from the plot. Miss Marple herself sees an apparent murder committed on a train running alongside hers. Actress Joan Hickson, who played Marple in the 1984–1992 television adaptations, has a role as a housekeeper in this movie.
Murder at the Gallop, based on the 1953 Hercule Poirot novel, After the Funeral.
Murder Most Foul, based on the 1952 Poirot novel Mrs McGinty's Dead.
Murder Ahoy!. The last film is not based on any Christie work but displays a few plot elements from They Do It With Mirrors, as well as similarities to The Mousetrap.
The music to all four films was composed and conducted by Ron Goodwin. The same theme is used on all four films with slight variations in each. The score was written within a couple of weeks by Goodwin who was approached by Pollock after Pollock had heard about him from Stanley Black. Black had worked with Pollock on Stranger in Town in 1957 and had previously hired Goodwin as his orchestrator.
Rutherford, who was 68 years old when the first film was shot in February 1961, insisted that she wear her own clothes during the filming of the movie, as well as having her husband, Stringer Davis, appear alongside her as the character Mr Stringer. The Rutherford films are frequently repeated on television in Germany, and in that country Miss Marple is generally identified with Rutherford's quirky portrayal.
Rutherford also appeared briefly as Miss Marple in the parodic Hercule Poirot adventure The Alphabet Murders.