ABSTRACT
In a pivotal sequence from the final episode of the BBC’s Christmas adaptation of Agatha Christie’s crime thriller And Then There Were None (2015), the focal character of Vera Claythorne, holding a lamp, ascends the stairs of the doom-laden weekend retreat of Soldier Island (see Figure 10.1). As an image, it is iconographic and speaks of a heritage of both televisual and cinematic Female Gothic narratives, a visual departure from the usual television renditions of Christie’s novels. The depiction of an inquisitive female heroine navigating the contours of her home to investigate the secrets housed within the architecture is a recurring image in female-centric films, as exemplified by Secret Beyond the Door (1947), The Innocents (1961), The Others (2001), The Duke of Burgundy (2014), and Crimson Peak (2015). The repeated use of such a specific sequence of female representation conveys a persistence not only in female visual narratives, but also of the Gothic as an aesthetic in illuminating the female experience. While this adaptation of And Then There Were None draws upon such a Gothic tradition, there are critical distinctions that need to be drawn. First, while the character of Vera Claythorne is centralised and presented as a focal figure for the audience throughout the serialisation, she is one character in what is essentially an ensemble crime drama. Acknowledging this does not disavow Vera’s depiction or negate reading her within the parameters of the Female Gothic, but rather warns against situating the adaptation as a whole solely within the Female Gothic mode. The narrative does not exclusively belong to Vera. Vera may be described in places as paranoid or as repressing her sexuality, but the drama is broader than offering a critique on gender relations and anxieties over domesticity, as scholars Tania Modleski (1984) and Diane Waldman (1984) consider the Female Gothic cycle of the 1940s to do. Second, to return to the visual treatment of Vera climbing the stairs, while the image may belong to the Gothic tradition, Vera’s motivation and agency depart from that of her predecessors, creating a frisson between the visualisation and the narrative trajectory of Vera. 142Miss Giddens in The Innocents, Grace in The Others, and Edith from Crimson Peak are exploratory figures who seek to resolve the disturbances in their home: the Gothic woman desires to know the secret behind the door. In comparison, Vera in ascending the stairs strives not to uncover, but rather endeavours to escape her fate, suppress her past, and deny her character. The disturbances in the home on Soldier Island, her secret, her past, are waiting for Vera, and the audience, as she reaches the landing. For in And Then There Were None, Vera is the final secret behind the metaphorical door. The Bluebeard story that provides the narrative structure for tales of the Female Gothic disrupts Vera as the ‘woman in peril’. The rendering of both Vera and the domestic setting in this sequence is symptomatic of the adaptation in that both are treated with a Gothic sensibility that centralises ambiguity, suspense, and the uncanny in the adaptation process, engaging the audience in a crime mystery that oscillates between rationality and the fantastic. It is the Gothicisation of the crime thriller that is the focus of this chapter.
