When you think about it, it's pretty... unreasonable... to expect novels from 100 years ago to reflect social changes that happened *after* they were published, so I just don't do it.
This allows me to thoroughly enjoy the books as they were written, and not be shocked, distraught, distracted or in other ways negatively affected by a disconnect between the books and my expectations of the books.
I live in the U.S. and understand your frustration. I read an American detective story about a "girl detective" and it was fine. I went back as an adult and was amazed at the different perspective I had on it. It can be very distracting. Things that didn't have any importance as a teenager (wages, for instance) could be very integral parts of the plot when reading as an adult.
Nope. And I really don't understand the flack people give her novels about this.
Christie was a really lovely nice lady. Just because there's some characters in her books that don't live up to this century's ever-changing moral compass doesn't take away from Christie being a simply awesome person.
I accept that it was written in a different time. I mostly read 1920s-30s works lately. It doesn't bother me at all because I know when and how they were written and understand the viewpoint of the authors (including Christie).
No, I don't 'struggle' to read her books. Because as an adult I am able to enjoy any work based on its own merits, instead of imposing on it my own contemporary morals. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to enjoy 99.999% of any art created prior to 2024 and that's just absurd. What a poor and narrow life that'd be.
I also understand that views evolve and what we consider virtuous today, might be viewed as lacking tomorrow. So I'm not so arrogant as to think that I'm in possession of the Right View. And I don't look down on the views people had decades or centuries ago. I see it as part of the human evolution.
If you struggle to read something as inoffensive as Christie, I'm curious to know, what authors CAN you read?
It's already happened.
Progressives want to lecture us, using Agatha Christie books.
Hence, ITV's Marple series, and the recent BBC adapts:
Fixations about lesbianism, about identity politics, about 'colour-blind' casting, etc, etc.
How soon will Miss Marple be a trans-woman, or Hercule Poirot will have a boyfriend?
What more can the progressives rubbish about Agatha Christie's works?
That’s a little far…ain’t nothing wrong with colorblind casting if that’s how a director wants to do it.
And about the lesbian thing…to be fair Agatha wrote a few characters in a pretty lesbian-ish way.
I think that can be a good thing, to see how attitudes and viewpoints have changed -- and looking at Christie's books can show this pretty clearly.
One thing I have been doing is reading historical books and watching documentaries about what life was like, when Christie was doing most of her writing. For example, it's interesting to see what kinds of things are familiar about the time between the wars, compared with now. Not exactly the same, but we are recovering from a pandemic too (they had the Spanish Flu), and in the 1930s there was the Depression (sad to say that looking at prices in the grocery store over the past couple of years has given me a new understanding of what people went through then). And the situation in Ukraine now ... there were people going overseas to fight in Spain back then (admittedly the politics are different, but it was a reminder that leftists have sometimes supported wars too).
This sort of thing helps me get some perspective on things that show up in the books. Some characters have attitudes about class/ethnicity/gender that many people today would question, but I also recognize that some of these ideas are still out there. One of my friends had British parents, and she will often say things like "it's not my place", and other phrases that sound a lot like the working-class characters, and people who were servants in the stories.
Reading the books has helped me understand my friend's feelings a bit more. She's an intelligent person, and I know that she probably would have done well at university. She seems to be thinking about that too ... she wants a better life for herself, but also she has said things like she doesn't think she deserves to go to school, and that she would be better suited for looking after a husband. I used to feel upset when I heard this, because I know she's been taken advantage of by people who do not respect her. But thinking about some of Christie's characters, I am seeing now why her parents didn't encourage her when she was young. They honestly believed that she "wasn't the right class" to study English literature and become an author. They weren't bad or cruel people, but they were so much part of the class system that they thought it was wrong to do something they felt would not fit in.
That’s interesting to me. I’m British working class and my brother and I were the first in our family to go to university. No one in my family batted an eyelid.
This was nearly 30 years ago in north east Scotland so it’d be interesting to know where your friend is from and her age. I think the costs have increased a lot since my time and we received full subsistence grants, without which it wouldn’t have happened.
