Poirot in the Orient: Race, Nationality and Orientalism in Agatha Christie

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Poirot in the Orient:

Race, Nationality and Orientalism in Agatha Christie

Ellen Mulder s1680102

Supervisor: Dr John Flood Date: 21 June 2011

Word Count: 14,542

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List of Abbreviations

An Autobiography: AUTO Akhnaton: AKH

“The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb”: ADV Appointment with Death: AWD

Death on the Nile: DOTN Murder in Mesopotamia: MIM The A.B.C. Murders: ABC

Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaeological Memoir: COME

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Introduction: Agatha Christie, a Life in Detective Fiction

Agatha Christie's best known protagonists are Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. However, most of the novels Agatha Christie has written are Poirot novels. She wrote thirty-three Poirot novels, and sixty-five short stories in which Poirot appears (Sova 270). Most of Agatha Christie's novels take place in England. However, there are also Poirot novels that take place in the Orient. Seven novels and one short story are Orientalist. All of her Orientalist writing, except the historical play Akhnaton (w. 1937, p. 1973) and her memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live (1946), were Poirot novels. In her autobiography, published posthumously in 1977, Agatha Christie tells about her own experiences in the Middle East as well. This thesis will deal with the novels Murder in Mesopotamia (1936), Death on the Nile (1937), Appointment with Death (1938), and Agatha Christie's memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live. The subject of this thesis is based on the collection of stories Poirot in the Orient, consisting of the novels Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile and Appointment with Death, published by HarperCollins Publishers in 2001 (hereafter referred to as Christie’s “Oriental” novels). After the Second World War, Agatha Christie wrote another three novels which took place in the Middle East: Death Comes at the End (1945), which is set in Egypt, and They Came to Baghdad (1951), which is set in Mesopotamia (Iraq) and Destination Unknown (1954), which is set in Morocco (this thesis will not deal with Akhnaton, Death Comes at the End, They Came to

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superior to the people in the Orient: “Orientalism depends for its strategy on this flexible positional superiority, which puts the [w]esterner in a whole series of possible relationships with the Orient without ever losing him the relative upper hand” (Childs and Williams 116). This thesis will explore the use of race and nationality in Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels Murder in Mesopotamia (1936), Death on the Nile (1937) and Appointment with Death (1938), in the light of The A.B.C. Murders (1936) a novel set in England.

In 1936, when she stayed with her husband Max Mallowan at a dig in Chagar Bazar, Agatha Christie wrote Murder in Mesopotamia, her first detective novel that takes place in the Middle East (Osborne 135). Her biographer gives the following explanation for Agatha Christie's sudden interest in the Middle East:

Hercule Poirot novels continued to pour from Agatha Christie's typewriter, and as so many were conceived and partly written in the Middle East it was hardly surprising that Mrs Christie should begin to set some of them in that part of the world. […] It is possible that Mrs Christie's concentration upon Poirot throughout the middle and late thirties, and her consequent neglect of Miss Marple, are due to the fact that she herself was engaged in travelling with her husband and thus tended to make increasing use of foreign locations, into which it was considerably easier to fit Poirot than Miss Marple, who would have seemed out of place away from her English village. (Osborne 136)

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were reading about it, such as Christie's novels. There is enough evidence to conclude that Agatha Christie was quite negative in her description of the Orient and Oriental people, and that Agatha Christie's works show a view of the Orient that demonstrates a lot of characteristics that Said describes in Orientalism (1978).

Agatha Christie was born as Agatha Mary Clarissa Miller in Torquay, Devonshire, on

September 15th, 1890. She and her family lived on an estate called Ashfield, near Torquay in Devon (Osborne 1). When she was sixteen, Agatha was sent to a school in Paris. After Agatha's return to Ashfield, Mrs Miller decided to take Agatha with her on a trip to Egypt, where they went to parties, did some sight-seeing and went to sites of antiquity. Mrs Miller was in bad health but the three months in Egypt certainly improved her condition (Osborne 3). However, at this time Agatha Christie was not interested in sites of antiquity yet, and more about keeping up a social life and going to parties:

Mother tried to broaden my mind by taking me occasionally to the Museum, and also suggested we should go up the Nile and see the glories of Luxor. I protested passionately, with tears in my eyes. “Oh no, mother, oh no, don't let's go away now. There's the fancy dress dance on Monday, and I promised to go on a picnic to Sakkara on Tuesday..' and so on and so forth. (AUTO 170-71, emphasis in the original).

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stories instead of telling them” (Osborne 3).Years before, Agatha and her sister had been discussing a murder mystery they were reading. Back then, Agatha had mentioned she would like to write a detective story as well. Her sister was of the opinion this would be too difficult for Agatha. With Archie away to the war, Agatha decided to use her spare time for writing a detective novel to “prove her sister wrong” (Osborne 5).

When modeling her detective, Agatha Christie “remembered the colony of Belgian war refugees living in Tor, a parish in Torquay” (Osborne 6). Then she decided she would make the detective a Belgian. This is how Hercule Poirot was born. She wanted her detective to have a heroic name. Therefore she decided that her detective should be named “Hercules, after the hero of Greek myth” (Osborne 7). Later, she claimed to be unable to remember where the name 'Poirot' came from, but “she liked the sound of the name 'Hercule Poirot'” (Osborne 7).

When she had written about half of the novel, Agatha was stuck with the plot. Her mother suggested that she should take a holiday from work, so she would have “nothing else to distract her” (Osborne 7). In the surroundings of the Dartmoor countryside, Agatha found inspiration for her first novel, which she called The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920), a Poirot novel. When her husband came back on leave, he read the novel and liked it. Agatha Christie offered the novel to several publishing houses. Methuen's declined it because it was unsuitable for their reading public. At the end of the war Agatha and Archie moved to London. Agatha gave birth to their daughter Rosalind in August 1919 (Osborne 9).

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to raise money to keep Ashfield (Osborne 18).

At first, Agatha was not very inclined to write more detective novels, because it was too much effort for too little money. In 1922 The Bodley Head agreed to publish The Secret Adversary, Agatha Christie's second novel. This was not a Poirot novel (Osborne 19).

After having written this novel, Agatha and her husband Archie went on a trip around the world. One of Archie's colleagues, Major Belcher, wanted to make a trip around the British Empire and liked Archie to go with him as his financial adviser. Agatha would be permitted to accompany them as well. Agatha “longed to travel” and Archie was “tired of his job”, so they decided to take the risk (Osborne 24). They would travel to South Africa and from there to Australia and New Zealand. Next, they would go to Canada, and they would end the trip with a short holiday in Honolulu (Osborne 24).

Before they went away on their trip Agatha had already completed another Poirot novel, called Murder on the Links (1923) (Osborne 26). She was also very successful in writing short stories, amongst them also a volume called Poirot Investigates (1924). Poirot Investigates included the story “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb”. In this story Poirot investigates a “strange series of deaths which followed upon the discovery and opening of the Tomb of King Men-her-Ra” (ADV 92). In “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb”, Agatha Christie refers to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen by Lord Carnarvon (ADV 92). The tomb of Tutankhamen was discovered in 1922. This is an interesting fact, because this shows that Agatha Christie was already interested in

archaeology and the east some years before she met her future husband Max Mallowan. When Agatha and Archie came back from their world trip they had difficulty settling

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thrillers for publication in magazines to make some easy money (Osborne 65).

