Agatha Christie Lovers discussion
Agatha's Missing 11 Days
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I didn't know this had happened at all!!!... I must read a biography pronto!! :o)I think she had a nervous break down, as it must be hard to hear your husband saying he's leaving you for another woman (what an idiot of a husband, I would like to add!), so maybe she doesn't really remember... o even better, maybe she spend those 11 days in the company of some good looking young man!! :oD
I've always thought this was her "snapping point", but not a nervous breakdown. She just needed a break and perhaps there was the added benefit of dragging her husband and his mistress through some mud. She would have been aware that, being a famous author, she couldn't disappear forever, but maybe for long enough to compose herself and let her husband sweat it out.
i just think it would be hard to have no contact with your child for 11 days unless you were mental.
I've heard of cases before where someone experiences such an extreme shock or incident that their mind will actually block it out or go completely blank (amnesia). It could be the shock of the divorce caused something. Or she planned out the whole thing as publicity stunt and slam againist her husband. If that was the case though, I would I have talked about it in my autobiography. Because it's not mentioned, it leads me to believe she was embarrassed by the event which would suggest the shock and amnesia from the divore...just some thoughts...
Dr Who, even devotes an episode to the mystery of Agatha Christie's disappearance...http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/epi...
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Melissa wrote: "Dr Who, even devotes an episode to the mystery of Agatha Christie's disappearance...http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/s4/epi..."
This is one of my all time favorite episodes of Doctor Who - great, good fun.
Yeah... It's a ripper! It's called 'The Unicorn & the Wasp'
"The Unicorn and the Wasp" is one of my favorite DW episodes! Favorite doc with 2nd favorite companion meet my favorite author- wonderful. It seems true, even today, that brilliant women tend to 'be a bit too much' for most men. I can't imagine the slim pickings she had in her day!
I love the DR Who interpretation of the incident.Personally I think she had a nervous breakdown and when she was finally able to fully comprehend the situation it had got out of hand with the involvement of the Home Secretary and Sir Conan Doyle.
She was probably concerned that if she told the straight truth her husband would sue for custody of their daughter claiming she was 'mentally unstable' and an 'unfit mother'. So she embellished the truth with a claim of amnesia.
My grandmother was a great Christie fan and was a teenager at the time of the incident. It was quite the scandal and her husband was considered Villain No1.
I was always so glad that she eventually found love and happiness with Max Mallowan and her interest in his archeology led to some fascinating mysteries.
You forgot to add that she had recently lost her mother when that happened... her mother died on November 1926. And this happened in December of the same year. That's why I believe it was a nervous breakdown. That Archie was sooooooo insensitive.
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078736/"
I thought that was a great movie - if you haven't watched it you really should. It was like Dustin Hoffman was a butchier Hercule.
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Well that can explain a lot, although from her autobiography her mother was one of delicate flowers lounging around with numerous weakness related injuries that Agatha tries to justifies, losing your mother and finding out your husband has been having hanky panky with a woman while under the same roof - too much to handle.
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Personally I think she had a nervous breakdown and when she was finally able to fully comprehend the situation it had got out of hand with the inv..."
Me too, I'm glad she found love eventually. In her autobiography she said he fell in love with her when they were in some desert country (Syria?), their car's tire blew and instead of getting upset, she took a nap. He told her that's what made him fall in love with her.
Carolyn F. wrote: "Esther wrote: "I love the DR Who interpretation of the incident.Personally I think she had a nervous breakdown and when she was finally able to fully comprehend the situation it had got out of ha..."
I love her comment about her second husband -
"An archaeologist is the best husband a woman can have. The older she gets the more interested he is in her."
Interestingly while I was double checking that quote I found this one.
"Dogs are wise. They crawl away into a quiet corner and lick their wounds and do not rejoin the world until they are whole once more. "
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From: http://www.nndb.com/people/583/000026...
Eventually, in 1926, Archie admitted he had a mistress and asked for a divorce. The highly sensitive Agatha was crushed. But what followed immediately after has haunted the legend of the great writer ever since. On the evening of Friday, December 3, 1926, Agatha Christie went upstairs to kiss her daughter goodnight. Then, at 9:45 p.m., she got into car and drove away. Later the vehicle was found abandoned several miles from home, with many of Agatha’s personal belongings strewn about inside. There was no sign of Agatha herself however. Immediately a huge search was mounted, and the case attracted tremendous attention from the media as well as various public figures, including the Home Secretary. As if the line between mystery novel and reality was not blurry enough, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was sought out to consult on the case as was mystery writer and Dorothy L. Sayers. Agatha’s husband Archie meanwhile, who had been away for the weekend with his girlfriend, became the object of tremendous scorn and suspicion, with members of the public alternately conjecturing that he had done his wife in, or driven her to suicide.
But 11 days later Agatha Christie was found, alive, at the Harrogate Hydropathic Hotel. Most curious of all, she had registered herself under a name patterned after her husband's mistress. According to a public statements made by police and family, Agatha was allegedly suffering from amnesia. Agatha herself never commented publicly on the event, and nowhere in her autobiographies is it mentioned. Christie enthusiasts and biographers continue to puzzle over the incident therefore. Was it a publicity stunt to raise book sales, as the police suspected? Or perhaps it was an attempt to embarrass her husband and ruin his weekend tryst with mistress Nancy Neele, as suggested by biographer Jared Cade ( Agatha Christie and the Eleven Missing Days, 1999).
There are even those who claim her tale of amnesiac confusion was legitimate, that she’d had a particularly severe nervous breakdown (Agatha Christie: The Finished Portrait, 2006, Dr. Andrew Norman). A fictionalized 1979 film treatment of the subject, Agatha, starring Dustin Hoffman and Vanessa Redgrave even portrayed a confused Christie held virtual prisoner at Harrogate, receiving shock treatments to alter her mental state. Although speculation continues, many believe her novel Unfinished Portrait (1934), written as Mary Westmacott, gives clues to the emotional turmoil she was experiencing prior to her disappearance. In it a woman writer, remarkably similar to the real life Christie, is driven to the edge of suicide by the shock of her husband’s demand for divorce.