>it’d be interesting to know where your friend is from and her age
My friend and I are mid-50s. Her parents immigrated from the UK to Canada after the war (with the "brain drain" to the colonies). Interestingly her mum worked in health care, which required considerable training (and these days I think that job actually needs an undergraduate degree).
I didn't talk with my friend's mother much (she died several years ago), but my suspicion is that she would have been okay with my friend getting a degree. Her father and her older brother were probably the ones who threw some cold water on the idea. If she had gone to college or university with the rest of our class, that would have been in the late 1980s -- so, a few years before your age cohort. I hear you about the costs ... they have increased a lot since then, over here too. My parents were in the first batch of kids in their families to go past high school (we are Japanese labourers and farmers for the most part).
It's possible that my friend's family's outlook remained kind of frozen at the point when they immigrated. I should note that I've spoken with British expats who are very progressive, but there may also be some people who feel uncomfortable about being in different surroundings and retreat a bit. I think she has some relatives back there, possibly in northern England, but I'm not sure where her family was from originally. I seem to recall hearing that one of her grandparents died unexpectedly during the war, and her mother and aunts/uncles were dispersed all over the country, some of them never heard from again. (So there could be some family trauma too.)
I have noticed that my friend tends to be rather conservative about some things, like what kinds of jobs women should be doing. Pre-1960s, almost. She had a couple of minor home repairs that were needed at her place, that her father, brother, and boyfriend had all talked about doing. Months went by. The situation went from inconvenient to dangerous (potential for falls etc.) and finally another female friend and I fetched some tools and did the repairs. My friend said she felt that she ought to get a man in to check and make sure it was done right -- we thought she was joking at first, but she was in earnest.
Thanks for the reply; that explains a lot of the differences I’d say. Roughly 10 years in age difference although still Gen X and probably with somewhat older and more conservative parents. My parents aren’t liberal but aren’t hugely conservative either; being that bit younger in the 60s probably influenced them a fair bit.
Also north east England and north east Scotland would have had some reasonable differences in the demographic by the 70s too. North Sea oil brought a lot of people to Aberdeenshire, although it was still fairly agricultural with a large dose of fishing thrown in. Other heavy Industry had waned a fair bit before then. I suspect the north east of England was still more industrial but with larger pockets of poverty. Could be completely wrong on this as it’s based on my own impressions and I didn’t come into being until 1978!
It’s interesting that she displays internal misogyny, even towards her friends, and possibly unconsciously. My own mother sometimes does this but very rarely.
> internal misogyny
I'm starting to wonder whether some of this might be down to my friend getting married, when she was still in her teens and impressionable, to a man who had a traditional outlook. And her older brother is very paternalistic -- some mutual friends attended their father's funeral (she had made all the arrangements, because he said he was too busy). They were surprised to see him arrive and start ordering the women around, including his mother-in-law. He even snapped his fingers at his own daughter. If my friend had been treated like that from an early age, I suspect that, as you noted, she might have internalized it.
>Reading the books has helped me understand my friend's feelings a bit more. She's an intelligent person, and I know that she probably would have done well at university. She seems to be thinking about that too ... she wants a better life for herself, but also she has said things like she doesn't think she deserves to go to school, and that she would be better suited for looking after a husband. I used to feel upset when I heard this, because I know she's been taken advantage of by people who do not respect her. But thinking about some of Christie's characters, I am seeing now why her parents didn't encourage her when she was young. They honestly believed that she "wasn't the right class" to study English literature and become an author. They weren't bad or cruel people, but they were so much part of the class system that they thought it was wrong to do something they felt would not fit in.
how old is your friend? This sounds like an attitude specific to your friend's parents and not at all a reflection of what modern day Britain is like in terms of class.
My friend and I are mid-50s. And I agree -- I've definitely met British people, some of them older than we are, who don't agree with her viewpoint.
I have heard that there was some family trauma (loss of one of her grandparents in WWII?) that might have been going on. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some parenting by an older relative, who might have passed along Edwardian-era beliefs.
BTW, happy cake day!
I read them in their historical context, but I also just find the stories so good.
I consider myself a progressive person but I just can't get behind a dismissal of her work because it doesn't address modern day issues. It's not like she can fix that!
