What was Agatha Christie’s political beliefs and what political party did she support? I assume she was a Tory since from what I know about her she was an elitist and a near-snob who thought poor people shouldn’t live in modern housing. :mad:
Well, I don’t know that that’s actually part of the party platform. From what I’ve been able to tell, she wasn’t very active in party politics at all, but her parents were Conservatives.
What’s the source for that view? Did she say anything along those lines in her autobiography?
TV Tropes:http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AgathaChristie
Values Dissonance: Christie used the Author Filibuster in many of her novels to promote what she considered old-fashioned conservative English upper middle-class values. For instance, Christie believed that it was perfectly acceptable for a man to have sex with as many women as he wanted and still be a sympathetic character, but a woman who had sex outside marriage even once was irredeemably ruined and permanently morally suspect, even if it was rape. Conversely, she felt that even the most promiscuous rake would really prefer to marry a woman who didn’t put out before marriage (the “once bedded, never wedded” theory).
* As society changed and became more open, Christie's Author Filibusters about modern society became so strident that she eventually wrote a novel (Passenger to Frankfurt) based on the idea that almost every new opinion held by modern youth, including sexual freedom, racial and class equality, and the prospect of widespread prosperity, had been created by an evil Nazi/Communist countess in order to destroy Western society. (For those paying close attention, yes: she blamed the Communists for capitalist prosperity.) She even hated the idea of modern housing developments, not because they were poorly built or unattractive but because "people like that" were not supposed to live in decent, safe, comfortable housing, because they had not earned it by being born a member of the genteel upper middle-class.
* In one short story, "The Case of the Rich Lady", she has a nouveau riche working-class woman sighing about how her life was so much better when she lived in squalor, worked hard at a boring, physically exhausting job for a pittance, and never had a bit of comfort or luxury in her life. She should have just kept to her station in life, not tried to be better than she was born. Of course, Christie used less obvious terms, but the implication is the same: the poor should keep their places and not try to act or live like higher-class, better people, because comfort and security will only make them unhappy.
Do you have any examples of these views from Christie’s works or her other writings? That website doesn’t provide any.
Again, some actual Christean examples would be useful. In some of her later novels she does use new housing estates as settings for her plots, but her conclusion is generally that “people are the same / there are good and bad types everywhere”, not that the uppity poor are getting above their station. As an example she is generous in her treatment of Cherry, Miss Marple’s hired help from the housing estate and compares her very favourably with previous “genteel” companions that Miss Marple has had.
Have you actually read that short story? I think the website to which you linked is drawing a very long bow to reach such a conclusion. To me it’s clear in that story that Christie is arguing that meaning and purpose are what gives life its value, and that these can be found in any state of life. Without them, either brute poverty, or life in a gilded cage, is empty and meaningless.