Intertextuality and characterisation in The Mirror Crack’d

Agatha Christie's The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side (1962) stands as the final Miss Marple mystery fully set in St Mary Mead, a village that functions as a microcosm of society throughout the series. Despite Miss Marple's observation about ‘wickedness in village life’, Christie's work notably features strong female characters during a period when women's societal roles were in flux. This chapter examines the novel alongside its 1980 film adaptation starring Angela Lansbury and Elizabeth Taylor, focusing on their intertextual relationships through Mason's narrative interrelation framework. The analysis reveals how both texts construct differing representations of womanhood and motherhood, particularly through the characterisations of Miss Marple, Marina Gregg, Dolly Bantry, and Margot Bence. The title's reference to Tennyson's poem ‘The Lady of Shalott’ creates a web of intertextuality that extends across both novel and adaptations. Most significantly, Christie's portrayal of triple murderer Marina Gregg elicits reader empathy rather than condemnation, demonstrating how these texts continually remoulded concepts of womanhood throughout the twentieth century and beyond.