Emily Brent is an elderly spinster of strict principles and fierce Christian piety who travels to the island believing she has been invited by an acquaintance for a summer holiday. When the gramophone accuses her of the death of Beatrice Taylor, she refuses to discuss it in front of the men. Later, alone with Vera Claythorne, she tells the story with complete composure. Beatrice was her maid; when it turned out that the girl was pregnant and unmarried, Miss Brent dismissed her immediately, without references, with nowhere to go. Her own family would not take her back, and Beatrice drowned herself. Miss Brent explains that she has nothing to reproach herself with: the girl had sinned, and what happened afterwards was the consequence of her sin. On the island she remains calm, reads her Bible and writes in her diary. One afternoon, drowsy, she writes in it, in a hand that is not quite her own: “The murderer is Beatrice Taylor”. She is found dead in her chair, killed by an injection of cyanide; a bumblebee buzzes at the window, as in the nursery rhyme.
// The theoryA ladder of reasons
Lawrence Kohlberg, building on Jean Piaget, studied how people justify moral decisions by presenting them with dilemmas and analyzing their reasoning. He proposed six stages grouped in three levels. At the preconventional level, right and wrong are defined by punishment and personal interest. At the conventional level, by the expectations of others (stage 3) and by the maintenance of law, duty and social order (stage 4). At the postconventional level, by social contracts and, ultimately, by universal principles of justice and human dignity. Criminologists used the theory to suggest that many offenders reason at the lower stages. Carol Gilligan, in In a Different Voice (1982), criticized Kohlberg for privileging an abstract morality of rules and justice, and for undervaluing an ethic of care: attention to relationships and to the concrete needs of the people involved.
Stage 4 in Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development
At the law-and-order stage, right behavior consists in doing one’s duty, showing respect for authority and maintaining the given social order for its own sake.
Rules without a person
Emily Brent is not morally undeveloped in Kohlberg’s scheme; she is fixed at stage four, and she holds it with absolute certainty. Her reasoning has a clear structure: there is a rule (sexual relations outside marriage are a sin), there is a duty (a respectable household must not shelter sin), and there is a consequence (the sinner bears the results). Within that structure, dismissing Beatrice was not cruelty but obligation, and the suicide is Beatrice’s responsibility. What the reasoning cannot include is the person: a young girl, pregnant, frightened and alone, for whom losing her place meant losing everything. Gilligan’s critique describes exactly what is missing. Miss Brent has a morality of justice in its most rigid form, and no morality of care at all.
// The subjectRighteousness as armor
Miss Brent is the only guest who never doubts. The others lie, deny, rationalize or break down; she simply considers herself innocent, and is untroubled by the deaths around her because, in her view, the wicked are being punished. Christie gives her a moment of weakness that is almost supernatural: half asleep, she writes in her diary that the murderer is Beatrice Taylor, as if the girl she sent away had come back for her. It is the only sign that something under her certainty knows. The rest of the time, her righteousness works as armor. It protects her from guilt, from compassion and, in the end, from noticing that she is in danger.
Emily Brent
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// The crackNot a crime, and not a lower stage
Emily Brent poses a problem for both criminology and Kohlberg. First, what she did was not a crime under the law of her time, or most others: dismissing a servant is legal, and the death that followed was a suicide. Wargrave puts her on the island because he judges her morally guilty, which is a different category. Second, Kohlberg’s theory associates offending with low stages of moral reasoning, while Miss Brent reasons at a relatively high conventional stage. Her case shows the theory’s limit: the stage of reasoning does not determine whether the outcome is humane. Kohlberg measured how people justify decisions, not what they do, and research has found only a modest link between moral reasoning and behavior.
The case also raises a question about the island itself. Wargrave sentences her to death for a harm that no court would have punished, applying his own rigid conception of justice, uncomfortably similar to hers. Miss Brent chose to throw a girl onto the street and felt no remorse. What Kohlberg and Gilligan add is that moral certainty is not the same as moral maturity, and that a morality of rules without care can do great harm while feeling entirely clean.
Institutional cruelty with a clear conscience
Beatrice Taylor’s story was not unusual in the first half of the twentieth century: unmarried pregnant women and girls were dismissed, disowned and, in several countries, confined in institutions run on strict moral principles, where many suffered abuse and lost their children. Later inquiries into some of those institutions documented harm committed by people who believed they were acting rightly. Emily Brent is a portrait of that conviction in one person. The lesson for any institution that judges and punishes is the one Gilligan pressed: rules matter, but a morality that cannot see the vulnerable person in front of it is not justice.
Three key ideas
- Kohlberg’s theory of moral development describes six stages of moral reasoning; stage four, law and order, judges acts by duty and established rules. Gilligan (1982) criticized the absence of an ethic of care.
- Emily Brent dismissed her pregnant, unmarried maid Beatrice Taylor without references; the girl drowned herself. On the island she feels no guilt, writes in her diary that “the murderer is Beatrice Taylor” and is killed with an injection of cyanide.
- The crack: what she did was not a crime, and she reasons at a high conventional stage, so the theory does not predict her behavior. Even so, she chose to throw a girl onto the street without remorse.
Sources · further reading
- Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on Moral Development, vol. 1: The Philosophy of Moral Development. Harper & Row.
- Gilligan, C. (1982). In a Different Voice: Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Harvard University Press.
- Stams, G. J. et al. (2006). “The Moral Judgment of Juvenile Delinquents: A Meta-Analysis”. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 34(5), 697-713.
- Christie, A. (1939). And Then There Were None. Collins Crime Club.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Emily Brent?
Emily Brent is a villain from And Then There Were None, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. “I have nothing to reproach myself with,” she said.
Why does Emily Brent become a villain?
Emily Brent and moral development: in And Then There Were None, a devout spinster dismisses her maid on learning that she is pregnant, and the girl drowns herself. She tells the story with a clear conscience: she did her duty. Kohlberg arranged morality in steps. Miss Brent stands on a high one, law and order, and from there she cannot see the person drowning.
Which criminological theory explains Emily Brent?
Emily Brent's case is analysed through Moral development. Lawrence Kohlberg’s theory of moral development describes six stages of moral reasoning, from obedience out of fear of punishment to universal principles of justice. Stage four, law and order, judges acts by their conformity to established rules and duties. Emily Brent, the most rigid guest of And Then There Were None (1939), reasons from there without any doubt: she dismissed her maid Beatrice Taylor for becoming pregnant outside marriage, the girl took her own life, and she feels no guilt because she did what was right. Her case shows that conventional morality without compassion can produce harm with a clean conscience.
