The Syllabification of Jessica Fletcher

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Dear Reader, brevity has never been my strong suit.

But I will try to be as succinct as I can, as I have had a sudden MSW epiphany but also am approaching my bedtime.

So without further ado:

I will not even try to pretend that I am the first to see a connection between Jessica Fletcher and Agatha Christie, the famous mystery writer and most successful novelist to date. It is widely accepted that Jessica is an amalgamation character, based on both the true-to-life Christie and Christie's own fictional amateur detective, Jane Marple.

But tonight I made a discovery that I believe must be added to the discourse: When broken down into their syllables and phonemes, the names of Jessica Fletcher and Agatha Christie are further proof that the former is based upon the latter.

Let me show you what I mean.

Jessica Fletcher Agatha Christie

['dʒɛ.sɪ.kə 'flɛ.tʃɚ] ['æ.gə.θə 'krɪs.ti]

Do you see it? Okay, so maybe you aren't familiar with the IPA system of spelling words phonetically, so I will raise the word count to explain further. The names Jessica Fletcher and Agatha Christie both are comprised of 5 syllables. Those syllables are broken into 3 syllables for the first name and 2 syllables for the last name. The syllabic stresses of both names fall on the first syllable of the both the first and and last names (JE-ssica FLE-tcher & A-ga-tha CHRIS-tie).

Moving even beyond the flow of the names, both first names end with the schwa phoneme. And to top it all off, both last names are possible first names (I was on an improv team with a kid named Fletcher. They're real).

So the point of all this? We have even further evidence that Jessica Fletcher is paying homage to one of the greatest writers of modern history. And I just think that's neat.