And Then There Were Lesbians

Queerness in the film adaptation of Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced

A quiet British countryside. Steam trains puffing across expansive green meadows. Well-tended rose gardens bordering quaint cottage houses. Mystery and murder. In the ITV film adaptation of A Murder is Announced (Strickland, 2005), we follow dear Miss Marple, played by Geraldine McEwan, a spinster in her 70s of understated cunning and intelligence, to the tiny village of Chipping Cleghorn. Under the pretext of visiting her late best friend’s daughter, Marple immediately sets to piecing together the suspect in a murder that occurred at the Little Paddocks estate the previous night.

Jane Marple herself breaks gender stereotypes

Marple breaks certain stereotypes for elderly, post-war, widowed women. She is single, childless, traveling the country, treating herself to spas and water treatments, and solving serious crimes. Not with a melancholic regret, but with energy and zest for life, in a way that causes the viewer to admire, and even envy her self-confidence and self-reliance. In her own right, Christie’s portrayal of xenophobia towards foreigners including the venerable Hercule Poirot, the exposure of cheating, killing, and thievery amongst the aristocracy, humanization of the criminal, and questioning the effects of war served as a gentle critique of British society and politics. In addition, she likely wrote gay characters into her novels, for example, Mr. Pye in The Moving Finger (Christie, 1942) and Christopher Wren in Three Blind Mice (Christie, 1950). I want to focus on the relationship between two women Hinchcliffe (Hinch) and Amy (Murgatroyd) in the movie A Murder is Announced.

Fans react to queer role differently

Almost any Google search into the matter will bring up much agreement among fans that Christie wrote Amy and Hinch as a lesbian couple. There is a vociferous, albeit small group that vehemently opposes this consideration. For instance, one blog expressed,

“in the book they [Amy and Hinch] are a dowdy old pair of friends, with nary a whiff of sexuality about them (“Miss Marple and the Case,” 2005).”

Which may say something more about the reader’s narrow analysis of the text than the author’s intention. Outrage over overt gay characters in ITV’s Miss Marple brought the BBC to advertise their own version of Marple without “extra lesbianism” implying that the lesbian roles were invented rather than embellishments of Christie’s conception of the characters.

“Fans of a good murder mystery without extra lesbianism will be thrilled to hear that the BBC’s own version of Miss Marple is coming to DVD at long, long last”(Owens, 2014).

More than a Boston Marriage?

In the film A Murder is Announced, we can tell as soon as Hinch and Amy take the screen that they are likely lesbians simply by contrasting their style of dress and form of speech with the portrayals of most heterosexual women in Christie movies. Straight women abide by classic charm-school mannerisms of the times, don elegant and effeminate clothing, maintain elaborate coiffed hairstyles, wear bright red lipstick and murmur things like, “Oh, sit down, darling, I can’t bear the thought of dining alone,” in melodious and sultry tones.

In contrast, both Hinch and Amy have short, unstyled hair, and wear trousers and sweaters, uncommon for forty-year-old women in the 1950s. Hitch speaks in a gruff and direct manner, while Amy’s speech is childish and unrefined. At the murder dinner party hosted at Little Paddocks, Hinch arrives in a full-piece suit and tie. When later reporting the night’s events to the police inspector, Julia, the host’s niece says,

“Well, I was on my guard. Next to Miss Hinchcliffe [Hinch] who had taken up a manly stance by the fireplace (Strickland, 2005).”

Besides their dress and speech, we also see two dead giveaways when they take each other’s hand walking down the stairs, and finally when they kiss. Well, we can at least call it a non-platonic peck on the lips, but it was something.

Unlike the gay characters from Christie’s other novels, Hinch and Amy are accepted by the townspeople, integrated into social gatherings, welcomed in the church, and treated as part of Chipping Cleghorn. However, Christie’s gay characters often are depicted as lone birds cast out of the community.

I find it interesting that Christie brought gay roles to her mystery novels, and consequently to the cinema, which many might have considered a surprising avenue. Perhaps all hardcore Christie fans ought to take a hard look at the queering of these novels. We may find that Christie explored more themes than we have traditionally given her credit for.

References

Christie, A. (1942). The moving finger. Dodd, Mead, and Company.

Christie, A. (1950). A murder is announced. Collins Crime Club.

Christie, A. (1950). Three blind mice. Dodd, Mead and Company.

Emmerson, O. (2014, June 13). Queering Agatha Christie. Headmaster Rituals or Barbarism Begins at Home. https://headmasterrituals.wordpress.com/2014/06/13/queering-agatha-christie-2/

“Miss Marple and the Case of the Superfluous Lesbians.” (2005, August 23). Darwin Catholic. http://darwincatholic.blogspot.com/2005/08/miss-marple-and-case-of-superfluous.html

Strickland, J. (Director). (2005). A murder is announced [Film]. ITV.