Masaryk University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English
and American Studies
English Language and Literature
Kateřina Urubková
Portrayal of the Orient in Agatha
Christie's Novels
Masters Diploma Thesis
Supervisor: prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc, M.A.
2019
/ declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.
Author's signature
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank my supervisor, prof. Milada Frankova, for her kind guidance, advice and
encouragement during the writing process of this thesis. My thanks also go to my family and
friends for their patience and support.
Table of Contents
Introduction 5
Chapter I: Orientalism - theoretical background 8
Chapter II: Colonization and the British Empire - historical background 29
British Imperialism 30
Britain in the Orient 36
Chapter III: Agatha Christie and the detective fiction, novel and culture 42
The link between novel and culture 43
Agatha Christie's detective fiction and its testament 48
Chapter IV: Orient in Agatha Christie's novels 54
Orient as a passive and dream-like setting 56
Observing the self and the other, Englishness and foreignness .... 65
Imperial utterances of superiority, conflicting viewpoints 75
Conclusion 80
Works Cited 83
English Resume 89
Czech Resume 90
Introduction
Literature is one of the means by which people encounter different cultures and
peoples and the representations which are stored in it and therefore preserved for
posterity have impact on people's perception of the world, particularly those inside
canonical works, which are highly respected and widely read. The thesis sets out to
analyse the views on and the portrayals of the Orient in the novels of Agatha Christie,
the leading representative of the golden age of detective fiction. For the purposes of the
thesis, the Orient as a designation stands for the Middle Eastern and also North African
countries, although North Africa is geographically as Western as Europe, culturally it is
perceived as Oriental, not Occidental. Seven of Christie's novels, namely Murder on the
Orient Express (1934), Murder in Mesopotamia (1936), Death on the Nile (1937),
Appointment with Death (1938), Death Comes as the End (1944), They Came to
Baghdad (1951) and Destination Unknown (1954), and their portrayals of the Orient
will be analysed predominantly against the background of Edward W. Said's
Orientalism, while the thesis also engages with the works and notions of Homi K.
Bhabha, Mary Louise Pratt, Pramod K. Nayar and other postcolonial scholars.
In Orientalism, Said propounds a theory that the West has created and
constructed the representations of the Orient as the other and employed them in what he
calls a colonial discourse. In it, the relationship between the Orient and the West works
on binary oppositions, since the West is portrayed as civilized, modern and rational,
while the Orient as primitive, backward and irrational. Said's work represented a key
moment for the formation of postcolonial theory and has had an enormous impact on
various scholars since its publication. The thesis applies Said's notions presented in
Orientalism to analysing Christie's portrayals of the Orient and its inhabitants. It
contributes to the debates about representations, othering and cultural encounters, while
5
it illuminates Christie's approach to representing the Orient and its people for the West
and its readership. The aim is to analyse whether she approached the Orient in
accordance with the Orientalist views employed by the colonial discourse and thus
strengthened the portrayal of the Orient as the Western other or not and to illustrate
which devices and strategies she used to represent the Orient for the West.
The thesis is divided into four chapters and is organized as follows. The first
chapter is devoted to the theoretical background and introduces Edward W. Said's
Orientalism, his key notions and their impact on postcolonial theory. The second
chapter provides a historical background of British colonization, while its main focus is
on the period in which the selected novels of Agatha Christie were published and that is
the years between the 1930s and 1950s. It is divided into two sections; the first part
illuminates British imperialist ideology that lied behind British colonization, including
the belief into the superiority of the English race and the natural right of the English to
rule the uncivilized world. The second part concentrates on Britain's role in the Orient
and the primary focus is again on the interwar period and the 1950s with its post-WWII
aftermath and the subsequent shift in power between Britain and the United States of
America in this part of the world. The third chapter focuses on the role of literature in
culture and is divided into two sections, the first part focuses on the link between the
novel and culture and the impact that the written word has had on people's perception of
the world. Moreover, it also illuminates how imperialist ideology penetrated the novel.
The second part concentrates on Agatha Christie and the detective fiction genre and
claims that Christie's fiction reflects its historical background and the racist discourse of
the society at that time. The fourth and at the same time the last chapter is devoted to the
analysis of the selected novels of Agatha Christie and consists of three parts. The first
part focuses on analysing the representations of the Orient as a backdrop to the Western
6
stories. The second part concentrates on representations of the native people as the
Western other and the third part focuses on how the imperialist ideology penetrated
Christie's fiction. All of the findings are eventually summarized in the final conclusion.
7
Chapter I
Orientalism - theoretical background
Orientalism views the Orient
through its own vested interests,
from its own vantage point, with
an imperial Eurocentric
perspective. (Burney 26)
Orientalism overrode Orient ...
Orientalism assumed an
unchanging Orient, absolutely
different ... from the West. (Said,
Orientalism 96)
The term 'Orientalism' has stood for many things throughout history. Initially,
Orientalism referred to the works of Western artists who took interest in Oriental
themes and artefacts and anyone who was concerned with the Orient and Oriental
things, in general, could be called an Orientalist. However, when "the Indo-Germanic
linguistic connection between Europe and India was discovered by German Romanticist
scholars in the 1700s, it generated tremendous interest in Oriental languages, literatures,
and cultures" (Burney 37), resulting in the emergence of Orientalism as a scholarly
discipline in the 18th
and 19th
centuries. The term Orientalist subsequently began to
signify a scholar who focuses on the languages and literatures of the Eastern world.
During the British rule in India (1858-1947), Orientalism was also "a school of thought
among a group of British colonial administrators and scholars who argued that India
should be ruled according to its own traditions and laws, thus opposing the
'Anglicanism' of those who argued that India should be ruled according to British
traditions and laws" (Thomas). Since 1978, when Edward W. Said's Orientalism was
8
published, the term Orientalism has acquired a pejorative connotation, as it began to
denote the patronising way in which the West had approached and depicted Middle
Eastern, North African and Asian societies. His notions have soon been applied to
various fields of study "from Literary Studies, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, History,
and Politics to Women's Studies, Media Studies, Native Studies, and Fine Arts"
(Burney 23). His approach to analysing literature and interconnecting different
disciplines in the process has become "a model for navigating between literature,
history, philosophy, and anthropology, and has gone on to inspire studies in such new
fields as cultural, feminist, and postcolonial studies" (Prakash 205). Said's research and
approach was not an isolated phenomenon, but rather, it was integral to the major shift
in the field of scholarship, since his work was a part of "a larger discursive shift in
literary studies, history, and anthropology animated by poststructuralism, Western
feminism, and neo-Marxism" (Prakash 205). Said's approach favours the connection
between literature and politics and opposes the formalist approach of New Criticism,
which "developed in reaction to the Marxist-oriented literature and literary theory of the
1930s and which came to full blossom during the Cold War" (Whalen-Bridge 194).
New Criticism asserts that "politics and literature had nothing to do with one another"
(Whalen-Bridge 194). In Orientalism, on the other hand, Said contends that history and
literature are related and literature should be approached and analysed in connection
with the historical and political background in which it was produced. His work is thus
"one of the seminal books that prompted a shift in the interest of literary and cultural
theoreticians from textuality to historicity, from the aesthetic to the political, and from
individual receptions to collective responses to literary texts" (Behdad, "Orientalism
after" 3). Said's work had an enormous impact, as it "inspired a whole new generation
of scholars who have sought to develop his critique by exploring its implications in
9
new, and sometimes unexpected, arenas of inquiry" (Behdad, "Orientalism matters"
709).
Edward W. Said (1935-2003), born in Jerusalem, which was then part of
Mandatory Palestine governed by the British, spent his childhood living in the Middle
East, in Jerusalem and Cairo alternately. As a teenager, he was sent to the United States
of America, where he later earned his degrees in English literature at Princeton and
Harvard universities. As a Palestinian American, who has lived both in the West and in
the East, which provided him with hands-on experience of the ways of life of both parts
of the world, he took interest in bridging the gap between the Western and Eastern
worlds throughout his life and career and tried to ameliorate their mutual understanding.
He also began to inquire into the Western portrayals and representations of the East and
its people and began to study and analyse them thoroughly, since "the images presented
in the colonialist discourse were completely alien to Said's own experience of growing
up in the Middle East" (Burney 24). He published his findings and conclusions in his
seminal work Orientalism in 1978, which represented a key moment for the formation
of postcolonial criticism, since Orientalism is "widely acknowledged as the cornerstone
of what has evolved into a multifaceted and diverse conceptual framework known as
'postcolonial theory'" (Burney 23). In Orientalism, Said "questions the very
foundations of Western representation and the social construction of the 'Orient' as the
ultimate Other in history, literature, art, music, and popular culture" (Burney 23). In
addition, he presents the term 'colonial discourse,' which denotes "a discourse that
presents the Orient as Other" (Burney 23). This term is perceived as one of his "major
contributions to postcolonial theory ... [and] he applied [it] to the close readings of texts
in order to point out the tropes of colonialism hidden in their words and perspectives.
Said's extensive discourse analysis of texts initiated what came to be known as colonial
10
discourse theory" (Burney 36), which became part of postcolonial criticism. Regarding
the colonial discourse, Said was influenced by Michel Foucault's concept of discourse
and discourse analysis. For Foucault, discourse denotes "a historically contingent social
system that produces knowledge and meaning" (Adams), as it produces "what he calls
'practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak'" (quoted in Adams).
Discourse is thus "a way of organising knowledge that structures the constitution of
social (and progressively global) relations through the collective understanding of the
discursive logic and the acceptance of the discourse as social fact" (Adams). Said
applies Foucault's notions to analysing the colonial discourse, while he is concerned
with the Western systematic practices of forming and depicting the Oriental other as its
object in the colonial discourse, and also with how these representations are generally
accepted as the fact, the truth.
The term postcolonial was first adopted by historians and political scientists after
World War II, when decolonization began to take place, and then in the late 1970s, it
was adopted by cultural and literary critics predominantly owing to Said's work and its
impact. Postcolonialism focuses on the consequences of the exploitation of colonized
people and their lands under the colonial rule, the colonizers. Postcolonial scholars,
such as Franz Fanon, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Homi K. Bhabha and Amar
Acheraiou among others, have produced works dealing with the consequences of
colonialism, meaning "a political-economic phenomenon whereby various European
nations explored, conquered, settled, and exploited large areas of the world" (Webster),
and imperialism, meaning "state policy, practice, or advocacy of extending power and
dominion, especially by direct territorial acquisition or by gaining political and
economic control of other areas" ("Imperialism"). Postcolonialism covers and deals
with "all the culture affected by the imperial process from the moment of colonization
11
to the present day" (Ashcroft et al. 2), since many consequences of colonialism have
persisted and endured to this day. The realms of focus of postcolonial theory are diverse
and extensive, since "more than three-quarters of the people living in the world today
have had their lives shaped by the experience of colonialism" (Ashcroft et al. 1), which
means millions of experiences and life stories of millions of people living in different
parts of the world with different living conditions as well as historical and cultural
backgrounds. What postcolonial theory enables them all is to let their voices be heard
and finally express in their own way and language what they have felt, thought and
experienced from the colonial period through decolonization until the present moment.
Postcolonial criticism has focused on two main groups of writings that are
analysed, first, on the postcolonial texts produced by people from the former colonized
parts of the world, who directly experienced exploitation and marginalization and are
now using their voices to produce pieces of work where they can provide their views on
the history of their sufferings and experiences under the colonial rule and beyond.
Second, it concentrates on rereading and re-analysing canonical texts "in the light of
post-colonial discursive practices. The former has been more closely associated with the
traditional domain of the field, but the latter has begun, more recently, to produce
powerfully subversive general accounts of textuality and concepts of 'literariness'
which open up important new areas of concern" (Ashcroft et al. 194). This thesis will
focus on the second target group, as the works of Agatha Christie are inseparably part of
the English canon, and will examine them from the postcolonial perspective, taking into
account the historical background in which the writings were produced, including
colonialism and imperialism of the British Empire. Postcolonial critics Ashcroft,
Griffiths and Tiffin in The Empire Writes Back reflect on and emphasize the importance
of post-colonial rereading and reanalysing of the canonical English texts, as "it is no
12
longer possible to preserve repositories of a fixed and immutable system of values"
(194), implying that it is possible to question and examine everything in today's
postmodern world. The scholars further propose that "the works from the traditional
canon which remain may reflect a radical revision and rereading" (Ashcroft et al. 196),
thus encouraging other scholars to analyse traditional texts from the postcolonial
perspective. This thesis will do that, it will reread the canonical English novels by
Agatha Christie and re-analyse their form and content against the background of
Orientalism and British imperialism.
In Orientalism, Edward W. Said proposes three main meanings of the word
'Orientalism'. First, according to him the "most readily accepted designation for
Orientalism is an academic one" (Said 2). Second, "Orientalism is a style of thought
based upon an ontological and epistemological distinction made between 'the Orient'
and (most of the time) 'the Occident'" (Said 2). Third, "[t]aking the late eighteenth
century as a very roughly defined starting point Orientalism can be discussed and
analysed as the corporate institution for dealing with the Orient ... Orientalism as a
Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient" (Said
3). For the most part, he is predominantly concerned with the third meaning, that is the
Western system of approaching the Orient and Orientals (predominantly Arab Muslims,
even though Said himself was an Arab Christian) in a dominating and patronising
fashion which consists of numerous stereotypes and serves as a tool for exercising
control over the East. From Said's perspective, Orientalism is closely connected with
colonialism and imperialism and particularly with the British and French Empires, as
these two seized power over the largest portions of the Orient. Since Britain and France
dominated the Orient physically, it is only natural that they also "dominated Orientalism
as a discipline" (Said, Orientalism 98) and that is why Said focuses almost solely on the
13
British, French, and subsequently American, for "since World War II America has
dominated the Orient, and approaches it as France and Britain once did" (Said,
Orientalism 4), and omits to analyse German Orientalism and others in his work.
The main argument that Said presents in Orientalism is that the Orient and all
the notions, concepts, images and fantasies connected to it were essentially created by
the West for the West, as he contends that "such locales, regions, geographical sectors
as 'Orient' and 'Occident' are man-made. Therefore as much as the West itself, the
Orient is an idea that has a history and a tradition of thought, imagery, and vocabulary
that have given it reality and presence in and for the West" (Said 5). The West
fabricated the notions of the East as its other that had, as Said puts it, "no corresponding
reality" (Orientalism 5). As Bhabha points out, Orientalism is therefore regarded by
Said as "misrepresentation of an Oriental essence" (The Location of Culture 103). The
West and the East have been in permanent contact throughout history, and Orient was
always a place with its distinct history and traditions, but imperialism brought different
dynamics into their relationship. Suddenly, all the Oriental things and also people were
described in marked contrast to the West and the relationship began to work on binary
oppositions, East versus West, Orient versus Occident. Before colonialism and
imperialism, the Orient "had really meant only India and the Bible lands" (Said,
Orientalism 4), but then the meaning of the word expanded to designate also all the East
Asian and North African countries and not only the countries themselves in terms of
their geographical location, but also all the notions, fantasies and stereotypes connected
with them. The West began to create notions and fantasies about the Orient, and the
word itself began to denote other things than simply a geographical location in the
minds of the Westerners. As Ning puts it, "the Orient geographically exists separately
from the Western world, but the 'Orient' does not merely refer to a geographical
14
location. It also has a very profound political and cultural connotation. This 'Orient' has
become the 'other' of the West, from which perspective Western people reflect its
world" (59).
