Miss Marple

Miss Marple
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Miss Jane Marple
Miss Marple First Image.jpg
Illustration by Gilbert Wilkinson of Miss Marple (December 1927 issue of The Royal Magazine)
First appearance "The Tuesday Night Club"
Last appearance Sleeping Murder
Created by Agatha Christie
Portrayed by Gracie Fields
Margaret Rutherford
Angela Lansbury
Dulcie Gray
Helen Hayes
Ita Ever
Joan Hickson
Geraldine McEwan
June Whitfield
Julia McKenzie
Isabella Parriss (playing young Miss Marple)
Julie Cox (playing Miss Marple as a young woman.)
Information
Gender Female
Occupation Amateur detective
Title Miss
Family Raymond West (nephew)
David West (great-nephew)
Lionel West (great-nephew)
Relatives Joan West (niece-in-law)
Mabel Denham (niece)
Henry (uncle)
Antony (cousin)
Gordon (cousin)
Fanny Godfrey (cousin)[1]
Lady Ethel Merridew (cousin)[2]
Thomas (uncle)
Helen (aunt)
Diane 'Bunch' Harmon (goddaughter)
Religion Christian
Nationality British

Jane Marple, usually referred to as Miss Marple, is a fictional character appearing in 12 of Agatha Christie's crime novels and in 20 short stories. Miss Marple is an elderly spinster who lives in the village of St. Mary Mead and acts as an amateur consulting detective. Alongside Hercule Poirot, she is one of the most loved and famous of Christie's 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",[3] 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.

Contents

1 Origins
2 Character
3 Novels featuring Miss Marple
4 Miss Marple short story collections
5 Books about Miss Marple
6 Films
6.1 Margaret Rutherford
6.2 Angela Lansbury
6.3 Helen Hayes
6.4 Ita Ever
7 Television
7.1 Joan Hickson
7.2 Geraldine McEwan (2004-2008) / Julia McKenzie (2009-2013)
7.3 Anime
8 Stage
9 Radio
10 Other appearances
11 See also
12 References
13 External links

Origins

The character of Miss Marple is based on Christie's step grandmother, or her Aunt (Margaret West), and her cronies.[4] Agatha Christie attributed the inspiration for the character of Miss Marple to a number of 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".[5] 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: Miss Marple was born.[6]

There is no definitive source for the derivation of the name 'Marple'.[7] The most common explanation is that the name was taken from Marple railway station in Stockport, through which Christie passed. Alternatively, Christie may have taken the name from a family named Marple, who lived at Marple Hall near her sister Madge's home at Abney Hall.[7][8]
Character

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 solves difficult crimes because of her shrewd intelligence, and St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has given her seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature. Crimes always remind her of a parallel incident, although acquaintances may be bored by analogies that often lead her to a deeper realization about the true nature of a crime. She also has a remarkable ability to latch onto a casual comment and connect it to the case at hand. In several stories, she is able to rely on her acquaintance with Sir Henry Clithering, a retired commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, for official information when required.

Miss Marple never married and has no close living relatives. Her nephew, the "well-known author" Raymond West appears in some stories including Sleeping Murder and Ingots of Gold, which also feature his wife Joan, a modern artist (though prior to their marriage she is referred to as "Joyce Lemprière", in the The Thirteen Problems stories). Raymond overestimates himself and underestimates his aunt's mental acuity. Miss Marple employs young women (Clara, Emily, Alice, Esther, Gwenda and Amy) from a nearby orphanage, whom she trains for service as general housemaids after the retirement of her long-time maid-housekeeper faithful Florence. She was briefly looked after by her irritating maid, Miss Knight. In her later years, companion Cherry Baker, first introduced in The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side, lives in.

Miss Marple has never worked for her living and is of independent means, although she benefits in her old age from the financial support of Raymond West, her nephew (A Caribbean Mystery, 1964). She is not herself from the aristocracy or landed gentry, but is quite at home among them and would probably have been happy to describe herself as "genteel"; indeed, a gentlewoman. Miss Marple may thus be considered a female version of that staple of British detective fiction, the gentleman detective. She demonstrates a remarkably thorough education, including some art courses that involved study of human anatomy through the study of human cadavers. In They Do It with Mirrors (1952), it is revealed that Miss Marple grew up in a cathedral close, and that she studied at an Italian finishing school with Americans Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline "Carrie" Louise Serrocold.

While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is mentioned in "At Bertram's Hotel", where it is said she visited the hotel when she was fourteen and almost sixty years have passed since then. Excluding "Sleeping Murder", 41 years passed between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's nephew. In The Murder at the Vicarage, the Reverend Clement's nephew Dennis is a teenager. In The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side, it is mentioned that the nephew is now grown and successful and has a career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a holiday after illness in A Caribbean Mystery.

Little is known about Marple's background, except that she has two younger sisters. One of them is the mother of Raymond, and the other is mother to Mabel Denham, a young woman who was accused of poisoning her husband Geoffrey (The Thumb Mark of St. Peter).
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)
Sleeping Murder (written around 1940, published 1976)