‘What are words?’: Symbolism and romance in Agatha Christie’s short stories ‘Within a Wall’, ‘The House of Dreams’ and ‘The Lonely God’

This article explores three of Agatha Christie’s early non-crime short stories written in the mid-1920s. I examine Christie’s use of symbolism and key motifs to explore the representation of relationships through the prism of romance. I argue that Christie’s short stories serve as a highly significant creative site for her investigation of the relationship between genre, subjectivity and symbolism.