Said observes the binary oppositions in the colonial discourse, as he discerns
"the absolute and systematic difference between West, which is rational, developed,
humane, superior, and the Orient, which is aberrant, undeveloped, inferior"
(Orientalism 300). In Orientalism, the Orient "was painted as the very antithesis, the
binary opposition, the contrasting image of the Occident. Colonialism and imperialism
not only 'conquered' the Orient and its territory, but also its identity, (hi)story, culture,
landscape, and voice" (Burney 24). With binary oppositions inevitably come
stereotypes, generalizations and simplifications. In the colonial discourse, stereotypical
portrayals of the Orient prevail and the stereotypes have their limits. As Bhabha puts it,
"the stereotype is not a simplification because it is a false representation of a given
reality. It is a simplification because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation that,
in denying the play of difference (which the negation through the Other permits),
constitutes a problem for the representation of the subject in significations of psychic
and social relations" (The Location of Culture 107). Said was also concerned with the
question to what extent can cultures represent other cultures accurately and to what
extent it is always about the stereotypes in the end, since in his view, "the real issue is
whether indeed there can be a true representation of anything, or whether any and all
representations, because they are representations, are embedded first in the language
and then in the culture, institutions, and political ambience of the representer"
(Orientalism 272). This notion further undermines the ability of people, in this case the
Westerners, to represent other cultures, in this case the Orient, accurately, since they
create the representations of the East in their own language, English, with their cultural
15
and historical background in mind, thus they essentially fabricate the East itself through
their eyes, minds, and language, the East for the West. What Said also contends is that
representations are "formations, or as Roland Barthes has said of all the operations of
language, they are deformations. The Orient as a representation in Europe is formed or
deformed - out of a more and more specific sensitivity towards a geographical region
called 'the East'" (Orientalism 273).
What Said asserts is that these two terms, Orient and Occident, are related and
dependent, as each term always needs the other to be fully understood and identified.
Burney endorses this approach when she argues that the West and the East as its other
are "symbiotically 'intertwined' and 'interdependent'" (Burney 35). In addition, Said
also argues that "representations have purposes, they are effective much of the time,
they accomplish one or many tasks" (Orientalism 273). The othering of the Orient, and
for that matter any territory which attracted the European powers as a potential colony
or dominion, and its stereotypical portrayals as the other for the West have been
employed for various reasons. First of all, cultures have employed representations of the
other throughout their histories in order to be able to understand themselves and their
own identity. It is always easier to oppose something and say what 'we' are not than to
precisely pin point what 'we' truly are. The colonizers shaped the identities of the
colonized by describing them and determining their lives through oppression, but, at the
same time, the colonizers themselves were also influenced by the imperial experience,
since it altered their perception of themselves, which only emphasizes the
interconnectedness of the Orient and Occident and the people behind these terms.
Recently, "the historiography has shifted its focus more to the way in which the
imperial experience also helped to shape colonizers' own conception of who they were"
(Gascoigne 578). For the colonizers who travelled to distant places, where they
16
encountered different cultures oftentimes for the first time from such a near position,
this represented the key moment, when they discovered the need to define their own
identity. As John Gascoigne puts it, cultures "often reveal themselves most tellingly
when they have to define themselves against what is unfamiliar and alien. Imperial
expansion brought with it, then, a clearer forging of national identity" (581). In addition,
the empire "was almost a testing ground for the attitudes and practices that collectively
make up a national identity or, more accurately, the different types of identity that
shelter under the same national umbrella" (Gascoigne 579). The colonizers usually
found themselves in the position of power over densely populated areas and "in order to
maintain authority over the Other in a colonial situation, imperial discourse strives to
delineate the Other as radically different from the self, yet at the same time it must
maintain sufficient identity with the Other to valorize control over it" (Ashcroft et al.
103). The first reason for creating the representations of the other was for the colonizers
to form their own consciousness and sense of identity and consolidate their beliefs and
norms as the Westerners.
The second reason, and even more significant one, was that the stereotypes
served as a justification for colonization. "The objective of colonial discourse is to
construe the colonized as a population of degenerate types on the basis of racial origin,
in order to justify conquest and to establish systems of administration and instruction"
(Bhabha, The Location of Culture 101). There is also a certain duality in the colonial
discourse, since it "produces the colonized as a social reality which is at once an 'other'
and yet entirely knowable and visible" (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 101). Prakash
shares the same view and states that "the Orient could be at once something to be
freshly discovered and something entirely and already known" (206). From the
colonizers' point of view, the Orient had to be known, since the colonizers justified the
17
oppression and the colonial rule by the notion that they knew what was best for the
Orientals better than they themselves could know. They portrayed the Orientals as the
lesser people in order to render their colonial efforts just and right. The violence and
oppression needed to sustain the control over such distant and vast territories was veiled
under the "civilizing mission" phrase. The British Empire, in particular, acted on behalf
of this notion, which is closely related to the belief in hierarchy of races, in believing
that one race should by nature dominate the others, that the hierarchy is given. In the
colonial discourse, Europeans were perceived as the superior race, while any other as
the inferior. The belief in this hierarchy of races was reinforced by the large number of
stereotypes which depicted the non-Western, non-European people as backward,
inferior and uncivilized, which led to the justification of Western exploitation of distant
places and local peoples. Said emphasizes the austerity of the imperialist approach by
stating that "since Oriental was a member of a subject race, he had to be subjected: it
was that simple" (Orientalism 207).
When Charles Darwin's theory of biological evolution emerged in the 19t h
century, it was soon exploited by the pro-imperialists and believers in the hierarchy of
races ideology, even though Charles Darwin himself condemned this linkage. As Said
points out, Darwinism:
seemed to accentuate the 'scientific' validity of the division of
races into advanced and backward, or European-Aryan and
Oriental-African. Thus the whole question of imperialism, as it
was debated in the late nineteenth century by pro-imperialists
and anti-imperialists alike, carried forward the binary typology
of advanced and backward (or subject) races, cultures, and
societies (Orientalism 206).
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John Westlake, an English law scholar, further reinforces this division between
advanced and backward races and argues that "regions of the earth designated as
'uncivilized' ... ought to be annexed or occupied by advanced powers" (quoted in Said,
Orientalism 207). For pro-imperialists, Darwinism represented a validation for the
oppression of distant territories and numerous derogatory terms were employed to
denote non-European races in the colonial and imperial discourse. For instance, Lord
Cromer, a leading figure of British imperialism and a Veil Protectorate in Egypt, called
Orientals the "subject races" (Said, Orientalism 36). Said presents the simplified version
of the main argument favouring the hierarchy of races in the colonial discourse as
follows: "there are Westerners, and there are Orientals. The former dominate; the latter
must be dominated, which usually means having their land occupied, their internal
affairs rigidly controlled, their blood and treasure put at the disposal of one or another
Western power" (Orientalism 36). Lord Cromer and Arthur Balfour, a British
Conservative Party politician, both employed binary oppositions of the colonial
discourse and presented them in the following way: "the Oriental is irrational, depraved
(fallen), childlike, 'different'; thus the European is rational, virtuous, mature, 'normal'"
(Said, Orientalism 40). In the case of Lord Comer, the paradox of the colonial discourse
and its duality can be demonstrated. Although he kept his distance from the Egyptians
while serving in Egypt, looked down on them, and did not speak their language, he
claimed that he knew them very well (Marsot). From the colonizers' perspective, the
Orientals are therefore "a subject race, dominated by a race that knows them and what is
good for them better than they could possibly know themselves" (Said, Orientalism 35).
This is the clearest instance of a patronizing Western approach to the East. By believing
and acting on this notion that the West knows the East better that the local people, the
colonizers deprived them of their sovereignty and independence. Sir Edward Cust in
19
'Reflections on West African affairs ... addressed to the Colonial Office' in 1839
maintains the colonial belief in Oriental incapability of self-rule and independence,
when he contends that "a fundamental principle appears to have been forgotten or
overlooked in our system of colonial policy - that of colonial dependence. To give a
colony the forms of independence is a mockery; she would not be a colony for a single
hour if she could maintain an independent station" (quoted in Bhabha, The Location of
Culture 121-22). It is interesting to note that these beliefs into the backwardness and
incapability of the Orientals as presented in the colonial discourse had a far-reaching
impact, even on people outside the British Empire. Arminius Vambery, a Hungarian
Turkologist and traveller, adopts the same attitude as the British pro-imperialists and
argues that "the English or the Anglo-Saxon race in general has proved to be the best
fitted for the propagation of modern ideas" (359). He also employs the binary
oppositions, when describing the difference between the British rule and the
government of the native people. According to him, "no Asiatic is so shortsighted as not
to perceive the good qualities of the English rule compared with the disorderly,
rapacious and despotic government of his native princes" (Vambery 363), briskly
embracing and incorporating derogatory terms of the colonial discourse. Vambery
defends the British rule, as he states that "British rule is not by any means oppressive to
the natives of Asia, and that, having once submitted to it, they become patient and
happy subjects" (363-64). Vambery's conviction that the "subject races" become
"happy subjects" under the British rule highlights the impact and power of the proimperialist,
colonial discourse.
The issue of difference of religion, Christianity and Islam, should also be
mentioned, since it played an important role in developing and maintaining the
stereotypical and derogatory representations of the Orient as the other. With the creation
20
of the new religion, Islam, Orient flourished and launched a few sorties into Europe.
After Mohammed's death in 632, "the military and later the cultural and religious
hegemony of Islam grew enormously. First Persia, Syria, and Egypt, then Turkey, then
North African fell to the Muslim armies; in the eighth and ninth centuries Spain, Sicily,
and parts of France were conquered. By the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries Islam
ruled as far east as India, Indonesia, and China" (Said, Orientalism 59). Islamic Orient
thus quickly expanded until it reached predominantly Christian Europe, and as a result
of being so close to each other, Islam began to pose a threat to European Christianity.
This is when the hostility to each other and the process of othering began, since for
European Christians Islam began to represent "hordes of hated barbarians" (Said,
Orientalism 59). Said further discusses the relationship between Islam and Christianity
and provides possible reasons for the hostility on Christians' part towards Islam:
Doubtless Islam was a real provocation in many ways. It lay
uneasily close to Christianity, geographically and culturally. It
drew on the Judeo-Hellenic traditions, it borrowed creatively
from Christianity, it could boast of unrivalled military and
political successes ... The Islamic lands sit adjacent to and even
on top of the Biblical lands ... From the end of the seventh
century until the battle of Lepanto in 1571, Islam in either its
Arab, Ottoman, or North African and Spanish form dominated
or effectively threatened European Christianity (Orientalism
74).
Said thus argues that the negative attitude towards Orient and its people was rooted in
the minds and consciousness of Europeans right from the emergence of Islam.
21
With the emergence of Islam, Orientals began to be perceived as barbarians and
stories and evidences about their otherness and strangeness began to shape in European
cultures. The evidences of the Orient and "its strangeness, its difference, its exotic
sensuousness, and so forth" were from the beginning "all declarative and self-evident;
the tense they employ is the timeless eternal; they convey an impression of repetition
and strength, they are always symmetrical to, and yet diametrically inferior to, a
European equivalent, which is sometimes specified, sometimes not" (Said, Orientalism
72). The Orient began to be studied and examined in-depth first by the travellers,
explorers and artists until Orientalism emerged as an academic discipline in the 18th
and
19th
centuries, but the all declarative, self-evident and timeless eternal statements and
descriptions of the Orient have remained. Said designates William Jones, an AngloWelsh
philologist, scholar of ancient India and the co-founder of the Asiatic Society of
Bengal in 1784, as "the undisputed founder (the phrase is A. J. Arberry's) of
Orientalism" (Orientalism 78). However, he considers Silvester de Sacy, a French
linguist and Orientalist, Ernest Renan, a French philologist, philosopher and historian,
and Edward William Lane, a British Orientalist, translator and lexicographer, to be "the
builders of the field, creators of a tradition, progenitors of the Orientalist brotherhood.
What Sacy, Renan, and Lane did was to place Orientalism on a scientific and rational
basis" (Said, Orientalism 122). According to Said, Sacy's work "canonizes the Orient; it
begets a canon of textual objects passed on from one generation of students to the next"
(Orientalism 129). The system of depicting the East began to be canonized, and since
Renan and Sacy, the generalizations have "begun to acquire the armor of scientific
statement and the ambience of corrective study" (Said, Orientalism 149). Moreover, as
Said puts it, Renan and Sacy strove to "reduce the Orient to a kind of human flatness,
which exposed its characteristics easily to scrutiny and removed from it its complicating
22
humanity" (Orientalism 150). During the 19 century Orientalism as an academic field
increased its popularity and prestige, which was demonstrated also by "the reputation
and influence of such institutions as the Societe asiatique, the Royal Asiatic Society, the
Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, and the American Oriental Society" (Said,
Orientalism 43). The capital of Orientalism was Paris, but the Oriental studies were
soon incorporated into all major universities across Europe and "by 1850 every major
European university had a fully developed curriculum in one or another of the
Orientalist disciplines" (Said, Orientalism 191). With that went hand in hand the
increase "in the number of professorships in Oriental studies, consequently there was an
expansion in the available means for disseminating Orientalism" (Said, Orientalism 43).
For example, many Orientalist periodicals began to be published, the first being
"Fundgraben des Orients (1809)" (Said, Orientalism 43).
The Orientalist discourse began to shape and the key moment, which altered it,
was Napoleon's invasion and conquest of Egypt (1798-1801). Before that, Orientalism
employed "a system of representation, a regime of truth, that is structurally similar to
realism" (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 101). All the notions were presented as selfevident
and realistic, novels were written in a realistic style. However, after Napoleon,
Said contends that "the very language of Orientalism changed radically. Its descriptive
realism was upgraded and became not merely a style of representation but a language,
indeed a means of creation" (Orientalism 87). The gap between the actual Orient and its
representations began to widen and broaden. The key piece of work manifesting this
change is considered to be the Description de VEgypte (1809-1829). In it, as Said
argues, "the Orient was reconstructed, reassembled, crafted, in short, born out of the
Orientalists' efforts. The Description became the master type of all further efforts to
bring the Orient closer to Europe, thereafter to absorb it entirely and - centrally
23
important - to cancel, or at least subdue and reduce, its strangeness and, in the case of
Islam, its hostility" (Orientalism 87). Another turning point in the development of the
Western and Eastern relationship came with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. It
literally brought the East and the West together by erasing the distance between them
and thus making one world bound together. After Ferdinand de Lesseps, a French
developer of the Suez Canal, "no one could speak of the Orient as belonging to another
world, strictly speaking. There was only 'our' world, 'one' world bound together
because the Suez Canal had frustrated those last provincials who still believed in the
difference between worlds" (Said, Orientalism 92). De Lesseps with his construction
changed the perception of the Orient as a distant place in the Westerners' minds, as it
became closer and more accessible for them, but the system of othering and hegemonic
Eurocentric approach towards it and its representation has remained.
Since its publication, Edward W. Said's Orientalism has been "one of the major
theoretical issues attracting the attention of both Eastern and Western scholars" (Ning
58). Orientalism as a designation for a derogatory manner of approaching the East by
the West has soon become highly influential. Said's theory has had impact particularly
on literary criticism and cultural studies and served as an inspiration for many scholars,
Homi K. Bhabha and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak among others. Although Said omitted
to take into account the links between Orientalism and Feminist theory in Orientalism,
Shehla Burney makes use of and develops the similar aspects of both disciplines in her
work. She compares the marginalization of women to the marginalization of Orientals
and illuminates their identical representations in the discourse, as "the Orient is the
charming seducer, the feminine persona, who never speaks but is spoken for" (Burney
33). She observes that in the colonial discourse "these motifs recur universally and
typically - the Orient as weak, as feminized, as exotic, mysterious, sensual and sexual,
24
as something to be desired and to be possessed" (Burney 34). She then strengthens the
relation between Orientalism and Feminist theory when she draws a comparison
between what she calls a '"Western gaze' ... a hegemonic Eurocentric perspective"
(Burney 26) and Mulvey's 'male gaze'. Laura Mulvey in "Visual Pleasure and
Narrative Cinema" makes a distinction between "active/male and passive/female" (837)
and states that the male gaze "projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is
styled accordingly" (837), women thus "connote to-be-looked-at-ness" (837).