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novels, but she did not, because this would not have been interesting to her reading public. At this time Agatha wrote Murder on the Orient Express (Osborne 100-01). Mallowan and Christie and their excavation team spent the winter of 1934 in the Habur Valley in the northeast of Syria to look for prehistoric material. They spent the summers in England and the winters in the Middle East. So, they had been to Mesopotamia for three winters, once in Ur, after which they made a big journey through Asia and Eastern Europe, and twice around Ninevah, and one winter in Syria.

In 1935 Christie wrote The A.B.C. Murders (Osborne 131). In 1936, during their stay in the east, Christie wrote Murder in Mesopotamia. Agatha Christie modeled the murder victim in Murder in Mesopotamia and her husband after Leonard and Katharine Woolley, whom she had met at the archeological excavation in Ur in the 1929-1930 season (Osborne 137). Just like Murder in

Mesopotamia, Death on the Nile was also written during a stay in the Middle East. Simultaneously with Death on the Nile, Christie had written a play called Akhnaton (Osborne 146-47). Agatha Christie wrote her next book about the Middle East, Appointment with Death, in the Balikh Valley in Mesopotamia (Osborne 160).

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There were other writers of detective fiction she must also have known. Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) is considered the first author of detective fiction. Poe only wrote short stories. Later British writers of detective fiction were Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. The Moonstone, the first detective novel, was written by Wilkie Collins (Symons 12, emphasis mine). T.S. Eliot claimed that Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone, published in 1868, was “the first and greatest of English detective novels” (426). Just like Agatha Christie's novels about the Middle East, Collins's The Moonstone also deals with prejudices about people from the east. For example, people from the east are regarded to be dishonest and the people who are suspected to have stolen the moonstone are Indian (Birch). So, detective writers and readers were familiar with Orientalism. The change through which the detective story was regarded to be non-serious came with Sherlock Holmes. The first Sherlock Holmes story was published in 1887 (Symons 13). Another writer of detective fiction was G.K. Chesterton with his protagonist Father Brown (Symons 19). Agatha Christie began writing around the 1920s. The 1920s are generally known as the “Golden Age of detective fiction” (Murch 218). Contemporary writers of detective fiction included Freeman Wills Crofts, H.C. Bailey,

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Change came through three writers: Anthony Berkeley, Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers (Symons 24), who revolted against the rules and came up with multiple solutions, for example. We see this for example in Murder in the Orient Express (1934), where Poirot offers multiple solutions for the murder. Either all passengers of the train must have committed the murder together, or some other person must have entered the train, committed the murder and went away unseen.

In conclusion, Agatha Christie regarded her life in the Orient as important enough to

incorporate it in her novels. Seven of the thirty-three Poirot novels take place in the Orient, which is about twenty percent. The fact that there are only Oriental Poirot novels and no Miss Marple novels can be explained by the fact that Miss Marple is a very old woman, so it was not easy for her to travel that far. Agatha Christie wrote most of her Oriental novels in the 1930s, because that was also the period when she lived in the Orient herself. All of the novels that are dealt with in this thesis were written in the Middle East. There were more experiences from her personal life that Agatha Christie used in her novels. She used the knowledge of poisons she had gained in the hospital pharmacy in Torquay during the First World War in many of her novels. The decision to make Hercule Poirot a Belgian came also from personal experience.

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Chapter 1: Orientalism and Nationality

In Orientalism, Said states that his thesis is that

The essential aspects of modern Orientalist theory and praxis (from which present-day-Orientalism derives) can be understood, not as a sudden access of objective knowledge about the Orient, but as a set of structures inherited from the past, secularized, redisposed, and re-formed by such disciplines such as philology, which in turn were naturalized, modernized, and laicized substitutes for (or versions of) Christian supernaturalism. (122)

Orientalism is the name of an approach to the Orient. This was a system of biased and principally negative representations about the Orient and people with an Oriental nationality. One could say that “Orientalism, which is the system of European or [w]estern knowledge about the Orient, thus becomes synonymous with European domination about the Orient […]” (Said 197). In Orientalism, Said describes what Orientalism is. In this book, he defines and explains what western people regard as the Orient. Furthermore, he gives a basic outline of Orientalism. Next, he describes the elements of Orientalism. Orientalism was seen as a “[w]estern projection on the Orient” (Said 95). Orientalism was an influential academic doctrine:

Edward Said's Orientalism has lived a seditious life. Since 1978, when it launched an audacious attack on [w]estern representations of the Orient, the book has breathed

insurgency. Its history is now inseparable from the severe condemnations it provoked from some and the high praises it elicited from others. Denounced as an uncharitable and

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societies. (Prakash 199)

Orientalism was also a political doctrine, because the Orient was seen as weaker than the [w]est (Said 204). There are two forms of Orientalism. The first one was “an unconscious feeling about what the Orient is”, which was called “latent Orientalism” (Said 206). The second one were various stated views, which were called “manifest Orientalism” (Said 206).

Said describes four elements on which the structures of modern Orientalism depend:

“expansion, historical confrontation, sympathy [and] classification” (120). During the middle of the eighteenth century, there was a “growing systematic knowledge about the Orient” (Said 39). Added to this knowledge was a “sizeable body of literature, compiled by poets, novelists, translators and travelers” (Said 40). This knowledge of the Orient was what created the Orient (Said 39-40). This body of knowledge was called Orientalism. In this Orientalism, the Oriental was depicted as something someone “judges, studies, disciplines or illustrates” (Said 40). Most people got their information about Oriental people from books:

There are two situations that favor a textual attitude. Firstly, when a human being

confronts something threatening, which was previously distant. The text that is written about this sometimes gets more authority than the thing that is being described. The second

situation that favors a textual attitude is the appearance of success. When one has read a book about Orientalism and one likes it, this encourages to read more books about the same subject. (Said 93)

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Orient themselves.

However, the books that the people were reading about people in the Orient were always written by westerners, never by the people from the Orient themselves, because they did not have the authority to write those books. Western people would not easily be inclined to accept what the people with an Oriental nationality wrote as the truth. The same goes for authors. When Orientalists (often academics) were writing books, they were not looking for Oriental sources for verification, but to the works of other Orientalists (Said 67). At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Oriental was still seen as inferior. There was a “channel thought about the world divided into an [e]ast and a [w]est compartment” (Said 46). Said states that

Orientalism exposed the strength of the [w]est and the weakness of the [e]ast. The Orient and the Islam were represented as outsiders, who had to play a special role inside Europe. The Orient was characterized as alien and incorporated schematically on a theatrical stage. (Said 71).

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Orientalism. The White Man had to control the people in the Orient. The western people saw an Oriental “first as an Oriental, second as a human being, and third again as an Oriental” (Said 102).

