English Masculinity and Its Others

Abstract

In her detective fiction, Agatha Christie presents masculine heroism as a self-consciously vulnerable construction. A concerted discussion of Christie’s work and contemporary sexological theories situates the rise of the detective novel in a period when categories for human sexual identity were beginning to become available. The relationship between her detective Hercule Poirot and his friend Captain Hastings is examined as a parodic response to the need for homosocial companionship in popular literature. Christie’s presentation of a colonial hero in Cards on the Table undermines itself by linking him repeatedly with violence. Over the course of the Second World War, her descriptions of “queer young men” evolved, becoming more conscious and condemning of prejudice.