Critics of the British detective novel have generally agreed that it is a conservative genre. The detective functions as the guardian of the status quo: he brings to justice criminals who have threatened middle-class stability by threatening the foundation of that stability—money. Not surprisingly, the genre itself is a product of the nineteenth century, for only this century saw the triumph of a class into which an outsider could buy his way—as he could not into the aristocracy—if only he could get his hands on capital. The getting of capital, therefore, motivates most criminals to murder in detective fiction, and the detective is worshiped by the middle classes who understand that their wealth and position will eventually be safe in his hands.

Given the conservatism of the genre, one can further predict that stereotypes of character will seldom be violated. Thus, upon opening an [Margery] Allingham, a [Dorothy] Sayers, or a Christie, one finds many of the familiar sexist attitudes toward women that one might otherwise expect these women writers to avoid. Christie offends the least, but still offends. (p. 144)

Christie is the mistress of plot rather than character. Her young men are tall, dark, and tense; her clergymen delightfully fuddled; her old solicitors discreet; her retired colonels bluff. How does she characterize women? Looking over the vastness of seventy—or is it eighty?—mysteries, we find a few inevitable types occurring again and again. Her women are garrulous, talking inconsequentially and at length about irrelevancies. If young, they are often stupid, blonde, redfingernailed gold diggers without a thought in their heads except men and money. Her servant girls are even more stupid, with slack mouths, "boiled gooseberry eyes," and a vocabulary limited to "Yes'm" and "No'm" unless, of course, they're being garrulous. Dark-haired women are apt to be ruthless or clever, redheads naïve and bouncy. Competent women, like Poirot's secretary Miss Lemon, are single, skinny, and sexless. A depressing cast of thousands.

Christie often prefaces her novels with thumbnail sketches [of the characters]. (pp. 149-50)

Granted that some of the sketches are meant to be misleading, this brief juxtaposing of Christie's male and female characters reveals her prejudice against women. The men are by and large presented as professional, active, and rational. The women are portrayed, on the other hand as social aberrants—exotics, witches, sea nymphs, woodsprites; as unattractive—snoopy, whining, foreign; or as mentally confused—"an imaginative if untidy mind."

In defense of Christie, one can argue that her novels are filled with students, secretaries, widows, headmistresses, actresses—independent women making it in society on their own brains, skills, and energies. Unfortunately, too many of Christie's competent women are portrayed as either deadly or destructive…. [Independent] and ambitious women are hostile and criminal, whereas the dizzy females are at least harmless. One hopes there is no significance to the fact that Christie's only murderous child is a girl.

Christie also exhibits sexism in depicting her detectives. Her most popular sleuth is Hercule Poirot. His fame rests on his "little grey cells": he is a purely cerebral armchair detective who solves his crimes by rationality and method. His geometrical apartment reflects his worship of regularity, precision, and order; his happiness is complete at the invention of square scones for his tea. While Christie smiles at Poirot's overweening pride in his luxurious moustaches and his patent leather shoes, his egotism is founded on a secure sense of self and male superiority. He praises rationality—a male attribute—and deplores intuition: in The ABC Murders … he reproves Hastings, his Watson, for suggesting that the great Poirot has employed instinct: "'Not instinct, Hastings. Instinct is a bad word. It is my knowledge, my experience—that tells me that something about that letter is wrong—'"

Not surprisingly, Miss Marple, Christie's spinstress detective, owes her success chiefly to intuition and nosiness. Operating on the theory that human nature is universal, she ferrets out the criminal by his resemblance to someone she has known in her native village of St. Mary Mead, since her knowledge of life extends little farther. Her method does, of course, involve analogy, a ratiocinative process (although her reliance on physical types has a disturbing similarity to the "science" of phrenology), but Christie presents Miss Marple as chiefly intuitive, operating with a sixth sense rather than the "little grey cells." Concomitantly, while Poirot looks upon crime rationally as a sociological ill, Miss Marple takes the reactionary medieval view that a tangible spirit of wickedness or evil walks abroad in the world: murderers can be detected by "the pricking of the thumbs." Again, unlike Poirot, Miss Marple lacks self-confidence; she apologizes, demurs, and patiently waits her turn to speak, a forbearance impossible to imagine in Poirot.

Mrs. Ariadne Oliver, a writer of detective fiction, also appears in Christie's novels as an amateur sleuth. Christie portrays her as a muddled, untidy woman whose trail is strewn with hairpins and apple cores. Mrs. Oliver's mind is as untidy as her appearance. And when she does come up with a right answer it's a lucky guess—in other words, her "feminine intuition." She almost always functions as a foil for Poirot's logical brilliance, and as the butt of his chauvinistic jokes…. (pp. 150-52)

Yet Christie is not as sexist as Sayers and Allingham in one respect. Both spinster and widow are self-sufficient, possessing a zest for life depending in no way on a man's support and approval. Neither manifests insecurity at being a single woman; both have interests that absorb them creatively. Neither succumbs to romance or marriage: Christie takes it for granted that without youth, beauty, or a husband a woman can still be fulfilled. (p. 152)