Who is miss jane marple

Miss Marple first appeared in six short stories, written in The first full-length novel, written and published in , is called The Murder at the Vicarage.

Miss Marple features in 12 novels, and 20 short stories written by Agatha Christie. Jane Marple is described as an attractive, thin, old lady, with a twinkle in her blue eyes. Although now a spinster, Miss Marple does hint at beaux from her past in the books. She has an unusual background for a sleuth, with no background in criminology or the police force. She lives in St Mary Mead, a small English village with a local pub, a handful of shops, the vicarage as well as the Gossington Hall estate.

Jane Marple is house-proud, and has had a host of different housemaids, many of whom she takes in from an orphanage and trains in housekeeping skills. A caring employer with a passion for justice, Miss Marple seeks revenge when a former maid is murdered in A Pocket Full of Rye. Mary Mead appearing in twelve novels and in twenty short stories ranks as many readers' second favorite detective next to Poirot.

Miss Marple as she is affectionately known is a tall, thin woman of between 65 and 70 years of age. She has white snowy hair, pale blue eyes, and a pinkish wrinkled face. Two of her hobbies and subjects of conversation are bird watching and gardening, and she is often seen carrying knitting needles and yarn.

She looks like an ordinary old lady, dressed neatly in tweed and is frequently seen knitting or pulling weeds in her garden. Miss Marple sometimes comes across as confused or "fluffy", but when it comes to solving mysteries, she has a sharp logical mind, and an almost unmatched understanding of human nature with all its weaknesses, strengths, quirks and foibles.

In the detective story tradition, she often embarrasses the local "professional" police by solving mysteries that have them stumped. The name Miss Marple was derived from the name of the railway station in Marple, on the Manchester to Sheffield Hope Valley line, at which Agatha Christie was once delayed long enough to have actually noticed the sign. The character of Jane Marple in the first Miss Marple book, The Murder at the Vicarage , is markedly different from how she appears in later books.

This early version of Miss Marple is a gleeful gossip and not an especially nice woman. The citizens of St. Mary Mead like her but are often tired by her nosy nature and how she seems to expect the worst of everyone. In later books, she becomes more modern and a kinder person.

Miss Marple never married and has no close living relatives. Vicarage introduced Miss Marple's nephew, the "well-known author" Raymond West. His wife Joan initially called Joyce , a modern artist, was introduced in in The Thirteen Problems.

Raymond tends to be overconfident in himself and underestimates Miss Marple's mental powers. She has a niece called Mabel Denman , who doesn't appear to be a sister of Raymond's. Mabel appears in the short story The Thumb Mark of St. Miss Marple stayed with her in A Murder is Announced. Miss Marple is able to solve difficult crimes not only because of her shrewd intelligence but because St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has given her seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature.

No crime can arise without reminding Miss Marple of some parallel incident in the history of her time. Miss Marple's acquaintances are sometimes bored by her frequent analogies to people and events from St. Mary Mead, but these analogies often lead Miss Marple to a deeper realization about the true nature of a crime.

This education, history, and experience are hinted at in the Margaret Rutherford films, in which Miss Marple mentions her awards at marksmanship and fencing although these hints are played for comedic value. Christie wrote a concluding novel to her Marple series, Sleeping Murder , in She locked it away in a bank vault so it would be safe should she be killed in The Blitz. The novel was not published until shortly after Christie's death in , some thirty-six years after it was originally written.

While Miss Marple is described as 'an old lady' in many of the stories, her age is never mentioned.