Jewry's war against novelist Agatha Christie
04/04/2023
Cliches about Jews are being removed from Agatha Christie's novels. No "thick Semitic lips" and "typical Jews" for you!
The American publishing house Harper Collins edited a number of novels by Agatha Christie. They removed statements about Jews that were considered anti-Semitic. The publishing house does not report which books of the world-famous writer have been proofread. However, it is known that among them there is definitely a debut novel, The Mysterious Affair at Stiles, in which the reader first met Hercule Poirot. From the 1920 book, at least one episode has been removed in which Poirot characterizes one of the characters: "He is, of course, a Jew."
This is not the first time that Agatha Christie's books, which have sold more than four billion copies worldwide, have been accused of anti-Semitism. Back in 2010, French journalist Marc Riglet published a study on the subject. He came to the conclusion that Christie's novels are stuffed with clichés related to nationalities - and Jews got the most from the writer.
Rigle gives examples. Here is a scene from the same "Mysterious Incident at Stiles", a conversation between John and Mary Cavendish. John: "I'm fed up with this guy. Besides, he is a Polish Jew!” Mary: “The admixture of Jewish blood is not the worst thing. In any case, I like it more than the pure blood that flows in the veins of thoroughbred Anglo-Saxons and makes them sluggish stupid ... ”And here are other novels from the Poirot series. "Lazarus? An antique shop on Bond Street? - He is. Jim, true, is a Jew, but terribly decent.” Or: “Sir Montagu looked like a typical Jew. He waved his hand, surprisingly resembling the clawed paw of a bird. And again: "Here's the catch with these Jews ... they understand music."
“Agatha Christie is characterized by “secular” or “everyday” anti-Semitism. It manifests itself in the assessments given to the Jews as if by chance, "in passing." But these assessments are always negative, Rigle concludes. - The modern reader often evaluates the work in terms of political correctness. Almost certainly, the statements that Christy allowed herself to shock him.
In 2020, the novel "Ten Little Indians" was excluded from the school curriculum in the Canadian province of Ontario. The writer herself spoke of him as the "best work" that ever came out of her pen. The reason for the exclusion was still the same - everyday anti-Semitism. The Education Commission reread the text of the detective and found in it, among other things, the expressions “thick Semitic lips”, “little Jew” and “Jewish boy”. After that, it was decided that this book should not be recommended to Canadian schoolchildren, so as not to produce anti-Jewish stereotypes.
Interestingly, Agatha Christie herself was not an anti-Semite at all. On the contrary, she was one of the first female writers to accept the need to cleanse her own books of "clichés". Christie understood that she learned them in the environment where she moved - and tried to get rid of the “stuck” stereotypes, says her biographer Mary Wagoner.
The writer was born and lived in the British "upper middle class", where a special kind of national pride ruled. In this circle, all people were divided into "English" - read "bearers of culture, mind and education" - and "non-English", that is, people who lacked the dignity of the English. In this patriarchal world, the Victorian spirit reigned, and everything was determined. Including the place of a woman as a mother, mistress and keeper of the hearth. The fact that Agatha Christie went beyond this circle, choosing the fate of a writer, is a feat in itself, Wagoner concludes.
But the star of detectives did not stop there and went further. Back in the early 30s, Christie was shocked by communication with a couple of British Nazis and their calls for the extermination of Jews. She described this meeting in her Autobiography. During those years, she spent a lot of time in the Middle East with her future second husband, archaeologist Max Mallowan. According to her, the ideas that later became the basis of the Holocaust made her feel "a feeling of deep despair." “And already after the Second World War - as her circle of acquaintances grew - Agatha Christie finally understood what Nazism meant for the Jewish people. Then she began to refuse any form of manifestation of anti-Semitism,” writes Gillian Gill in the book “Christie. Woman and her secrets.
It is known that in the 40s the writer allowed her American publisher to remove from her books a number of statements about Jews that the company considered controversial. She was also not opposed to changing the titles of books - if she was pointed out to the presence of one form or another of racism. It was no longer only about the Jews, but also about other nations. So, the novel "Ten Little Indians" for reasons of political correctness was already published in the 40s under the title "And there were none."
Agatha Christie's novels are not the only books that have been revised to reflect new language taboos. So, for example, for many years the controversy around Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has not subsided. В тексте автор использовал слово «ниггер» – для его времени оно было обиходным. When preparing the next edition, it was changed to a more neutral one - “slave”. The same fate almost befell another American classic, Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell. In 2018, activists who campaigned for the rights of blacks demanded that a scene where former slaves beg to be returned to serve their masters be cut from the novel. The latest edition of the book, published recently by the British publishing house Pan Macmillan, left this scene - but accompanied the entire text with an extensive preface condemning slavery. The novels of Ian Flemming were also proofread. creator of James Bond, and children's writer Roald Dahl. Anti-Semitic clichés were also found in the texts of the latter.
At the same time, Agatha Christie is still one of the few authors who welcomed the edits. For the same Dahl, who was an open anti-Semite - for example, he owns the phrase: "Even such a bastard as Hitler did not just find fault with the Jews" - his descendants had to apologize. The writer died in 1990, and in 2020 his family published an open letter where they asked for "forgiveness for the long and understandable damage caused by some of Roald Dahl's statements."