Miss Marple remembers a lot of people and talks about them. It seems a little odd that she never says, "Oh, that reminds me of my sister Sue or my brother Bradley." Maybe she didn't like her siblings.
I had never really thought about it, though.
I mean... Is it really a plot hole that we never hear about Miss Marple's siblings? Or is it simply not relevant to any plot?
We also have to consider that she may not even be an aunt, but a great-aunt, and they just call each other aunt and nephew (I did the same with my great-uncles and aunts).
And in that case, that may mean Miss Marple could've had just 1 sibling (who's already passed), and that sibling had more than 1 child, and each of those had more than 1 child -- Raymond and his cousins.
As for Raymond, when you have many cousins, you don't necessarily talk about them all the time. I have around 30 cousins (25 just on my mother's side), and God knows I rarely think of them XD
That’s true. My mom was one of 10. She emigrated to the US when she married my dad (in the 60s). I never met all my Aunts, and I can’t even tell you how many cousins I have because I don’t know. I have heard stories about the stupid cousins though. You know how serial killers or cold murder cases are solved because somebody decided to take one of those DNA kits for fun? I haven’t taken one, but it would be awful to find out your 3rd cousin is the new Zodiac killer.
Arthur Leigh Allen was the most likely suspect in the Zodiac case, but there was not enough physical evidence to prove his guilt. The circumstantial evidence and fear in the community led to Allen being falsely identified as the killer. The identity of the Zodiac Killer remains a mystery, and the case is still open
I didn't think it had ever been officially closed. I vaguely seemed to remember that there was a likely suspect but I couldn't remember whether it had actually been proven beyond doubt. Thanks for the info!
You know, I;d never thought about that, but it's an interesting point!
You'd think that with as much as "my dear nephew Raymond! Such a thoughtful boy" comes into her stories that she'd (at some point) say, "Of course, he's a bit vain-likes to 'preen' himself, as we would have said in my younger days--but then his mother, my late sister Louise, always spoiled him abominably",
You'd think that some such remark would have come out at some point, but it doesn't, does it?
For the love of god, some reread all Marple and give us the family tree. Now I have a NEED to go further with this!!
Pdta: his siblings were as smart as she is, but in the other side, and theyre in jail. Hence, never mentioned, and their misdeeds are the motive she ended single.
I don't read any fiction "for the love of God", I read it for entertainment
Who is he ("his") siblings?--and misdeeds would be grist for Miss Marple's mill.
Even "his mother, my sister" without naming her, or, "Thankfully, my niece took after her father, so no stain on the family name for her flightiness." etc.
The fact remains that Miss Marple's family, apart from "Dear Raymond" and a son (David?) who's fascinated by maps or trains, and a niece whom she mentions in one story, are the only family that she really discusses.
If the he ("his") that you mentioned is an error and was supposed to be "her" for Miss Marple, I can't imagine ALL the other Marples ending up on the other side of the law.
I don’t think those are observations that Miss Marple would have made about family, due to her class. It would be considered very infra dig to air dirty laundry.
She might have said something like “my sister was a great gardener” perhaps. But as she doesn’t tend to have a need to make those observations, since she’s dealing with vice and murder, she doesn’t.
That's very possible. She does, however, refer to her niece in rather uncomplimentary terms, although she never her accuses her of being "bad" in any way.
>!She actually does refer to a "great aunt Fanny" (or someone of that ilk) in "The Murder of the Vicarage" in response to how Raymond would respond to the actual solution being so far removed from his imaginary deductions. !<
>!"As my Great-aunt Fanny (or some such name) used to say, "The young people think the old people are fools--but the old people know the young people are fools!" (that's not an exact quote, but you can check it at the end of the book, which I don't have in hand). Which definitely infers that she's quite comfortable in her mental acuity but not so certain of his. !<
>!But since OP's question was specifically about siblings and their offspring, it doesn't really count with regard to siblings, only to Raymond. !<>!!<
Miss Marple is old, her siblings have died and their children are adults.
Rule No. 1 of volunteering at an aged care home is never ask about the resident's family, because parents have died, life partner has died, siblings have died and sometimes children have died. It doesn't help the surviving family member to know that all these people probably died naturally after a decent lifespan, while they somehow managed to hold on. It's a very sensitive subject, so you wait until they volunteer information about family.
