Tumblr crosspost (15 September 2020)

[anghraine]

I re-read Death on the Nile to prepare for the adaptation and … whew, problematic does not begin to cover it.

#i still love jacqueline and linnet is interesting but MAXIMUM YIKES #don't even with it was another time #jrrt at least retconned some of his shit but christie did ...... not

Comments

[dragoness_e]

I haven't read that one since I was a teenager or in my tweens, and back then I was oblivious to anything but the most extreme bigotry (I didn't notice the racism in Lovecraft, but I did notice the homophobia in Adams' Horseclans novels).

I've re-read other Christie murder mysteries in recent years, and what struck me was the really nasty classism, more than racism. OTOH, not too many non-whites in her 1920s English villages to be racist about... But the classism just reeked. Servants always portrayed as, well, servile, timid, and stupid; social-climbers were always punished by the narrative--either by being murdered, or by being the murderers, because getting above your station is the worst of all crimes in Agatha Christie's novels.

[anghraine]

I remember noticing as a teen that Christie novels could be really weird about Italians, but it wasn't as glaring to me then as when I re-read this in 2020, for sure.

There is a ton of classism (and misogyny) in addition to the racism, certainly.