Jane Austen and Agatha Christie use their village settings to interrogate aspects of gender, class and culture. Meryton in Hertfordshire (Pride and Prejudice) and Highbury in Sussex (Emma) share the iconic brand recognition of Miss Marple’s St Mary Mead, somewhere in southwest England. Village gossip is the lifeblood of these rural communities, as their sharpest residents know only too well. Mr Bennet asks, ‘For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbours, and laugh at them in our turn?’ (Pride and Prejudice, Ch. 57), while Miss Marple declares that ‘one has opportunities of observing [human nature] at closer quarters in a village’ (‘The Thumb Mark of St Peter’ in The Thirteen Problems, 1932). This article explores the nature of village gossip as a plot device, an agent of social control and/or a detection method in selected works by these writers.
AQA (B) Paper 1: Aspects of comedy (Emma); Paper 2: Elements of crime writing (The Murder of Roger Ackroyd)
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