Indo-European languages were considered as the “living, organic norm” of languages (Said 143). Oriental languages were regarded to be inorganic (Said 143). Said states that “Orientalism carried forward two traits, the first being scientific self-consciousness, namely the the linguistic importance of the Orient to Europe” (98). The second trait is the “proclivity to divide, subdivide and redivide” (Said 98). The Orient was located in a comparative framework. Marx stated in Surveys from Exile, in which he evaluates international politics in the 1850s and 1860s, that “as human material the Orient is less important than as an element in a Romantic redemptive project” (quoted in Said 154). Said's project with Orientalism was to describe a system of ideas.

The part of the world that can be called the Orient is not fixed. Europe was the “genuine creator of the Orient” (Said 57). Later rulers of the Orient subdivided the Orient into realms visited by the historian Herodotus and the warrior Alexander the Great. Christianity in turn divided the Orient into the Near Orient and the Far Orient. Christianity regarded the Near Orient to be “the complementary opposite of the [w]est” (Said 58). The Orient was different from the west because they had different languages and different religions there.

In the beginning of the fourteenth century the west started showing interest in the east as an object of study. However, the east was not only seen as an object of study but sometimes also as a threat. From the seventh century until the battle of Lepanto in 1571 Islam threatened Christianity. The Christians defeated the Muslims in this major naval battle. Therefore, it was often tried to convert Muslims to Christianity.

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During the entire nineteenth century, the Orient had been a favorite place to travel to and to write about. During the nineteenth and twentieth century the approach of Orientalism changed. Orientalism had undergone a metamorphosis from scholarly discourse to institution. The period that Orientalism was most active coincides with the period of European expansion, which was from 1815 until 1914 (Said 41).

“Latent Orientalism made a conception of the world and took a variety of forms in the nineteenth century. The European awareness of Islam transformed from textual to administrative, economic and military” (Said 210).

The countries that the western people were most familiar with were of course the countries their governments had colonized. There were differences between the British and the French in this. India was in British possession, so the Near Orient was a route to a major British colony. France had no sovereign presence in the Orient. The Franco-Prussian War had taken place in 1870 and 1871. France lost, therefore the French wanted to expand, firstly to compensate for the Prussian victory, and secondly, to catch up with the British (Said 218). The British ruled in Egypt and Mesopotamia (Said 220). Britain felt that it had to safeguard the Orient. The British were represented by the British historian Sir Hamilton Alexander Rosskeen Gibb (1895-1971), who was interested in the Islam. All Oriental countries Christie writes about in her books (Egypt, Mesopotamia and Jordan) had recently become independent from Britain.

“Tension caused convergence between latent and manifest Orientalism” (Said 223). This occurred when Orientalists started to advise governments. In the case of Asiatic Turkey, just after World War One, this ended dramatically (Said 223). This was also the period when Christie started writing her novels. People from the Orient were seen in a “framework of biological determinism and moral-political admonishment” (Said 207). Oriental people were seen as problems, which had to be solved (Said 207).

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the Orient. The westerners regarded the Orient to be weaker than the west. The knowledge of the Orient was what created the Orient. Most people got their information from the Orient from books, because they were unable to visit the Orient themselves, and therefore gave those books very much authority as a source of information about the Orient. However, these books needed to have been written by other westerners, because westerners would never accept the inferior “Orientals” as an authority.

Westerners did not regard Oriental people as full human beings, but as problems, which had to be solved. The Orient was seen as strange because the people in the Orient had different

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Chapter 2: Race and Nation in Murder in Mesopotamia, Death on the

Nile and Appointment with Death

This chapter focuses on the racist and nationalist elements in Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels. The main focus will be on Orientalism and the differences between the west and the Orient, but other cultural differences will also be explained.

Orientalism emerges in Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels: Murder in Mesopotamia (1936, hereafter referred to as Murder), Death on the Nile (1937, hereafter referred to as Death) and Appointment with Death (1938, hereafter referred to as Appointment). The westerners felt superior to the “Orientals”, and therefore they considered it their duty to take care of them. This is explained in Rudyard Kipling's theory of the White Man. Kipling (1865-1936) was a British poet and writer. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907 (Birch). He was a strong supporter of

imperialism. In 1899 he wrote the poem “The White Man's Burden” in which he explained that he felt that the white people had an obligation to rule over people from other ethnic backgrounds (Kipling 334). These lines of “The White Man's Burden” show best how Kipling thought about “Orientals”, namely that they were wild, stupid and childish:

To wait in heavy harness On fluttered folk and wild – Your new-caught, sullen peoples,

Half devil and half child. (Kipling 334, lines 5-8)

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Appointment, Mrs Boynton is compared to Alexander the Great: “She seeks, like Alexander, new worlds to conquer” (AWD 538). The Orient was seen as underdeveloped, and started developing when the westerners arrived. Barry states in Beginning Theory: “Children, both black and white, will have been taught to see history, culture and progress as beginning with the arrival of the Europeans” (186). Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels only show examples of women who act like Kipling's White Man. These are Louise Leidner (in Murder) and Mrs Boynton (in Appointment). This is striking because Kipling wrote “The White Man's Burden” before the rise of feminism, when women were still seen as inferior to men, just like Oriental people, and Kipling himself, therefore, did not intend to include women in “The White Man's Burden”.

Europeans felt that the Oriental people were inferior to them: “Said identifies a European cultural tradition of 'Orientalism', which is a particular and long-standing way of identifying the [e]ast as 'Other' and inferior to the [w]est” (Barry 186). This emerges in Death, where the “Orientals” are depicted as simple, uncivilized poor creatures without an education: “Ferguson overheard her. He said aggressively: 'That's because you're over-civilized. You should look on death as the Oriental does. It's a mere incident – hardly noticeable.' 'That's all very well,' Cornelia said. 'They're not educated, poor creatures'” (AWD 375). On the other hand, one can also argue that the people in the Orient are more civilized than westerners, because they have a much more

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man is buried in Jerablus, where his family can hold a proper funeral. (COME 97-99). Alawi states: “Death is nothing. It's not the man's death that matters. It is the burial” (COME 98, emphasis in the original). In the western world, death is considered a very important concept and burial only a logical continuation of death.

Although Agatha Christie depicts the Orient predominantly in a negative way, there are also some remarks to be found which show admiration for Oriental cultures. For example, the people in the Orient make beautiful buildings:

“Take the Pyramids. Great blocks of useless masonry, put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent.” Mrs Allerton said cheerfully: “You'd rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon, no beautiful tombs or temples – just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got three meals a day and died in their beds.” The young man directed his scowl in her direction. “I think human beings matter more than stones.”(DOTN 250-51).

Furthermore, Raymond Boynton is described as having “a Greek head” and one of his relatives as having “a placid face not unlike a Luini Madonna” (AWD 426). This clearly shows admiration for Greek and Italian art. When the Lennox family is planning to visit Jerusalem, they discuss which buildings they have to visit:

“We might go to Solomon's Stables?” “Would that be too much for Mother?” “The Wailing Wall in the morning?” “The Temple, of course – the Mosque of Omar they call it – I wonder why?” “Because it's been made into a Moslem mosque, of course, Lennox.” (AWD 432)

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very interesting ruins there – Roman, you know” (AWD 436), “[s]he turned and looked at the Mosque which now covered the shrine and wondered if Solomon's temple would have looked half as beautiful” (AWD 443), and “[t]hey reached Amman late in the afternoon and after a short visit to the Graeco-Roman theatre went to bed early” (AWD 470). This interest in the buildings in the Orient shows admiration for Oriental architecture. It is a paradox: the west depends on an Oriental religion, because there would have been no Christianity without Judaism.

