'We're all strangers': post-war anxiety in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap

Article

Gildersleeve, Jessica. 2014. "'We're all strangers': post-war anxiety in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap." Clues: a journal of detection. 32 (2), pp. 115-123. https://doi.org/10.3172/CLU.32.2.115
Article Title

'We're all strangers': post-war anxiety in Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap

ERA Journal ID11759
Article CategoryArticle
Authors
AuthorGildersleeve, Jessica
Journal TitleClues: a journal of detection
Journal Citation32 (2), pp. 115-123
Number of Pages9
Year2014
Place of PublicationJefferson, NC, USA
ISSN0742-4248
1940-3046
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)https://doi.org/10.3172/CLU.32.2.115
Web Address (URL)http://mcfarland.metapress.com/content/95077237w570l578/?p=322c7b46f8624db496bcb68af4467da4&pi=12
Abstract

Agatha Christie's play, The Mousetrap (1952), disturbs the middlebrow, middle-class conventions of Golden Age detective fiction. By introducing an explicit suspicion of personas and roles, Christie's play points to a postwar anxiety that wartime freedom undermined the capacity for surveillance, putting citizens—especially women—at risk.

Keywordsanxiety, Christie, Agatha, The Mousetrap, war, women
ANZSRC Field of Research 2020470504. British and Irish literature
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Byline AffiliationsSchool of Arts and Communication
Institution of OriginUniversity of Southern Queensland
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