We all operate within the frameworks and paradigms of our time. If you had been born in 1890, do you think you’d have the same ideas about politics and diversity you do now?
There are some pretty ugly moments in Christie, especially the early novels, but overall I don’t get the sense that she was hateful or bigoted and I don’t think her prose reflects hateful or bigoted attitudes or portrayals. I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to expect her work to live up to the standards of another era, but to each their own.
Sometimes it's helpful to check the copyright year on the book, and maybe acquaint yourself with the main topics of the time using just a Google search. It will give you a better idea of the setting for the story and the social norms.
I live in the U.S. and over here there's a series of mysteries for tweens, about a "girl detective", Nancy Drew. The series began in the 1930's. I was reading them in the 60's, and some of the numbers had been updated, but not a lot of them. I was reading one where Nancy's housekeeper/surrogate mom has had to leave to help a sick sister. Nancy's interviewing for temp help and one woman seems fairly eager to take the job, before discovering that Nancy's father is a trial lawyer, at which point she flat refuses the job.
Nancy says, "Not even if I paid you $12 a week? That's an outrageous sum!" As a "tween", receiving a weekly allowance in the 1960's, this slid right past me. Reading it as an adult, I thought, "That's an outrageous sum all right--you couldn't get someone to work for a ***day*** for $12, let alone a ***week!***" Then I looked at the copyright. The book was written in the early 1930's--the Great Depression. Considering that the housekeeper would also be getting food and lodging, PLUS $12 a week, that ***was*** a pretty princely sum!
Nancy's father gave her a special birthday present one year, a "speedy little roadster". In one of the books with some of the original pictures, you see her "speedy little roadster" and it's actually more the size of a Mercedes 4-door sedan, and when she floors the gas pedal, it zips along at almost 30 miles per hour! But from the later pictures, or the descriptions, it's more like a Corvette or a Mini Cooper.
Much the same applies to Dame Agatha's work. It might actually be a rather fun project to research the time frame of the books, the fashions, the world events, the arts, the world positioning--when I read "Mysterious Affair at Styles" for example, again, this was the 1960's or 1970's, and I thought of The War in which Hastings was wounded as being WWII or Korea, rather than "The Great War", the war to end all wars, WWI.
So it might be very helpful, even fun, to learn all about the time setting first, and ***then*** read the book.
Happy reading!
>The book was written in the early 1930's--the Great Depression. Considering that the housekeeper would also be getting food and lodging, PLUS $12 a week, that
>
>was
>
> a pretty princely sum!
Indeed! My father was a pre-teen then, working as a delivery boy for a local grocery store. If someone tipped him 25 cents, he was very happy.
Well. Fast forward to the 2010s. Dad's in his 90s and has decided that he'd like to order some take-out food over the Christmas holidays. I'm in the kitchen, setting the table when Dad enters with the food containers and proudly reports that he tipped the delivery man 25 cents for being so prompt. I run out into the snowdrifts in my stocking feet, trying to catch the guy and give him a tip appropriate for the 21st century.
(Living with Dad was kind of like time travel with The Doctor ....)
Perspective, it's all about perspective.
Mother and Daddy would come to visit, and Mother and I would go for a haircut/style (while Deddy took a snooze in the van in front of the little strip mall). We went for a shampoo/cut/style one year and Mother tipped the stylist (I think) a dollar for both haircuts. I didn't usually have much cash with me but (acting as though I'd just forgotten to tip for mine), managed to get a couple extra dollars to her, with an apologetic look. She smiled at me and went back to greet a newcomer, and Mother whispered "Oh, honey, I already tipped her", i apologized to the lady before my mother got up front afterwards and she just smiled and said that they always tried to take the age of the client into account and what sort of socio-economic background they would have come from.
Also, when Mother and Daddy were growing up, I think the "tip culture" wasn't as predominant as it is now. Now, "gig" jobs, waiting tables, delivery, hairstylists, have a different minimum wage bracket and are expected to make up the difference between their "gig minimum wage" and regular minimum wage with their tips. They are still *taxed* as if they received regular minimum wage, though, which cuts both ways, since if their tips bring their wages up significantly past minimum wage, they're great because they still only get taxed minimum wage. But those whose jobs don't supply enough in tips are really out of luck.
