Agatha Christie, Miss Marple, and the proprieties

Some ramblings

Amidst the stressful politics of our era I have been giving the news only a sideways glance, and distracting myself with audio books of Agatha Christie. I’ve probably read all of them—and more than once—but it’s been long enough that many of the stories are fresh, although with faint echoes dimly recalled. Apparently, even she did not know who the murderers were when she started out, and this shifting of focus from one suspect to the other keeps the plots moving along in ways that were as surprising to the author as they are to the reader.

My favorite of her detectives is Miss Marple. She is the elderly spinster from a tiny English village whose observations on human nature are anything but naïve. “Human nature is the same everywhere,” she remarks, and in a village, where everyone knows everyone else’s business, she has had ample opportunity to fully absorb the vagaries of human behavior. If she seems scatty, it is only because she is following a deeply personal thread of connections from an incident in the village and extrapolating to whatever mystery is at hand. But it is always a mistake to underestimate the acuity of her observations or her analyses.

In one of her stories this week, an adult nephew comments to Miss Marple (and I’m paraphrasing) “You Victorians don’t trust anyone.” Miss Marple responds, “But you young people trust everyone. That is how you get into trouble.” This remark struck me because I think it’s still true. Victorian propriety was based very specifically upon the known fallibilities of human beings.

We think of propriety as stuffiness, but proprieties are actually a way of acknowledging temptations and finding ways to avoid them. In the twenty-first century, we eschew the proprieties of former times, as if we believe that the human animal has no flaws, or that anything we feel is okay to express. But propriety and rituals—which include basic etiquette—are supposed to be there to provide us a roadmap to know what to do, and to minimize opportunities to harm or distress others…and ourselves. We tend now to think of manners as obsolete, and temptation as a delicious invitation to pleasure. But leaving all moral strictures aside, it is also an invitation to be the victim of others. Proprieties are there as a social structure of protection. In many ways, the founding of the United States—although not Victorian, obviously—was also based on this essential distrust of humanity writ large. If only the founding fathers had been even less confident in the honor of our office holders.

I was chatting with my nephew yesterday, who is in the midst of a job hunt. He commented on how a potential employer had let him know that there would be a delay in scheduling because one of their associates was traveling. This once common courtesy is now impossibly rare in the job-searching world, where employers, like bad boyfriends, simply leave people hanging without the courtesy of a response. The rarity of simple thoughtfulness gave us both pause—almost to the point of shock—but also made the prospect of employment there more appealing.

I rank Christie right up there with the literary greats. Yes, she “only” writes murder mysteries, but her social and psychological insights are profound, and expressed with vibrant realism in her characters. Hers are also the perfect books for adolescents, combining erudite storytelling with history, etiquette, advanced vocabulary, and moral standards; a list not necessarily in order of importance. That there is always a murder does not in any way contradict the foregoing, rather, it further emphasizes the educational value of the books, offering—as does all good literature—an understanding of human nature without having to actually live through the direct experience.

As I contemplate Miss Marple and her realistic view of human weakness, I am newly aware of how the modern way of wandering through the world trusting our good instincts, and that of others, is fraught with dangers both trivial and momentous. The world is a dangerous place, filled with people who have their own motives and priorities. When you go out in it, it’s best to be armed with some principles of self-preservation. Just a thought.

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And now for your gratuitous dog photo:

The heartbreaking look I get when I open the door—still in pajamas—and ask him whether he’d like to come in. Obviously, I’m supposed to come out. I break his heart in so many ways every day.