Abstract
A great deal of rhetoric following the Second World War concerned the sanctity of the nuclear family. Agatha Christie’s post-war detective fiction, however, suggests a need to radically reconceptualize the family if it is to survive in changing times. Families in Sleeping Murder, Crooked House and They Do it with Mirrors are all downsized and shaken up. Like many subsequent anti-family queer theorists, such as Lee Edelman, Christie confronts the rhetorical image of the innocent child to mount an attack on cultural constructions of family. This chapter explores incestuous desire, children who kill and adoption to assess Christie’s contribution to post-war discussions.
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Bernthal, J.C. (2016). Queer Children, Crooked Houses. In: Queering Agatha Christie. Crime Files. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33533-9_5
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Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-33532-2
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-33533-9
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