According to Burney, the Western gaze works similarly, since "not unlike the deadly
'male gaze' in feminist theory, [it] subjectifies and objectifies all that it sees in its own
image, through its own colored lenses, and from its own position of power" (Burney
26). In the colonial discourse, "the land, the landscape, the country, becomes the main
character and is appropriated by the Western traveler's gaze" (Burney 34). The male
gaze objectifies and derogates women into an inferior and passive position and the
Orientals find themselves in the same position, when they are approached through the
"Western gaze," since it projects Western fantasies on to the Orientals and styles their
representations in accordance with it. In the colonial discourse, the Orientals are
depicted as passive, since they are spoken for and written about, being only people to be
looked at and ruled over. They have been denied the freedom to represent themselves
and speak for themselves, which was the case for women in not-so-distant past
worldwide and in some parts of the world it is still the case today.
Apart from being praised, Edward W. Said's theory was also criticised,
condemned and rejected by a number of Orientalist scholars, namely Albert Hourani,
Robert Graham Irwin, Bernard Lewis and Bruce Thornton among others and also by a
Marxist philosopher and literary theorist Aijaz Ahmad, whose work In Theory (1992)
contains, among other things, a critique of Said's work. All in all, Said was mainly
25
criticised for the lack of linking his notions with the Feminist theory and for not
incorporating the gender aspect into Orientalism. However, Burney states that
"historically there are hardly any women Orientalists or Orientalist works by women, so
it is a fairly moot point. Moreover, Said feels that in any relationship between the rulers
and the ruled, race precedes gender and class as a category" (34), which is in agreement
with Said's point, since in his opinion, "an Oriental man was first an Oriental and only
second a man" (Said, Orientalism 231), which demonstrates Said's conviction that race
takes precedence over gender in the colonial discourse and that is why gender is
sidelined in his works. In addition, Said was also criticized for not incorporating
German and other Orientalists into his theory, which resulted in the seeming
homogeneity of Orientalism. As Ning points out, "the 'Orient,' geographically
speaking, covers at least the wide areas of Asia, Africa, and Australia, but in Said's
book, the boundary line stops at the Near East and Middle East. Such regions as
Southeast Asia and such important Oriental countries as China, India, and Japan are
seldom touched upon; they pose a serious limitation to his theory" (61). Prakash,
however, addresses this issue and states that Said focuses on the colonial discourse and
his "principal focus is on its functioning as a discourse since the late seventeenth
century. In analysing it as a discourse, Said does not deny heterogeneity in Orientalism"
(Prakash 206). Said focuses on the specificities of the British, French and subsequently
American Empires and concentrates primarily on the Middle East, since that is where he
grew up and also where it is the most relevant for him. It would not be possible to cover
the entire Asian and African countries thoroughly in one book without avoiding
resorting to many simplifications and generalizations, which is precisely what Said's
theory has opposed to in the first place. He covered only part, but a significant one, of
the colonial discourse, as he encompassed and depicted the gist of the colonial discourse
26
and the phenomenon of representing the East by the West. As Burney puts it, "the
impact of Orientalism and its critique of representation and discourse analysis cannot be
denied. It has established Said as a leading theorist of the present age and as a leading
scholar of postcolonialism" (39).
In today's global world, TV and the Internet with all the kinds of new media
have employed a similar approach to Orientalism to representing the Orient and the
stereotypical other thus lives on and has been only reinforced by the new media. It is
also worth mentioning that as opposed to Orientalism, Occidentalism also developed in
some parts of the world. In Occidentalism, "'Occident' is also constructed as an 'other,'
and the Occidentalism in the eyes of the Oriental is obviously characterized by the
Third World's anticolonialist and antihegemonic tendency" (Ning 63). In the Middle
East, in particular, Occidentalism "manifests itself as an antagonistic form that strongly
opposes Western hegemonism represented by the United States, and sometimes even
evolves into large-scale armed clashes" (Ning 62). The relationship between the Orient
and the Occident continues to be very fragile and turbulent, as it involves many clashes
and conflicts. The stereotypical representations frequently employed by the media also
do not contribute to the amelioration of the relationship between the East and the West
and their mutual understanding. In the past, a certain race or group of people were
ostracized and dehumanized in such a way that it led to horrendous things, such as
slavery, the Middle Passage, Holocaust and apartheid. It is possible, as history shows,
for people to be manipulated into believing untruthful things, into taking stereotypical
generalizations at face value. Othering, which is still a widespread practice, fosters
prejudice and incomprehension among people. It is therefore necessary to keep a
broader picture in mind and remember that we are all human beings first and only after
that men, women, Europeans, Asians, Africans, Christians, Muslims and Jews. After all,
27
as stated in Nation and Narration: a "man is a reasonable and moral being, before he is
cooped up in such and such language, before he is a member of such and such a race,
before he belongs to such and such culture" (Bhabha 17). The next chapter will provide
insight into the historical background of British colonization and the imperialist
ideology that lied behind it.
28
Chapter II
Colonization and the British Empire - historical background
[E]mpires, the children of the
medieval world, were the
midwives of the modern.
(Drayton quoted in Gascoigne 592)
Oppression under colonial rule is a
common colonial experience that
lasts long after colonialism.
(Alkadry 755)
Empires had existed long before the British Empire emerged, yet the British
Empire was exceptional in many respects, particularly in its vastness, as it "comprised
nearly one-quarter of the world's land surface and more than one-quarter of its total
population" ("British Empire") by the end of the 19t h
century, and also in the imperialist
ideology that lied behind it. The first part of this chapter will focus on British
imperialism and its ideology in connection with the development of the empire,
particularly throughout the interwar period and one decade after the Second World War,
which corresponds with the period when Agatha Christie's novels that will be analysed
in Chapter IV were written. The second part will illuminate and examine British
colonization of the Middle East, while concentrating again predominantly on the
interwar period and the post-World War II settlement with the transition of power. The
link between the Western colonization and the ongoing struggles to develop democratic
institutions in this region is also commented upon, as it presents the argument that
colonization left this area in such a state that it is difficult for the peoples of the Middle
East to establish democracy.
29
British Imperialism
British colonial efforts began in the 16th
century when Britain first aimed to
found overseas settlements. A considerable success came in the 17th
century with the
establishments of permanent British settlements in North America and the West Indies.
This period of the British Empire is denoted as the First Empire, which lasted until the
signing of the Declaration of Independence of the United States of America in 1776.
When the USA became independent, the Second Empire started. British focus shifted
towards the East and developed colonies in Africa, New Zealand and Asia. However, it
was the 19th
century when the British Empire reached its peak, as Britain became the
world's leading power and the British Empire expanded into immense proportions. The
development of the British Empire was closely linked with the Industrial Revolution
taking place in Britain since the 18th
century and the mercantilist doctrine, as the
colonies represented the source of raw materials as well as the market for British
manufactured goods. The laws also ensured that all materials and goods were
transported solely on British ships, which boosted British shipbuilding industry
tremendously. "The colonies, held together by an immense fleet, supplied Britain with
enormous wealth by providing a market for the country's booming industry" (Hoglund
29) in the 19th
century.
It was also during the 19th
century and the reign of Queen Victoria that
imperialism as a concept first occurred in British culture. Eric Hobsbawm, a British
historian, contends in The Age of Empire that:
[e]mperors and empires were old, but imperialism was
quite new. The word ... first entered politics in Britain in the
1870s, and was still regarded as a neologism at the end of that
30
decade. It exploded into general use in the 1890s. By 1900,
when the intellectuals began to write books about it, it was, to
quote one of the first of them, the British Liberal J. A. Hobson,
'on everybody's lips ... and used to denote the most powerful
movement in the current politics of the western world' (quoted
in Hoglund 35).
The word imperialism and its meaning thus began to make its way into popular British
culture. Up to 1870, the British had, however, a restrained attitude towards the
expansion of the British Empire and many people were "strongly in favour of
emancipating the colonies ... [they] already possessed" (Martin 308). Moreover, all
political parties "agreed in regarding the Empire as a temporary phenomenon and ...
colonies as children who were now reaching maturity, and who would, of course,
shortly wish to set up housekeeping for themselves. The example of the United States
was accepted as conclusive" (Martin 308). However, by the turn of the century,
Britain's attitude had changed predominantly due to economic and mercantilist reasons.
As Martin points out:
[i]t is easy to understand that British manufacturers and
merchants, whose virtual monopoly of the raw materials and
markets of the world was challenged by the rising competition
of America, Germany and Japan, were likely to favour the
consolidation and extension of the British Empire. They
naturally desired to 'open up' uncapitalised Africa and found
conditions in every way more favourable where political control
was combined with economic. They also hoped to find rich
31
markets in the colonies where they anticipated what proved to
be an unrealisable increase in population. (313)
The attitude towards imperialism thus changed, as the people realized the indisputable
economic benefits of the colonization. The growing influence of imperialism was then
reflected in culture and subsequently in people's daily lives. "In the closing year of the
nineteenth century, with the scramble of Africa, the consolidation of the French
imperial Union, the American annexation of the Philippines, and British rule in the
Indian subcontinent at its height, empire was a universal concern" (Said, Culture and
Imperialism 76). By the turn of the century, imperialist ideology had been deeply rooted
in people's minds, since it was not only part of a political discourse, but laws were
passed to bring imperialist notions to schools. Young boys, in particular, began to be
taught about the British Empire and imperialism in order to adopt the imperialist ideas
of their innate rights to rule the world. Literature, especially colonial novels and
adventure novels, also employed those concepts and brought them to the adult
readership. The link between literature and culture and the impact of novel on people's
perception of the world, in particular, will be further analysed in Chapter III.
In Ideology: An Introduction (1991), Terry Eagleton asserts that one of the
possible definitions of ideology is that it "signifies ideas and beliefs which help to
legitimate the interests of a ruling group or class" (30). Moreover, according to Teun A.
van Dijk, "ideologies are shared social representations" (191). Robert H. MacDonald
depicts British imperialist ideology as follows:
[a]s world-view it was stoutly Eurocentric, or more properly,
Anglocentric, defining itself against, and asserting its own
superiority to, all other systems. It was masculinist, and the
32
politics of the home, in which women were often subordinated,
worked to create the expectation that domesticity was soft and
feminising, while the 'proper' male sphere, the outside world,
was active and invigorating. The class hierarchy, through which
ideas of dominance were made 'natural', was its ally: upper
class and upper middle-class men were born to rule the world.
The ruling castes were conditioned by an education in power,
which asserted that civilisation - morality, knowledge,
technology, and, more crudely, the best guns - were themselves
sufficient proof of authority, (quoted in Hoglund 36)
British imperialist ideology rested on "a racist, Social Darwinist paradigm that pictured
the British at the very top of the evolutionary ladder" (Hoglund 58). They believed that
they were "the biologically chosen" (Hoglund 79) race which was given the right to
teach and rule the whole world. Darwinist terminology had a major impact on British
population in the 19th
century, for "[e]ver since the publication of Origin of Species in
1859, Darwinist terminology had been a part of the English language" (Hoglund 98).
Darwinism was perceived as endorsement of the fact that they were the chosen race, and
subsequently the biological supremacy of their race was perceived as having "a
scientific foundation" (Hoglund 98). Joseph Chamberlain, a leading imperialist,
epitomizes the imperialist discourse at that time, when he states that "[i]n the first place
I believe in the British Empire and in the second place, I believe in the British race. I
believe that the British race is the greatest of governing races that the world has ever
seen" (quoted in Hoglund 58). Furthermore, as Martin puts it, the imperialists misused
the idea of 'the survival of the fittest,' which for them, "in some mysterious way, was
held to prove that the fittest would only survive if the white man undertook the burden
33
of the black man's resources" (Martin 314-15). It refers to and criticizes the notion of
the white man's burden (a phrase derived from Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same
title published in 1899), which promoted the duty of the white race to rule the non-white
peoples and justified the Western imperialism by foregrounding the noble reasons
behind it, such as bringing Western education and ideals to the uncivilized parts of the
world.
British imperialists acted on the white man's burden and claimed that they
colonised the world particularly for the benefit of the colonies. "To the enthusiasts,
imperialism was literally a divine force and it was suggested that it could generate a
paradise on earth, an imperial Utopia created out of a wild and disorderly world"
(Hoglund 89). They were masking the fact that they were gaining economically, while
exploiting the colonies' raw materials to boost Britain's economy, behind the 'civilising
mission' creed. Although stating that they were colonizing the vast territories for the
general welfare of the world, it is clear that the economic motives were of paramount
importance for the expansion of the British Empire. It is therefore necessary to keep in
mind that "imperialism was about power and that its main objective was to generate
vast amount of wealth in Britain" (Hoglund 37) and that Britain perceived their colonies
often solely through the economic and mercantilist lenses. As John Stuart Mill states in
the Principles of Political Economy:
[tjhese [outlying possessions of ours] are hardly to be looked
upon as countries ... but more properly as outlying agricultural
or manufacturing estates belonging to a larger community. Our
West Indian colonies, for example, cannot be regarded as
countries with a productive capital of their own... [but are
34
rather] the place where England finds it convenient to carry on
the production of sugar, coffee and a few other tropical
commodities, (quoted in Said, Culture and Imperialism 69).
The credibility of the civilising mission is further diminished by the fact that many
colonies suffered under British colonial rule instead of flourishing, since British rule
was frequently accompanied by oppression, violence and famines. The Amritsar
Massacre in India in 1919 was a prime example of British colonial violence. British
troops commanded by Reginald Edward Harry Dyer, which fired on a large crowd of
unarmed Indians in the Punjab region of India, then "killed 379 individuals and
wounded 1,137 others" (Bose, Lyons 200). Such a violent act did not remain unnoticed,
since "[a]s a well-documented instance of the use of lethal military force against
civilians that violated British claims to colonialism's civilizing mission, this massacre
shocked people around the world" (Bose, Lyons 201). Moreover, many parts of the
British Empire were exploited to the point when they suffered from series of famines
and "Ireland and India were the two regions of the British empire most severely visited
by famine in the nineteenth century" (Gray 193). In addition, war crimes and
concentration camps during the Boer War (1899-1902) are all instances of the violence
and brutality of British imperialism. After the Boer War, "Britain lost prestige [abroad].
War crimes, concentration camps and poorly conducted campaigns made the rest of
Europe doubt the military strength of Britain and thoroughly condemn its moral
conduct" (Hôglund 42). All of these acts left the outside world questioning the
sustainability and morality of the British Empire before the First World War.
The British Empire underwent a major change during the interwar period, as it
started to be on the decline, which was completed after the Second World War with
35
decolonization. When the First World War broke out in 1914 and Britain declared war
on Germany, it was on behalf of the whole British Empire, including all British
colonies, dominions and dependencies. Although the colonies were eager to help their
mother country, the war represented a turning point for the British Empire as such, since
many colonies began to shape national consciousness, oftentimes for the first time, and
it boosted their confidence, which resulted in their subsequent demands for greater
autonomy, self-governance, sovereignty, and in the final stage, complete independence.