People went to the Orient not only to conquer new territory, but also to study the culture there. People who studied the Orient were, therefore, often from the academic world. In Murder, Father Lavigny is “a student of Oriental languages” (MIM 47). Later on, when travelling also became accessible to the common man, this common man showed an interest in the Orient as well.

In Christie's “Oriental” novels there are numerous references to “Orientals” who are regarded as stupid by the people from the west. This complicates the communication between the westerners and the “Orientals”. In Murder, Dr Leidner says about his wife that she “likes Arabs so much, she appreciates their simplicity and sense of humor” (MIM 12). A little later on in the novel, Nurse Leatheran is advised to shout to the servants, otherwise they will not understand her: “Shout it, Arabs do not understand anything said in ordinary English voice” (MIM 28). The Arabs are allowed to help Dr Leidner with his work, but they are only able to do the simple jobs, like the “boy Abdullah [who is] washing pots” (MIM 78). Because the natives are such simple creatures, they act disorganized: “Native porters taking suitcases out of the train collided with other porters putting them in” (DOTN 251). In Appointment, Sarah King ridicules the “Orientals”:

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In Appointment, the murder is committed by Lady Westholme. This is not immediately clear after the crime because Lady Westholme has dressed herself up as an Oriental servant, so everybody assumes she is indeed an Oriental servant, and therefore she is almost able to get away with the crime:

“N-No,” said Lady Westholme, considering. “No, I should say then that her manner had been fairly normal – for an American of that type, that is to say,” she added condescendingly. “She was very abusive to that servant,” said Miss Pierce. “Which one?” “Not very long before we started out.” “Oh! Yes, I remember, she did seem extraordinarily annoyed with him!” “Of course,” went on Lady Westholme, “to have servants about who cannot

understand a word of English is very trying, but what I say is that when one is travelling one must make allowances.” (AWD 509)

Lady Westholme is acting and she uses the costume of an Oriental servant as a disguise. However, the incident is considered normal because westerners would treat a real servant this way as well. This incident is again referred to when Poirot is trying to solve the crime: “An Arab, one of the servants, approaches Mrs Boynton, angers her in some way and retires hastily” (AWD 573). The servants protect each other by acting stupid too:

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The Christian religion was the standard in the western world. The people from the Orient are depicted as heathens. In Murder Louise Leidner explains Nurse Leatheran about the clay tablets they have found: “They wrote everything on clay, queer heathenish-looking marks too” (MIM 37). In Appointment, Sarah King complains that the people there are squeamish and narrow-minded concerning religion: “Sarah sighed. 'They turned me out of one place today because I had on a sleeveless dress,' she said ruefully. 'Apparently the Almighty doesn't like my arms in spite of having made them.'” (AWD 424-25) Furthermore, Mrs Boynton, the antagonist in Appointment, is

repeatedly referred to as a Buddha: “a distorted old Buddha” (AWD 426), a “grotesque Buddha-like figure” (AWD 429), a “monstrous swollen Buddha” (AWD 473), a “motionless Buddha in the door of her cave” (AWD 481). The Buddha is associated with the Oriental religion of Buddhism and by describing Mrs Boynton in this negative way Agatha Christie devalues Buddhism. Furthermore, though Buddhism is an Oriental religion, it is not prevalent in Israel, where the novel is set. Therefore, Agatha Christie generalizes Oriental religions.

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getting out of the way” (MIM 123). The boys also act funny during the work and the westerners love to ridicule that: “[Jacqueline de Bellefort] laughed and mimicked the parrot cry of the donkey-boys” (DOTN 260). Furthermore, the guides in Appointment are compared to monkeys, swinging upward: “The party began to climb. Two Bedouin guides accompanied them. Tall men, with an easy carriage, they swung upward unconcernedly in their hobnailed boots completely footsure on the slippery slope” (AWD 476). This is a contrast, because Christie is clearly depicting the guides as animals, but they have hobnailed boots on and these are typically western, so this is an interesting hybrid. The people are sometimes compared to mythical creatures as well. In Appointment, Mrs Boynton is compared with a mythical snake dragon: “Mrs Boynton's basilisk eyes looked, not to Sarah, but over her shoulder” (AWD 464) and her daughter Ginevra is compared to a nymph: “The enchanted nymph had come back from the country of enchantment” (AWD 539).

The way of building a house is different in the Orient, and is an important condition for the homicide in Murder. The staircase is described as “running up to the roof” (MIM 28), and the characters therefore walk on the roof quite often. In the end, it turns out that Dr Leidner was standing on the roof when he committed the murder.

The “Orientals” also had peculiar manners, habits and objects that the Europeans considered to be strange. In Murder, Agatha Christie mentions that the “workmen [are] singing in their queer monotonous chant” (MIM 41). Their manner of singing is quite dull, not as refined as that of a westerner. Agatha Christie also compares the people from the Orient to westerners, in order to stress a negative quality the westerner has, for example in Murder: “It was [h]ard to explain her to

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private dahabiyeh” (DOTN 255). A “wadi” is a dry river bed in the desert, and therefore typically eastern (Soanes and Stevenson). A “walad” is an eastern servant (Esposito). A “dahabiyeh” is a typically Egyptian kind of boat (Dear and Kemp). Agatha Christie also describes situations which would be regarded as highly unusual in the western world, such as the “brightly painted scarlet basket chairs outside the Cataract Hotel in Assuan” that Christie describes in Death (DOTN 215). It would be possible in the western world, but inappropriate. When westerners travelled to the east, they need a guide and translator, and in Death and Appointment this is the dragoman, who seems to be a constant nuisance. Agatha Christie attributes the dragoman with other negative characteristics and, therefore, uses the dragoman as a mirror to the westerners: the dragoman is very racist towards Jews because in Appointment he holds an “anti-Zionist lamentation” (AWD 468). A little bit further on in Appointment, Christie writes: “We go on now, yes?' announced the tarbrushed dragoman, and began to talk about the iniquities of the Jews again” (AWD 472) and “We escaped, I'm glad to say, without that pestilential dragoman. That man's just crazy on the subject of Jews. I don't think he's quite sane on that point” (AWD 547). So, the westerners are not only racist towards the “Orientals”, but the “Orientals” are very racist themselves as well. This had Agatha Christie experienced herself as well. One specific thing when Christie and Mallowan departed to Baghdad in 1933 is that Agatha met Dr Julius Jordan, the director of antiquities in Baghdad. He was very racist about Jews and wanted them to be exterminated (Osborne 103). She later realized that she had met “her first Nazi”. Jordan's wife was even “fiercer” than her husband and they both had to spy on their own German ambassador. This made Christie very sad (AUTO 466).

