Study Guide

The Christie Affair

Nina de Gramont
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44 pages • 1 hour read

Nina de Gramont

The Christie Affair

Nina de Gramont
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2022

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Summary

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Themes

Love Versus Independence

The Christie Affair features several love stories: the dying embers between Agatha and Archie, the fluttering new romance between Agatha and Chilton, and the lifelong tether between Finbarr and Nan. For both women in each of these great loves, a line is drawn between embracing that love and embracing their agencies.

In Nan’s case, Finbarr is unequivocally the love of her life. Their love persists throughout their childhood and to the time when Nan becomes pregnant and Finbarr is held out of reach by influenza. Even as their paths deviate, their bond remains unbroken, making the reader hope for their happy ending. However, Nan is faced with an impossible choice: the man she loves or the daughter they should have had. We feel her being pulled in two directions until the end: “And so he might persist in his attempts to lure me away, and if I saw him even one more time, I might very well succumb” (347). As readers, we want to believe that love conquers all; however, here true love is not enough. Nan chooses another kind of love, the one she feels for her daughter.

Agatha works her way through two contrasting love stories. In each of them, the thing that distinguishes her character is her independence. With Archie, “she didn’t even think of herself as an author. Her primary occupation and identity was Married Lady. That’s who she was. Married. To Archie” (24). Everything she is comes second to her love. With Chilton, however, we see the potential for a different dynamic. In all of his daydreams, he imagines her writing, a constant presence in their lives: “It pleased Chilton to think of it, how he’d have to learn to tiptoe. He’d become adept at removing the kettle just before it whistles, slipping a mug quietly on the table beside her” (298). Unlike Archie, Chilton imagines Agatha’s love and independence coexisting in harmony.

In the end, of course, Agatha succumbs to her married identity and returns home with Archie. However, she quickly learns that is no longer satisfied to be only a Married Lady and leaves both loves behind to forge her path.

Law Versus Justice

Over the course of the story, several laws are broken, and several horrible acts are committed that are not in contradiction with the law. This raises questions for the reader about the meaning of right and wrong, legal and illegal, moral and immoral.

The most obvious example is in the murder of the Marstons, an act that goes against every law there is and one which we tend to see as universally negative. And yet, was this act of double murder justified? About Mary Clare’s theft of her baby, Nan says, “In the course of this story thus far I have described to you a variety of crimes. But none—none—is more heinous, more violent, more unconscionable, than this one” (264-65). Even Father Joseph’s acts against Bess, though considered a crime today, would have meant little to the eyes of the law; in the 1920s, regulation of sexual crimes was only just beginning to crystallize. In removing such a man from the world, was Bess’s act one of crime or justice? And most importantly, within the context of the novel, are crime and justice mutually exclusive?

Archie also wrestles with his moral compass as his mother voices her suspicions regarding his wife’s disappearance. He initially reacts with shock before considering that perhaps his crimes against his wife are not so innocent after all: “The one and only thing he hadn’t done to his wife, at this point, was murder” (244). Throughout the novel, both Archie and Chilton—the latter a man of the law, and the former one who thought he was above it—step back and consider their relationship and preconceptions of right and wrong.

The Bonds of Motherhood

Throughout the novel, several relationships are explored between mothers and children. Nan compares her bond with her daughter to the legend of the red thread: “The one that connected me, still and always, to Genevieve. I could feel it like a living, tactile object, stretching out from my heart to hers” (348).

Although the red thread is a metaphor born of legend, it represents the physiological bond that connects mothers with their children. This connection rooted in the body is particularly apparent when the women living in the convent are separated from their children. Their bodies begin producing milk for their children even though they can’t reach them; when they hear their child cry, they immediately recognize which one is theirs and release the milk from their breasts unwillingly.

Dissonance between the body and the mind is mentioned several times throughout the text. As Nan searches for her daughter, she reaches out with her body, knowing that “once you’ve lost a baby their cries will reach you anywhere” (269). When she meets Teddy for the first time on the beach, they recognize each other instantly through their physical connection. Constantly, Nan is conscious of how her molecular structure is intimately entwined with that of her daughter: “A baby never entirely leaves his mother’s womb,” she writes to another mother. “Traces of your boy—the very cells that comprise his living form—are still contained inside of you” (306).

Other mother and child bonds are explored in the novel, such as Archie and his mother—despite their disagreements, he turns to her in his time of turmoil. Chilton, too, is shown to have a deep bond with his mother. His is shown to be a warm, loving, middle-class family, and that bond keeps him clinging to life. Though we never meet Chilton’s mother in the text, the reader can see how their relationship has helped shape the man he grew to become.

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