They were represented independently in the League of Nations which was formed after
the end of the First World War. The colonies also took for themselves the words of
American President Woodrow Wilson that he pronounced in his speech "Fourteen
Points" on 8 January 1918, in which he calls for people's right to self-determination.
The position of the British Empire was thus weakened and it was no longer endorsed by
the outside world. The calls for independence also resulted in the redefinition of the
British Empire and it began to be called the Commonwealth of Nations in 1931. When
the Second World War broke out in 1939, colonies declared war separately and
individually as sovereign countries. After the Second World War, decolonization began
to take place, India being the first country granted independence in 1947. Other
countries soon followed and became independent, but for the most part, they stayed in
the Commonwealth of Nations as a symbolic act of friendship and cooperation.
Britain in the Orient
Britain started to take interest in the Orient relatively late, considering that other
European powers (mainly Portuguese and Spanish) had already established trade routes
leading to this part of the world. Britain then established a few companies to ensure
trade with the Orient, the Levant Company being the most successful of them all. The
system of trading was thus established, however, "European and Middle East trade
36
relations had existed for centuries before the modern colonization, and because of the
imbalance of exchange, it can [be] argued that the dependency relationship between the
two economies had already been established in the Middle Ages" (Turner 175-76).
When Britain began to rule India in the form of British Raj in 1858, Britain started to be
more interested in the Middle East in order to secure a stable access to India on the
mainland through the Middle East. As Said puts it in Culture and Imperialism, "[a]fter
1870 ... protecting India ... and defending against other competing powers, e.g. Russia,
necessitated British imperial expansion in Africa, and the Middle and Far East" (86). By
the late nineteenth century, "the West had [already] attained a considerable degree of
domination throughout the East" (Cranston 43).
The main colonial interest came, however, in the 20t h
century. "With the
exception of the Saudi Arabia, all Arab countries were colonized in the early twentieth
century. Prior to this colonization, the Ottoman Empire controlled the Middle East for
some 400 years preceded by several centuries of Islamic governance" (Alkadry 745).
When the Ottoman Empire entered into the First World War, Britain and France took it
"as something of a joke. Newspapers and cartoons mocked the alleged backwardness
and disorganization of the Ottomans" (Provence 215). However, the Triple Entente
suffered a few defeats from the Ottoman Empire, which boosted their people's
confidence. They no longer felt inferior and so they "appropriated for themselves
President Wilson's doctrine of the self-determination of peoples" (Cranston 44). After
the First World War, the Ottoman Empire fell apart after six centuries of existence, and
the regions of the Middle East, instead of being independent, as promised by the
European powers in exchange for cooperation, became colonised by the European
powers, particularly Britain and France, as they "scrambled for control of the Middle
East paying no attention to promises of independence that the Allies had made to Pan-
37
Arab rebels who fought the Turks and assisted the Allies" (Alkadry 746). They divided
"the old Ottoman empire into several states - thus delineating the boundaries of new
states within the Middle East without the consent or input of the indigenous peoples of
the region" (Alkadry 746). The newly delineated borders, which created artificial states
with mixtures of minorities, brought tension to this region. As a result, "[p]opular
revolts shook the Middle East between 1919 and the 1940s. Tens of thousands of
colonial citizens challenged the postwar settlement and hoped to drive Britain and
France from the region" (Provence 206). Some of the uprisings included, for example,
"the Turkish War of Independence, the Iraqi revolt of 1920, the Syrian Battle of
Maysalun, and the Palestinian uprisings of 1920, 1929, and 1936" (Provence 206).
It was not only the artificial delineation of borders, but also British policy and
government itself that provoked protests in this region. As Turner argues, the British
authorities "did little to encourage industrial growth in the Arab world, or to promote
literacy, or to lay the foundation for a truly Western type of constitutional state; but they
modernized the Arab armies and thus reinforced the most traditional trait in Arab
society" (171). In fact, Britain hindered progress towards democracy in many cases
throughout its colonial rule. "Colonial powers in the Middle East systematically
opposed any attempts by local leaders to create any form of democratic institutions"
(Alkadry 748). For instance, Abu Jaber "documents the reaction of the British colonial
administrators to a 1924 request by the Jordanian king to hold elections for a
parliament. Instead, the colonial power insisted on an appointed council - thus delaying
and not advancing the formation of democratic institutions" (Alkadry 748). Moreover,
the British also "opposed elections and the formation of nationalist government in Iraq
in the early 1920s, and instead installed a complacent royal regime - that of King Faisal
who had been recently exiled from Damascus by French colonial administrator"
38
(Alkadry 748). Besides hindering democratic progress, Britain exploited colonies' raw
materials, which they imported at advantageous prices to the detriment of the local
peoples, as can be manifested in the case of the Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). Before
the AIOC was nationalized in 1951, it had made "almost £200 million in profit in 1950,
of which the British government received more than £50 million in taxes, while the
shah's government received only £16 million. Iranians were excluded from senior
positions in the company, and Iran had to pay more for its own oil than the British paid.
In fact, oil imported from the Soviet Union was cheaper in Iran than domestically
produced oil" (Petersen 854). This is one of the examples of the British exploitation of
this region, and draws attention to its most powerful wealth, which makes it so
appealing for the Western powers, the oil.
After the Second World War, transfer of power between Britain and the United
States of America started to take place in this region, as the USA slowly started to take
control over the Middle Eastern decolonized states. Americans "did not admire British
imperialism" (Louis 399) and so it was never their objective to fight in order to help "to
hold the British Empire together" (Louis 399). In addition, the Cold War was in full
swing in the 1950s and the threat that communism posed to the West was felt
profoundly, therefore "[fjhe decolonized Middle East found itself facing one of two cold
war camps - Soviet or American" (Alkadry 749). The USA appropriated the role of a
defender against the Soviet Union as well as a saviour from the threat of communism
hanging over these newly independent Middle Eastern nations. That is why the United
States did not hesitate to interfere in this region to prevent these nations from sinking
into communist regimes. As Freiberger puts it, "[ostensibly the United States pursued
an anti-colonialist policy in the Middle East. In fact, this was only a mask used to
replace the British and block Soviet expansion" (quoted in Petersen 861). However, in
39
reality, the USA acted in the same colonial fashion as Britain once did, also pursuing
the policy of prioritising their own interest over the local peoples. "As the United States
justified its ever larger role in Middle Eastern affairs by the need to prevent Soviet
inroads, it is ironic that the Eisenhower administration let the Russians slip in through
the back door by way of an arms deal with Egypt" (Petersen 858-59). Moreover, "the
United States is acting in no different manner than French and British colonial
administrations of the past whose top priority was serving their interests at the expense
of democratic governance" (Alkadry 750). They also did not ameliorate the political
situation in this region, since by "economically and politically sustaining ruthless
regimes, the U.S. constrains the emancipation of Arab peoples and at the same time
ensures a complacency of these regimes in their external relations" (Alkadry 750). For
the USA, the Middle East is also a vital source of oil, and so their interest in this area
remains. As Nixon describes it, this region's oil is "the lifeblood of modern industry, the
Persian Gulf region is the heart that pumps it, and the sea routes around the Gulf are the
jugular through which that lifeblood passes" (quoted in Alkadry 751). The transition of
power in this region "was completed by the invasion of Lebanon and Jordan in 1958:
'the 1958 crisis marked the transition, with the full co-operation of Britain, to US
dominance in the region" (Petersen 865).
The USA further aggravated the situation in the Middle East, since by
foregrounding their own interest over the wellbeing of the local peoples, they further
hindered progress and halted the development of democratic regimes and institutions
and general development towards democracy. Generally speaking, most former colonies
have problems with establishing and perpetuating democracy, since "colonialism
creates patterns of development that often leave countries highly dependent on exports
from monocrop agriculture or resource-extractive industry" (Bernhard et al. 229). As
40
Pfaff argues, "colonialism lasted long enough to destroy the social and political
institutions, but not long enough to put anything solid and lasting in their place" (quoted
in Alkadry 747). That is why the "decolonized Middle East of the twenty-first century is
a set of countries still in search of national identities, with ruthless regimes that are
either supported by the West or use defense from the West as an excuse for their
continued domination of their people" (Alkadry 756). The reason why it is particularly
the Middle Eastern nations that struggle with establishing democracy could be that
"nations with Islamic heritage tend to share a common colonial and imperial experience
that led these nations to the same fate - stagnation at the moment of national
independence with no progress toward liberation" (Alkadry 742). The remnants of
imperialism of the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuries are still to be found in today's
global world, particularly "two central ideas clearly were held over from the past and
still hold sway: one was the great power's right to safeguard its distant interests even to
the point of military invasion; the second was that lesser powers were also lesser
peoples, with lesser rights, morals, claims" (Said, Culture and Imperialism 41). That is
why the ongoing conflicts burden and devastate the Middle East to this day and there is
little prospect of a rapid change. It also does not help that the European discourse often
demonizes the natives of the former colonies, particularly Muslim Arabs, and that
Islamism is frequently mistaken for Islam. That is where the role of literature, novel and
narrative, in general, comes into play in terms of shaping people's opinions, and that
will be examined in the following chapter.
41
Chapter III
Agatha Christie and the detective fiction, novel and culture
The study of world literature might
be the study of the way in which
cultures recognize themselves
through their projections of
'otherness'. (Bhabha, The Location
of Culture 17)
[Njations themselves are
narrations. (Said, Culture and
Imperialism xiii)
Literature and culture are interconnected entities and the link between them will be
illuminated in the first part of this chapter that will concentrate primarily on the impact
that novels, in particular, have had on shaping, perpetuating and planting a large scale of
ideas, morals, representations as well as stereotypes in people's minds. As Said puts it
in Culture and Imperialism, "[w]e live of course in a world not only of commodities but
also of representation, and representations - their production, circulation, history, and
interpretation - are the very element of culture" (66) and literature can be perceived as a
key means for producing, spreading and perpetuating these representations in culture.
The second part of this chapter will focus on Agatha Christie and the detective fiction.
Agatha Christie as the best-selling and the most translated English author still has
influence not only on how the English perceive the rest of the world, for she frequently
incorporated distant parts of the world into her novels, but also on how the rest of the
world perceives the English, since many people consider her portrayal of, for example,
the English village St. Mary Mead, the embodiment of a true English village. This only
emphasizes the impact that literature has on people's consciousness and perception of
42
the world. The thesis furthermore wants to convey the message that the link between
literature and history, in other words, the link between the work of art and the period in
which it was produced, cannot be omitted when analysing the work, since it was in all
probability somehow influenced by the historical background, even if unintentionally
and peripherally. As Said puts it:
[t]o lose sight of or ignore the national and international
context of, say, Dicken's representations of Victorian
businessmen, and to focus only on the internal coherence of
their roles in his novels is to miss an essential connection
between his fiction and its historical world. And understanding
that connection does not reduce or diminish the novels' value as
works of art: on the contrary, because of their wordliness,
because of their complex affiliations with their real setting, they
are more interesting and more valuable as works of art. {Culture
and Imperialism 13)
That is why the thesis will look at the works of Agatha Christie against their historical
background and will also take into account the imperialist notions and ideas that
circulated in the period of their creation in Britain, as discussed in the previous chapter.
The link between novel and culture
Literature has played a significant role in shaping and storing ideas which are then
shared and adopted by a large number of people for a long time and the reason why
literature has been so influential is because, historically, a great deal of power has been
attributed to the written word. What was written automatically assumed credibility and
subsequently authority over the matter it described. It follows that the same also applied
43
to the representations of foreign places and people, once something was written about
them, it has been perceived as an indisputable truth. As Said contends, "it seems a
common human failing to prefer the schematic authority of a text to the disorientations
of direct encounters with the human" (Culture and Imperialism 93). In the past, it was
much easier to reach for a book, read about faraway places and people and believe that
what was written about them by the Western travellers and colonizers were truthful
portrayals than to come into contact with real people from those lands to get
information from them. Literature was thus a significant source of information and the
written word prevailed over the reality which it described in many cases, since at that
time, many people believed that "people, places, and experiences can always be
described by a book, so much so that the book (or text) acquires a greater authority, and
use, even than the actuality it describes" (Said, Culture and Imperialism 93).
Fiction, in particular, has gained an immense popularity since its emergence and it is
thus significant "as an intercultural agency, if, for no other reason than, because so
many more people read it than read other kind of literature dealing with other peoples"
(Braden 166). In the past, literature also served as a tool to instruct society and to
furnish it with certain ideas, morals and notions. As Jeffrey Richards argues:
[p]opular fiction is one of the ways by which society
instructs its members in its prevailing ideas and mores, its
dominant role models and legitimate aspirations. It both reflects
popular attitudes, ideas and preconceptions and it generates
support for selected vies and opinions. So it can act - sometimes
simultaneously - as a form of social control, directing the
popular will towards certain viewpoints and attributes deemed
desirable by those controlling the production of popular fiction,
44
and as a mirror of widely-held popular view, (quoted in Hoglund
21)
It draws attention to the impact that fiction has had on society and how influential it has
been in shaping ideas and instructing people, in general. According to Braden, the
reason why the popular novel, in particular, has had the power to shape people's
opinions and alter their perception is because:
the novel is a peculiarly effective means for the diffusion of
ideas and attitudes. Not that one gets his ideas primarily through
fiction. He does not. But his ideas and outlook are definitely
influenced ... when he is least conscious of any change within
himself. This is so because, carried along by the well-written
story, he lives in and with the characters he is following. Their
experiences, as he relives them, seem natural, normal, fitting.
His guard is down. He may thus be induced to consider ideas
that are ordinarily foreign to him, ideas to which he may
actually be definitely opposed. (Braden 165-66).
It illustrates how novel-reading works, in other words, what people experience while
reading novels. They tend to immerse themselves in the story by letting their guards
down, which subsequently enables them to adopt concepts and ideas about the world
unconsciously. Since readers frequently identify with the main characters, they become,
to a certain extent, influenced by their opinions, experiences and perception of the
world, since it is through their eyes and minds that readers encounter and learn about
the world and the story they tell.
45
In the 19 and early 20 -centuries, imperialist ideology also penetrated the popular
novel in Britain, in the form of, for instance, colonial novels and invasion novels. By the
1840s, "the English novel had achieved eminence as the aesthetic form and as a major
intellectual voice, so to speak, in English society. Because the novel gained so
important a place in 'the condition of England' question, for example, we can see it also
as participating in England's overseas empire" (Said, Culture and Imperialism 85). Due
to its popularity, the novel then as a "vital vehicle of imperialist ideology ... permeated
most segments of British society" (Hoglund 12). As Hoglund points out, the reason why
the link between the novel and the imperialist ideology has worked so well is because
"'literariness' of the novel is a vital quality that, in effect, allowed the novel to produce
ideology while displaying the surface of an adventure novel, horror story or science
fiction narrative. It may thus be argued that the 'literaryness' made the popular novel
one of the most efficient vehicles for imperialist ideology" (18). The novel could
skilfully incorporate the imperial notions in such a way that they would not be traced at
first sight, which rendered a novel a very efficient tool for maintaining the imperialist
ideology in the society.
The fascination with foreign and exotic places and the subsequent inclusion of the
exotic by literature emerged a long time ago following the European colonial expansion.