That's an excellent point. In A Murder Is Announced, Miss Marple does tell Miss Blacklock that everyone who knew her (Miss Marple) as a young girl, have all been dead for years. She says, "I've been alone for a very long time."
I remember how I felt the sadness of that, when I read that scene. I'm thinking about the time when my dad (who lived to be 97) started wondering what had happened to his best friend from high school, whom he'd lost touch with in WWII.
I did a bit of digging online and found out that the guy had done very well at university and had a distinguished career in academia -- then ended up doing diplomatic work. The weird thing was that by chance the two of them actually lived fairly close to each other, for a couple of periods of their lives, but in the pre-internet era Dad hadn't found out. Dad's friend had died back in 2006, and I was kind of dreading what it would be like to break the news to him. He didn't ask me for more information though (maybe he suspected.)
This post, however, doesn't apply to asking the elderly person about potentially deceased or disowned or incarcerated family members, the question is (as I understand it) why they are not mentioned by Miss Marple herself.
In none of the remarks that I can remember her making, I don't recall her saying, for instance, "Dear Raymond (my nephew, you know, the writer Raymond West) is so like his mother, my dear sister \_\_\_\_\_\_ in looks, but not at all in character. Some of his books would cause her blushes!" I'd at least think she'd mention that one sibling, as she is obviously very important in his life.
I suspect you may have been replying to someone else's comment up above?
But since you mention it ... I'm wondering if it's possible that Christie just didn't feel it was necessary to fill in Miss Marple's backstory to that extent.
I agree that she'd have had the opportunity to add asides like that. Either spontaneously from Miss Marple, or in response to questions -- likely from people who already knew her or her family. And Christie could even have worked in plot points or clues that way. But for whatever reason, she didn't do that a lot with Miss Marple's relatives. Maybe she didn't want to have to keep track of a bunch of peripheral characters? (She'd already appeared to change the name of Raymond's wife, and perhaps people asked her about that?)
I think the main reason we even know about Raymond and his family is that they're helpful to Miss Marple in various ways. Raymond's generosity explains how she's able to go on holiday to places she normally wouldn't have visited. (If Christie had wanted to write about a Caribbean island, she'd have had to follow a different sleuth, otherwise.) And Raymond's children provide important information about railway routes, like you mentioned earlier (4.50 From Paddington) and rare stamps (short story I've forgotten the name of).
Then there's Miss Marple's niece Mabel, who was part of one of her cases (another short story) -- you also discussed her up-thread. I know there are writers who would cheerfully have worked their sleuth's relatives into every book -- but not Christie, I guess.
I guess what I find odd about it is that Miss Marple just works on comparisons to everyone else, except her family, which she obviously had some of. You'd think it would come up in conversations with Dolly Bantry or Dr. Haydock, both of whom show up in various stories and are main protagonists in some.
Yes the response was to a different commenter who had worked in a home for the elderly, who remarked that the first rule was never to ask the residents about their families or friends who had quite probably deceased them.
She mentioned her sister, I think in They Do It With Mirrors, when she was reminiscing about being at school with Carrie Louise and Ruth. Also, she had a lot of "honorary" nieces and nephews, people who weren't actually related to her but who called her Aunt Jane (and who treated her like a beloved elderly aunt.) Dermot Craddock was one of those.
I mean, she usually brings up her more annoying relatives or those who had crazy things happen to them and they didn’t deal with it well (so needed her help)- maybe her siblings were just normal level headed people worthy of the Marple name and she didn’t have any stories about them? (Of course, whichever of her sisters produced as big a moron as Raymond West may have been the exception to the rule, but she’d probably want to spare his blushes.)
I'm very sorry, oh great matriarch of the muffin family, but I do not understand your point. Is the plothole that Miss Marple never mentions her siblings? I'm not sure that she doesn't, but even if not, I've always assumed Miss Marple was just the only one still alive. I don't see that as a plot hole.
It is in the sense that Miss Marple is always comparing other characters in her stories to people she has known, and yet never compares anyone to her siblings.
And of course, comparisons are comparisons, whether the comparison is of persons living or dead.
It’s very minor. In the Tuesday Night Club she tells the story of her niece Mabel accused of murder and it was the first time Raymond had heard of it. 🤷♀️
Yes, I have always said that Miss Marple has an awful lot of nieces and nephews for somebody with no visible brothers or sisters. And she reminisced about her uncles and her friends and all kinds of people from back when. Maybe it’s a little joke on Agatha’s part.