In Death, the characters take a Nile cruise. Mrs Allerton says to her son Tim: “But Egypt's expensive, my dear. Not for those who have to count the pennies” (DOTN 206). It was expensive to travel through the east, because it was so far away from the west. Only the rich and civilized

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Dr Bessner says “we will get him to civilization” (DOTN 306). Simon can only be helped if they get him out of the primitive circumstances he is in. Here, the technical superiority of the west over the east is stressed.

The people from the Orient are also considered as people who do not show much care for their clothing. Either they were just poor, or clothing was not a priority when they had money. In Murder, the workmen are described as “a lot of scarecrows in petticoats and rags, their heads tied up as if they had a toothache” (MIM 38). Everything the native inhabitants of the Orient wear is described as being dirty and damaged:

Finally she followed one of the native servants. He wore khaki breeches, much patched, and untidy puttees and a ragged coat very much the worse for wear. On his head the native headdress, the cheffiyah, in long folds protecting the neck and secured in place with a black silk twist fitting tightly to the crown of his head. (AWD 473)

This attitude of the “Orientals” of all wearing dirty and damaged clothes makes it more difficult to distinguish between them. Westerners saw the people from the Orient as homogeneous. Miss Pierce therefore complains in Appointment: “All those Arabs look alike to me” (AWD 510). Barry

confirms this: “the people there being anonymous masses rather than individuals, their actions determined by instinctive emotions (lust, terror, fury, etc.) rather than by conscious choices or decisions” (186). Poirot knows that this is the general attitude of westerners against people from the Orient and is therefore able to unmask Lady Westholme as the murderer because she is able to give a very detailed and accurate description of the non-existing Arab servant:

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they were – and his puttees were wound most untidily – all anyhow! These men need discipline!” (AWD 510)

Westerners in Oriental countries were also more likely to adopt the bad habits of the people from the Orient. In Death, one of Linnet Ridgeway's English servants has a relationship with a man in Egypt. It turns out “that he had a wife already and three children” (DOTN 195). So apparently staying in the east makes one susceptible to adultery. Later on in the novel, Agatha Christie refers to this man Fleetwood once again: “Fleetwood already had a wife – a wife of color you understand, a wife of this country” (DOTN 310). Fleetwood's Oriental wife had apparently dissatisfied him and therefore he was again looking for a western woman to have a relationship with. Egypt also has a bad effect on Rosalie Otterbourne in Death, because she describes Egypt in a very negative way:

“There is something about this country that makes me feel – wicked. It brings to the surface all the

things that are boiling inside one. Everything is so unfair – so unjust” (DOTN 253). With this, Rosalie Otterbourne means that the people feel a need to express their negative feelings.

Westerners projected their own negative qualities on “Orientals”: “This means, in effect, that the [e]ast becomes the repository or projection of those aspects of themselves which [w]esterners do not choose to acknowledge (cruelty, sensuality, decadence, laziness, and so on)” (Barry 186). One of those qualities is antisocial behavior. For example, Arab people who wanted to communicate just shouted. In Murder, “one Arab [is] bawling to another some distance away in the fields” (79). In Appointment, savagery is also connected to the Orient:

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When the travel party in Appointment travels through the desert, “strange wild-faced men crowded around the car” (AWD 472). These people are regarded as annoying.

Honor is also very important in the Oriental world. Jacqueline feels aggrieved because her boyfriend Simon has eloped with her best friend Linnet. Jacqueline is constantly bullying Simon and Linnet by showing up wherever they go and Simon then asks himself the following question: “What the devil does she hope to get out of it?” (DOTN 240). Poirot knows the answer: “Perhaps – revenge!”(DOTN 240). Taking revenge when someone's honor is aggrieved is also very important in the Oriental world.

The “Orientals” are also regarded very lazy. They sneak away from work whenever possible. In Murder, Dr Leidner is able to commit the murder unseen because of his inattentive servants. It is suggested that a hypothetical stranger must have sneaked in and committed the murder. This

hypothetical stranger “slunk in when the boys weren't looking” (MIM 59). The servants were chatting when the murder was being committed:

“Now for the servants. The cook – your Indian chap – was sitting immediately outside the archway chatting to the guard and plucking a couple of fowls. Ibrahim and Mansur, the house-boys, joined him there at about 1.15. They both remained there laughing and talking until 2.30.” (MIM 62)

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dragoman is also very happy when it appears that the westerners do not require his services, because then he can continue being lazy: “For me, that is very well – better than usual. I can go back to sleep” (AWD 532).

Because of the attitude the “Orientals” have towards work, the payment method is also different in the Orient. In Murder, Mrs Leidner explains to Nurse Leatheran that “[y]ou have to pay the workmen who find it the weight of the object in gold, that prevents them for stealing” (MIM 39). The workers also had to be paid more often than in Europe, and in smaller amounts of money: “It was pay-day for the men, and he would have to go to the bank and bring out the money in coins of small denominations” (MIM 55). This was necessary, because when the workers got too much money, they would stay away from work until they were out of money, Agatha Christie explains in her memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live: “One of the great disadvantages, we find, is that the men do not work regularly. As soon as they are paid they quit work. 'I have money now. Why should I continue to work? I will go home” (COME 86).

The people from the Orient were also considered to be unreliable in what they said. This is partly why it is so difficult to solve the homicide in Murder: “Lies told by an Indian cook and a couple of Arab house-boys. […] Truth as truth means nothing to them. They say what you want them to say as a mere matter of politeness” (MIM 64). Furthermore, if they do not lie intentionally, they may have been bribed into it by a westerner: “The servants may be lying – they may have been bribed” (MIM 139). In Appointment, Poirot remarks that the dragoman has helped him, but this is not taken serious: “'I have here a plan,' said Poirot, 'concocted with the help of the dragoman, Mahmoud.' Lady Westholme remarked that in that case it was probably wrong!” (AWD 508)

The “Orientals” were also suspected to be thieves. In Murder, someone is sneaking around the house. This is not one of the expedition members, because it is a “yellow face [which is] pressed against the window” (MIM 32). This suggests that the perpetrator must be an Oriental. When

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man was standing. He wore European clothes. […] 'He's only an Iraqi after all'” (MIM 42). When they discover it is an Iraqi, they regard it not surprising that he is sneaking around, because

“Orientals” are known to be stealing. Mr Coleman's remark “[n]o highway robberies” (MIM 58) is also quite striking. This suggests that highway robberies are very common and it is very surprising if they do not happen.

