4 Synthesis

This rather detailed classification of the characters as they occur in Christie's and Sayers's novels calls for an analytical application. I have tried to refrain from a broader merging between the descriptive and the analytical in the above in order to access the summary with a conclusive force rather than risk repeating myself.

In comparison, the most notable difference between Agatha Christie's and Dorothy L. Sayers's fictional women is a numerical, found in the categorisation process. This may be due to the number of novels examined, five in one case and eight in the other, but I am disposed to deduce that the actual variety of female types advanced by the authors diverges. I suggest that the reason for this difference lies in the systemic structure of each author's fiction on the one hand, and her respective attitude towards both fictional and actual women.

In the first instance, Christie operates with a strictly limited number of characters in her novels, who, in turn, are all suspect of having committed the crime. In contrast, Sayers fills her fictional structure with subsidiary figures who lend little or no aid to the development of the plot, are rarely suspects and function largely as reflecting surfaces for the author's beliefs, the detective's experiences, or the reader's disposition. Purists of the genre accuse Sayers of side-tracking the actual puzzle with these trivial persons, while others accuse Christie of minimalistic cardboard characterisation; as I have indicated before, I admit to belong to the latter. Within the framework of the fictional structure, however, either approach has its individual merits, and in the context of this study, the result is illuminating. It takes the issue into the question of the author's attitude towards the female character types she respectively portrays.

To begin with, one needs to compare the categories and examine correspondences and differences. With a margin of nuances, I propose that all seven of Christie's female types find their counterpart in the list of Sayers's characters. Thus the 'heroine' corresponds essentially with the 'self-confident girl', the 'benefactor' with the 'formidable old', the 'gold-digger' and the 'disguised' with the 'shark', the 'loyal' and the 'sacrificing lover' with the 'devoted', the servants with either the 'sensible' or the 'bird-witted'. However, there are no 'intellectual', no 'sour', no 'spineless' women in Christie's novels, and the attitude either author displays towards the representatives of each category varies.

The lack of three of Sayers's character types in Christie's novels is rather edifying. First of all, the absence of the 'intellectual' type is explainable by the lack of university-educated women in Christie's life. Sayers and Christie, as documented by their biographies, moved in entirely different circles, and the intellectual woman, not as a fictional type as an actual person, was both Sayers's own reflection and, so to speak, her daily bread and butter, be it during her university years, at the printer's, at Benson's or during her life as a free-lance writer. She spent most of her adult life in London, in literary and educated circles, while Christie lived in the country, absorbing and reflecting rural life.

Secondly, I suggest that the absence of 'sour' and 'spineless' women in Christie's novels is due, not so much to the absence of that particular characteristic in her daily life, but rather to her disposition towards the literary representation of certain opinions. Sayers, though fundamentally reserved, never spared anyone's feelings; she was, to take the worst look at it, opinionated and arrogant, and the 'sour' and the 'spineless' are easily the most despised of her fictional type. I propose that Christie's upbringing and her controlled, middle-class nature prohibited an equally scathing attitude towards her fictional persons, particularly since there is nothing inherently immoral about either type. In the case of villainous characters, she is readily capable of aversion and even disgust, but then these characters deserve the scorn by their actions, while the 'sour' and the 'spineless' are condemned solely on the ground of their temperament.

The second concrete difference between the typification of women in Christie's and Sayers's novels is the attitude displayed to each variety. As I have pointed out in their respective descriptions, character types receive treatment according to the author's disposition towards their essential nature. Some of these likes and dislikes correspond, as with the 'gold-digger' or the 'disguised' and the 'shark'. Others, such as the 'loyal' or the 'sacrificing lover' and the 'devoted', differ markedly. Again, I contend that the different attitudes are grounded in biographical developments. Christie, though married twice, was only once disappointed in a love matter, while Sayers, married only once, amassed a number of very unsatisfactory lovers, to whom she was repeatedly and steadfastly devoted. However, her own behaviour never clouded her view of the mistakes she made, and she apparently held a very ambivalent attitude towards devoted love; both her life and her literature bear witness to the fact. This is also borne out by the observation that marriage, either its commencement between the heroine and a desirable young man or its preservation, is one significant feature of Christie's novels, while Sayers elaborates only two marriages in a positive way: the wedding of Charles Parker and Lady Mary, and the union between her detective and her alter ego. In both cases, it is a careful match of equals rather than a match for the match's sake.

