Words on Wednesday: Agatha's Managing Women: A Favorite Character Type/Trope

  Some of my favorite Agatha Christie characters are her women.
   Christie clearly delineates their characters, but a type that appears in several stories is the Manageress.
  Miss Marple is not a Manageress, but, as Christie learned that Marple and Poirot stories sold better, she wedged her flagship characters in whenever she could.
  Including, of course,

 Her Manageress Stories 

  i should  note that these are not her only novels with a Manageress.  These women are often featured side characters, like the first victim in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, but in these stories listed below,  the Manageress is the protagonist.

Emily Trefusis: The Sittaford Mystery aka Murder at Hazelford;  1931
Mary Dove: Pocket Full of Rye  1953; Mary Dove (Miss Marple)
Lucy Eylesbarrow:  4:50 from Paddington aka What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!  1957; featuring Miss Marple

Pocket Full of Rye

  One of several Nursery Rhyme Novels* written by Christie, this one perhaps best follows the  lines of the rhyme.
  In a house of "very unpleasant people," Mary Dove is the cool and efficient housekeeper.  She is a person who could have had any career she wanted, but chose to be temporary housekeeper help.  Her clients use near-religious terms to describe her, as she runs things so well they do not have to be concerned about anything.
  Still, Miss Dove is not a favorite character of mine.  Not only does she run everyone's lives to perfection while being well-paid, she uses her position to - um, be unscrupulous & dishonest.

 4:50 from Paddington, or What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw!

  This is an early favorite of mine, which i thoroughly enjoy every time i read it. 
  It begins with the unusual feature of a murder being witnessed from a passing train.  Miss Marple is certain that her friend would be incapable of making up any such thing, and sets out to find the body. 
  But there's a catch.  Originally introduced as an old lady in the 1920s, by 1957 Christie - and Miss Marple - recognize that she won't be capable of the legwork required.
  Enter Lucy Eylesbarrow, "one of Christie's few sympathetic independent women," according to one reviewer.  
   Well, i wouldn't say Christie didn't write many sympathetic independent women, but Lucy is definitely one of the most attractive.  i would say that she is the best expression of Christie's Manageress heroine.
  Like Mary Dove, Lucy is university educated, and becomes a temporary house help because of the variety and good pay that allows her to choose which clients and dates to accept.
  Unlike Miss Dove, she isn't dipping into the family till.
  After Lucy is hired by the family whose estate is reasoned to contain the body, readers get to know the family.  Murder follows, as well as preceeds, her arrival.
  Mrs. McGillicuddy is summoned to return, and we find Lucy has fallen in love with two of the brothers of the household (technically, one is a son-in-law, but...).  The murder is solved, the guilty caught, and the question asked, but not answered (in the novel anyway), "Which of 'em? (will she marry).

The Sittaford Mystery, or Murder at Hazelmoor

   Emily Trefusis was not present the night the murder was predicted in a seance, but when her fiance is accused, she's quick on the scene. 
  Not one of Christie's better-known stories, it has ardent fans among those who are familiar with it.  Emily sparkles on every page on which she appears.  While one  reviewer (linked in subhead) places Emily on a level with Anne Beddingfeld and Tuppence, among her early heroines, the reviewer who liked Lucy as "one of Christie's few..." would doubtless have disliked her.  She's forthright in acknowledging she needs a man to clear her fiance, doesn't mind allowing this second man to believe she could love him, and insists that her fiance's managability is what attracts her to him.
  Not very lovable sounding, but it works.  (The second man probably wasn't too deeply attracted anyway, since within seconds he he dumps her for the next hot career development.)

  Of the three of these,

  • Pocket Full of Rye is an enjoyable mystery, but Miss Dove not a favorite character.
  • What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! is not only an enjoyable mystery, but has an engaging heroine and sweet unemphasized love story.  Which son will she marry?  We can look at Emily in
  • The Sittaford Mystery to find the answer.  While i wouldn't rate the story one of my favorites, i would love to have more stories about Emily and Charles.  Maybe James Pearson, the fiance, will continue to be a hapless trouble magnet?  Or perhaps Charles comes across another mystery while doing his job and just knows that the now-Mrs. Pearson is the one person who can help him crack it?  
  Like the Tommy and Tuppence stories, i don't think you could do very many of these, or else the characters will become semi-pro crimesolvers.  But i would like to spend more time in their company.  
  What about it, Christie Estate and Sophie Hannah? 
  
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*For more about her nursery rhyme stories, see:
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