Begging is considered to be very normal in the Orient. The daily occupation of Oriental children seems to be to beg westerners for money: “A group of small black figures surrounded [Mrs Allerton], all grinning and posturing and holding out imploring hands as they lisped 'Bakshish' at intervals, hopefully” (DOTN 246-47). They are so skilled in this that they even have developed a play for when they get money from the westerners:

At their feet in a row, presenting a momentarily gruesome appearance as though sawn from their bodies, were the heads of half a dozen Nubian boys. The eyes rolled, the heads moved rhythmically from side to side, the lips chanted a new invocation: 'Hip, hip hurray! Hip, hip hurray! Very good, very nice. Thank you very much.” (DOTN 272)

However, Oriental adults can be annoying as well. The “Orientals” know that they can earn a lot of money by selling the Europeans native keepsakes:

They came out from the shade of the gardens on to a dusty stretch of road bordered by the river. Five watchful bead-sellers, two vendors of postcards, three sellers of plaster scarabs, a couple of donkey boys and some detached but hopeful infantile riff-raff closed in upon them. (DOTN 217-218)

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Poirot states: “It had been suggested to me that Mrs. Leidner was a woman whose main

preoccupation was to attract the opposite sex” (MIM 163). Barry states that “the [e]ast is seen as a fascinating realm of the exotic, the mystical, and the seductive” (186). Western women were much more conservative and prudish about sex and certainly did not exploit the advantages of their body.

In Murder, Louise Leidner appears to have been murdered because she married another man while her first husband was still alive. It is remarked that “she shall belong to no other man” (MIM 184, emphasis in the original). From the point of view of someone from the Orient, it would be quite normal that she was murdered for this, because family honor is very important in the Orient and she had violated this honor.

The women in Europe appear to be much more feminist than Oriental women. In Murder Dr Reilly remarks: “My daughter won't let me” (MIM 8). In the Orient, this would be the other way round; fathers tell their daughters there what to do. So, the extent to which men and women respect and dominate each other is related to feminism. Western people regard countries where women are suppressed by men generally to be less developed.

This admiration sometimes goes so far as that an Oriental place is regarded as fairylike:

The Orient, in other words, has now become an ideological representation with no corresponding reality. There can be no “real” Orient because “the Orient” is itself an

Orientalist construction. Orientalism was a signifier whose signified corresponded only to a [w]estern fantasy world, “the Orient”. It was a [w]estern projection onto the Other producing only knowledge of “the Other”. (Young 389)

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you recommend the native villages, Monsieur Poirot?' 'Is that your excursion today, Madame? Eh bien, they are picturesque, but do not spend large sums on native curios'” (DOTN 251).

In conclusion, the westerners in Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels are very negative about the Orient, and they consider themselves to be superior to the people from the Orient. However, for a big part this is caused by the cultures being so different from each other and having other concepts and priorities. The westerners admire Oriental architecture, which is positive. They even depict the Orient as fairy-like. In Christie's “Oriental” novels the Orient is also an object of study.

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Chapter 3: Nationality in The A.B.C. Murders

This chapter discusses Agatha Christie's novel The A.B.C. Murders and compares it to Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels to see which similarities and differences there are regarding issues of nationality. Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels are compared to The A.B.C. Murders because the latter was published in 1936, just before the “Oriental” novels were published, Poirot is the protagonist in all four novels, and The A.B.C. Murders takes place in England, which enables a comparison of murders in the Orient to murders in England. In all four novels, nationality is very important. In the “Oriental” novels, this feeling of nationalism focuses primarily on Orientalism and a little bit on other nationalities. In The A.B.C. Murders many typical English customs are

described, but Agatha Christie depicts a lot of other nationalities too.

In The A.B.C. Murders, time is a very important element. The English are shown as very punctual. For example, the man that Poirot questions in The A.B.C. Murders because he is the last person who has seen the first victim alive knows exactly at which time he entered the shop: “The church clock chimed. I looked at my watch and found I was a minute slow” (ABC 41). When Poirot and Hastings want to go back to London, they have to hurry, because otherwise they will miss the train: “In the street [Poirot] consulted his watch. “With great haste, my friend, we might manage to catch the 7.02. Let's dispatch ourselves quickly” (ABC 45).

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Another important element in The A.B.C. Murders is the efficiency of the English postal system. In England, the mail was delivered several times a day: “I arrived back on Monday afternoon and the letter came by the six o'clock post” (ABC 50) and “The evening post arrived at about ten o'clock” (ABC 90). When the murderer posts the third letter to Poirot, he knows exactly when Poirot will get it, and that it can never be on time: “The letters were sent to me because the essence of the plan was that one of them should be wrongly addressed and go astray – ” (ABC 228, emphasis in the original). From Agatha Christie's memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live (1946) can be deduced that efficiency and delivering the mail on time do not have a high priority in the postal system in the east and that she finds this very displeasing: The postmaster in Kamichlie opens the door in his pajamas and invites the group to drink a cup of coffee with him. They agree because they want to be polite. The reason for their visit to the post office is that B., a friend and colleague of Agatha Christie, needs to pick up a parcel there. The postmaster informs them that the parcel has been sent to Customs and that it will return to the post office after Customs have finished with it, but not on a single day of the week Customs and the post office are open on the same time. It has to be arranged exactly this way because of formalities. (COME 102-04)

In the end, the matter is solved, but the officials turn out to be corrupt. The official does not only ask for Customs tax, but also demands cigarettes: “The complications have been resolved: thirty shillings for the duty, 'douze cents cinquante pour les timbres, et des cigarettes, n'est ce pas?' (Packets of cigarettes are put into his hand.) Voila, Monsieur!” (Twelve hundred fifty for the stamps, and cigarettes, isn't it? […] Here you are, sir!) (COME 106, emphasis in the original) Agatha

Christie uses four out of the total of 205 pages in her memoir to describe the event at the post office, so she is so annoyed by it that she gives it considerable attention.

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“Tell me mademoiselle, it is true, is it not, that your mother bought those stockings, not at a shop, but from someone who came to the door?” “Yes – yes – she did. I remember now. She said some thing about being sorry for these wretched men who go round and try to get orders.” “But what's the connection?” cried Franklin. “That a man came selling stockings proved nothing?” “I tell you, my friends, it cannot be coincidence. Three crimes – and every time a man selling stockings and spying out the land.” (ABC 148)

Although there are itinerant pedlars in the east, travelling salesman are a typical western phenomenon. They reflect the materialist approach westerners have. Salesmen in the west generally have a fixed route they have to travel in order to sell products for the factory they work for. Itinerant pedlars work alone and sell all different kinds of things. The examples of the railway system, the postal system and the system of the travelling salesman are all examples of technical superiority of the west over the east.

There are a lot of references to nationality in the “Oriental” novels Murder, Death and Appointment, and also in the novel that takes place in England, The A.B.C. Murders. Poirot himself is often patronizing towards the other characters in the novels. He feels superior to the other

characters because he has the ability to solve murders. He thinks the British are immature. In Death, he comments on the British: “The Anglo-Saxon, he takes nothing seriously but playing games!” (DOTN 245) and in Appointment: “Incredible! The English never grow up!” (AWD 535). In The A.B.C. Murders, Poirot is condescending towards Captain Hastings as well, when he remarks about the English:

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reticence. If I had asked those people for information, they would have shut up like oysters. But by making a statement (and a somewhat out of the way and preposterous one) and by your contradiction of it, tongues are immediately loosened. (ABC 34-35)

He again makes a provocative statement when he needs information from Milly Higley, the waitress at the Ginger Cat: “The legs of the English – always they are too thin! But you, mademoiselle, have the perfect leg. It has shape – it has an ankle!” (ABC 202). Poirot even links nationality to the way someone commits a crime:

“He has said quite enough,” said Poirot, and he added to Clarke: “You are very full of an insular superiority, but for myself I consider your crime not an English crime at all – not above-board – not sporting.”(ABC 232)

Poirot also considers parts of the English sporting culture odd, such as fox hunting: “What a strange sport” (ABC 206).

