Post 7

We used to do a project on Agatha Christie and her works. The project was in the form of a report. During that report, we introduced the class system of England at the time she lives.
And we are asked to show the reasons why we want to talk about the class system. The following article is my response to this question:


Talking about England at that time, one thing that I could not avoid mentioning was the class system. We think it is important to give the readers a basic impression about the class system because agatha Christie and her works were greatly influenced by the class system. There were altogether three classes and Christie was born in the leisured class. Her family had been enjoying a relaxed life as they did not have to work for a living. Her father’s death changed all this. The great change left great impact on Christie. Many characters in her works are from the leisured class and many stories were set among the leisured class. Though her books were mainly set among the leisured class, the other two classes were also mentioned frequently. In murder on the orient express, Christie even put people from all the classes in the train. We can see that the class system is an important part of her books.

Another purpose for talking about the class system is to help readers understand people’s behaviors in Christie’s books. Servants, middle class, rich people are always seen in her stories and they were from different classes. So some knowledge of the class system can make readers more clear about the relationships between classes and they get to know why the characters in her books behave that way.

In this part, we also talk about the shift from different classes because we think it is necessary to show the evolution of the class system. The industrial revolution was a landmark. Before that, people’s social status were determined by their birth while after the industrial revolution, shift between classes were possible. To give an example of how the shift happened, we use the case the tape-measure murder in which a working class person became a middle class. This is a typical example though the shift happened in an illegal way.