Miss Marple

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Jane Marple, usually known as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in twelve of Agatha Christie's crime novels. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who acts as an amateur detective, and lives in the village of St. Mary Mead. She has been portrayed numerous times on screen, and is one of the most famous of Christie's creations. Her first published appearance was in issue 350 of The Royal Magazine for December 1927 with the first printing of the short story The Tuesday Night Club which later became the first chapter of The Thirteen Problems (1932). Her first appearance in a full-length novel was in The Murder at the Vicarage in 1930.

[edit] Character

Illustration by Gilbert Wilkinson of Miss Marple from the December 1927 issue of The Royal Magazine and the first-known image of the character (See The Thirteen Problems)

Miss Jane Marple is an elderly woman who lives in the little English village of St. Mary Mead. She looks like an ordinary old lady, dressed neatly in tweed and is frequently seen knitting or pulling weeds in her garden. Miss Marple sometimes comes across as confused or "fluffy", but when it comes to solving mysteries, she has a sharp logical mind, and an almost unmatched understanding of human nature with all its weaknesses, strengths, quirks and foibles. In the detective story tradition, she often embarrasses the local "professional" police by solving mysteries that have them stumped.

The name Miss Marple was derived from the name of the railway station in Marple, on the Manchester to Sheffield Hope Valley line, at which Agatha Christie was once delayed long enough to have actually noticed the sign.

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

Miss Marple never married and has no close living relatives. Vicarage introduced Miss Marple's nephew, the "well-known author" Raymond West. His wife Joan (initially called Joyce), a modern artist, was introduced in 1933 in The Thirteen Problems. Raymond tends to be overconfident in himself and underestimates Miss Marple's mental powers. In her later years, Miss Marple has a live-in companion named Cherry Baker, who was first introduced in The Mirror Crack'd From Side To Side'.

Miss Marple is able to solve difficult crimes not only because of her shrewd intelligence, but because St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has given her seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature. No crime can arise without reminding Miss Marple of some parallel incident in the history of her time. Miss Marple's acquaintances are sometimes bored by her frequent analogies to people and events from St. Mary Mead, but these analogies often lead Miss Marple to a deeper realization about the true nature of a crime.

Miss Marple also had a remarkably thorough education, including some art courses that involved study of human anatomy through the study of human cadavers. Although she looks like a sweet, frail old woman, Miss Marple is not afraid of dead bodies and is not easily intimidated. She also has a remarkable ability to latch onto a casual comment and connect it to the case at hand.

This education, history, and experience are hinted at in the Margaret Rutherford films, in which Miss Marple mentions her awards at marksmanship and fencing (although these hints are played for comedic value).

Christie wrote a concluding novel to her Marple series, Sleeping Murder, in 1940. She locked it away in a bank vault so it would be safe if she was killed in The Blitz. The novel was not published until shortly after Christie's death in 1976, some thirty-six years after it was originally written. Sleeping Murder created some discrepancies in the timeline of the series, as characters who were killed off by Christie in previously published novels reappeared alive.

While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is never mentioned. Thirty-five years pass between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's son. In a Murder at the Vicarage, the Vicar's wife is pregnant. In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, it is mentioned that the son is now grown, successful and has a career. The effects of aging are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing vacation after illness in A Caribbean Mystery or finding she can no longer knit due to poor eyesight in The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side.

[edit] Novels featuring Miss Marple

• The Murder at the Vicarage (1930)
• The Body in the Library (1942)
• The Moving Finger (1943)
• A Murder is Announced (1950)
• They Do It with Mirrors, or Murder With Mirrors (1952)
• A Pocket Full of Rye (1953)
• 4.50 from Paddington, or What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! (1957)
• The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, or The Mirror Crack'd (1962)
• A Caribbean Mystery (1964)
• At Bertram's Hotel (1965)
• Nemesis (1971)</l