Therefore, there have been "books of travel and formal studies of Oriental peoples ever
since the time of Marco Polo, and occasional novels or short stories concerning Oriental
countries have appeared" (Braden 166). It is also worth mentioning that the novel was
"inaugurated in England by Robinson Crusoe, a work whose protagonist is the founder
of a new world, which he rules and reclaims for Christianity and England" (Said,
Culture and Imperialism 83). The imperialist ideology and its notions were therefore
connected with the English novel right from the beginning, since Robinson Crusoe is
46
"virtually unthinkable without the colonizing mission that permits him to create a new
world of his own in the distant reaches of the African, Pacific, and Atlantic wilderness"
(Said, Culture and Imperialism 75). However, the key period when the novelist truly
discovered the Orient and wrote about it extensively was the interwar period, when the
novel served "as a means of diffusing Oriental ideas, outlooks, and attitudes throughout
the West" (Braden 165). According to a study based on the magazine Book review
digest, the "peak period for novels about ... the Near East ... [as well as about] the
Orient as a whole ... was ... 1927-31," (Braden 168) implying how significant was the
interwar period in terms of its production of novels dealing with the Orient.
However, although a lot of novels were set in the Orient at that time, a closer
examination exposes that in many cases the Orient serves only as a setting for the
Western characters, while providing a desired exoticism and passive backdrop to
enliven the story which "chiefly concerns English or American heroes or heroines, with
some of the minor characters, servants often, as natives" (Braden 171). The local people
are frequently marginalized and if they occur in the story at all, usually it is only in
minor roles as servants. However, when the natives do appear in the story, "[s]ometimes
only the bizarre, unusual, and even repulsive features of native life are shown, which fit
in with the stereotype that is usually held concerning the country, and so tend to fix it
still more firmly in the minds of the reader ... it does more to create a barrier between
peoples than otherwise" (Braden 171). In many cases, books dealing with the Orient
thus only emphasized the stereotypes already held by the Westerners and did nothing to
bridge the gaps or foster understanding between the West and the East.
It is related to the fact that Western writers, particularly the English writers at the
time of the British Empire, wrote from the position of the imperial centre and treated
other parts of the world as inferior, since they were "writing from within the world's
47
centre of power (imperial, financial, military and cultural), ... [and thus] framing this
centre as the centre and all else as periphery" (Das 42). In addition, the British favoured
the Eurocentric point of view and that is why they "relentlessly codified and observed
everything about the non-European or peripheral world, and so thoroughly and in so
detailed a manner as to leave few items untouched, few cultures unstudied, few peoples
and spots of land unclaimed" (Said, Culture and Imperialism 268). The question
remains whether Agatha Christie, as the best-selling and most translated English author,
also incorporated these imperialist and Eurocentric ideas and notions into her novels
and thus treated other parts of the world, in this case the Orient, as inferior places with
inferior people, or not.
Agatha Christie's detective fiction and its testament
Agatha Christie (1890-1976) was together with Dorothy L. Sayers, Margery
Allingham and Ngaio Marsh one of the English '"Queens of Crime' or the 'Quartet of
Muses'" (Snell 23), as they began to be called, and certainly the most famous
representative of '"the Golden Age' of detective Fiction" (Snell 22), as the interwar
period began to be termed by the literary critics. Agatha Christie, who wrote over 80
detective novels, is "the best-selling writer of books of all time. Over two billion of her
books have been sold (some estimates are twice that). Only the Bible may exceed this.
Her works have been translated into over 110 languages, with about 6400 separate
translations, making her the most translated novelist in the world" (Snell 21). Christie's
novels reveal a lot about the times of their creation, including the social, political,
historical background and the changes that the society was going through during the
interwar and post-war periods. They have therefore a lot to offer in terms of study and
research, despite their being labelled as light reading. Admittedly, Agatha Christie
wrote "simply to entertain, and disliked attempts to treat her writing as a formal body of
48
literature worthy of study" (Arnold 275). Moreover, she was even "content to classify
her art as secondary to her married life" (Rowland 11), which testifies to her Victorian
upbringing and the rules and social norms of the period in which she was brought up.
However, it does not diminish the potential which her works offer in terms of academic
research and that is why, Agatha Christie's attitude to her writings notwithstanding, this
thesis treats her work as worthy of study and is determined to examine it closely and
critically.
Although Agatha Christie's first literary attempts date back to before the First
World War, her career as a published author did not begin until the interwar period, in
which there was a "huge interest in detective fiction" (Snell 23) and "hundreds of such
novels were published" (Snell 23). The popularity of this genre could lie in its fixed
structure and subject matter, since the detective fiction seeks justice and "implies
naming and capturing a criminal" (Rowland 39). Moreover, its aim is "to restore a
'natural' order" (Rushing 91) of things, both "a moral and social order" (Rowland 39),
which provided readers with comfort and assurance in the turbulent interwar years,
when fear and uncertainty reigned. In addition to the promise of justice being served,
detective fiction also offers another psychological dimension. As Slavoj Zizek argues,
"detective fiction is based on 'avoiding the real of desire' - we read murder mysteries in
order to 'realize' our antisocial impulses, to see them played out for us, but still be able
to attribute them to someone else" (quoted in Rushing 90). It certainly has something to
do with the psychological aspects of this genre that a lot of people acquired a taste for it
and its popularity endures to this day.
Agatha Christie had an eye for detail and possessed remarkable observational
abilities. After all, the key concept of the detective genre itself is paying attention to
detail and playing with minor differences and ingenious clues and that is precisely what
49
Agatha Christie mastered exceptionally. "In her sheer love for the details making up
English life, from teapots to trains, Christie remains unrivalled as a master of
atmosphere, a genius of setting and a brilliant crime writer whom very little escaped"
(Das 43). In addition, as Snell puts it, novelists "reveal much about their period, about
its social and community relations, valuations, opinions and prejudices, gender
presumptions, speech or material culture, and this may be especially true of detective
writers, given their attention to detail" (23). In the 1930s, "it was even claimed that the
'true twentieth-century chroniclers are the detective story writers'" (Snell 23).
Following the Second World War, the importance of Christie's novels did not fade,
since her "post-1945 novels were very revealing about social changes as late as the
1960s, indicating attitudes and responses that she would not have envisaged in 1930"
(Snell 24). Her portrayals captured the atmosphere of an English life and they became
synonymous with how the rest of the world imagines the true Englishness, which can be
illustrated in the case of her depiction of the English village St. Mary Mead. Her fiction
is "the most common way in which the English village has come to be known worldwide.
Her fictional St Mary Mead is globally the most widely known village in writing
of any form. Millions of people have learnt English by reading about this village, and
their presumptions about the English have been saturated with Christie's discernment"
(Snell 21). It only highlights the power of the written word and its ability to influence
people's perception.
Although Agatha Christie is best known for her depiction of the atmosphere of
an English village and "for the genteel 'English country house' type of murder, where
the body is decently shrouded upon discovery and the sleuth gives a grand explanation
at the end" (Arnold 275), she is not known or praised "for the development of her
characters to any great degree" (Arnold 275). In reality, Christie "is sometimes
50
criticized for the shallowness of the characters in her stories. They have been described
... as stereotypes" (Arnold 275). Neither a great development of characters nor
portrayals of multi-faceted characters are typical of Christie's works, which is why they
are frequently pervaded by stereotypical portrayals, not only of foreigners, but also of
the English themselves. For instance, she frequently depicts and employs "the typical
English anti-Semite: 'not violent, not active, simply smugly secure in the knowledge
that anyone who isn't English isn't really quite human, and isn't really worth serious
and humane consideration'" (Arnold 280).
It was not unusual for the golden age novelists to write about foreigners or to set
their stories in foreign and faraway places from time to time. For some of them,
including Agatha Christie, it was more common, for others less. All of them, however,
somehow depicted the foreigners as the other and played with the concepts of
Englishness and foreignness in their works. As Susan Rowland points out,
"[undoubtedly, some golden age writing does engage in what Edward Said has called
'Orientalism'. Here a Western identity is psychically constructed by projection onto a
homogenised Eastern 'other' of precisely what the occidental is supposed not to be:
irrational, savage and dark" (62-63). However, at the same time, golden age queens of
crime were also aware of a certain overlapping between colonial othering and gender
othering, as Rowland further argues that they share "a sense of the feminine as a
colonised other within English society ... [and that] all six authors are aware of the
potent intersection of gender and colonial structures" (72). At that time, an English
female could be perceived in Britain as both, a superior to a foreign, Oriental other, but
at the same time, as an inferior other to a male, for feminine was not perceived as
simply '"something else' but ... as the 'not masculine' - as what has been cast out of
masculinity in the very act of its formation as reason, intelligence and so on" (Rowland
51
16). It is important to keep this duality and intersection of gender and colonial structures
in mind when reading their novels.
Agatha Christie frequently plays with the Englishness and foreignness in her
fiction, especially through her creation of a Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot. "Not only
is he not English, he is most determinedly foreign. An affront to English masculinity in
his neatness, fussiness, demands for fine food and central heating, Poirot is frequently to
be found reflecting negatively on English habits and sentimentality" (Rowland 63). The
tension between different cultures and habits comes to the fore in golden age writings
and it is important to take into account the historical background of that time. "Golden
age writers lived and wrote in a racist society. Characters in works by all four writers
make unchallenged racist comments, and only Marsh emphatically addresses racism as
a stain on English character" (Rowland 66), for she was a New Zealander. Those racist
remarks were common at that time and it is therefore necessary not to take their writings
as stand-alone pieces of work, but rather as a reflection and illustration of a specific
discourse that was taking place at that time with certain ideas and representations
circulating in Britain and keep it in mind when reading it. In other words, this thesis
approaches Christie's novels as a testament to their historical background, to the times
when they were produced.
Agatha Christie set a few of her novels in the Orient and she was in a close
contact with these parts of the world throughout her life. Particularly, after marrying her
second husband, the archaeologist Sir Max Mallowan, in 1930, she spent "several
months each year on expeditions in Iraq and Syria with him" ("Agatha Christie"). She
became a seasoned traveller, for she enjoyed travelling with her husband to these distant
places and "took a full part in her husband's archaeology as a traditional wifely
helpmeet" (Rowland 7). In An Autobiography, written by Agatha Christie herself, which
52
was first published posthumously in 1977, she declares her love for this part of the
world and its people. She spent there so much time that she befriended many local
people, about whom she writes in An Autobiography the following: "[h]ow good it is to
have these friends. Warm-hearted, simple, full of enjoyment of life, and so well able to
laugh at everything. Arabs are great ones for laughing, great ones for hostility too ...
Some of the town effendis in purple suits are tiresome, but the men of the land are good
fellows and splendid friends" (Christie 547-48). Moreover, she also reveals her
fondness for and attachment to the Orient itself by stating: "[h]ow much I have loved
that part of the world. I love it still and always shall" (Christie, An Autobiography 548).
Whether her love and fondness were also manifested in her fiction and were
transformed into multi-faceted characters of local people with detailed portrayals of
their ideas, feelings and beliefs, which would foster deeper understanding between the
West and the East, or whether she approached these exotic places in connection with the
patronising attitudes of Orientalism and exploited the Orient only as an exotic setting
for stories of Western characters, will be illuminated in the following chapter, where her
selected novels will be examined and analysed.
53
Chapter IV
Orient in Agatha Christie's novels
The racial-cultural Other is not
merely the backdrop to England's
national identity: it is central to the
process of England's identitymaking.
(Nayar 4)
Self and other are not stable
unitary categories but shifting and
sometimes contradictory
constructs. (Hallam and Street 5)
The representation of the other plays a crucial role in realizing and addressing
the identity of the self, in this case the English. As Pramod K. Nayar puts it in The
Transnational in English Literature, othering is "the process of negotiating with such
external cultural referents in order for England to develop a sense of self, society and
the world" (4). In addition, Mary Louise Pratt points out in Imperial Eyes: Travel
Writing and Transculturation that the urgent need to represent the other is also
interwoven with empires, since "empires create in the imperial center of power an
obsessive need to present and re-present its peripheries and its others continually to
itself. It becomes dependent on its others to know itself (4). This chapter concentrates
on analysing Agatha Christie's representation of the Orient in those of her novels which
are set in Middle Eastern and North African countries and which were, at the same time,
written and published between the 1930s and 1950s, which corresponds with the
historical background presented in Chapter II. The selected novels that fit the criteria
defined above are namely Murder on the Orient Express (1934), centring on a group of
Western passengers travelling on the Orient Express from Istanbul to London, Murder
54
in Mesopotamia (1936), providing an insight into working on an excavation site in Iraq,
Death on the Nile (1937), following an international group of tourists travelling on a
ship sailing on the River Nile, Appointment with Death (1938), focusing on a group of
Western tourists in Jerusalem, Death Comes as the End (1944), the only Christie's
novel without any Western characters concentrating solely on an Egyptian family and
its servants living in Thebes in 2000 BC, They Came to Baghdad (1951), focusing on
the conspiracy behind a secret international summit that is to be held in Baghdad, and
lastly, Destination Unknown (1954), situated in Morocco and later in a medical research
centre disguised as a leper colony somewhere in the Atlas Mountains. The first four
novels, that is Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Murder in Mesopotamia (1936),
Death on the Nile (1937) and Appointment with Death (1938), are traditional detective
stories, whodunits, which feature a Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who always solves
the crime(s) through interrogation and deduction. Death Comes as the End (1944)
combines a historical fiction with a whodunit, which later began to be designated as a
historical whodunit. They Came to Baghdad (1951) and Destination Unknown (1954)
are spy fictions and they both reflect the tension between the capitalist West and the
communist Soviet Union and the fear of communism and defection, which was
omnipresent in the 1950s in the West. The chapter is divided into three sections in terms
of their focus. The first part concentrates on the Orient serving as a passive and
enchanting backdrop to the Western stories. The second part focuses on the way the
characters realize and address the English identity, while observing the otherness of
everything foreign in and also beyond the Orient. The third part analyses how the
imperialist ideology penetrates Christie's fiction.
As stated in Chapter III, the thesis approaches Christie's fiction as a testament to
its historical background. It suggests that Christie captured the views concerning the
55
Orient as the other among the Westerners at that time and played with it in her novels.
According to Rowland, it is important to perceive the racist utterances simply as
"rhetoric" (67), which was employed deliberately. She further argues that Christie and
other queens of crime incorporated Orientalist notions and attitudes consciously into
their works in order to help them depict Englishness (Rowland 68). For them, this
"projection of Englishness through an overtly Orientalising psyche ... becomes one
method of destabilising and parodying English stereotypes" (Rowland 68). However,
although the racist rhetoric might have been employed consciously and deliberately and
is, to a certain extent, also exaggerated due to the theatricality of the golden age of
detective fiction, it still reflected widespread, and often contradictory, beliefs of many
Westerners and English people at that time. As a result, the portrayals of the Orient and
Orientals themselves are frequently conflicting in Christie's novels, which attests to the
fact that "representations are not always straightforward and the same European artists
who deployed ... stereotypes also depicted Africans with sensitivity and imagination"
(Hallam and Street 29). The same applies to Christie, since although she depicted
Orientals mostly superficially, she portrayed the Egyptian family in Death Comes as the
End with sensitivity and sympathy.
Orient as a passive and dream-like setting
The Orient, as one of the colonial spaces, represents what Pratt calls a '"contact
zone' ... the space of imperial encounters, the space in which peoples geographically
and historically separated come into contact with each other and establish ongoing
relations, usually involving conditions of coercion, radical inequality, and intractable
conflict" (8). The same applies to the Orient in Agatha Christie's fiction, since the
Orient in her novels also represents a place where the West meets the East, which
provides room for encountering, observing and addressing the differences among
56
people, in this case, from the point of view of the imperial superior, since Christie's
Western characters observe and assess everything through the Eurocentric lenses.
