Feminization of Agatha Christie´s Character Hercule Poirot through His Appearance, Personality, Age and Cat Symbolism

Abstract

This article aims to analyze how Agatha Christie’s character Hercule Poirot is feminized through several aspects, namely his appearance and character, his age and recurring cat symbolism. All the aspects and their examples were collected from Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot stories employing close reading as a method. By the use of several academic papers focused mainly on the topic of gender stereotypes in connection to the presented examples from Agatha Christie’s works, the central argument is that the character of the male detective Hercule Poirot is strongly feminized. Although this theory is already widely accepted, this article focuses on its less frequently discussed aspects, namely cat symbolism and age-related feminization.