Caroline Derry: Agatha Christie and the Crime That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Event WebsiteCaroline Derry’s talk will explore how Agatha Christie represented lesbians in her post-war novels, and the insights they offer into the criminal justice system’s attitudes to lesbianism.
Several Agatha Christie novels depict lesbian relationships. The best-known, A Murder is Announced (1950) and Nemesis (1971), portray them very differently. The contrast between the devoted and socially accepted couple in A Murder is Announced and the dysfunctional love at the heart of Nemesis is stark.
In the same period, the criminal law’s approach to relationships between women also changed. Nonetheless, it seemed to lag several decades behind medical and sexological developments. By looking at Christie’s novels and real-life cases together, we can see that this was not simply a symptom of out-of-touch judges. The reasons, to be discussed in this talk, are both more complex and more interesting!
Caroline Derry is a senior lecturer in criminal law at The Open University, author of Lesbianism and the Criminal Law: Three centuries of regulation in England and Wales, and a lifelong fan of Agatha Christie
