57 pages • 1 hour read
Agatha ChristieA Pocket Full of Rye
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1953A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Family, Loyalty, and the Ties That Bind
In A Pocket Full of Rye, almost the entirety of the action is contained within either the Fortescue family firm’s offices or the family home, Yewtree Lodge. The setting reflects the thematic importance of family in the novel. It soon becomes apparent that Rex Fortescue was poisoned at home, either by a member of his family or household staff, and Neele spends the rest of the novel trying to determine which of Rex’s family stood to gain the most from his death. The novel uses the Fortescues to explore loyalty and the ties that bind family together.
Early on, the novel establishes that the Fortescues are distant from one another—Neele cannot find anyone to notify of Rex’s sudden death. His introduction to the family comes through the housekeeper, Miss Dove, who pronounces that they are “all really quite odious” (35), an opinion Neele comes to share. Adele is delighted by her husband’s death because it means that she will inherit a vast sum of money. Percival neglects his wife and is far more devoted to the family business. He declares that the murder investigation “will all be most unpleasant” but is chiefly concerned with how it disrupts his own life (73). Only Elaine sincerely weeps for Rex, though she admits that his death means she can marry the man she loves. All the Fortescues are financially dependent on Rex, but this dependence has bred resentment rather than loyalty.
Despite the family’s open dislike of each other, some of them do have a perverse sense of familial loyalty. Miss Ramsbottom admits later that she had strong suspicions that Lance was the killer but did not disclose them, telling Miss Marple, “[H]e was Elvira’s boy. I couldn’t bring myself to say anything” (246). Miss Ramsbottom thus compromises her deeply held religious values out of loyalty. Lance and Jennifer, both implicated in the text’s key mysteries, have their own relationships to family loyalty. Jennifer avenged her father’s death by marrying Percival, but this gesture of loyalty landed her in an unhappy marriage. Lance, meanwhile, pronounces his wife the only member of his family he feels any loyalty toward, but he commits murder to provide Pat with the kind of lifestyle that he feels she deserves. For the Fortescues, family loyalty has a dark side.
The Fortescue family underscores that true loyalty and family ties may be distinct phenomena. Only Miss Marple’s loyalty to Gladys Martin, her former maid, brings real emotional satisfaction to the text’s conclusion. Meanwhile, Pat’s genuine loyalty to Lance makes her both an outlier and a victim. Miss Marple regrets that Pat will suffer for her actions, gently advising her to return to Ireland, where her family comes from.
Class, Ambition, and Transgression
Ambition is the Fortescue family’s driving force, and much of the narrative is shaped by it. Through the Fortescues, the novel illustrates the diverse motives for social transgressions and criminality. The characters of Miss Marple and Inspector Neele demonstrate the ways that these deviations from morality are ultimately disastrous for those who undertake them.
Early on in the case, Neele is unimpressed by the Fortescues. When his sergeant suggests that the office is a “ritzy joint,” Neele comments that the family name is not English but meant to obscure Central European origins: Their opulence is a kind of cover, and not a very good one. He also criticizes the palatial Fortescue home, Yewtree Lodge, noting that real “lodges” are like the servant’s lodge he grew up in before the decline of the British nobility. As these remarks illustrate, Neele’s contempt for the Fortescues stems largely from his perception of them as the nouveau riche, whose desire for wealth is equal to their desire for social status and who use suspect means to attain both.
In both business and private life, Rex decided that rules did not apply to him. Neele says that “[t]he Inland Revenue have been after [Rex] for a long time, but he’s been too clever for them” (24), suggesting that he amassed his fortune through dodgy schemes that may be technically legal but are nonetheless unethical. A similar comfort with transgression is apparent in Yewtree Lodge, as Miss Dove cheerfully admits that the Fortescues use the black market to avoid any dietary restrictions that postwar rationing might otherwise impose on their lives. The revelation that Rex’s imprudent business choices were the result of an advancing syphilis infection might thus be read as a kind of cosmic punishment for a life of excess and transgression.
Lance is also unethical. Gladys’s manner of death particularly upsets Miss Marple, as she declares that “it’s very wicked, you know, to affront human dignity” (109). It is this death that brings Miss Marple to the case, so Lance, like his father, brings about his own downfall through his disregard for others. Miss Marple, unlike the Fortescues, can form strong social bonds and care for others, which enables her to triumph where Rex and Lance fail. She cares little for her reputation or any public accolades and is only concerned that Gladys’s killer experience consequences.
Gender, Intuition, and Justice
A Pocket Full of Rye constructs a world dominated by patriarchal power and privilege, though women are not without influence. In making Miss Marple more than equal to Lance, and more adept than Inspector Neele, the novel argues that women are key to real justice.
Rex and Lance both embody masculine power in their own ways—Rex through his money, Lance through his charm. Rex’s office is established as a kind of kingdom where he lords over the secretaries and demands personal tea service. He is similarly tyrannical in his family, threatening to disinherit his daughter if she marries a man he dislikes. In contrast to his father, Lance has no fortune with which to manipulate others. His power lies in his winning personality and good looks, as is apparent throughout the novel. In one scene, Lance’s arrival causes quite a stir among Rex’s secretaries, and he impresses one of them by remembering her name. Miss Dove, upon seeing him for the first time, reflects that she finds him appealing and that “probably a great many other women th[ink] so, too” (88). This observation is key to the whole case: Lance used his appeal to deceive Gladys and poison his father. However, Lance’s charisma protects him from suspicion. Pat, for all her foreboding about the killer, never suspects her own husband. Even Neele is taken in by Lance and immediately suspects the unattractive and unappealing Percival instead.
Miss Marple and Miss Ramsbottom are the only ones to see that Lance’s charm has helped him get away with murder. Neele suspects Percival until Miss Marple points out that such an unappealing man could never be capable of enlisting Gladys as an accomplice. Miss Ramsbottom warns Pat that Lance has never been especially ethical and later reveals that she always suspected her younger nephew. However, both of them are repeatedly underestimated due to their gender and age. Even Neele, who enlists Miss Marple to help him with the investigation, views her theories with skepticism bordering on contempt. He favors a “rational” approach to Miss Marple’s talk about nursery rhymes and human nature.
After Miss Marple identifies the killer for him, Neele admits that he should not have been surprised, as, “after all, [he’s] known his kind before” (239). Miss Marple retorts that her own experience led her to the conclusion, as Pat, for all her fine qualities, is “the kind that always marries a bad lot” (239). Miss Marple relies on a combination of intuition and experience—often feminine coded—throughout the case. She visits Gladys’s room and deduces that she must have been tricked with a ruse from one of her magazines. Gladys’s final letter proves her entirely correct, vindicating her unconventional approach and dealing a final rebuke to Neele’s skepticism. The novel thus constructs a world where men like Rex may rule unchallenged, but after their deaths, justice will only prevail if women are listened to rather than dismissed or denigrated.
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By Agatha Christie