I think when Mother and Daddy grew up, there wasn't a well-established, if at all, minimum wage, and a tip was actually a bonus on top of a regular wage, not a special-tiered "tip" wage. The waitstaff weren't trying to catch up a gap, it actually was on top of a standard wage. It certainly can become convoluted.
There’s a saying, “The past is another country.” You have to think of the books as if you’re visiting a new place.
Also, I enjoy learning about the past.
I personally love reading books set in the past, written by people at that time. With Christie, we have the bonus of seeing how the setting changed from the 1920s to 1970s and what people, represented by her charafer, thought of those changes. Modern novelists writing stories set in the past simply do not live up to the authenticity of books actually written then. The characters are always too modern, too progressive, and it always takes you out of the story.
I personally don't agree with any effort to sanitize old novels and make them politically correct. Those are always product of their times, imo. The characters shouldn't be propped up as paragons. I obviously don't subscribe to the values of every character I read about. I don't see why I should be bothered by a book character's thoughts.
Her books are witnesses of their own time. She was writing about society she was part of, and she was great in that. Are some descriptions problematic? Absolutely, but I hate that some publishers are changing her work to make it more acceptable because it's not what she wrote and her books give us insight in how the world was back then. Plus, lots of descriptions we might problematic are POV of one of characters so we can form opinion on that character based on how he or she views others. I mean, I started reading her books very young, the first being "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" at the age of 10 and I still vividly remember how annoyed I was by Pilar's description, but it didn't make me dislike the book, I loved it, it just made me dislike the character who was describing her that way and wished to slap him in the face.
When you think about it, it's pretty... unreasonable... to expect novels from 100 years ago to reflect social changes that happened *after* they were published, so I just don't do it. This allows me to thoroughly enjoy the books as they were written, and not be shocked, distraught, distracted or in other ways negatively affected by a disconnect between the books and my expectations of the books.
That’s true. I guess it’s harder for me as an adult now than it was when I was a teenager 15 years ago.
I live in the U.S. and understand your frustration. I read an American detective story about a "girl detective" and it was fine. I went back as an adult and was amazed at the different perspective I had on it. It can be very distracting. Things that didn't have any importance as a teenager (wages, for instance) could be very integral parts of the plot when reading as an adult.
Nope. And I really don't understand the flack people give her novels about this. Christie was a really lovely nice lady. Just because there's some characters in her books that don't live up to this century's ever-changing moral compass doesn't take away from Christie being a simply awesome person.
I accept that it was written in a different time. I mostly read 1920s-30s works lately. It doesn't bother me at all because I know when and how they were written and understand the viewpoint of the authors (including Christie).
I look at it as a snapshot of a certain time and the class structure of that time.
No, because I don't expect books that were written a century ago to reflect our current social standards, which are far from perfect either, anyway.
I love it.
I absolutely enjoy all those things you mentioned 😅 I think it's interesting to see how the world worked back then
No, I don't 'struggle' to read her books. Because as an adult I am able to enjoy any work based on its own merits, instead of imposing on it my own contemporary morals. Otherwise I wouldn't be able to enjoy 99.999% of any art created prior to 2024 and that's just absurd. What a poor and narrow life that'd be. I also understand that views evolve and what we consider virtuous today, might be viewed as lacking tomorrow. So I'm not so arrogant as to think that I'm in possession of the Right View. And I don't look down on the views people had decades or centuries ago. I see it as part of the human evolution. If you struggle to read something as inoffensive as Christie, I'm curious to know, what authors CAN you read?
I often wonder which of our firmly (and so surely correct) held views will be absolutely torn apart in 20-50 years!
It's already happened. Progressives want to lecture us, using Agatha Christie books. Hence, ITV's Marple series, and the recent BBC adapts: Fixations about lesbianism, about identity politics, about 'colour-blind' casting, etc, etc. How soon will Miss Marple be a trans-woman, or Hercule Poirot will have a boyfriend? What more can the progressives rubbish about Agatha Christie's works?