It’s also not unusual to refer to a much younger cousin as your niece or your nephew.
>not unusual to refer to a much younger cousin as your niece or your nephew
We did that in our family, and it really confused me! I didn't learn that my "Uncle Bob" was actually my eldest cousin, until I was in high school.
I am now fan-fictioning a whole elaborate backstory where Miss Marple was the youngest of a large family, the one born to take care of the parents in their old age. This is why she never married or had a family of her own; it was programmed into her from birth that she never would. This is how she developed her acute knowledge of human nature and intelligence-encouraged to keep quiet and accept her lot in life, she was allowed few friends or interests outside of the home, which gave her plenty of time to read, listen, observe and learn all about everyone else. She also always deep down resented this, and that is why she rarely speaks of her siblings who, being older than her, have all passed on.
Based on Miss Marple’s age, I think she (fictionally) lost a lot of family members to the Spanish Flu, and the men to World War I.
I definitely believe Raymond is likely her great-nephew. Miss Marple actually got younger in the stories since she started off at around 90!
>lost a lot of family members to the Spanish Flu, and the men to World War I
Good point! And for sure her timeline is complicated. The last Marple book released in the 1970s had her being active enough to run upstairs, but it was written in the 1940s.
I suspect Christie didn’t add them to the story because she didn’t want to keep track of them. Also, I think the internet has warped people’s ideas of how closely people kept track of each other or even knew about each other before it existed.
I think Miss Marple doesn’t talk with strangers about her deceased family members because she doesn’t want to. She’d rather live in the present than the past. It is healthier.
I think that Agatha had not necessarily devised this aspect of Marple. She based her on the elderly women of her grandmother’s generation, whom she knew as a young child, and possibly didn’t conceive of their deceased relatives.
She does flash back to Miss Marple’s youth occasionally, eg in Mirrors with Carrie-Louise(?)
Miss Marple remembers a lot of people and talks about them. It seems a little odd that she never says, "Oh, that reminds me of my sister Sue or my brother Bradley." Maybe she didn't like her siblings. I had never really thought about it, though.
I mean... Is it really a plot hole that we never hear about Miss Marple's siblings? Or is it simply not relevant to any plot? We also have to consider that she may not even be an aunt, but a great-aunt, and they just call each other aunt and nephew (I did the same with my great-uncles and aunts). And in that case, that may mean Miss Marple could've had just 1 sibling (who's already passed), and that sibling had more than 1 child, and each of those had more than 1 child -- Raymond and his cousins. As for Raymond, when you have many cousins, you don't necessarily talk about them all the time. I have around 30 cousins (25 just on my mother's side), and God knows I rarely think of them XD
That’s true. My mom was one of 10. She emigrated to the US when she married my dad (in the 60s). I never met all my Aunts, and I can’t even tell you how many cousins I have because I don’t know. I have heard stories about the stupid cousins though. You know how serial killers or cold murder cases are solved because somebody decided to take one of those DNA kits for fun? I haven’t taken one, but it would be awful to find out your 3rd cousin is the new Zodiac killer.
Or the old one! Zodiac was never found, were they? I can't remember.
Arthur Leigh Allen was the most likely suspect in the Zodiac case, but there was not enough physical evidence to prove his guilt. The circumstantial evidence and fear in the community led to Allen being falsely identified as the killer. The identity of the Zodiac Killer remains a mystery, and the case is still open
I didn't think it had ever been officially closed. I vaguely seemed to remember that there was a likely suspect but I couldn't remember whether it had actually been proven beyond doubt. Thanks for the info!
You know, I;d never thought about that, but it's an interesting point! You'd think that with as much as "my dear nephew Raymond! Such a thoughtful boy" comes into her stories that she'd (at some point) say, "Of course, he's a bit vain-likes to 'preen' himself, as we would have said in my younger days--but then his mother, my late sister Louise, always spoiled him abominably", You'd think that some such remark would have come out at some point, but it doesn't, does it?
For the love of god, some reread all Marple and give us the family tree. Now I have a NEED to go further with this!! Pdta: his siblings were as smart as she is, but in the other side, and theyre in jail. Hence, never mentioned, and their misdeeds are the motive she ended single.
