Agatha Christie’s Autobiography: “The Girls,” not just imaginary companions, lived on, but never grew old, since child-aged alternate personalities, like J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, don’t

Yesterday’s post discussed the “the girls” as they were portrayed in a novel written by Agatha Christie under a pseudonym. This post is about “the girls” as discussed by Agatha Christie in her autobiography, which she wrote between ages sixty and seventy-five.

It is the same seven girls, including Isabella, whom Agatha did not like, because she was too “worldly” (1, p. 90). But here, instead of discussing the personal conflict in terms of music, it is discussed in terms of croquet.

“I used to arrange tournaments and special matches. My great hope was that Isabel would not win. I did everything short of cheating to see that she did not win—that is, I held her mallet for her carelessly, played quickly, hardly aimed at all—yet somehow the more carelessly I played, the more fortunate Isabel seemed to be. She got through impossible hoops, hit balls from right across the lawn, and nearly always finished as winner or runner-up. It was most annoying” (1, p. 91).

“‘The girls,’ I may say, stayed with me for many years…Even when I was grown up I spared them a thought now and then, and allocated them the various dresses in my wardrobe…Even now, sometimes, as I put away a dress in a cupboard, I say to myself: ‘Yes, that would do for well for Elsie, green was always her colour.’ It makes me laugh when I do it, but there ‘the girls’ are still, though, unlike me, they have not grown old” (1, pp. 91-92).

As I have previously discussed in regard to J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan, child-aged alternate personalities may never grow old.

1. Agatha Christie. An Autobiography. New York, Dodd Mead & Company, 1977.