Agatha Christie deliberately gave Poirot Belgian nationality: Around 1920, most Americans would probably think of Belgians as sort of “junior Frenchmen” (Bowen). A Briton would have had a different view. Every Briton with a “serious education” knew that Caesar wrote in the first

paragraph of The Gallic Wars that “of all the tribes inhabiting Gaul, the Belgians are the bravest” (Bowen). There had been a nineteenth century treaty guaranteeing the neutrality of Belgium. In 1914, the Belgian Army “had bought time with its gallant stand against the Kaiser’s troops”

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was a non-threatening little country the English could admire without having to feel competitive or inferior. Making Poirot Belgian enabled Christie to both differentiate her creation from Conan Doyle's and to give her readers a protagonist who could give a Continental perspective on solving English crimes without “the baggage a French character would have had” ( Bowen).

In The A.B.C. Murders, the Belgian nationality of Poirot is also stressed: “The Belgian gentleman. The one that A.B.C writes to always” (ABC 184). Milly Higley, the waitress at the Ginger Cat, mistakes Poirot's nationality: “She knew what French gentlemen were like” (ABC 202). Poirot however, does not seem bothered: “Poirot did not trouble to contradict her mistake as to his nationality” (ABC 202).

However, in Appointment it turns out that Poirot also admires English culture: “'Something is rotten in the state of Denmark' quoted Poirot.’You see, I know your Shakespeare'” (AWD 500). Poirot also shows his admiration for Shakespeare in The A.B.C. Murders: “Is it not your great Shakespeare who has said, 'You cannot see the trees for the wood?'” (ABC 223)

Agatha Christie also applies the general stereotype that Belgians are not so smart to Poirot, by letting the other characters make offensive remarks about him, for example in Death, when Dr Gerard remarks: “Little Hercule Poirot? Is he here?” (AWD 438) and Sarah King: “‘is he as much a fool as he looks?” (AWD 536). In The A.B.C. Murders, almost all remarks on foreigners are aimed at Poirot and are negative: “His manner said: “Really- these foreigners! All the same! (ABC 57), “Miss Merrion, in her turn, gave him an “Oh, these foreigners” look” (ABC 61), “What injury has he suffered at a foreigner's hand?” (ABC 87), “The daring adventurous character, the roving life, the partiality for England that had showed itself, very faintly, in the jeer at foreigners” (ABC 224) and “'You unutterable little jackanapes of a foreigner!' cried Clarke, purple with rage” (ABC 232). The fact that the characters in the novels do not take Poirot really serious because of his Belgian

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There are quite a few references to the east in The A.B.C. Murders. When Poirot is thinking about a theory on a hypothetical murder, Captain Hastings considers it boring. Poirot then remarks that Hastings considers it to be boring “because there are no curiously twisted daggers, no

blackmail, no emerald that is the stolen eye of a god, no untraceable [e]astern poisons” (ABC 13). In The A.B.C. Murders, it turns out that the east is a popular travel destination for Franklin Clarke: “I myself returned from the [e]ast not long ago and I was shocked at the change in him” (ABC 99), “You have been in the [e]ast? In China?” “Yes, I had a kind of roving commission to purchase things for my brother” (ABC 118) and “It's just a sick woman's imaginings. Look here – he fumbled in his pocket – here's a letter I received from my brother when I was in the Malay States” (ABC 160). Westerners also had an urge to conquer:

“I might make a suggestion. Your name!” “My name?” “Yes. Cust is saddled – apparently by the whim of his mother (Oedipus complex there, I shouldn't wonder!) – with two extremely bombastic Christian names: Alexander and Bonaparte. You see the implications? Alexander – the popularly supposed undefeatable who sighed for more worlds to conquer. Bonaparte – the great Emperor of the French. He wants an adversary – an adversary, one might say, in his class. Well – there you are – Hercules the strong.” (ABC 196)

Christie refers to Alexander the Great and Napoleon Bonaparte here, who both went to the east in order to gain ground and control the people there.

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“Possibly, you even observed the murderer enter the shop- a tall, fair man with a beard, was he not? A Russian, so I have heard.” “What's that?” The woman looked up sharply. “A Russian did it, you say?” (ABC 33)

When Poirot drops the suggestion that a foreigner might have committed the murder the people suddenly get talkative and gossipy:

“I understand that the police have arrested him.” “Did you ever now?” The woman was excited, voluble. “A foreigner.” “Mais oui. I thought perhaps you might have noticed him last night?” “Well, I don't get much chance of noticing, and that's a fact. The evening's our busy time and there's always a fair few passing along and getting home after their work. A tall, fair man with a beard- no, I can't say I saw any one of that description anywhere about.” I broke in on my cue. “Excuse me, sir,” I said to Poirot. “I think you have been misinformed. A short dark man I was told.” An interested discussion intervened in which the stout lady, her lank husband, and a hoarse-voiced shop-boy all participated. No less than four short dark men had been observed, and the hoarse boy had seen a tall fair one, “but he hadn't got no beard,” he added regretfully. (ABC 34)

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Germany in the spring of 1933 and the British government was concerned that this would lead to an increasing military force in Germany. After a couple of months Germany indeed violated the

disarmament clauses of the Versailles and Locarno treaties. Germany withdrew from the League of Nations in October 1933. After that, Germany started to rearm (Ripsman and Levy 159-63). So, during the time that Agatha Christie wrote The A.B.C. Murders, there was a feeling of fear in Britain about what Hitler's next move would be. Agatha Christie must have felt this too and this probably explains her attitude towards Germans in The A.B.C. Murders.

There are negative references to nationalities and ideologies in Christie's “Oriental” novels as well. Jacqueline de Bellefort in Death is being described as having a “dark, piquant, Latin face” (DOTN 267). Communists are heavily criticized:

“ I suppose Mr Mad Mood – I cannot remember his name – but the dragoman, I mean – I suppose he could not be a Bolshevik agent? Or even, perhaps, Miss King? I believe many quite well-brought-up girls of good family belong to these dreadful Communists!” (AWD 548)

This distrust against Communists can be explained by the fact that Christie wrote these novels in the 1930s.

