The Jewishness of Hercule Poirot
Was Agatha Christie's Famous Sleuth Jewish?
In an article in the Jewish Daily Forward; Phoebe Maltz Bovy claims that Agatha Christie’s famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot was jewish. (1)
As a fan of the many works and characters of Agatha Christie (and Maltz Bovy makes it quite clear that she isn’t a fan per se but is trying to force an article – any article – out of her pen for a looming deadline) it is profoundly irritating to read junk like of this sort produced by writers like Maltz Bovy.
Since the character of Poirot was never ever described or indicated to have been jewish by Christie herself; it renders Maltz Bovy’s case a difficult one to make coherently. So in order to make her argument she asserts that Poirot is a highly intellectual eternally foreign effete urbanite with a dislike for rurality, the countryside and physical exertion.
She then necessarily asserts that the only people who are actually like this – based upon the work of Paula Hyman – are jews. So therefore Poirot is a ‘jewish’ character.
In the first instance Poirot doesn’t actually dislike rurality and the countryside in the novels. Hence why he retires to an English country village from his London apartment and only moves back once he discovers that the countryside is no haven from murder. What Poirot dislikes about the countryside is the dirt and the smell (much as he does in the city as it happens) not the thing itself (hence why he is happy to retire to a village and tend his garden as a hobby).
In the second; it is true that Poirot is effete and dislikes physical exertion, but had Maltz Bovy actually bothered to read the novels (or even watch all the episodes featuring David Suchet [who is jewish] playing Poirot) then she would have known that this is because Poirot is getting older and is severely out of shape being a consummate bon vivant.
In his younger and more vital years he was in fact a Belgian police detective who spent his time chasing around criminals on foot much like any policeman of the time would.
As to the equation of being an effete foreign urbanite with jewishness: I thought this was supposed to be ‘anti-Semitic canard’ not a unique indicator of jewishness. (2)
Well apparently it is such an indicator, but regardless it is not an argument for Poirot’s jewishness since it is utterly subjective and, as we have seen, largely an invention not of Agatha Christie, but Maltz Bovy.
References
(1) http://forward.com/sisterhood/352626/the-secret-jewishness-of-inspector-hercule-poirot/
(2) Nathan Abrams, 2012, ‘The New Jew in Film: Jewishness and Judaism in Contemporary Cinema’, 1st Edition, Rutgers University Press: New Brunswick, p. 124; Edward Shapiro, 2008, ‘From Participant to Owner: The Role of Jews in Contemporary American Sports’, pp. 87-95 in Ezra Mendelsohn (Ed.), 2008, ‘Jews and the Sporting Life’, 1st Edition, Oxford University Press: New York