Editing Miss Marple (section)

==Character==
The character of Jane Marple in the first Miss Marple book, ''[[The Murder at the Vicarage]]'', is quite different from how she appears in later books. This early version of Miss Marple is a gleeful gossip and not an especially nice woman. The residents of St. Mary Mead like her but are often tired of her nosy nature and the fact she seems to expect the worst of everyone. In later books, she becomes a kinder person.

Miss Marple solves difficult crimes thanks to her shrewd intelligence, and St. Mary Mead, over her lifetime, has given her seemingly infinite examples of the negative side of human nature. Crimes always remind her of a previous incident, although acquaintances may be bored by analogies that often lead her to a deeper realisation about the true nature of a crime. She also has a remarkable ability to latch onto a casual comment and connect it to the case at hand. In several stories, she is able to rely on her acquaintance with [[Sir Henry Clithering]], a retired [[commissioner]] of the [[Metropolitan Police]], for official information when required.

Miss Marple never married and has no close living relatives. Her nephew, the "well-known author" [[Raymond West (character)|Raymond West]], appears in some stories, including ''[[The Thirteen Problems]]'', ''Sleeping Murder'', and ''Ingots of Gold'' (which also feature his wife, Joyce Lemprière). Raymond overestimates himself and underestimates his aunt's mental acuity. Miss Marple employs young women (including Clara, Emily, Alice, Esther, Gwenda, and Amy) from a nearby [[orphanage]], whom she trains for service as general housemaids after the retirement of her long-time maid-housekeeper, faithful Florence. She was briefly looked after by her irritating companion, Miss Knight. In her later years, companion Cherry Baker, first introduced in ''The Mirror Crack'd From Side to Side'', lives with her.

Miss Marple has never worked for her living and is of independent means, although she benefits in her old age from the financial support of her nephew, Raymond. She is not from the aristocracy or [[landed gentry]], but is quite at home among them; as a [[gentlewoman]], Miss Marple may thus be considered a female version of the [[gentleman detective]], a staple of British detective fiction. She demonstrates a remarkably thorough education, including some art courses that involved the study of human anatomy using human cadavers. In ''[[They Do It with Mirrors]]'' (1952), it is revealed that Miss Marple grew up in a [[cathedral close]], and that she studied at an Italian finishing school with American sisters Ruth Van Rydock and Caroline "Carrie" Louise Serrocold.

While Miss Marple is described as "an old lady" in many of the stories, her age is rarely mentioned and is not consistently presented. In ''At Bertram's Hotel'', published in 1965, it is said she visited the hotel when she was 14 and almost 60 years have passed since then, implying that she is nearly 75 years old; but in ''4:50 from Paddington'', published almost a decade earlier in 1957, she says she will be "90 next year."

Excluding ''Sleeping Murder'', 41 years passed between the first and last-written novels, and many characters grow and age. An example would be the Vicar's nephew: in ''The Murder at the Vicarage'', the Reverend Mr Clement's nephew Dennis is a teenager; in ''The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side'', it is mentioned that the nephew is now an adult and has a successful career. The effects of ageing are seen on Miss Marple, such as needing a holiday after illness in ''[[A Caribbean Mystery]]'', but she is if anything more agile in ''[[Nemesis (Christie novel)|Nemesis]]'', set only 16 months later.

Miss Marple's background is described in some detail, albeit in glimpses across the novels and short stories in which she appears. She has a very large family, including a sister, the mother of Raymond, and Mabel Denham, a young woman who was accused of poisoning her husband, Geoffrey (''[[The Thirteen Problems#The Thumb Mark of St. Peter|The Thumb Mark of St. Peter]]'').