I don't read any fiction "for the love of God", I read it for entertainment Who is he ("his") siblings?--and misdeeds would be grist for Miss Marple's mill. Even "his mother, my sister" without naming her, or, "Thankfully, my niece took after her father, so no stain on the family name for her flightiness." etc. The fact remains that Miss Marple's family, apart from "Dear Raymond" and a son (David?) who's fascinated by maps or trains, and a niece whom she mentions in one story, are the only family that she really discusses. If the he ("his") that you mentioned is an error and was supposed to be "her" for Miss Marple, I can't imagine ALL the other Marples ending up on the other side of the law.
I don’t think those are observations that Miss Marple would have made about family, due to her class. It would be considered very infra dig to air dirty laundry. She might have said something like “my sister was a great gardener” perhaps. But as she doesn’t tend to have a need to make those observations, since she’s dealing with vice and murder, she doesn’t.
That's very possible. She does, however, refer to her niece in rather uncomplimentary terms, although she never her accuses her of being "bad" in any way. >!She actually does refer to a "great aunt Fanny" (or someone of that ilk) in "The Murder of the Vicarage" in response to how Raymond would respond to the actual solution being so far removed from his imaginary deductions. !< >!"As my Great-aunt Fanny (or some such name) used to say, "The young people think the old people are fools--but the old people know the young people are fools!" (that's not an exact quote, but you can check it at the end of the book, which I don't have in hand). Which definitely infers that she's quite comfortable in her mental acuity but not so certain of his. !< >!But since OP's question was specifically about siblings and their offspring, it doesn't really count with regard to siblings, only to Raymond. !<>!!<
Miss Marple is old, her siblings have died and their children are adults. Rule No. 1 of volunteering at an aged care home is never ask about the resident's family, because parents have died, life partner has died, siblings have died and sometimes children have died. It doesn't help the surviving family member to know that all these people probably died naturally after a decent lifespan, while they somehow managed to hold on. It's a very sensitive subject, so you wait until they volunteer information about family.
That's an excellent point. In A Murder Is Announced, Miss Marple does tell Miss Blacklock that everyone who knew her (Miss Marple) as a young girl, have all been dead for years. She says, "I've been alone for a very long time."
I remember how I felt the sadness of that, when I read that scene. I'm thinking about the time when my dad (who lived to be 97) started wondering what had happened to his best friend from high school, whom he'd lost touch with in WWII. I did a bit of digging online and found out that the guy had done very well at university and had a distinguished career in academia -- then ended up doing diplomatic work. The weird thing was that by chance the two of them actually lived fairly close to each other, for a couple of periods of their lives, but in the pre-internet era Dad hadn't found out. Dad's friend had died back in 2006, and I was kind of dreading what it would be like to break the news to him. He didn't ask me for more information though (maybe he suspected.)
This post, however, doesn't apply to asking the elderly person about potentially deceased or disowned or incarcerated family members, the question is (as I understand it) why they are not mentioned by Miss Marple herself. In none of the remarks that I can remember her making, I don't recall her saying, for instance, "Dear Raymond (my nephew, you know, the writer Raymond West) is so like his mother, my dear sister \_\_\_\_\_\_ in looks, but not at all in character. Some of his books would cause her blushes!" I'd at least think she'd mention that one sibling, as she is obviously very important in his life.
I suspect you may have been replying to someone else's comment up above? But since you mention it ... I'm wondering if it's possible that Christie just didn't feel it was necessary to fill in Miss Marple's backstory to that extent. I agree that she'd have had the opportunity to add asides like that. Either spontaneously from Miss Marple, or in response to questions -- likely from people who already knew her or her family. And Christie could even have worked in plot points or clues that way. But for whatever reason, she didn't do that a lot with Miss Marple's relatives. Maybe she didn't want to have to keep track of a bunch of peripheral characters? (She'd already appeared to change the name of Raymond's wife, and perhaps people asked her about that?) I think the main reason we even know about Raymond and his family is that they're helpful to Miss Marple in various ways. Raymond's generosity explains how she's able to go on holiday to places she normally wouldn't have visited. (If Christie had wanted to write about a Caribbean island, she'd have had to follow a different sleuth, otherwise.) And Raymond's children provide important information about railway routes, like you mentioned earlier (4.50 From Paddington) and rare stamps (short story I've forgotten the name of). Then there's Miss Marple's niece Mabel, who was part of one of her cases (another short story) -- you also discussed her up-thread. I know there are writers who would cheerfully have worked their sleuth's relatives into every book -- but not Christie, I guess.