Similarly to the 'male gaze', they therefore approach the Orient through a Western gaze,
or more specifically a "normative English gaze" (Biestock and Howard 20), which they
employ to present the Orient as the Oriental other to the Occidental self. Exoticism, that
is a "representational strategy through which difference is highlighted, sentimentalized
and morally adjudicated" (Nayar 76), whose main focus is on "foregrounding of cultural
difference and foreignness" (Nayar 76), was frequently used for this end, and is also
employed by Christie. She exoticizes the Orient in her novels, while the Orient serves
predominantly only as a backdrop to the stories of Westerners. It is "the stage for the
plot, essential for mood but rarely contributing to development" (McManis 327). The
Orient in Agatha Christie's novels is thus submitted to the Westerners, who observe it
and describe it, and the following section will illustrate how.
When the Western characters arrive in the Orient and start to express their first
impressions, very often the word 'disappointment' is mentioned, since the Orient is
different from what they had expected. In Appointment with Death, when Sarah, a
young English doctor, is asked about how she likes Jerusalem, she answers: "It's rather
terrible in some ways" (Christie 15), and when Mr Cope and the Boynton family talk
about King David's city, Mr Cope says: "Find it kind of disappointing, do you? I'll
confess it struck me that way first" (Christie 38). In Murder in Mesopotamia, a hospital
nurse Amy Leatheran expresses her disenchantment with Baghdad, when she writes in
her letter: "The dirt and the mess in Baghdad you wouldn't believe - and not romantic
at all like you'd think from the Arabian Nights\" (Christie 13). In addition, Amy also
states about the excavation site that "it was a disappointment! The whole excavation
looked like nothing but mud to me ... my aunt's house in Cricklewood would have
57
made a much more imposing ruin! And those old Assyrians, or whatever they were,
called themselves kings" (Christie 68). Similarly, in They Came to Baghdad, when
Victoria Jones, a young English lady, arrives in Baghdad, it is noted that she was
"unfavourably impressed by Baghdad" (Christie 89). Due to the inclement weather,
there was "nothing to be seen of the Tigris but a thick yellow haze" (Christie 91) and
she immediately spurns the place utterly and says to herself: "[w]hat a hateful place"
(Christie 91). It demonstrates that the Orient is frequently introduced rather negatively
and the following extracts also show that the disappointment of the Westerners is
sometimes caused by completely opposite reasons. In Murder on the Orient Express,
Mrs Hubbard states that Istanbul is "a very disappointing city - [since it is] all tumbling
down" (Christie 179). On the other hand, in Destination Unknown, it is said that
Casablanca "had vaguely disappointed Hilary by being such a prosperous-looking
French town with no hint of the Orient mystery about it, except for the crowds in the
street" (Christie 89). It highlights the passivity of the Orient, since the Westerners are
the ones who assess the Orient, while it does not have any influence on the assessment,
and since every Westerner has their own vision of how the Orient is supposed to be, it
can never win. It imitates the relationship of the dominant imperial centre and its
passive colonial periphery, the Orient is there to please the Westerners and to fulfil their
dreams and expectations.
Throughout the narratives, the disappointment of the Westerners is usually
replaced by enchantment, as the characters gradually discover the mysteriousness and
dream-likeness of the Orient and its landscape that they desire. The Orient is then, for
the most part, represented as a fantastical place and the words 'fairy' and 'dream-like'
are frequently associated with its landscape, which could evoke the feeling of an
unrealness of the Orient as a place in the real world. In Murder in Mesopotamia,
58
Hassanieh is described as "standing up quite white and fairy-like with minarets"
(Christie 33). In Appointment with Death, Sarah describes Petra, a historical and
archaeological city, as "wonderful and just a little horrible ... I've always thought of it
as romantic and dream-like - the 'rose-red city'. But it's much more real than that - it's
as real as - as raw beef (Christie 111). She addresses the clash between fantasy and
reality when it comes to an idea of the Orient in a Westerner's mind and presents Petra
as a real-life place. However, later she describes it again as "a strange and unbelievable
country unparalleled anywhere" (Christie 112), which exoticizes it and presents it as
something strange and beyond this world. When Victoria is confined in Babylon in
They Came to Baghdad at one point, she hopes that she will wake up in London and
discover that she is only "dreaming a wonderful melodramatic dream about dangerous
Babylon" (Christie 185). It connects the Orient with a dream-like and unreal situation
once more. In Destination Unknown, when Hilary arrives in the city of Fez, which is
designated as "untouched" (Christie 92), she states that it was "like stepping into
another world" (Christie 105) and also like "living and walking in a dream world"
(Christie 106). Afterwards, she also calls Morocco as a whole a "land of mystery and
enchantment" (Christie 116) and states that she finds it '"quite enchanting'" (Christie
116). Moreover, the Arabian Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern tales, which has
been very popular in the West and its characters have become household figures in the
Western culture, are mentioned for the second time in Christie's novels (first it was in
Amy's letter in Murder in Mesopotamia). Here Hilary connects the Arabian Nights to
her own experience of being in the middle of the desert in the Orient, when she says:
"It's unbelievable ... It's an Arabian Nights fairy tale" (Christie 195). Her companion
Murchison agrees with her and adds: "It looks exactly as though it has come into being
by conjuring up a djinn!" (Christie 195). It emphasizes the dream-likeness and fairy-
59
likeness of the Orient, which corresponds with the fact that the Western characters come
to the Orient with their dreams and visions, which they subsequently project onto it.
They want to find a mystery and a fairy tale similar to the stories of the Arabian Nights
there and so they do. The descriptions show how the construct of Orient's dreamlikeness
and fairy-likeness is consumed by the West.
There are several instances when the Westerners treat the Orient simply as
consumable and do not pay much attention to it. In Death on the Nile, Mrs Otterbourne,
an American erotica novelist, complains: "I really don't see why we shouldn't go on to
Egypt. I'm sick and tired of Jerusalem" (Christie 49) and her daughter Rosalie replies:
"One place is very like another ... I suppose we might as well go on to Egypt. It doesn't
make any difference" (Christie 50). It highlights the consumerism of the Western
travellers and the indifference with which they approach the foreign places. In
Destination Unknown, Miss Hetherington, an English traveller, comments on a hectic
manner of travelling American ladies, who are always "[r]ushing from place to place,
never settling down anywhere. Egypt one day, Palestine the next. Sometimes I really
don't think they know what country they're in" (Christie 115), which again
demonstrates the consumption of the East by the West. The Westerners are active, while
the Orient is passive and only waits to be conquered, observed and written about. The
dominance of the Westerners over the Oriental landscape is further demonstrated in
Appointment with Death, when a group of Western travellers looks at the sights of the
Orient from above. The depiction is as follows: "Here in the exquisite pure morning air
they stood like gods, surveying a baser world" (Christie 112). The Western tourists are
compared to gods who survey the 'baser world', which is a direct employment of the
colonial Western gaze, and can be also compared to what Pratt calls a "monarch-of-all-
60
I-survey scene" (201). The Westerners are portrayed as being dominant and superior
over this simple and backward world and its people.
Although the Oriental landscape is, for the most part, passive, and the novels
could be therefore easily set in any other place without any difference, in Death on the
Nile and Destination Unknown the landscape complements the story. In Death on the
Nile, the setting enables the Western characters to fully express themselves and reveal
their true nature, however, mainly in a negative fashion. As Rosalie Otterbourne puts it:
"There's something about this country that makes me feel - wicked. It brings to the
surface all the things that are boiling inside one. Everything's so unfair - so unjust"
(Christie 117-18). As Rowland points out, Rosalie here "suggests a classic 'Orientalist'
attitude when she describes the savage landscape as releasing her inner passions" (73).
Moreover, three murders happen on board a ship and when the cruise ends, Hercule
Poirot murmurs: "Quel pays sauvage!" (Christie 411), implying that the Oriental setting
was the primary reason why that three murders took place, even though they were
committed by the Westerners. In Destination Unknown, the setting also accompanies
the story, since the emptiness of the North African desert accentuates the secrecy of the
scientific research centre and its mission. "The repeated mention of the starkness and
lack of habitation that characterize the North African desert created the desolate
isolation essential for the mood" (McManis 328) of the story in Destination Unknown.
In Death Comes as the End, the Orient, in this case Egypt, is described as static
and unchanging by Renisenb, an Egyptian woman, who returns home and states that
"[njothing was changed here, all was as it had been. Here life was safe, constant,
unchanging" (Christie 17). Not only the home was unaltered, but also the "framework,
the essence of things, was unchanged" (Christie 18). It could be perceived as hinting at
the underdevelopment of the Orient, since there is no change, no progress, and the lack
61
of progress is also portrayed in Murder in Mesopotamia. When Dr Leidner shows Amy
the excavation site with the historical ovens, she is told that the Arabs use "much the
same kind of ovens nowadays" (Christie 71). Moreover, in Destination Unknown, when
Mohammed and Sidi, two Arab men, talk together, the former remarks: "Do I want to
remain in a backward part of the world all my days? Here there is money and much
food and many rugs and women - but it is not modern. It is not America" (Christie
245). The representation works on binary oppositions of the colonial discourse, as
presented in Said's Orientalism, since the progressive West, represented by the USA, is
portrayed as a complete opposite of the backward East. In addition to that, a contrast
between lightness of the West and darkness of the East is also outlined in Destination
Unknown, and it is the "play of light and darkness, the two binary elements which
constitute, according to some postcolonial critics, the Manichean allegory of colonial
discourse" (Hallam and Street 51). When the city of Fez is compared to the "Great West
Road in London" (Christie 117) by Mr Aristides, he describes them as complete
opposites, since there is "nothing hidden, there is nothing mysterious ... everything is in
the open" (Christie 117) in London, while "in the old streets of Fez nothing is a jour.
Everything is hidden, dark" (Christie 117). Although the city of Fez was previously
described as untouched and pure, it is still dark and mysterious compared to London.
The descriptions of the Oriental landscape are full of contradictions in the
colonial discourse, as it can be "both convivial and hostile, hospitable and rejecting,
unpolluted and fly infested" (Hallam and Street 58). The last contrast, in particular, can
be found in Christie's novels, since the Orient is sometimes presented as pure, but other
times, and more frequently, as rotten and fly-infested. The rottenness of the Orient is
symbolized by the large numbers of flies everywhere and the decay is depicted in the
state of Oriental toilets, buildings, bazaars, roads and means of transport. In
62
Appointment with Death, Lady Westholme, a member of the British Parliament,
exclaims: "[t]he flies - in the bazaars - terrible!" (Christie 174). Moreover, Mrs Calvin
Baker, an American tourist, in Destination Unknown states: "My dear, you should see
the meat in the souks - all smothered in flies. They just seem to think it's natural to
have flies settling on everything" (Christie 101). In Murder in Mesopotamia, Hassanieh
is first described as white and fairy-like, however, a closer look reveals "[s]uch a smell
and everything ramshackle and tumble-down, and mud and mess everywhere" (Christie
33). The Oriental roads also do not meet the English standard, since Amy complains
that there is "nothing like a road - just a sort of track all ruts and holes. Glorious East
indeed! When I thought of our splendid arterial roads in England it made me quite
homesick" (Christie 32). Furthermore, the quality of the means of transport is also
unsatisfactory. When the group of travellers had to cross the river, they went by "the
craziest ferry-boat you can imagine. It was a mercy we ever got across" (Christie 33). In
addition, the Oriental hygiene also does not comply with the Western standards, as Amy
reflects that "when you've got used to taps and proper plumbing, it seems strange to call
a couple of mud-rooms with a tin hip-bath in each of them, and muddy water brought in
kerosene tins, bathrooms^ (Christie 52). In They Came to Baghdad, Victoria's
employer tells her about the "filth of the streets and the bazaars ... the unhygienic rags
the people wear ... And some of the toilets - why, you just couldn't call them toilets at
all!" (Christie 67). In Destination Unknown, Mrs Calvin Baker sums up her vision of
the hygienic norms in the East as a whole by stating that "[tjhey've no idea at all of
hygiene in these countries" (Christie 101). The statements are frequently generalizations
based on one particular example, which is then applied to the whole country or even the
Orient as a whole. With these statements and utterances, which are not undermined or
63
questioned, Christie strengthens the suspicions and prejudices already held by the
Westerners in terms of the unsanitariness and rottenness of the Orient.
Everything in the Orient is closely observed and most of the things, including
religion, money, names and water, are presented as a strange Oriental other to the
correct Western self, which can be illustrated with the following examples. In Murder
on the Orient Express, Mrs Hubbard, an American traveller, complains about the kind
of mineral water she gets: "there's that bottle of mineral water - and a queer sort of
water too. They hadn't got any Evian or Vichy, which seems queer to me" (Christie 28)
and when another lady explains that they have to "serve the water of the country"
(Christie 28), she persists that "it seems queer" (Christie 28) to her. In addition, she also
looks at the native money with disdain and says: "[l]ook at all this peculiar stuff he's
given me. Dinars or something. Just a lot of rubbish, it looks" (Christie 28). Similarly,
Islam is also represented as peculiar in Appointment with Death, when Sarah exclaims:
"Religion is very odd!" (Christie 15) and adds her indignation: "They turned me out of
one place today because I had on a sleeveless dress ... Apparently the Almighty doesn't
like my arms in spite of having made them" (Christie 16). In Death on the Nile, Rosalie
also "parodies Islam by describing her mother as 'the prophet of the god, Sex'"
(Rowland 73). In They Came to Baghdad, it is the Arab names that strike Victoria as
strange, since one of the men is called Jesus. After hearing it, she looks "startled"
(Christie 94) and when she realizes that "Jesus was the barman's Christian name"
(Christie 94), she perceives the East once again as "an odd place" (Christie 94). All of
these utterances emphasize the incomprehension of Islam on the part of the Western
characters, who frequently show disrespect to the Orient and its rules, which only
widens the gap between the East and the West. Although Christie brings the Orient
closer to the Western readers, it is mostly by foregrounding its strangeness and
64
otherness, which further reinforces the representation of the Orient as the Western other,
as an odd place and with an odd religion.
Observing the self and the other, Englishness and foreignness
In the novels, the natives themselves, their behaviour and characters are closely
observed by the Westerners. For the most part, the Arabs are described by general and
broad designations, and although their names are sometimes stated, no background is
provided for their characters, which results in their coming across as an unspecific mass
rather than individuals. In Appointment with Death, the supposed indistinguishableness
of Arabs is highlighted by Miss Pierce, a former nursery governess, who contends that:
"All these Arabs look alike to me" (Christie 173), which is reinforced by Lady
Westholme's affirmative: "really these Arabs look all alike" (Christie 173), suggesting
that it is impossible to tell them apart and thus needless to remember their names or
learn something more specific about them. Similarly to the passiveness of the Oriental
setting, the local people are also passive and therefore only marginal characters, who
feature in the story, but mostly only peripherally. For this reason, the representation of
the Orientals in Christie's novels is in conformity with the colonial discourse, where
"[t]he West is the actor, [and] the Orient a passive reactor. The West is the spectator, the
judge and jury, of every facet of Oriental behavior" (Said, Orientalism 109).
The colour of the skin plays an important role in representing the Arabs as the
other, since the skin "as the key signifier of cultural and racial difference in the
stereotype, is the most visible of fetishes" (Bhabha, The Location of Culture 112) and
the local people are thus frequently described by the colour of their skin. For example,
in Destination Unknown, there is a servant described as a "white-robed figure with a
black, smiling face" (Christie 160) and also a native girl as having "a shining dark face"
65
(Christie 183). The natives are sometimes reduced solely to one part of their body, to a
'black face', as in these two examples from Death on the Nile: "a startled Nubian face
showed" (Christie 179) and the "black face looked doubtful, puzzled, then reassured.