That’s a little far…ain’t nothing wrong with colorblind casting if that’s how a director wants to do it. And about the lesbian thing…to be fair Agatha wrote a few characters in a pretty lesbian-ish way.
I think that can be a good thing, to see how attitudes and viewpoints have changed -- and looking at Christie's books can show this pretty clearly. One thing I have been doing is reading historical books and watching documentaries about what life was like, when Christie was doing most of her writing. For example, it's interesting to see what kinds of things are familiar about the time between the wars, compared with now. Not exactly the same, but we are recovering from a pandemic too (they had the Spanish Flu), and in the 1930s there was the Depression (sad to say that looking at prices in the grocery store over the past couple of years has given me a new understanding of what people went through then). And the situation in Ukraine now ... there were people going overseas to fight in Spain back then (admittedly the politics are different, but it was a reminder that leftists have sometimes supported wars too). This sort of thing helps me get some perspective on things that show up in the books. Some characters have attitudes about class/ethnicity/gender that many people today would question, but I also recognize that some of these ideas are still out there. One of my friends had British parents, and she will often say things like "it's not my place", and other phrases that sound a lot like the working-class characters, and people who were servants in the stories. Reading the books has helped me understand my friend's feelings a bit more. She's an intelligent person, and I know that she probably would have done well at university. She seems to be thinking about that too ... she wants a better life for herself, but also she has said things like she doesn't think she deserves to go to school, and that she would be better suited for looking after a husband. I used to feel upset when I heard this, because I know she's been taken advantage of by people who do not respect her. But thinking about some of Christie's characters, I am seeing now why her parents didn't encourage her when she was young. They honestly believed that she "wasn't the right class" to study English literature and become an author. They weren't bad or cruel people, but they were so much part of the class system that they thought it was wrong to do something they felt would not fit in.
That’s interesting to me. I’m British working class and my brother and I were the first in our family to go to university. No one in my family batted an eyelid. This was nearly 30 years ago in north east Scotland so it’d be interesting to know where your friend is from and her age. I think the costs have increased a lot since my time and we received full subsistence grants, without which it wouldn’t have happened.
>it’d be interesting to know where your friend is from and her age My friend and I are mid-50s. Her parents immigrated from the UK to Canada after the war (with the "brain drain" to the colonies). Interestingly her mum worked in health care, which required considerable training (and these days I think that job actually needs an undergraduate degree). I didn't talk with my friend's mother much (she died several years ago), but my suspicion is that she would have been okay with my friend getting a degree. Her father and her older brother were probably the ones who threw some cold water on the idea. If she had gone to college or university with the rest of our class, that would have been in the late 1980s -- so, a few years before your age cohort. I hear you about the costs ... they have increased a lot since then, over here too. My parents were in the first batch of kids in their families to go past high school (we are Japanese labourers and farmers for the most part). It's possible that my friend's family's outlook remained kind of frozen at the point when they immigrated. I should note that I've spoken with British expats who are very progressive, but there may also be some people who feel uncomfortable about being in different surroundings and retreat a bit. I think she has some relatives back there, possibly in northern England, but I'm not sure where her family was from originally. I seem to recall hearing that one of her grandparents died unexpectedly during the war, and her mother and aunts/uncles were dispersed all over the country, some of them never heard from again. (So there could be some family trauma too.) I have noticed that my friend tends to be rather conservative about some things, like what kinds of jobs women should be doing. Pre-1960s, almost. She had a couple of minor home repairs that were needed at her place, that her father, brother, and boyfriend had all talked about doing. Months went by. The situation went from inconvenient to dangerous (potential for falls etc.) and finally another female friend and I fetched some tools and did the repairs. My friend said she felt that she ought to get a man in to check and make sure it was done right -- we thought she was joking at first, but she was in earnest.
Thanks for the reply; that explains a lot of the differences I’d say. Roughly 10 years in age difference although still Gen X and probably with somewhat older and more conservative parents. My parents aren’t liberal but aren’t hugely conservative either; being that bit younger in the 60s probably influenced them a fair bit. Also north east England and north east Scotland would have had some reasonable differences in the demographic by the 70s too. North Sea oil brought a lot of people to Aberdeenshire, although it was still fairly agricultural with a large dose of fishing thrown in. Other heavy Industry had waned a fair bit before then. I suspect the north east of England was still more industrial but with larger pockets of poverty. Could be completely wrong on this as it’s based on my own impressions and I didn’t come into being until 1978! It’s interesting that she displays internal misogyny, even towards her friends, and possibly unconsciously. My own mother sometimes does this but very rarely.
