Unravelling Miss Marple: Knitting, intuition and ageing femininity

Franklin, Alex

Abstract

'I envisage you knitting more jackets, head scarves and a good many other things of which I do not know the name. If you prefer to continue knitting, that is your decision. If you prefer to serve the cause of justice, I hope that you may at least find it interesting.'
Let justice roll down like waters
And righteousness like an everlasting stream.'

Section of a letter from Jason Rafiel, Agatha Christie (1971: 31) Nemesis

Knitting and its by-products appear as recurring motifs in Agatha Christie's descriptions of her character, Miss Jane Marple. Marple is frequently described as quietly engaged in, carrying the paraphinalia of or wearing garments which are the result of the practice of knitting. This has not gone unnoticed in knitting literature, with Turney (2009: 161) describing her as 'essentially a busybody for whom knitting is merely a guise, a means of appearing busy as she listens in to and watches the interactions between characters'.

In contrast to the conception of Marple's knitting as 'an innocuous activity, associated with dithering […] old ladies' (ibid), this paper argues that Marple's knitting can be understood as indicative of an implacable and ruthlessly methodical mind; one whose relentless truth seeking results in her being described in the first book in which she appears, The Murder at the Vicarage (1930: 10) as 'that terrible Miss Marple' who 'always knows every single thing that happens - and draws the worst inferences from it'. Rather than seeing Marple's 'intuition' as rooted in biological deterministic binaries which equate the female with irrationality and instinct, this paper argues that Marple's apparently intuitive detection practice is in fact the result of a skilful integration of theory and practice earned over the course of her long life.

By the time she appears in her final book, Nemesis (1971), the working of Marple's knitting needles have become almost synonymous with the labouring of her mind: quietly chipping away at a problem with the same persistence, resilience to boredom and ability to problem-solve in four dimensions as is required to produce 'a small child's woolly jacket' (10). Not for her the choice Rafiel envisaged when he asked her to put down her knitting in order 'to serve the cause of justice', rather for Marple you can't have one without the other.

References:
Christie, Agatha (1930 [2006]) The Murder at the Vicarage, London: HarperCollins
Christie, Agatha (1971 [2006]) Nemesis, London: HarperCollins
Turney, Jo (2009) The Culture of Knitting, Oxford: Berg

• Presentation Conference Type: Conference Paper (unpublished)
• Conference Name: In the Loop at 10
• Start Date: Jul 19, 2018
• End Date: Jul 20, 2018
• Acceptance Date: Apr 11, 2018
• Peer Reviewed: Not Peer Reviewed
• Keywords: ageing, intelligence, knitting, Agatha Christie, Miss Marple, murder mystery
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/869657
• Additional Information: Title of Conference or Conference Proceedings : In the Loop at 10