The teeth showed in a wide grin" (Christie 180). The Westerners also recognize
different 'types' of Orientals according to their skin, as in Destination Unknown, where
it is pointed out that the servants attending to a lift "were darker-skinned and of a more
massive build than the slight, fair Berbers - a desert type, Hilary thought" (Christie
194). Later, when an Arab is questioned by police, he is also introduced as a type and
"'[t]his type' was a particularly wild-looking Berber" (Christie 217). These descriptions
degrade the natives into inferior creatures which are there to be looked at and put into
categories. In addition, their humanity is also further degraded, when they are likened to
animals. In Destination Unknown, "a couple of giggling Berber women" (Christie 137)
are treated as hens by Mrs Baker, since she despises them, calls them "[s]illy creatures"
(Christie 138) and repels them by "Shoo, shoo" (Christie 138) sounds. Hilary then notes
that it was "exactly like shooing chickens" (Christie 138). In Murder in Mesopotamia,
Arab people are described as "little black figures moving about ... like ants" (Christie
41), which endorses the stereotypical portrayal of Arabs as an indistinguishable mass.
Moreover, the basket-boys are compared to bats, since, when they walk, "they always
seemed to be as blind as bats never to think of getting out of the way" (Christie 231 -32).
In addition, the sellers and vendors on the streets are described as a "human cluster of
flies" (Christie 55) in Death on the Nile. It is again a derogation of the natives from
human beings into animals, in this case flies. These representations are part of the
"dehumanization of the Other [which] is often bound up with the demonization of the
Other" (Biestock and Howard 172). Dehumanization is also linked with objectification
of the natives and as Nayar puts it, "objectification in English literature" frequently
66
works "as a means of engaging with the Other, primarily in the form of an
objectification of humans of different races and ethnicities" (132).
When it comes to the nature of the natives and their behaviour, the descriptions
are varied in the colonial discourse, for Africans/Arabs can be "both ravishingly
winsome and grotesquely repulsive. They have healthy, sculpted bodies or degenerate,
demonised ones. They are capable of gratuitous, altruistic behaviour or can reveal
themselves as money hungry and easily corruptible" (Hallam and Street 58). In
Christie's novels, the natives are frequently described as greedy, untrustworthy,
mendacious, lazy and obliging. In Destination Unknown, the porters are designated as
"rapacious" (Christie 92) and their rapacity is hinted at in several other instances. In the
colonial discourse, "[g]reed and the quest for wealth are markers of a barbaric
civilization that then the European/English knight must overcome" (Nayar 78), which
could be perceived as paradoxical, since colonization and imperial efforts were
connected with gaining wealth and increasing economic growth of the empire and the
links between "mercantilism, profit and Empire were [already] established as an
unquestionable continuum in the English mind and discourse" (Nayar 155). However, in
Christie's novels, it is the natives that are portrayed as rapacious and greedy. The
importance of money in their lives is also highlighted by the fact that a special attention
is given to a guest, Monsieur Aristides, who is enormously rich, by the servants, since it
is said that "because of his enormous wealth, waiters darted and sprang and spoke with
awe in their voices" (Christie 96). A waiter even exclaims: "Ce monsieur-la, he is a big
business magnate from Sweden. Very rich, very important" (Christie 96). The equal
sign between wealth and importance of a person is apparent in his utterance, which only
highlights how money-oriented Orientals purportedly are. In Murder in Mesopotamia,
Mrs Leidner says that they have to pay the workmen in gold for the weight of the
67
objects that they find, since "it prevents them from stealing" (Christie 73), suggesting
that the natives would not hesitate to steal in order to acquire wealth, which is later
affirmed, when it is stated that most of the royal graves at the excavation site "had been
plundered" (Christie 73). In addition to stealing, bribery and lying are also practices
associated with the natives and their trustworthiness is frequently questioned. For
example, Dr Leidner claims: "[t]he servants may be lying - they may have been bribed"
(Christie 261). Similarly, in Appointment with Death, when Poirot says that he has
developed a plan with the help of a dragoman Mahmoud, Lady Westholme immediately
remarks that "in that case it was probably wrong!" (Christie 169) and continues to say:
"That man is grossly inaccurate. I have checked his statements from my Baedeker.
Several times his information was definitely misleading" (Christie 169), suggesting that
a travel guidebook has more accurate information of the place than the local people who
live there, which again highlights what authority the Westerners attach to books and the
written word, in general. The natives themselves also talk about their inclination to
lying in certain situations, as one servant reveals: "Old lady angry, you say? Then
naturally boys would not tell. Abdul say it Mohammed, and Mohammed say it Aziz and
Aziz say it Aissa, and so on. They are all very stupid Bedouin - understand nothing"
(Christie 216). In Murder in Mesopotamia, Dr Leidner gives his opinion on the attitude
of the natives towards the truth and again makes a very general statement. "Truth as
truth means nothing to them. They say what you want them to say as a mere matter of
politeness" (Christie 118), suggesting that the natives are only trying to please the
Westerners, which demonstrates and reinforces their inferior position.
In addition to being greedy and untrustworthy, the Orientals are also depicted as
idle. For instance, in Murder in Mesopotamia, a boy is supposed to be working, but
when the masters do not watch him for a few minutes, he seizes "his chance to be idle"
68
(Christie 119) and joins the others for a chat. In Murder on the Orient Express, Mrs
Hubbard states that "you just can't apply Amurrican methods in this country. It's just
natural to the folks here to be indolent ...They just haven't got any hustle in them"
(Christie 26). Moreover, in They Came to Baghdad, it is stated that "you can't hurry
things too much in this country" (Christie 111) due to "the delaying tactics of the East"
(Christie 150). "Everyone is very pleasant and willing - only nothing seems to happen"
(Christie 150). In addition, Oriental idleness is also mirrored in their appearance, since
they are portrayed as dirty and untidy. In Appointment with Death, Lady Westholme
describes a Bedouin servant as having on "a pair of very torn and patched breeches really
disgraceful they were - and his puttees were wound most untidily" (Christie 173).
In Murder in Mesopotamia, their shabby appearance is also a source of laughter for the
Westerners, when Amy says that "the workmen ... made me laugh. You never saw such
a lot of scarecrows - all in long petticoats and rags, and their heads tied up as though
they had toothache" (Christie 71). Dr Leidner, however, sees it differently and remarks:
"[rjather a fine-looking lot of men, aren't they?" (Christie 71). Amy then thinks to
herself "what a queer world it was and how two different people could see the same
thing ... the other way round" (Christie 71). It provides a suggestion for the readers not
to take every statement as genuine truth since there are many different ways of looking
at one thing.
The Arabs are also portrayed as highly superstitious and dependent on the will of
Allah, always wishing and saying the phrases such as: "May Allah prosper you"
(Christie 46) and "Inshallah" (Christie 46) to each other as in They Came to Baghdad.
Their faith is depicted from the Western point of view, which is why it is frequently
simplified. For example, Henry Carmicael, a British agent, wishes to be of 'Eastern
blood', since he could "throw responsibility on the All Merciful, the All Wise.
69
Inshallah, I shall succeed! Even saying the words over to himself he felt the calmness
and the fatalism of the country" (Christie 46-47). It simplifies Arab approach to life and
their faith in a similar way as these comments: "[i]t's always Inshallah, isn't it?"
(Christie 181) and "Yes, nothing like laying the responsibility upon the Almighty"
(Christie 181). A tendency to portray Arabs as simple beings, in general, can be traced
throughout the novels. In Murder in Mesopotamia, it is said that Mrs Leidner likes
Arabs, since "she appreciates their simplicity and their sense of humour" (Christie 24).
In They Came to Baghdad, the "charitable Marcus" (Christie 118), a native owner of a
hotel where Victoria is staying, states about one of the guests: "he is a very nice man - a
very nice man" (Christie 103). He repeats this evaluation so often that Victoria then
wonders "if there was any one whom Marcus would not consider a very nice man"
(Christie 103). It hints at his simplicity, although later it is stated that he "has a great
deal of sense, though one doesn't always realize it in talking to him" (Christie 130),
suggesting that he might give the impression of simplicity and stupidity intentionally in
order to play his subordinate and inferior part. It is also he who proclaims that the taxi
drivers "do not know where anything is!" (Christie 104). The Oriental simplicity is
contrasted with the 'Anglo-Saxon brain'. In Murder on the Orient Express, Hercule
Poirot states that the crime that happened on the train was so "far-sighted, [and] longheaded"
and shows "traces of cool, resourceful, [and] deliberate brain" that it could
have only been committed by "an Anglo-Saxon brain" (Christie 149).
The interaction between a Westerner and a native reveals their imbalanced
relationship, since the former approaches the latter as the dominant approaches the
subordinate. Sometimes the Westerner approaches the native in terms of their imperial
superiority, other times as an adult approaches a child; however, the native is always in
the inferior position. A key example of the dominance of the English over the
70
subordinate natives is to be found in They Came to Baghdad, when Victoria comes to
the organization Olive Branch in Baghdad for the first time. She talks with Catherine, a
native woman at the reception, and uses a domineering manner to get her own way. She
starts to be impatient, since a "kind of Anglo-Saxon intolerance of foreigners swept
over" (Christie 109) her and therefore urges: "I have just arrived from England ... and I
have a very important message for Dr Rathbone which I must deliver to him personally.
Please take me to him at oncer (Christie 109) and repeats: "At oncer (Christie 109)
once more. Catherine does what Victoria wants and takes her to Dr Rathbone and
afterwards it is stated that "[bjefore an imperious Briton who means to get his or her
own way, barriers nearly always fall" (Christie 109). It highlights the superiority of the
English and their awareness and deliberate exploitation of it. On the other hand, the
Westerners sometimes approach the natives like adults approach children. As Fanon
puts it, "[a] white man addressing a Negro behaves exactly like an adult with a child and
starts smirking, whispering, patronizing, cozening" (19). He proposes that there is an
utterly different manner of communication between the Westerners and people from the
East and demonstrates it on an example of two different interactions between a doctor
and a patient. "Twenty European patients, one after another, come in: 'Please sit down.
... Why do you wish to consult me? ... What are your symptoms? ...' Then comes a
Negro or an Arab: 'Sit there, boy. ... What's bothering you? ... Where does it hurt,
huh? ..."' (Fanon 20). It emphasizes the patronizing approach of the Westerners
towards the non-Western people and this approach can be found in Appointment with
Death. When a native Mahmoud starts to recite Keats and Shelley to Poirot to showcase
his knowledge acquired through "Mission education" (Christie 216) by saying:
"Iadadoveandasweedovedied" (Christie 217), Poirot flinches and, although he does not
like his rendering, exclaims: "Superb! ... Superb! Definitely I recommend you to all my
71
friends" (Christie 217). It epitomizes the patronizing approach of the Westerners
towards the natives and marks the inequality of their prescribed roles, the childish role
for the Orientals and parental role for the Westerners.
The natives are rarely given a chance to talk and express themselves, which
gives readers little chance to get to know them. There are only few instances when the
natives have more room to talk. For instance, in Appointment with Death, a dragoman
Mahmoud complains: "[a]lways, always, I am blamed. When anything happens, say
always, my fault. Always my fault ... My life all one misery!" (Christie 215) and also:
"What a life - what a life! I do all I can - always I blamed" (Christie 216). In Death on
the Nile, the limited vocabulary of the Oriental sellers is demonstrated, when they
interact with the Western travellers: "You want beads, sir? Very good, sir. Very cheap
.. .Lady, you want scarab? Look - great queen - very lucky ... You look, sir - real lapis.
Very good, very cheap ... You want ride donkey, sir? This very good donkey" (Christie
54). In They Came to Baghdad, it is also shown how obliging the natives and the
servants are, which is demonstrated in the way they ask questions. When a servant is
summoned, he asks: "Yes, sir? I unpack for you, sir?" (Christie 86). Catherine from the
Olive Branch asks Victoria questions in the same fashion: "[w]hat can I do for you, yes,
please?" (Christie 108) and also: "[y]ou wish to join us? Yes? That will be very nice"
(Christie 108). It shows how very obliging they are towards the Westerners and also
how limited their vocabulary is, which contributes to their being perceived as inferior in
the eyes of the English. However, there are also exceptions, for example, when a local
policeman comes into Victoria's hotel room, his English is described as "very passable"
(Christie 127), when he says: "I am so sorry, miss, to disturb you at this hour ... but we
have a criminal escaped. He has run into this hotel. We must look in every room. He is a
very dangerous man" (Christie 127). It highlights that the level of English is also
72
assessed and plays an important role in terms of how the natives are perceived and
assessed by the English.
Although the Westerners predominantly perceive the Orientals as subordinate,
they sometimes feel sympathy for them. Particularly, in Destination Unknown, when a
group of Western travellers go native and dress up as Orientals, it is stated that in "a
queer way Hilary felt far nearer and more in sympathy with the two giggling Berber
women who brought them food, than with her two companions of the Western world"
(Christie 140). However, later she compares the going native part of their journey to a
dream, when she says: "I felt as though I were taking part in a dream" (Christie 141),
which undermines the reality of the situation. To bring the East closer to the West,
Christie employs index verborum, which is "the indexing of words and the slow
incorporation of the language of the Other into the Englishman's vocabulary" (Nayar
61), for she frequently uses local words and expressions, which familiarizes the objects
and terminology of the natives for the Westerners. For example, in They Came to
Baghdad, pedestrians shout: "Balek - BalekV (Christie 2), words such as "keffiyah" and
"agal" (Christie 44) are used, "ferwahs" are described as "the sheepskin coats of the
north" (Christie 49), and "gw/a" as "one of those native boats" (Christie 165).
Moreover, in Death Comes as the End, Christie carefully depicts and illuminates the
customs of the ancient Egyptians, as detailed descriptions of their burying and
embalming procedures are provided as well as the Egyptian deep connection to death.
Furthermore, the position of women in ancient Egypt is also stressed, since it is stated
that "women have power in Egypt - inheritance passes through them to their children.
Women are the life blood of Egypt" (Christie 253). It is also the female characters, in
particular, who are portrayed with sympathy and understanding. Since there are no
Westerners present in the story, there are also no processes of othering and no
73
comparisons between the West and the East. However, when the Westerners and the
Orientals do appear together, which is the case for the other six novels, they are mostly
presented as polar opposites. Moreover, the Orientals are frequently portrayed in a
negative light, when only their strangeness, inferiority and backwardness are
foregrounded. As a result, instead of subverting or undermining the Western Orientalist
approach to the Orientals, the representations employed throughout the selected novels
reinforce it.
However, the Orientals are not the only ones, who are found strange and
portrayed as the other to the English in Christie's novels. When Colonel Arbuthnot, who
is an Englishman, sees Hercule Poirot on the train in Murder on the Orient Express, he
thinks to himself: "[o]nly some damned foreigner" (Christie 9). In addition, since a valet
Masterman is a 'Britisher', he is said to have "a low opinion of Americans and no
opinion at all of any other nationality" (Christie 57). It sums up how the English mostly
approach everything foreign in the novels, where they are directly confronted not only
with the foreignness of the Oriental setting and the natives, but also with the foreignness
of their fellow travellers. It is, however, the Belgian detective Hercule Poirot, who is the
embodiment of the foreignness for the English. His foreign appearance and manners are
mocked and because of them he is looked down on by the English particularly in the
early novels. In Murder in Mesopotamia, Amy remarks about Poirot's foreignness that
"I hadn't expected him to be quite as foreign as he was, if you know what I mean. When
you saw him you just wanted to laugh!" (Christie 125). She also disapproves of his
English by stating: "[w]hy, he couldn't even speak English properly!" (Christie 126)
and even corrects him: "[yjou'll excuse me, M . Poirot ... But it's 'stubbed your toe',
not stepped or stebbed" (Christie 257). He then further emphasizes his foreignness by
purposely using French words in his reply: "Ah! Thank you, ma soeuf (Christie 257).
