Miss Jane Marple and Miss Cordelia Grey

At first blush it is difficult to believe cardinal women who be more different that discharge Jane Marple, the cozy unpaid detective featured in Agatha Christies At Bertrams Hotel and escape Cordelia colorize the booster dose in P. D. James An incompatible Job for a Woman. First, fell Marple is a ripe(p) deal older than unload Gray, although their carriage clips overlap.Secondly the clocks and institutions they separately interest vary considerably. Lastly, Miss Marples life experiences appear to stool occurred in the colony St. bloody shame Mead. Cordelia grizzly however has never reallyly known a home and has lived throughout Europe. However, after sorting through the struggles between the two women it becomes clear that each has the necessary qualities necessary to play the role of mystery story novel detective.Time provides the most obvious focus between these two novels and their main characters. Miss Marples age is non revealed, tho Lady Selina, hersel f sixty-five- age-old notices Miss Marples arrival with the observation I do believe thats old Jane Marple. musical theme she was dead years ago. Looks a hundred (Christie 4). Cordelia grayish is completely twenty-two-years-old in An Unsuitable Job for a Woman, but it is not just the difference in their ages that separates the two women, it is the difference in time.Although At Bertrams Hotel come tos beat in London in 1955 and An Unsuitable Job for a Woman takes place in London and Cambridge in 1972 the focus on time each novel has is quite is quite different. Bertrams Hotel stands proudly in the mid-1950s looking rearward to an England that no longer exists except in the memories of the elderly and English films.The heed has created an artificial, refined world that caters to the aging members of Edwardian England who fondly recall their young person and to whose Americans who want to visit the real England hopefully the England from before World warfare I, but certainly t he England from before World War II. Bertrams has changed over the years, but looks precisely as it had looked in 1939dignified, unostentatious, and quietly expensive (Christie 1).Miss Marple arrives for a visit after having previously stayed there when she was fourteen. Miss Marple brings with her not only her memories of her previous visit, but also a lifetime of memories of the people from St. bloody shame Mead who she has observed for a lifetime and has learned to recognize anomalies in the actions of others and has genuine the habit of picking at these peculiar actions until she has revealed the reason for the action. In this process, Miss Marple has solved a large number of murder mysteries (Christie).The 1972 world of Cordelia Grey differs greatly. Rather than focusing her interest backward at a puerility without a mother and most often without her father being use of her life, Cordelia Grey looks forward. She lives at a time when a young char charr living in London has th e opportunity to maneuver in an change magnitude variety of careers. in spite of this relaxing of social attitude toward the role of women in England, Cordelia has stumbled into the detective business, a most unsuitable career that she intends to master (James). contrasted Miss Marple who has a treasure trove of memories to guide her in her investigations, Cordelia Grey has had a short live and has had almost no upbringing to work as a detective. Although technically a partner, Greys training has been limited to radical training in the use of fingerprinting and similar techniques. Her real training has been the often-repeated litany remarks of her late partner Bernard G. Pryde. Pryde was fired from the CID section of the Metropolitan police because of his unfitness to put together facts and solve cases. He had however taken to boob the teachings of Superintendent Inspector Adam Dagliesh and always had a proverb at hand to help with the current situation. Miss Grey calls these to mind as she proceeds throughout the investigation (James 56, 211).Miss Marple appears to have spent her life at home, working in her garden except for occasional trips a lot(prenominal) as the two to Bertrams and a trip to the Caribbean that had been paid for by her nephew. Her world is St. Mary Mead, a microcosm sufficiently diverse to have allowed her to develop a keen scent out of observation that is adequate to the world outside St. Mary Mead. Cordelia Grey, however, has lived in a series of foster homes after her mothers death piece giving birth to Cordelia. Her father was a fascist poet and not much of a father at all, prompting Cordelia to conclude that the six years she spent at convent school due to a clerical misconduct were the most settled and happy years of her life. (James 68).The similarities between the two are quite striking. both women are extremely intelligent though Miss Marple often appears as a twittering and reminiscing old lady (Christie 36). While at convent school Cordelia Grey had learned that she was smart and that she neednt to conceal her intelligence, that cleverness which a succession of foster mothers had somehow seen as a threat.She was offered a take chances to take her A-levels with the hopes of a scholarship to Cambridge, but was forbidden to do so by her father who unfortunately chose to appear at the time (James 68-9). Miss Marple and Miss Grey have a strong attraction to what is bully and proper. Miss Marple always awakens early she has her breakfast at eight-thirty and enjoys a real breakfast with proper eggs (Christie 33-35). Even though her partner has died, she attends to the business, hitherto though there are no clients, cleaning, tidying, rearranging . . . (James 22).She carefully plans what clothes she should take with her to Cambridge while she conducts her investigation (James 43). When the investigation is over Miss Grey takes the time to finish spading the last two feet of the garden row the murder dupe had failed to complete before his death, as if it were one more unsettled line that needed to be completed. Finally, these women are tenacious as terriers. If either of them notices something that is not quite right they will fuss at it and fiddle with it until it makes sense and is reconciled to their satisfaction.Ultimately both Miss Marple and Miss Grey are, in some respects, different faces of a modern, female Janus, the two faced idol with each face pointing in opposite directions. The elderly Miss Marple hard faces back in time toward the Edwardian England she remembers and prefers the young Miss Grey who eagerly faces forward, looks hopefully toward the future.Despite this different temporal orientation, each woman keeps one, boldly curious, wandering eye firmly in the present time and location. Each woman notices the unusual in the thick of normalcy, seeks lies in the midst of truth, and discerns the sinister among the innocent. Despite the great differences between them, they are in umteen ways kindred sisters or perhaps kindred grandmother and granddaughter. Both women successfully engage in activities deemed unsuitable work for a woman. Despite this they succeed in discovering and righting the wrongs even though the men around them have failed to do so.Works CitedChristie, Agatha. At Bertrams Hotel. New York Bantam Books, Agatha Christie Mystery Collection, 1987. James, P. D. An Unsuitable Job for a Woman. New York Charles Scribners Sons, 1972.