Agatha wrote the first detective novel The Mysterious Affair at Styles featuring Hercule Poirot, the famous detective with many “grey cells” in his mind。 Another female detective, Miss Maple, the protagonist in The Murder at the Vicarage。 Among her 66 detective novels, some have been adapted for films and TV series such as Murder on the Orient Express , Then There Were None , and Death on the Nile。 What’s more, Agatha Christie was awarded as the Dame Commander of the British Empire in 1971。 来自优Y尔L论W文Q网wWw.YouERw.com 加QQ7520~18766

Due to the remarkable achievement she made, the research about Agatha Christie is quite broad among foreign scholars。 British writer John Curran wrote a book called Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks。 He thought highly of Agatha on her high production, writing skills and imagination。 Some scholars believe that the reasoning literary guru is a thoroughly feminist。 Michelle Slung(1988) takes three female characters: the irrepressible protagonist Victoria Jones, Miss Oliver and Miss Marple for example to prove that Christie is a feminist。 Roberta Klein and Paul Korshin(1999) wrote in their paper that Christie grew up in a supportive matriarchy where,shaped by proto-feminist game play and fantasy, she developed a woman-centered perspective reflected in her lifelong maintenance of female support networks and her egalitarian view of courts hip, marriage, motherhood and career。 M。 Vipond wrote Agatha Christie’s women and in this essay she thinks there are many remarkable female characters in Christie’s books。 What’s more, these books show a picture of the life of the twentieth-century women。 But there are other scholars believe that Christie is a representation of anti-feminism because she can not get rid of the influence of the male-dominated society。 In Snobbery with Violence (1971), Colin Watson considers Christie’s fictional environment as “a sort of museum of nostalgia” (Colin Watson 171)。 In Patricia Maida and Nicholas Spornick’s Murder She Wrote (1982), Maida consider Christie as a conservative writer under the impact of male-dominated society。 In The Gentle Art of Murder, Earl Bargainnier views Christie as an ambivalent feminist。 She draws an accurate conclusion that Agatha’s novels have “a dual even ambivalent quality”。 

Most of the scholars in China hold the view that Christie has feminist tendencies to some extent, but this kind of feminist tendency is unstable and vacillating。 The reason of her tendencies is the social environment。 It determines that she can not be a thorough feminist representative。 刘文洋(2013) claims that as a member of the general society, Agatha maintained the traditional concept of Victorian women。 Men and women have different talent in many ways but women are in a subordinate position。 鲁向黎(2006) expresses that the simple feminine consciousness makes her creation different from the male text pattern of Conan Doyle, which can be embodied in the shaping of the detective image。 But deep-rooted male-dominated discourse also makes Agatha unconsciously to shape a lot of distorted female images with the male-centered culture。 刘齐平（2012）analyzes in “A Study of Agatha Christie’s Ambivalent View on Feminism in Endless Night and Evil Under the Sun” that Agatha’s ambivalent view is the influence of her self-consciousness。论文网

The purpose of this thesis is to explore Agatha Christie's female consciousness with both some references of the study of Agatha Christie's life and the analysis of some characters in Christie’s books。 

2。 Background of Agatha Christie

Before discussing Christie’s female consciousness, it is necessary to know some background information。 In following chapters, historical background, family background and marriage experience are going to be discussed。