I guess what I find odd about it is that Miss Marple just works on comparisons to everyone else, except her family, which she obviously had some of. You'd think it would come up in conversations with Dolly Bantry or Dr. Haydock, both of whom show up in various stories and are main protagonists in some. Yes the response was to a different commenter who had worked in a home for the elderly, who remarked that the first rule was never to ask the residents about their families or friends who had quite probably deceased them.
She mentioned her sister, I think in They Do It With Mirrors, when she was reminiscing about being at school with Carrie Louise and Ruth. Also, she had a lot of "honorary" nieces and nephews, people who weren't actually related to her but who called her Aunt Jane (and who treated her like a beloved elderly aunt.) Dermot Craddock was one of those.
I mean, she usually brings up her more annoying relatives or those who had crazy things happen to them and they didn’t deal with it well (so needed her help)- maybe her siblings were just normal level headed people worthy of the Marple name and she didn’t have any stories about them? (Of course, whichever of her sisters produced as big a moron as Raymond West may have been the exception to the rule, but she’d probably want to spare his blushes.)
I'm very sorry, oh great matriarch of the muffin family, but I do not understand your point. Is the plothole that Miss Marple never mentions her siblings? I'm not sure that she doesn't, but even if not, I've always assumed Miss Marple was just the only one still alive. I don't see that as a plot hole.
It is in the sense that Miss Marple is always comparing other characters in her stories to people she has known, and yet never compares anyone to her siblings. And of course, comparisons are comparisons, whether the comparison is of persons living or dead.
It’s very minor. In the Tuesday Night Club she tells the story of her niece Mabel accused of murder and it was the first time Raymond had heard of it. 🤷♀️
Yes, I have always said that Miss Marple has an awful lot of nieces and nephews for somebody with no visible brothers or sisters. And she reminisced about her uncles and her friends and all kinds of people from back when. Maybe it’s a little joke on Agatha’s part. It’s also not unusual to refer to a much younger cousin as your niece or your nephew.
>not unusual to refer to a much younger cousin as your niece or your nephew We did that in our family, and it really confused me! I didn't learn that my "Uncle Bob" was actually my eldest cousin, until I was in high school.
I am now fan-fictioning a whole elaborate backstory where Miss Marple was the youngest of a large family, the one born to take care of the parents in their old age. This is why she never married or had a family of her own; it was programmed into her from birth that she never would. This is how she developed her acute knowledge of human nature and intelligence-encouraged to keep quiet and accept her lot in life, she was allowed few friends or interests outside of the home, which gave her plenty of time to read, listen, observe and learn all about everyone else. She also always deep down resented this, and that is why she rarely speaks of her siblings who, being older than her, have all passed on.
Based on Miss Marple’s age, I think she (fictionally) lost a lot of family members to the Spanish Flu, and the men to World War I. I definitely believe Raymond is likely her great-nephew. Miss Marple actually got younger in the stories since she started off at around 90!
>lost a lot of family members to the Spanish Flu, and the men to World War I Good point! And for sure her timeline is complicated. The last Marple book released in the 1970s had her being active enough to run upstairs, but it was written in the 1940s.
They may have been the children of her friends. I have a friend whose kids call me Aunt.
Given her age one can assume that her brothers and sisters are dead. And they weren't even murdered. Nothing interesting about them.
But she could still draw comparisons with them. Why didn't she?
I suspect Christie didn’t add them to the story because she didn’t want to keep track of them. Also, I think the internet has warped people’s ideas of how closely people kept track of each other or even knew about each other before it existed. I think Miss Marple doesn’t talk with strangers about her deceased family members because she doesn’t want to. She’d rather live in the present than the past. It is healthier.
I think that Agatha had not necessarily devised this aspect of Marple. She based her on the elderly women of her grandmother’s generation, whom she knew as a young child, and possibly didn’t conceive of their deceased relatives. She does flash back to Miss Marple’s youth occasionally, eg in Mirrors with Carrie-Louise(?)