The references to South America are neutral. In The A.B.C. Murders, Mary Drower remarks: “My Uncle Tom was killed in the war, and my Uncle Harry went to South America and no one's heard of him since” (ABC 27). When Poirot and Inspector Japp from Scotland Yard are discussing the reliability of a witness, they remark about him that “He wants to get off to Chile” (ABC 196). Christie's choice for South America was random. She just needed to depict the characters in

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childhood” (ABC 69) and “I think you've got a weakness for that Dutch doll of a girl” (ABC 162). The remarks on Scandinavians and American Indians are positive. These remarks are based on appearance and are stereotypes of what the British thought a person from that country would look like. Scandinavians and American Indians are regarded very beautiful:

“My attention was caught at once by the girl's extraordinary Scandinavian fairness. She had almost colorless ash hair-light-grey eyes- and transparent glowing pallor that one finds amongst Norwegians and Swedes. She looked about twenty-seven and seemed to be as efficient as she was decorative.” (ABC 100-01)

and

“The three girls of them were all striking-looking – the extraordinary fair beauty of Thora Grey, the dark intensity of Megan Barnard, with her strange Red Indian immobility of face – Mary Drower, neatly dressed in a black coat and skirt, with her pretty, intelligent face.” (ABC 118)

Christie comments on all nationalities and is positive or neutral about most of them, and therefore it can be argued that Christie is acting anti-xenophobic. Her negative remarks about Germany and the Orient can be explained by her fear of the rise of German nationalism in the 1930s and by Orientalism. Because Christie's novels were widely read, Christie reinforced these

stereotypes by making such statements in her novels.

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173). She makes this comparison in the “Oriental” novels too. She describes the foreman in Murder as “an old man like a tortoise” (MIM 123). However, there are some differences between The A.B.C. Murders and the “Oriental” novels. She compares the people in the “Oriental” novels to all kinds of animals (preferably black) and also specifies them by name. In The A.B.C. Murders she does not specify what kind of animal she means, only that it is a hunted animal that is cornered: “But man was a ridiculous animal anyway” (ABC 193), “His conduct after that is the conduct of a hunted animal” (ABC 230), “The hunted animal does his last run...” (ABC 230) and “But even a cornered beast will fight” (ABC 231). So, animal imagery seems to be more a general thing than that Christie uses it specifically for describing Oriental people. However, Christie adapts the way she uses the animal imagery to the novel. In the “Oriental” novels, she is dealing with black people, so she uses black animals for her animal imagery. Consequently, the animal imagery in The A.B.C. Murders is about a hunted animal.

In conclusion, The A.B.C. Murders reflects a lot of typical English customs. Time appears to be a very important element and being late can make a great difference. From the story about the post in Agatha Christie's memoir one can deduce that time and efficiency have much less priority in the east. Because the west is technically superior to the east, people in the west act much more efficient.

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Conclusion

Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels Murder, Death and Appointment, combined with Christie's own experiences in the Middle East as told in her memoir Come Tell Me How You Live and compared to the novel The A.B.C. Murders, which is set in England, show that Agatha Christie is predominantly negative in her description of the Orient and Oriental people. Christie's “Oriental” novels show a view of the Orient that has many of the characteristics of the theory of Orientalism as formulated by Said.

Agatha Christie found inspiration for her novels in her surroundings and she loved to travel. Even before she met Max Mallowan in 1930, she was already interested in the Middle East, as her reference to the discovery of the tomb of Tutankhamen shows in “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb” (1924). The fact that she changed her trip to the West Indies to a trip to the Middle East also shows Christie's increasing interest in the Middle East.

In Orientalism, Said describes western ideas about the Orient. Western people were most familiar with the countries they had colonized. Agatha Christie's “Oriental” novels show that she is no exception on this as all the countries she describes in her novels had recently become

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these qualities as evidence that Oriental people are less developed. Christie tries to strengthen this negative view about “Orientals” in her novels by using animal imagery, because both animals and “Orientals” were lower in the hierarchy than western people. People from the Orient were also seen as a homogeneous mass instead as individuals, just like animals. Mrs Leidner's remark in Murder about that it is strange that the people from the Orient seem so human sometimes confirms this (MIM 37).

Though Christie is predominantly negative about the Oriental culture in her novels, she also realizes that Oriental and western cultures are both very different, because the people in the Orient have different religions, a different way of building, use Oriental objects, and have a different attitude to life, for example concerning their wages and family honor. Some cultural conceptions should even be admired instead of despised, and are worth studying, such as the Oriental view on death (she describes in her memoir Come, Tell Me How You Live, where the burial ceremony of one of her employees is regarded as more important than his death (COME, 97-99)), and Oriental architecture, such as that described in Death and in Appointment, and the fairy-like cities in Murder, which is a contradiction, as Christie uses both admiration and disapprobation together in her

“Oriental” novels . It is, therefore, difficult to simply categorize Christie as a supporter or opponent of Orientalist racism. Her “Oriental” novels show that she herself did not see things that black-and-white. One the one hand, Christie is the same as other Orientalists, because she criticizes Oriental culture as well, on the other hand she has a more sophisticated view of the Orient and the people from the Orient, because she also realizes that there are parts of the Oriental culture that are equal or even better than their western counterparts.

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(Alexander and Bonaparte). However, in The A.B.C. Murders Christie not only makes negative comments about the Orient, but also about several western countries. Her negative comments about the Germans in The A.B.C. Murders can be related to the period in which she has written the novel and reflects the national fear of the rising German nationalism. When suggestions are made about the nationality of the murderer, the first suggestion is that the murderer is foreign and might have had come from the east (Russia). The rest of the stereotypes Christie employs in The A.B.C. Murders are also those that the English had of a people from particular countries, and Christie reinforced these stereotypes by making statements about them in The A.B.C. Murders. The fact that Christie pays so much attention to nationality in a random non-Oriental novel shows that Christie was intrigued by the topic of nationality herself as well (except that it had to be a Poirot novel written in the late 1930s, the choice for The A.B.C. Murders as the comparison novel was random). Furthermore, Poirot, the central figure of both the “Oriental” novels and The A.B.C. Murders, is a foreigner in both the Oriental countries and in England. Christie stresses the punctuality of public services such as the railway system, the postal system and travelling salesman in The A.B.C. Murders and with this she wants to demonstrate that these services are in the western world much more efficient than in the Orient.

Because Christie uses animal imagery in The A.B.C. Murders as well, and not in the “Oriental” novels alone, it can be concluded that Christie's use of animal imagery is more general. However, the animal imagery in the A.B.C. Murders is not meant to strengthen a negative

stereotype. With the animal imagery in The A.B.C. Murders Christie wants to show the weakness of a character, hence the animal imagery references to old people, who are weak because of their seniority and to Mr. Cust, who is very nervous and feels cornered because he is the prime suspect of the crime.

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Bibliography

Primary literature:

Christie, Agatha. An Autobiography. London: Collins, 1977. [AUTO]

---. Akhnaton: A Play in Three Acts. New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1973. [AKH]

---. Poirot Investigates. “The Adventure of the Egyptian Tomb”. London: Pan Books Ltd., 1955. [ADV]

---. Poirot in the Orient. “Appointment With Death”. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. [AWD]

---. Poirot in the Orient. “Death on the Nile”. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001. [DOTN] ---. Poirot in the Orient. “Murder in Mesopotamia”. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2001.

[MIM]

---. The A.B.C. Murders. New York: Pocket Books, 1941. [ABC]

Christie Mallowan, Agatha. Come, Tell Me How You Live: An Archaelogical Memoir. London: HarperCollins Publishers: 1999. [COME]

Kipling, Rudyard. The Collected Poems of Rudyard Kipling. Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 1994.

Secondary literature:

Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. “Postcolonial Criticism”. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2009. 185-195

Poirot in the Orient: Race, Nationality and Orientalism in Agatha Christie