Jane Marple

 

Miss Jane Marple is perhaps Agatha Christie's second most famous character, second only to Poirot of course! She's always on the list of amateur detectives and interestingly is often the only female addition. 

We enjoyed our post on Sherlock Holmes so much that we didn't see why we couldn't continue writing posts about the most famous characters cemented in history. So that's what we've done! We covered their authors, and now it is time to look at yet another famous character who stands the test of time.

It all began when Christie was determined to have an older female character stick. A stage play had adapted The Murder of Roger Ackroyd but replaced the spinster Caroline Sheppard with a young girl. The swap upset her and she became cross at the fact that 'old maids' were being passed over. This spawned Miss Marple, a woman of a certain age who was impossible to replace. It is said that Miss Marple is based on the friends of Christie's step-grandmother, charismatic women who she was surrounded with during her childhood as she travelled around. It is widely believed that she took the name Marple from Marple railway station which she saw in passing.

Her very first full length appearance was in The Murder at the Vicarage, in this story she is a sharp-tongued, enthusiastic, and somewhat sharp edged individual. She isn't the same sympathetic, rounded individual we see in the newer TV adaptations where she's more of a smart yet sweet old lady. No, originally Miss Marple came across as a vaguely spiteful gossip who was capable of stringing along enough information to be able to solve a murder. However, Agatha changed her as her stories went on and she became more like the character we are familiar with, she became softer, less spiteful and nosey, and instead of being the gossip, she was the ear and used her observation skills to assist.

Miss Marple never married and this was important for her character as it allowed her to be independent with her own means and not have any obligations to any other characters. Despite this, she relies on money from the only family she has, her nephew Raymond, who pops up from time to time and is a rather famous author himself, only he can't seem to appreciate how special and clever his aunt is. She isn't a wealthy woman but that doesn't stop her from worming her way into social gatherings and the trust of the upper classes, it likely helped that she had such a strong education which wasn't that common.

We're never sure quite how old Miss Marple is. Agatha seems not have aged her in a linear fashion and her age jumps around in various novels but we know that at any given time she is between the age of 75 and 90.

Jane Marple featured in 12 novels and 20 short stories, not to mention an additional four novels by different authors following Christie's death. She went on to feature on stage, first in 1949, a favourite also for more independent amateur more recently. But Miss Marple is perhaps more famous for her TV work outside of the written word. Unlike Poirot who has only had a handful of portrayals on screen, most famous of which is actor David Suchet, Marple has been played by many a talented woman across the decades.

First came Gracie Fields who played her in an American series in 1956.

Margaret Rutherford was the first to bring her to film and she played Marple in four films which are engrained in our Ren's childhood. Despite being light comedies, and not how Christie wanted them to be, the two became friends and Christie dedicated The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side to Rutherford. Her version of the character was a no nonsense, slightly eccentric older lady who somehow had a marriage proposal in every movie as the 'strong man' admired her forwardness. 

Then in 1970 Marple was played by Inge Langen in a German adaptation of The Murder at the Vicarage.

Second in film came Angela Lansbury, who we didn't know portrayed Marple. She took on the role in 1980 in The Mirror Crack'd and her version, unusual to the character, smoked cigarettes.

Ita Ever then played Miss Marple in Russian Language adaptations between 1983 and 1990 before taking her onstage in 2005.

Also in 1983 Miss Marple went back to America and was played by American actress Helen Hayes. This was across two TV movies and she played Marple as chirpy and somewhat harmless.

We then move to the BBC taking over the Marple mantle and they produced a series of all Christie's original Marple novels as thus far on screen Marple had been in both her own stories and some of Poirot's due to limited source material. Joan Hickson, who had also played the housekeeper in one of Rutherford's adaptations took over Marple from 1984 to 1992. She'd been a personal choice to play the character once Christie herself saw her talents in the 1940s stage version of Appointment with Death. Hickson also narrated the audiobooks for Miss Marple.

ITV then took Marple as of 2004 and throughout this version the main character was played by Geraldine McEwan and then Julia McKenzie. This series made quite a few changes to the source material, including the removal of certain characters, as well as adding Marple's background which was having an affair with a married man during the war and being the reason why she never married herself. They even placed Marple in stories in which she never featured in order for more material as this was quite the successful series and frequently on in our household.

As a whole, the character of Miss Marple gave basically a generation of unmarried women who were shunned from society a role model and voice. She went from nosey neighbour who wanted justice to kindly old lady who helped her community. Marple belongs in the strong women of history even if she was never real purely for the fact she was more formidable than any man and never had a recurring nemesis.