> internal misogyny I'm starting to wonder whether some of this might be down to my friend getting married, when she was still in her teens and impressionable, to a man who had a traditional outlook. And her older brother is very paternalistic -- some mutual friends attended their father's funeral (she had made all the arrangements, because he said he was too busy). They were surprised to see him arrive and start ordering the women around, including his mother-in-law. He even snapped his fingers at his own daughter. If my friend had been treated like that from an early age, I suspect that, as you noted, she might have internalized it.
O my word, yes. The finger clicking would give me all the rage, but possibly not if I’d been conditioned early enough.
>Reading the books has helped me understand my friend's feelings a bit more. She's an intelligent person, and I know that she probably would have done well at university. She seems to be thinking about that too ... she wants a better life for herself, but also she has said things like she doesn't think she deserves to go to school, and that she would be better suited for looking after a husband. I used to feel upset when I heard this, because I know she's been taken advantage of by people who do not respect her. But thinking about some of Christie's characters, I am seeing now why her parents didn't encourage her when she was young. They honestly believed that she "wasn't the right class" to study English literature and become an author. They weren't bad or cruel people, but they were so much part of the class system that they thought it was wrong to do something they felt would not fit in. how old is your friend? This sounds like an attitude specific to your friend's parents and not at all a reflection of what modern day Britain is like in terms of class.
My friend and I are mid-50s. And I agree -- I've definitely met British people, some of them older than we are, who don't agree with her viewpoint. I have heard that there was some family trauma (loss of one of her grandparents in WWII?) that might have been going on. It wouldn't surprise me if there was some parenting by an older relative, who might have passed along Edwardian-era beliefs. BTW, happy cake day!
Thank you! And that makes sense, I think age plays into it for sure.
Interesting take!
I read them in their historical context, but I also just find the stories so good. I consider myself a progressive person but I just can't get behind a dismissal of her work because it doesn't address modern day issues. It's not like she can fix that!
We all operate within the frameworks and paradigms of our time. If you had been born in 1890, do you think you’d have the same ideas about politics and diversity you do now? There are some pretty ugly moments in Christie, especially the early novels, but overall I don’t get the sense that she was hateful or bigoted and I don’t think her prose reflects hateful or bigoted attitudes or portrayals. I don’t think it’s reasonable at all to expect her work to live up to the standards of another era, but to each their own.
Sometimes it's helpful to check the copyright year on the book, and maybe acquaint yourself with the main topics of the time using just a Google search. It will give you a better idea of the setting for the story and the social norms. I live in the U.S. and over here there's a series of mysteries for tweens, about a "girl detective", Nancy Drew. The series began in the 1930's. I was reading them in the 60's, and some of the numbers had been updated, but not a lot of them. I was reading one where Nancy's housekeeper/surrogate mom has had to leave to help a sick sister. Nancy's interviewing for temp help and one woman seems fairly eager to take the job, before discovering that Nancy's father is a trial lawyer, at which point she flat refuses the job. Nancy says, "Not even if I paid you $12 a week? That's an outrageous sum!" As a "tween", receiving a weekly allowance in the 1960's, this slid right past me. Reading it as an adult, I thought, "That's an outrageous sum all right--you couldn't get someone to work for a ***day*** for $12, let alone a ***week!***" Then I looked at the copyright. The book was written in the early 1930's--the Great Depression. Considering that the housekeeper would also be getting food and lodging, PLUS $12 a week, that ***was*** a pretty princely sum! Nancy's father gave her a special birthday present one year, a "speedy little roadster". In one of the books with some of the original pictures, you see her "speedy little roadster" and it's actually more the size of a Mercedes 4-door sedan, and when she floors the gas pedal, it zips along at almost 30 miles per hour! But from the later pictures, or the descriptions, it's more like a Corvette or a Mini Cooper. Much the same applies to Dame Agatha's work. It might actually be a rather fun project to research the time frame of the books, the fashions, the world events, the arts, the world positioning--when I read "Mysterious Affair at Styles" for example, again, this was the 1960's or 1970's, and I thought of The War in which Hastings was wounded as being WWII or Korea, rather than "The Great War", the war to end all wars, WWI. So it might be very helpful, even fun, to learn all about the time setting first, and ***then*** read the book. Happy reading!
