The Case of the Missing Older Lesbians

Where are the representations of older lesbians in the media?

Three decades of lesbian scholarship have borne witness to our incredible courage and creativity in the face of unremitting misogyny and homophobia. Where are the stories, the representations of our lives and our loves?

Well, imagine my surprise to discover an authentic depiction of a old lesbian couple in an Agatha Christie episode filmed by the BBC in 1985. [Click here for selected lesbianic excerpts from the show.]

Even for a series about a woman detective, "A Murder Is Announced" stands out as unusually woman-centered.  Not only is the entire plot built on a matrix of female bonding: love between sisters, between girlhood friends, between a wife and her husband's secretary, and between lesbians, but, in fact, the lesbian relationship provides the key to solving the mystery. And the original mystery was written in 1950!

The time is immediately after the war, and the place is a fictional little village in England.  Murgatroyd is the fem.  She wears the housedress, does the laundry, and defers to her partner.  Hinchcliffe, affectionately known as "Hinch," is the butch.  She wears the boots, slops the pigs, drives the car, and brags about drinking.  Both women are in their late forties/early fifties. Murgatroyd is a big woman with soft features, maternal and plodding in her process.  Hinch is angular, articulate, acerbic, and animated. The two women have apparently been partners for a long time, and the villagers accept their relationship.

I found myself replaying and fast-forwarding to watch the scenes with the two lesbians, and as I did this, I asked myself why I should be so fascinated with such obviously old-fashioned and stereotypical representations of lesbians at a time when I could download so many more recent lesbian films.

The fact is Hinch and Murgatroyd have something I rarely see anywhere else.  They have a real relationship.  A long-term relationship.  A relationship in a world which is brutally hostile to lesbians and which involves complicated strategies for survival, compromises, divisions of labor, and highly protective coloring. Hinch and Murgatroyd reflect a relationship where, over time, each partner has gained a monopoly over the areas in which she possesses the greater strengths, ceding to her partner the territory to which she holds the lesser claim.  It is a question of economy, not caricature. 

This is evident from comparisons with the other characters: the communist student-idealist, the mysterious war widow, the potentially unbalanced refugee, the long-lost school chum, the retired army officer, and the upper class "waster."  All of these characters are charming, shifty, and one-dimensional.  Their heterosexual relationships are blatant plot devices, which even the actors cannot  invest with any authenticity.  Not so Murgatroyd and Hinch, whose behaviors are complex and coded.

For example, when Hitch characterizes Murgatroyd as flighty and unreliable
to the police inspector, it is not only to cast herself in the light of being the responsible partner, but also to shield Murgatroyd from the questions of the police and the eyes of the community.  In this scene, Hinch makes a point of mentioning her fondness for liquor, her war service record, and the fact that she has seen things that would make the inspector's hair curl.  Caught slopping the pigs, she makes a show of her affection for the animals, as if she were indulging herself in a hobby instead of performing a menial task.  When Murgatroyd joins them, Hinch hovers over her -- correcting, mocking, and confusing her.  Editorializing on the inadequacy of Murgatroyd's answers, Hinch successfully deflects the inspector's interest in both of them and redirects it toward the other villagers. Even as she patronizes her partner, she throws a protective arm around her and makes it clear that the inspector will have to deal with her if he intends to badger her lover.

Two later scenes are even more illuminating. Both women are at home in their modest cottage. In both scenes, Hinch is puzzling over the murder they have witnessed. She recruits Murgatroyd's aid in re-enacting the shooting. Overtly, Murgatroyd follows Hinch's orders, anxious to please her mistress. Overtly, Hinch is acting in a high-handed and domineering way. But watching the scenes a second time, a different quality emerges. When Murgatroyd mentions that she remembers hitting her foot against the door, Hinch stops mid-hunch to address her concern for Murgatroyd's failure to see a chiropodist about her corns. Later, Murgatroyd, caught up in the drama of the re-enactment, drops her deferential act, and we see her emerge, if only for a few seconds, as a full partner to her irascible lover.

During the second re-enactment, Murgatroyd realizes the identity of the murderer, but Hinch is distracted by a call to rescue the family dog from the train station. On the way back, Hinch picks up Miss Marple, rescuing her from a downpour. She rakishly suggests that Miss Marple tell the others she is "out on the town." Returning to the cottage, both women discover Murgatroyd's body.  After a thorough check for vital signs, Hinch sets her face with grim determination: "When I find out who did this, I'm going to kill her."

Back at the cottage, Hinch blames herself for Murgatroyd's death, because the re-enactments had been her idea -- "silly games."  Miss Marple, in a very tender scene, gently asks her to focus on the killer's identity.  Later, Miss Marple will make inquiries about how Hinch is doing.  The inspector notes that she seems to have aged ten years.

In the final confrontation scene, Hinch is silent and stony, but as soon as the accusation is made, she rivets her attention on the killer like a bloodhound who has scented her prey.  When the killer is apprehended, she bursts in on the scene, lunging at the murderer with the cry, "I'm going to kill you!"  Restrained by the police, Hinchcliffe finally gives way to her grief. 

Alcoholism, domination, gender roles...  and real life. Real lesbian life. In a story where the detective-heroine is an old woman who speaks plainly about what it is to live on fixed low income at an age when all of one's friends are dead, the lesbian story line is given a dignity and depth not accorded to the other more privileged characters.  Miss Marple and Hinchcliffe share the understanding that beneath the surface of life in a storybook village lie violence and evil. Hinchcliffe, in carving out some corner of joy and safety for herself, had found a partner who seemed untainted by knowledge of that evil, and she had devoted her life to protecting her innocence. Indeed, Murgatroyd's last words were admonishments to the murderer to come in out of the rain. 

There appear to be several links for viewing this episode online.  Click here for one of them.