Miss Marple Morton adapted the novel for the stage, he replaced the character of Caroline with a young girl. This change saddened Christie and she determined to give old maids a voice: Miss Marple was born. Christie may have taken the name from Marple railway station, through which she passed, or from Marple Hall, near her sister Madge's home at Abney Hall. The character of Jane Marple in the first Miss Marple book, "The Murder at the Vicarage", is markedly different from how she appears in later books. This early version of Miss Marple is a gleeful gossip and not an especially
Miss Marple nephew ("A Caribbean Mystery", 1964). She is not herself from the aristocracy or landed gentry, but is quite at home among them and would probably have been happy to describe herself as "genteel"; indeed, a "gentlewoman". Miss Marple may thus be considered a female version of that staple of British detective fiction, the gentleman detective. She demonstrates a remarkably thorough education, including some art courses that involved study of human anatomy through the study of 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