Accessories to murder: reading women’s fashion objects in Agatha Christie’s detective fiction

Abstract

This thesis analyses women’s fashion accessories in the detective fiction of Agatha Christie, considering how these items invite a particular mode of reading. Christie is widely acknowledged as one of the best-selling authors of all time, yet Christie scholarship is largely informed by her place in ‘Golden Age’ detective fiction. In considering texts from across Christie’s career, I suggest that Christie’s later novels are equally as engaged with contemporary fashions as her earlier texts. This thesis considers Christie’s texts as both detective fiction and also as part of the feminine middlebrow, drawing on thing theory – particularly the work of Elaine Freedgood and of Bill Brown – in its consideration of women’s fashion accessories as ‘things’. In so doing, I accord a fuller recognition of the role of these items in the texts. My first chapter focuses on items of jewellery in Christie’s texts to argue that they have value in framing discussions of genre. I argue that this is both in relation to the broader canon of middlebrow fiction and also in relation to the specific plot demands of detective fiction. My second chapter then discusses women’s hats with a focus on how these items relate to specific identities in the novels. My third chapter analyses cosmetics and makeup in Christie’s fiction, considering this through the lens of habit to discuss how this lens renders these items significant in Christie’s texts. Throughout this thesis, I argue that Christie’s texts invite a feminised mode of reading of these items; this is a form of reading that is aware of and understands the contexts of these items and can thus read them as clues to the resolutions of the mysteries.