However, not only the differences, but also the similarities are significant to this study. The relationship between fictional and actual women can be exemplified in both the similarities and in the differences. I have accounted for the differences by correlating fiction with biography. Obviously, the degree of correspondence between types and reality is equal irrespective of their occurrence in only one or both authors' work, but while the differences are more elucidating of the individual writers experiences, the entire catalogue of types have to be studied to illuminate the connection between fiction and socio-historical reality.

While all the character types are common enough in their make-up nowadays and would probably considered rather old-fashioned, at the time of the novels, they bear an unmistakable relation to the changing image of women, their role and social status as well as their capacities. This is most obvious with types such as Christie's 'heroine' or Sayers's 'intellectual', but almost all of them, negative or positive, can be discerned as autonomous individuals. They are not defined by or through the men in the novels, they act independently of them or follow their own ends as much as theirs. Even the 'loyal spouses' or 'sacrificing lovers' who renounce one or several aspects of their independence are motivated by an individual decision, not a social phenomenon. I suggest that if a sacrifice for a woman's husband or lover were a directive of the surrounding circumstances, then the positive image of a woman who pursues her own adventure and self-determines her fate would necessarily be missing; however, it does not. Admittedly, the image is weaker in Christie's than in Sayers's novels, but it still exists. Even Christie's recurring motif of the heroine's marriage does not contradict this statement, as the woman marries a carefully chosen husband, carefully chosen, that is, by and for herself. Nowadays I suppose that the entire preoccupation with marriage would be considered hopelessly outdated, but one has to remember that these novels were written by women who grew up in a time when decent upper middle-class women were supposed to be only interested in marriage, and that the match had to be condoned by the woman's^[1] parents. Even after the First World War, a woman's job was meant to be a transitional phase between adolescence and marriage. At the receiving end of the novel's production, the audience, the same applied. The generation of independent women was only just emerging, and even for them, marriage was an important aim. Readers, to some extent even those belonging to the war generation, did not yet expect the same amount of self-determination that is commonplace today. From this point of view, the initiative that even Christie's fairly conventional young heroines display, their independence and discernment would have collided violently with the ideas of decorum and decent feminine behaviour expected by that part of British society that had been shaped by the pre-war years, and that includes at least anyone born before 1900, probably even anyone born before 1910. New ideas always need some time to take roots, and I propose that a woman who thinks and acts for herself was still a relatively new concept in the 1920s.

Again, I make some exceptions concerning some of Agatha Christie's female characters, who still conduct themselves according to Edwardian ideals. Yet the war's influence is evident in many of them. Cynthia Murdoch (The Mysterious Affair at Styles) works in a hospital dispensary (as Christie did during the war), is knowledgeable about drugs, has passed the appropriate exams and generally performs according to the changes brought about by the absence of men during the war years. Anna Benningfeld (The Man in the Brown Suit), too, is schooled in palaeontology by her father, and is sufficiently firm in the subject that she can pretend to be in search of scientific data when she attaches herself to a group of people travelling through the south of Africa. Though academic women fail to feature in Christie's novels, women who consider themselves equally capable of logical deduction and the solution of a crime puzzle are not infrequent (Katherine Grey in The Mystery of the Blue Train).

On the negative side, one might also argue that Christie gave her women more leeway towards the possession of a criminal nature. Murderers are necessarily almost as cunning, as perceptive, as sharp as the detective. Indeed, the murderer, if anyone, equals the detective's overall capability. While Sayers refrains from female murderers most of the time, and portrays the two she produces as mentally deranged though cunning, Christie has no qualms whatsoever to provide them with plenty of criminal energy and the intelligence necessary to deceive the detective for the better part of the novel. The latter is the crucial part here, for criminal energy in itself is obviously not a sign of women's emancipation. In a detective story, however, the crime is not a brutal unplanned slaughter but a highly logical, complex puzzle work intended to mislead anyone but the necessarily brilliant detective. He is superbly structured, mathematical, logical and perceptive, otherwise he would never solve the riddle. But the riddle in turn has been engineered by the murderer who is, sometimes, a woman. The mental capacity to be a worthy opponent to the detective, and to survive his investigation until the very end of the story indicates that Christie, probably quite unconsciously, regarded women as equally capable of that logical, mathematical, structured process. These qualities, however, have been solely attached to the male brain until the First World War.