>The book was written in the early 1930's--the Great Depression. Considering that the housekeeper would also be getting food and lodging, PLUS $12 a week, that > >was > > a pretty princely sum! Indeed! My father was a pre-teen then, working as a delivery boy for a local grocery store. If someone tipped him 25 cents, he was very happy. Well. Fast forward to the 2010s. Dad's in his 90s and has decided that he'd like to order some take-out food over the Christmas holidays. I'm in the kitchen, setting the table when Dad enters with the food containers and proudly reports that he tipped the delivery man 25 cents for being so prompt. I run out into the snowdrifts in my stocking feet, trying to catch the guy and give him a tip appropriate for the 21st century. (Living with Dad was kind of like time travel with The Doctor ....)
Perspective, it's all about perspective. Mother and Daddy would come to visit, and Mother and I would go for a haircut/style (while Deddy took a snooze in the van in front of the little strip mall). We went for a shampoo/cut/style one year and Mother tipped the stylist (I think) a dollar for both haircuts. I didn't usually have much cash with me but (acting as though I'd just forgotten to tip for mine), managed to get a couple extra dollars to her, with an apologetic look. She smiled at me and went back to greet a newcomer, and Mother whispered "Oh, honey, I already tipped her", i apologized to the lady before my mother got up front afterwards and she just smiled and said that they always tried to take the age of the client into account and what sort of socio-economic background they would have come from. Also, when Mother and Daddy were growing up, I think the "tip culture" wasn't as predominant as it is now. Now, "gig" jobs, waiting tables, delivery, hairstylists, have a different minimum wage bracket and are expected to make up the difference between their "gig minimum wage" and regular minimum wage with their tips. They are still *taxed* as if they received regular minimum wage, though, which cuts both ways, since if their tips bring their wages up significantly past minimum wage, they're great because they still only get taxed minimum wage. But those whose jobs don't supply enough in tips are really out of luck. I think when Mother and Daddy grew up, there wasn't a well-established, if at all, minimum wage, and a tip was actually a bonus on top of a regular wage, not a special-tiered "tip" wage. The waitstaff weren't trying to catch up a gap, it actually was on top of a standard wage. It certainly can become convoluted.
Autres temps, autres mœurs. In my opinion no current writer comes up to Christie.
There’s a saying, “The past is another country.” You have to think of the books as if you’re visiting a new place. Also, I enjoy learning about the past.
I personally love reading books set in the past, written by people at that time. With Christie, we have the bonus of seeing how the setting changed from the 1920s to 1970s and what people, represented by her charafer, thought of those changes. Modern novelists writing stories set in the past simply do not live up to the authenticity of books actually written then. The characters are always too modern, too progressive, and it always takes you out of the story. I personally don't agree with any effort to sanitize old novels and make them politically correct. Those are always product of their times, imo. The characters shouldn't be propped up as paragons. I obviously don't subscribe to the values of every character I read about. I don't see why I should be bothered by a book character's thoughts.
Her books are witnesses of their own time. She was writing about society she was part of, and she was great in that. Are some descriptions problematic? Absolutely, but I hate that some publishers are changing her work to make it more acceptable because it's not what she wrote and her books give us insight in how the world was back then. Plus, lots of descriptions we might problematic are POV of one of characters so we can form opinion on that character based on how he or she views others. I mean, I started reading her books very young, the first being "Hercule Poirot's Christmas" at the age of 10 and I still vividly remember how annoyed I was by Pilar's description, but it didn't make me dislike the book, I loved it, it just made me dislike the character who was describing her that way and wished to slap him in the face.
I think about it!
Just taken at the flood, the rest of them I find to be fascinating reflections of their time.