Q

Christie began writing her fiction in the early twentieth century, just decades after the death of England’s Queen Victoria. The Victorian Era was a period of economic, industrial, and political consolidation in British history. Socially, the era was characterized by growing conservatism. This social conservatism is seen in Christie’s novel through the relatively subdued ways in which her victims are murdered. Instead of using intense scenes of vivid violence, Christie kills her victims through less obvious means. Christie uses poisons to kill her victims, for instance, and her victims are usually killed in solitude. The mystery and suspense of her novels are built not through intense uses of violence, but through violence imagined in the reader’s mind.