This complex argument aside, the socio-historical changes in Sayers's novels are much fuller represented. Here, emancipated women are commonplace and generally receive a much more favourable treatment than the more old-fashioned types of women. This is most obvious in the roles of Harriet Vane and other 'intellectuals'; they are, both in their presence and in their number, the strongest indication and reflection of the movement of women towards political, social and individual enfranchisement. However, the author's individual development has to be taken into account before one can state unequivocally that Christie's women are not modern while Sayers's are. Conventionality is a relative term that can only be defined in connection to contemporary ideals. I have shown that on the whole, Christie was a significantly more conventional than Sayers, but conventionality has to be seen in perspective to the prevailing attitude surrounding it. Christie was both older and more traditionally middle-class, and less exposed to socio-historical changes than Sayers due to the different places of residence, countryside as opposed to the 'big city'. While Sayers is more progressive in comparison to Christie, Christie is reasonably progressive compared to the rural standards she had probably internalised. Sayers, in turn, tends to pass muster even with late 20th century feminist and may thus be exempt from being criticised as too conventional - at least as far as the representation of women is concerned.

Generally speaking, then, Sayers treats her women (and her character in general, I might add) with more respect, more care and more love than Christie does. They are more diverse, more understandable and more detailed in their description. The rigid differentiation between moral and immoral behaviour is missing in Sayers's novels, even though she makes just as many judgmental statements about right and wrong. Criminal behaviour, however, is often explained as a consequence of mental disturbance rather than pure greed, and the most despised of characters type are essentially harmless. The wider range of fictional women distracts from the pure logic of the puzzle however, and that, for the devotee, is a cardinal sin. Still, in her aim to evolve a detective novel of manners, the more detailed characterisation is a minimal requirement, and the task is one of which she has acquitted herself with honour.

Be that as it may, the range of fictional personalities offers a fair representation of everyday character types, and the women who bought either Christie or Sayers were sure to find themselves as positive figures and their individual sympathies and antipathies reflected on the page. I suggest that the circle of readers differs between the two authors, but that, as a whole, all aspects of middle- and upper middle-class society are covered. Christie, as I have pointed out above, unfolds a landscape of rural tranquillity disturbed by a crime; Sayers often places her crimes in the outward upheaval, clamour and confusion of a big city like London. Interestingly enough, the difference between country and city is so inherent that any urban setting in Christie's novels still resembles a small village, while Sayers takes her fictional metropolis even into the desolation of the fens. Within these systems of the external and the internal 'Mayhem Parva' (cf. p. 38), however, typical female readers of classic detective fiction could choose among an approximately complete set of identification figures. The fictional women reflected actual women.

The role of women within society, as regarded by either author, and its description, varies according to the author's own perception of society. Working on the assumption that literature is a mirror of society as seen by the author, and that in turn a mirror of actual society, a picture emerges that is curiously twofold. On the one hand, both Christie and Sayers present strong, independent, intelligent women, negative and positive in connotation, women who take their destiny into their own hand - progressive, emancipated, feminist women. Their status as fully liberated members of society is not seriously contested in the course of any novel; it may be questioned, but the answer is unequivocal. Normally, however, the problem simply does not arise. They have achieved at least the same if not a higher degree of enfranchisement as their actual counterparts. With the additional differentiation that the society each author sets out to describe, rural in Christie's case and predominantly urban in Sayers's case, and thus by inflection more conservative or more progressive, these women take "[...] the emancipation of their sex as an accomplished fact [...]."^[2]. On the other hand, the structure of the genre and the individual disposition of each author limits the amount of progressiveness endorsed. Christie, being the more unmitigatedly conservative of the two, depicts a segment of society that omits the academic woman altogether, yet still her women, in all their Edwardian nature, are very much a product of the war generation. Sayers, with intimate knowledge particularly of academic and literary-artistic circles, omits that broad expanse of rural upper-middle class women who, though affected by the socio-historical changes, maintain an appearance of pre-war sex attitudes. Thus the classic detective novel as produced by Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers creates a world of traditionalism and the conservation of conventional values while its representation of women is comparatively advanced. It is a paradox of progressive conservativism.

^[1] It is noteworthy that even the word 'woman' is modern; at that time, she would have been referred to as a 'girl'.

^[2] Pugh, Martin Women and the Women's Movement in Britain 1914-1959, London, 1992, p. 22