So, Was Agatha a Racist?

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Moonraker
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So, Was Agatha a Racist?

Post by Moonraker »

As we've been discussing racism on other threads, I thought I'd bring this up. I am currently re-reading Christie's Hallowe'en Party, and have just come across this:

"You do not believe in the maxim 'the fate of every man have we bound about his neck'?" said Poirot.

Mrs Drake looked extremely doubtful and slightly displeased.

"An Islamic saying, I believe," said Poirot.

Mrs Drake looked unimpressed.

"I hope," she said, "we do not take our ideas--or perhaps our ideals--from the Middle East."


This was published in 1969, so could Agatha see the tide of 'foreign' religions coming in on the horizon, and did this make her displeased too?
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Re: So, Was Agatha a Racist?

Post by lizarfau »

I'm not a Christie expert (haven't read her books since my teens), but I attended a talk about her works at a crime and mystery conference a few years ago. Apparently, there are some anti-Semitic comments in some of Christie's work, but after she visited Germany in the late 1930s she returned to Britain regretting that she'd ever written anything derogatory about Jewish people because she'd seen what ignorance could lead to.

I don't think she's racist in your quotation, though - it's her hero quoting Islam after all and a minor character being scathing about it.
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Re: So, Was Agatha a Racist?

Post by Moonraker »

She certainly referred to Jews in a derogatory fashion, I can't remember the title, but she referred to a shop owner as "a fat Jewess".
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Re: So, Was Agatha a Racist?

Post by dsr »

Quite a number of her characters held opinions, frequently put into practice, which showed they were clearly in favour of murder. There's no presumption that AC was in agreement with her characters' opinions.

I presume the same would apply to Mrs. Drake's comments?

:?:
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Re: So, Was Agatha a Racist?

Post by Rob Houghton »

I just feel that, like Enid, Agatha was writing in her own era, and for her own era, and had the same opinions as most of her middle-class English readers of the time. Her books, like Enids, are products of their time and of her up-bringing. As was said earlier, her views do change throughout her writing career, to reflect the changing times. I don't think she was being racist exactly, but just writing from the viewpoint of someone from England during the 1930's. England was quite a racist place, but then no one in England really knew any better...
'Oh voice of Spring of Youth
hearts mad delight,
Sing on, sing on, and when the sun is gone
I'll warm me with your echoes
through the night.'

(E. Blyton, Sunday Times, 1951)



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