Under Western Eyes: Representations of the Orient and the “Dark Continent” in Agatha Christie’s Novels

Abstract

Crime fiction has captivated readers for decades, from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories to Agatha Christie's intriguing mysteries of Patricia Cornwell's best-selling novels. The genre's blend of suspense, intrigue and human psychology has contributed to its enduring allure, and particularly since the second half of the twentieth century crime fiction has also been accorded increasing attention within literary criticism. Within a Western literary tradition, the origins of crime fiction can be traced back at least to the early nineteenth century: Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was one of the genre's pioneers and, later, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) consolidated what has been termed "detective fiction", a subgenre of crime fiction also practised by Agatha Christie (1890-1976), the "queen of crime". As an easily recognisable genre, crime fiction was, therefore, cemented during a period that coincided with the heyday of European empires -including the British Empire- and, partly as a result, from the nineteenth century to the modern era, certain works within the crime fiction genre reflect the logics of colonial discourse, at times emphasised by the portrayal of detectives as colonial or imperial agents. Departing from these considerations, the present dissertation intends to provide an overview of crime fiction from its origins to the so-called "Golden Age" -the period to which Christie belongs- tracing the connection between empire and the discourse of criminality. This will be followed by a theoretical exploration of colonial discourse theories, bringing in the work of key thinkers such as Edward Said. Drawing on this theoretical framework, the second part of the study will provide a close reading of two novels by Agatha Christie -Death on the Nile (1937), which takes place in Egypt, and The Man in the Brown Suit (1924), which is set in Southern Africa -in an attempt to unveil how Christie's text contributed to constructing the colonial "Other" by reproducing Orientalist figurations and stereotypical images of the "Dark Continent".