 |
| Image Courtesy: Google |
To the world, at large, she is the Queen of Crime. But the real Agathe Christie is not to be found in the pages of her 66 detective novels and 15 short stories. Instead, one truly looking for her would have to go behind the curtains of Mary Westmacott and the six romantic stories written under the pseudonym.
Standing at the height of her success as Agatha Christie, she probably yearned to voice her own longings. Traces of these longings can be found in her detective novels. Both Poirot and Miss Marple have a history of unfulfilled love. Tommy and Tuppence seem like a wishful exception. But deeper than her detectives, her longing reflects in her victims, especially those who are a victim of love.
However, Christie found her true outlet under a false identity. Her six romantic novels are as far away from the utopian world of Mills & Boons as they possibly could be. In the pages of these six novels, she identifies love in its most destructive forms; not only that between a man and a woman but that in every relation that one human being shares with another. Each love more binding, yet liberating, than the other; each more catastrophic than the other.
Christie's close bond with her mother and sister, her loss of her mother, her divorce and her rediscovery of love, all leap out of the pages. By the time she found true companionship, she had possibly come to realize the futility of looking for love and, yet it being an endless search. And this double-edged sword became the basis for the six Westmacott works.
They did not receive as much success as the Christie series. Nevertheless, it was here that Christie felt most comfortable, content and accomplished. She was more at home in the loss and pain experienced by her characters, possibly because of her own series of losses, than in the accomplishment of her detectives seeking justice. The Westmacott books are a clear indicator of her acknowledgement of the fact that there can never be a 'happily ever after'. Life is, indeed, about trial, losses and failures and, in the end, making the best of your situation.
Very rarely known for anything else but her detective works, Agatha Christie became the pseudonym to the real Mary Westmacott.
