애거서 크리스티 소설 속 젠더와 섹슈얼리티

Agatha Christie(1890-1976) enjoyed enormous success as the
‘world’s best-selling fiction writer’ for over 100 years. But academia
either ignored or under-evaluated her works. Literary critics
severely denounced Christie for her wooden dialogue, the
over-sentimentalism, the artificiality of characters and the absence
of social reality. Her fictions, however, present a realistic world
view and her characters are much more like those people we meet
every day. In this context Christie’s works are of great value as
source materials for social historians.
This article analyzes Christie’s novels focusing on gender and
sexuality. Christie was criticized as being conservative or regressive
in the wave of women’s movement and her literary approach
toward sexuality was often assessed to be somehow indifferent and
even asexual. Christie, however, was conscious about social changes
and her works clearly reveal the progressive attitude toward gender
issues. She created the female characters who challenged the
conventional gender norms, and she utilized the reversal of gender
roles as an important motive for her works.
Christie‘s novels have a great significance in depicting an
extraordinarily broad spectrum in sexuality. She not only dissects
sexual appeal into many elements, but also offers various shapes of
love in the heterosexual relationships, from a maternal-like affection
to a ghastly obsession. Homosexuality and impersonation are
another major subjects that Christie utilizes in her fictions. The
manly love between Poirot and Hastings is still being adapted as a
recurring motif in contemporary media contents.