http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/905890469

Agatha Christie investigating femininity

Far from being a conservative writer endorsing women's domestic role, Agatha Christie's books depict women as adventurous and independent, renegotiating sexual relationships along more equal lines. Career women, wives who abandon their families and even mistresses may be seen positively. Women are also allowed the dangerous competency to disrupt society, both from a swashbuckling sense of adventure and for more sinister motives, and yet the texts refuse to see them as double deviant because of their femininity. Unlike much of the criticism which chooses to focus on a few canonical texts, this detailed textual analysis of Christie's oeuvre demonstrates exactly how quietly innovatory Christie was in relation to gender, beginning in nineteen twenty and concluding in the early seventies. Makinen questions a reputation based solely as the supreme puzzle-plotter, suggesting that Christie's literary innovations in relation to femininity are important.

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