[christie] homophobia is homophobic
I just finished reading The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie. I actually enjoyed it a great deal; I love the narrator and his relationships with various other characters LIKE WHOA and I would reread this mystery -- unlike the ones that are enjoyable once but not worth a reread.
Except.
Ohmygod.
Mr. Pye.
[there are spoilers under here, though none for whodunnit]
Okay, so we meet him in Ch. 1, when we are meeting all the suspects townspeople:
Mr. Pye was an extremely ladylike plump little man, devoted to his petit point chairs, his Dresden shepherdesses and his collection of period furniture. He lived at Prior's Lodge in the grounds of which were the ruins of the old Priory dissolved at the Reformation.
It was hardly a man's house. The curtains and cushions were of pastel shades in the most expensive silks.
Mr. Pye's small plump hands quivered with excitement as he described and exhibited his treasures, and his voice rose to a falsetto squeak as he narrated the exciting circumstances in which he had brought his Italian bedstead home from Vienna.
The premise of the novel is that Someone Unknown is sending innocent villagers appalling notes accusing them of terrible, sexy, scandalous behavior. Mr. Pye receives such a note in Ch.1 in the presence of the narrator (and further events corroborate that this was a Genuine Anonymous Note), but we never find out what it said, even in the vaguest way. We have brief summaries of most of the other accusations (doctor seducing his patients! devoted brother and sister aren't really siblings! etc.), but nothing about queer Mr. Pye.
The letters take a perverse turn when they lead to a suicide and then seem to be implicated in a murder. Joanna has her suspicions about who the letter writer/murderer might be:
"they are sure it is a woman, aren't they?"
"You don't think it's a man?" I exclaimed incredulously.
"Not--not an ordinary man--but a certain kind of man. I'm thinking, really, of Mr. Pye."
"So Pye is your selection?"
"Don't you feel yourself that he's a possibility? He's the sort of person who might be lonely--and unhappy--and spiteful. Everyone, you see, rather laughs at him. Can't you see him secretly hating all the normal happy people, and taking a queer, perverse, artistic pleasure in what he was doing?"
"[The police detective/profiler] said a middle-aged spinster."
"Mr. Pye," said Joanna, "is a middle-aged spinster."
"A misfit," I said slowly.
"Very much so. He's rich, but money doesn't help. And I do feel he might be unbalanced. He is, really, rather a frightening little man."
The police consider Joanna's theory too:
"I don't think a man wrote the letters -- in fact, I'm sure of it -- and so is Graves -- always excepting our Mr. Pye, that is to say, who's got an abnormally female streak in his character"
It turns out Mr. Pye isn't involved except as a bystander. And he and his Sekrit Boyfriend live happily ever after. We don't actually have any sort of resolution re: Mr. Pye.
ARGH. I'm really so repulsed by reading that and then typing it all out that I can't make a coherent argument except homophobia. UGH.
Except.
Ohmygod.
Mr. Pye.
[there are spoilers under here, though none for whodunnit]
Okay, so we meet him in Ch. 1, when we are meeting all the suspects townspeople:
Mr. Pye was an extremely ladylike plump little man, devoted to his petit point chairs, his Dresden shepherdesses and his collection of period furniture. He lived at Prior's Lodge in the grounds of which were the ruins of the old Priory dissolved at the Reformation.
It was hardly a man's house. The curtains and cushions were of pastel shades in the most expensive silks.
Mr. Pye's small plump hands quivered with excitement as he described and exhibited his treasures, and his voice rose to a falsetto squeak as he narrated the exciting circumstances in which he had brought his Italian bedstead home from Vienna.
The premise of the novel is that Someone Unknown is sending innocent villagers appalling notes accusing them of terrible, sexy, scandalous behavior. Mr. Pye receives such a note in Ch.1 in the presence of the narrator (and further events corroborate that this was a Genuine Anonymous Note), but we never find out what it said, even in the vaguest way. We have brief summaries of most of the other accusations (doctor seducing his patients! devoted brother and sister aren't really siblings! etc.), but nothing about queer Mr. Pye.
The letters take a perverse turn when they lead to a suicide and then seem to be implicated in a murder. Joanna has her suspicions about who the letter writer/murderer might be:
"they are sure it is a woman, aren't they?"
"You don't think it's a man?" I exclaimed incredulously.
"Not--not an ordinary man--but a certain kind of man. I'm thinking, really, of Mr. Pye."
"So Pye is your selection?"
"Don't you feel yourself that he's a possibility? He's the sort of person who might be lonely--and unhappy--and spiteful. Everyone, you see, rather laughs at him. Can't you see him secretly hating all the normal happy people, and taking a queer, perverse, artistic pleasure in what he was doing?"
"[The police detective/profiler] said a middle-aged spinster."
"Mr. Pye," said Joanna, "is a middle-aged spinster."
"A misfit," I said slowly.
"Very much so. He's rich, but money doesn't help. And I do feel he might be unbalanced. He is, really, rather a frightening little man."
The police consider Joanna's theory too:
"I don't think a man wrote the letters -- in fact, I'm sure of it -- and so is Graves -- always excepting our Mr. Pye, that is to say, who's got an abnormally female streak in his character"
It turns out Mr. Pye isn't involved except as a bystander. And he and his Sekrit Boyfriend live happily ever after. We don't actually have any sort of resolution re: Mr. Pye.
ARGH. I'm really so repulsed by reading that and then typing it all out that I can't make a coherent argument except homophobia. UGH.