74
It shows that Poirot deliberately teases the English in order to destabilize their norms
and stiffness. In addition, Amy does not only survey Poirot's English, but also his
behaviour. For example, she states that "Once more he cleared his throat. I've always
noticed that foreigners can make the oddest noises" (Christie 166) and also that "M.
Poirot gave me a little friendly tap on the shoulder. Quite an English tap, not a foreign
one" (Christie 180). It follows that the English do not realize their identity only in
comparison with the Oriental other, but also in comparison with the Western others in
Christie's novels, since they constantly distinguish themselves from everyone, from the
rest of the world. It is through Hercule Poirot that Christie points out the English
mistrust of everything foreign and slightly mocks it. Moreover, the English are also
frequently compared to the Americans, who are usually portrayed in a better light in
terms of their nature and behaviour. For instance, in Destination Unknown, Hilary
thinks to herself: "How very good-natured and friendly Americans were ... So different
from the stiff travelling English" (Christie 123). Similarly, in Appointment with Death,
it is said that "Americans are disposed to be a friendly race. They have not the uneasy
suspicion of the travelling Briton" (Christie 41). By these juxtapositions, Christie also
reflects negatively on the English mistrust of foreignness. However, it seems to concern
mainly their attitude towards other Westerners, their fellow travellers, and not the
natives, since these juxtapositions are always provided, when only the Westerners are
together. In addition, the Americans themselves are guilty of uttering disdainful remarks
about the Orient and Orientals throughout the selected novels, which shows that they
are not so tolerant or friendly when it comes to the Orient and the natives either.
Imperial utterances of superiority, conflicting viewpoints
Christie incorporates a lot of conflicting opinions on various topics throughout
the selected novels. For example, in Death on the Nile, there are presented conflicting
75
views on equality, the role of education and the capitalist system. Mr Ferguson, a young
traveller and an outspoken Socialist, and Cornelia Robson, a young American lady, who
is treated as an inferior by her older cousin Mrs Schuyler, discuss equality. When Mr
Ferguson suggests that she should not let her cousin treat her that way and urges:
"[d]on't you realize - and you an American - that everyone is born free and equal?"
(Christie 168) and reminds her that it is part of their constitution, she answers as
follows: "of course people aren't equal. It doesn't make sense" (Christie 168).
Regarding education and civilization, when Cornelia is horrified by the three deaths that
happened during the cruise, Mr Ferguson retorts: "[t]hat's because you're overcivilized.
You should look on death as the Oriental does. It's a mere incident - hardly
noticeable" (Christie 337). Cornelia pities the Orientals instead of showing an
understanding for them: "[t]hey're not educated, poor creatures" (Christie 337). Mr
Fergusson condemns education and reveals his socialist way of thinking, since he
answers: "Education has devitalized the white races. Look at America - goes in for an
orgy of culture. Simply disgusting" (Christie 337-38). In addition, Mr Fergusson
condemns the pyramids, since they were "put up to minister to the egoism of a despotic
bloated king. Think of the sweated masses who toiled to build them and died doing it. It
makes me sick to think of the suffering and torture they represent" (Christie 113). And
when Mrs Allerton remarks cheerfully: "You'd rather have no Pyramids, no Parthenon,
no beautiful tombs or temples - just the solid satisfaction of knowing that people got
three meals a day and died in their beds" (Christie 113-14), he retorts: "I think human
beings matter more than stones ... I'd rather see a well fed worker than any so-called
work of art" (Christie 114) and leaves by rejecting the capitalist system as a whole. The
opposite view is expressed later on by Simon Doyle, when he states: "Those old
Pharaohs must have been wonderful fellows" (Christie 146). It demonstrates Christie's
76
employment of contrasts in her novels, for her characters frequently express conflicting
views. The above mentioned Mr Ferguson's statements render him one of the most
vociferous characters showing sympathy and understanding for the natives.
As far as the imperialist ideology is concerned, Christie provides a lot of room
for the imperialist utterances, which favour the white man's burden. Due to the belief
into the 'civilizing mission' of imperialism, the relationship between the English and the
natives was frequently promoted as that of the "to-be-improved native and the
improving-Englishman or woman" (Nayar 240) at that time. In Christie's novels, a lot
of the Western characters located in the Orient fulfil the role of'"the imperial hero'"
(Nayar 240), since they are respectable and educated people with noble intentions,
including, for example, a "selfless missionary, doctor, teacher, nurse, reformer and
social worker" (Nayar 240), who are aware of the white man's burden and express
notions in accordance with it. For instance, in Murder on the Orient Express, Mrs
Hubbard states that "[w]e've got to apply our Western ideals and teach the East to
recognize them" (Christie 26), while Lady Westholme exclaims about the natives in
Appointment with Death that "[t]hese men need disciplined (Christie 173). Similarly,
Mrs Baker contends in Destination Unknown that "I have no patience with
sentimentality. There are those that rule, the few; and there are the many that serve"
(Christie 138). Helga Needheim, a German scientist, agrees with her and states that the
natives "belong to a slave race. They are useful to serve their betters, but no more"
(Christie 138). Moreover, a secret organization of Western best scientists wants to take
over the world in the novel and a Norseman Ericsson expresses their aim: "[w]e must
conquer ... we must conquer the world. Then we can rule ... we few who count. The
brains. That is all that matters" (Christie 152). All of these utterances suggest that there
are people who feel naturally superior and have therefore the right to rule the others,
77
which is in accordance with the imperialist ideology. A lot of room is given to these
utterances of the superiority of the white race and they appear throughout Christie's
novels. They are, however, sometimes counterbalanced by characters calling for
tolerance and equality.
One of them is Dr Rathbone in They Came to Baghdad, who expresses
conciliatory thoughts and strives to reconcile the divided parts of the world. His efforts
are always questioned and undermined by sceptical and intolerant voices. For example,
when Dr Rathbone prepares to give a lecture on "World Relationships and
Brotherhood" (Christie 98), Mrs Cardew Trench remarks: "[a]ll nonsense if you ask me.
The more you try to get people together, the more suspicious they get of each other"
(Christie 98). Moreover, when Dr Rathbone states that "There must be an end of all the
savagery in the world, the wars, the misunderstanding, the suspicions" (Christie 111-
12), since "finding out and being excited by encountering a different point of view ...
that's what the world is meant to be" (Christie 112), Victoria regards him as "slightly
over-optimistic" (Christie 112) and further undermines the conciliatory effects of the
organization Olive Branch, when she reflects that "[rjegrettably, instead of the Olive
Branch creating friendly international feelings, it seemed to be having the opposite
effect as far as she was concerned" (Christie 109). Later Mr Dakin tells Victoria that
"the belief in a superstratum of human beings - in Supermen to rule the rest of the
decadent world ... is the most evil of all beliefs. For when you say, 'I am not as other
men' - you have lost the two most valuable qualities we have ever tried to attain:
humility and brotherhood" (Christie 138). This statement is one of the most vociferous
anti-imperialist thoughts expressed throughout the selected novels of Agatha Christie.
At first, Victoria, in particular, is in stark contrast with him, since she acts as an
'imperious Briton' in the novel and always undermines any conciliatory efforts.
78
However, she undergoes a change throughout the novel, when she realizes her own
inferior position, since she observes that men are "always so superior about women"
(Christie 221). In the end, Victoria realizes the importance of humility and reflects that
"[t]hey always say humility is a Christian virtue - now I see why. Humility is what
keeps you sane and a human being ..." (Christie 261-62). Although Christie captures
the racist rhetoric and a lot of room is given to the imperialist notions and utterances,
she also incorporates voices calling for tolerance and conciliation, which is also
reflected in Victoria's realization that humility is what makes people human beings and
being a human being is what all people on the planet have in common. It could be
concluded that the selected novels of Agatha Christie are full of contrasts and
ambiguities. On the one hand, her slight disapproval of the imperialist ideology and
English mistrust of foreignness can be sometimes read between the lines, on the other,
she herself contributes to the reinforcement of the English mistrust of the Orient and
Orientals with the representations that she employs throughout the selected novels.
79
Conclusion
As the analysis from Chapter IV illustrates with examples, Agatha Christie, for
the most part, portrays the Orient and its people in accordance with the Orientalist
techniques of the colonial discourse throughout the selected novels. She frequently
portrays the Orient and its people in a negative and derogatory fashion that foregrounds
their strangeness, backwardness and inferiority and employs devices such as othering,
exoticism, dehumanization and objectification to do so. In addition, she frequently
employs binary oppositions when it comes to comparing the Orient with the West, since
the former is mostly portrayed as passive, dark and primitive, while the latter as active,
light and progressive. The Orient serves mostly as a static, unchanging, passive and
enchanting setting, which is there only to be looked at, assessed and written about by
the Westerners, who consume and observed it through the colonial Western gaze, or,
more specifically, the English gaze. In addition, in many cases, the Western characters
approach the Orient as consumable, as a place which they know from the Arabian
Nights, and only project their dreams and visions on it and subsequently expect the
Orient to please them by fulfilling these dreams and expectations.
The passivity of the Orient is further reinforced by the representations of the
local people themselves, since they are mostly marginalized and portrayed as an
undistinguishable mass without any memorable characters. The only exception is Death
Comes as the End, where solely non-Western people are the main protagonists, which
enables Christie to portray them as individuals, and since there are no Westerners
whatsoever, there are also no comparisons between the West and the East and no
processes of othering. She describes the ordinary lives of the ancient Egyptians and
their traditions and beliefs with sympathy. However, when there are Westerners and
Orientals together, which is the case for the other six novels, the latter is always
80
described as a strange other to the correct former. The natives are predominantly
portrayed as idle, untidy, untrustworthy, simple and obliging, while they are also
frequently dehumanized and objectified, when their status is degraded from adult
human beings into animals and child-like figures. These representations of the Orientals
further reinforce their inferiority in the eyes of the Westerners. In addition, everything
Oriental is described as strange, including water, money, names and religion. Although
Christie brings the Orient closer to the West, since she describes its cities, historical
monuments, excavation sights, people and things and oftentimes also incorporates local
expressions, she does it predominantly in a disparaging manner by foregrounding the
strangeness of the Orient and its dissimilarity from the West. The overall impression is
therefore that she only strengthens the suspicions and prejudices already held by the
Westerners against the Orient, for instance, that the whole Orient is unsanitary, rotten
and fly-infested and that its inhabitants are obliging, simple, untrustworthy and
undistinguished as a 'human cluster of flies'.
As Said proposes, Orientalism and its patronising attitudes of the West towards
the East are connected with colonization and imperialism. Christie lived and wrote her
fiction in a racist society at the peak of the British Empire and deliberately reflected and
captured the racist rhetoric, the imperialist discourse and the English mistrust of
foreignness at that time throughout the selected novels. Although a lot of attention and
space are given to the imperialist utterances and statements favouring the white man's
burden throughout the selected novels, apart from Death Comes as the End, Christie
also incorporates anti-imperialist and conciliatory voices calling for tolerance. For
instance, Mr Dakin in They Came to Baghdad expresses the most anti-imperialist
notion, when he warns against the belief into the superiority of a certain race that is
destined to rule the rest of the world. Christie's slight disapproval of the imperialist
81
ideology and the English mistrust of foreignness can be read between the lines in
several instances throughout the novels. However, she does not subvert the Orientalist
approach of the West towards the East, since the portrayals of the Orient and Orientals
in accordance with Orientalism that she employs throughout the novels are mostly
unquestioned and thus presented as indisputable, which only reinforces the perception
of the Orient as the strange other by the West.
The thesis aims to foreground the idea that literature says something about the
times when it was produced, even if unintentionally and peripherally, and needs to be
therefore approached and read in connection with its historical background in mind. It
also applies to Christie's fiction, which should be regarded as reflecting its times of
creation. It is, however, important to note that the influence works both ways, since in
the same way as politics, historical events and social changes influence the cultural
production, including literature, theatre and film, the artistic production with its
employment of representations, beliefs, morals, stereotypes and ideology subsequently
influences people and penetrates their consciousness. As was suggested throughout the
thesis, literature, or the novel, to be more precise, has played a significant role in
shaping people's perception of the world. Agatha Christie's fiction as part of the
English canon is immensely popular with people and is also frequently adapted to film
and theatre. Her notions and representations therefore live on. It is important to revisit
canonical works, reread them through the lenses of different literary criticisms and
question everything that they present, since nothing is fixed and unquestionable in this
postmodern world.
82
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88
English Resume
The aim of this thesis is to analyse the representations of the Orient in Agatha
Christie's novels in connection with Edward W. Said's Orientalism and to determine
whether she depicted the Orient in accordance with the Orientalist notions used in the
colonial discourse and thus strengthened and maintained the representation of the Orient
as the Western other, or not. Moreover, its aim is also to illustrate which devices and
strategies Christie employed to describe and bring the Orient closer to the West and
Western readership.
To achieve this aim, seven novels of Agatha Christie have been selected for the
analysis, namely Murder on the Orient Express (1934), Murder in Mesopotamia (1936),
Death on the Nile (1937), Appointment with Death (1938), Death Comes as the End
(1944), They Came to Baghdad (1951) and Destination Unknown (1954). The first part
of the analysis focuses on the representations of the Orient as a backdrop to the stories
of Westerners. The second part analyses the representations of the natives and the third
part illustrates how imperialist ideology penetrated Agatha Christie's fiction.
The conclusion then summarizes all of the findings. The thesis aims to
foreground that literature says a lot about the times when it was produced, which also
applies to Agatha Christie's fiction, since it reflects the racist rhetoric and discourse of
the English society at that time. The thesis also demonstrates that Agatha Christie's
fiction can be and deserves to be analysed, since it is an important source that provides
knowledge about the times of its creation.
89
Czech Résumé
Cílem diplomová práce je analyzovat zobrazení Orientu v románech Agathy
Christie v souvislosti s Orientalismem Edwarda W. Saida a zjistit, jestli zobrazila Orient
v souladu s myšlenkami Orientalismu užitými v koloniálním diskurzu, a tudíž posílila a
zachovala zobrazení Orientu jako opak ('the otheť) Západu, nebo ne. Cílem práce je
navíc také názorně ukázat, jaké prostředky a strategie Agatha Christie využila, aby
popsala a priblížila Orient Západu a západním čtenářům.
K dosažení tohoto cíle bylo vybráno sedm románů Agathy Christie k analýze,
jmenovitě Vražda v Orient-Expresu (1934), Vražda v Mezopotámii (1936), Smrt na Nilu
(1937), Schůzka se smrtí (1938), Nakonec přijde smrt (1944), Sešli se v Bagdádu (1951)
& Místo určení neznámé (1954). První část analýzy se zaměřuje na zobrazení Orientu
jako pozadí pro příběhy obyvatel Západu. Druhá část analyzuje zobrazení obyvatel
Orientu a třetí část názorně ukazuje, jak imperiálni ideologie prostoupila beletrií Agathy
Christie.
Závěr pak shrnuje všechny nálezy. Cílem diplomové práce je zdůraznit, že
literatura vypovídá o dobách, kdy byla vytvořena, což platí i pro beletrii Agathy
Christie, která odráží rasistickou rétoriku a diskurz anglické společnosti té doby.
Diplomová práce také ukazuje, že beletrie Agathy Christie může být a také si zaslouží
být analyzována, protože je důležitým zdrojem, který poskytuje znalosti o době svého
vzniku.
90