DLS: The Nine Tailors 3
Jul. 11th, 2003 10:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyPrevious DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, and Ralph Lynn, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Miss Katharine Alexandra Climpson, media whimsies, music, aspidistra & ampelopsis, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1 & 2, Strong Poison, The Five Red Herrings, Have His Carcase 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7, Murder Must Advertise, The Nine Tailors 1 & 2.
At long last, the third Nine Tailors post, in which we will discuss religion, realism, and anything else that happens to cross my mind. Discussion inspired from the replies to this post, with much gratitude!
Spoilers abounding.
The Nine Tailors is at once one of the most realistic books in the Wimsey canon (the other being Gaudy Night) and the most inclined toward the surreal, dream-like state of affairs that Freud (in one of his more useful moments) labelled as the unheimlich. There are no overtly supernatural happenings (unlike, say, the cheerfully matter-of-fact sighting and discussion of ghosts in Busman's Honeymoon), but the novel is brooded over by the presence of the bells. As Peter says, chiding Charles (who appears for the last time here as his Horatio), "You wait, Charles ... You wait till you get stuck on a ladder in a belfry in the dark. Bells are like cats and mirrors--they're always queer, and it doesn't do to think too much about them" (T9T 226). The bells are the answers to the book's mysteries: Deacon's death and the cipher. Even Deacon's misdirect, which leads poor Cranton into the belfry, merely serves to reinforce the importance of the bells to the story.
The dream-like nature of the novel is heightened by Peter's isolation from his usual setting (which I talked about in my first Nine Tailors post), and especially by the flood at the end. My second favorite passage in the book (following only the description of the bell-ringing that starts "The bells gave tongue" (T9T (29)) is this one:
The flood, of course, has religious overtones to spare--including Peter enacting Noah's dove (T9T 278), which incidentally explains what![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pameladean points out as one of the novel's manifest implausibilities: Peter's "morning swim"--and the fact that it is the means of Will Thoday's death requires some exploration.
"He died finely," says Peter, "and his sins died with him" (T9T 279).pameladean and brisingamen both objected to the use of the word "sins," but for me it has always seemed clear that Will has sinned, not in the murder of Deacon, which was involuntary, but in allowing Deacon to corrupt him. He says he struck a deal with Deacon for his wife and children's sake--which is exactly the sort of thing that the SCR object to in Gaudy Night when considering the misdeeds of Arthur Robinson--but the fact remains that he has awareness of evil and conceals it, and by so doing does not in fact make his wife and children's position any better vis-a-vis God, but only in terms of public opinion. And I don't think we're meant to find Will's fate justified; my reading is that the tragedy of the book--and I do think The Nine Tailors is a tragedy--is the fact that Will's sufferings and self-sacrifice are undeserved. The "justice" in the book is Deacon's death, but even that is made uncomfortable and ambiguous by how close Peter comes to suffering the same fate:
This is not a message of comfort, any more than it partakes of the usual resolution and closure of the mystery genre. There is something intensely medieval about The Nine Tailors (asvassilissa suggested (Deacon is very like a morality Vice), and part of that quality lies in the stark comfortlessness of the characters' relationships with God. Prayers are not answered (Hilary prays for her father not to die, for example), and there is no note of grace, except decent, ordinary, human kindness, to counterbalance the darkness.
Which leads, of course, to the realism in the portrayal of the Venables and the people of Fenchurch St. Paul.brisingamen has testified to the authentic feeling of the bell-ringers, and Mr. Venables has always seemed to me the most realized and human of Sayers's various clergymen. He is not a paragon (Catherine Kenney, in The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, argues that Mr. Venables's wisdom is the linch-pin of the book, the rock that both it and Peter rely on, and I think that's a gross over-idealization of the character Sayers presents), but is, very clearly, a human being sincere in his calling and performing his duty to the utmost of his abilities. His wife's exasperated pride, likewise, if you'll pardon the expression, rings true. (The Goodacres in Busman's Honeymoon seem to me like a caricature of the Venables.) And Will, Jim, and Mary Thoday, struggling in the trap made for them by circumstance and malignant coincidence, are many-sided and difficult, as human beings are wont to be.
This and Gaudy Night (and the Pym's half of Murder Must Advertise) are the most carefully observed of Sayers's books. In Gaudy Night this is a matter of texture; for The Nine Tailors it's part of the book's architecture, the balance of the bell-ringers against the bells.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Nine Tailors. 1934. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.
At long last, the third Nine Tailors post, in which we will discuss religion, realism, and anything else that happens to cross my mind. Discussion inspired from the replies to this post, with much gratitude!
Spoilers abounding.
The Nine Tailors is at once one of the most realistic books in the Wimsey canon (the other being Gaudy Night) and the most inclined toward the surreal, dream-like state of affairs that Freud (in one of his more useful moments) labelled as the unheimlich. There are no overtly supernatural happenings (unlike, say, the cheerfully matter-of-fact sighting and discussion of ghosts in Busman's Honeymoon), but the novel is brooded over by the presence of the bells. As Peter says, chiding Charles (who appears for the last time here as his Horatio), "You wait, Charles ... You wait till you get stuck on a ladder in a belfry in the dark. Bells are like cats and mirrors--they're always queer, and it doesn't do to think too much about them" (T9T 226). The bells are the answers to the book's mysteries: Deacon's death and the cipher. Even Deacon's misdirect, which leads poor Cranton into the belfry, merely serves to reinforce the importance of the bells to the story.
The dream-like nature of the novel is heightened by Peter's isolation from his usual setting (which I talked about in my first Nine Tailors post), and especially by the flood at the end. My second favorite passage in the book (following only the description of the bell-ringing that starts "The bells gave tongue" (T9T (29)) is this one:
The banks of the Thirty-Foot held, but the swollen Wale, receiving the full force of the Upper Waters and the spring tide, gave at every point. Before the cars reached St. Paul, the flood was rising and pursuing them. Wimsey's car--the last to start--was submerged to the axles. They fled through the dusk, and behind and on their left, the great silver sheet of water spread and spread.
(Sayers 273)
The flood, of course, has religious overtones to spare--including Peter enacting Noah's dove (T9T 278), which incidentally explains what
pameladean points out as one of the novel's manifest implausibilities: Peter's "morning swim"--and the fact that it is the means of Will Thoday's death requires some exploration."He died finely," says Peter, "and his sins died with him" (T9T 279).
pameladean and brisingamen both objected to the use of the word "sins," but for me it has always seemed clear that Will has sinned, not in the murder of Deacon, which was involuntary, but in allowing Deacon to corrupt him. He says he struck a deal with Deacon for his wife and children's sake--which is exactly the sort of thing that the SCR object to in Gaudy Night when considering the misdeeds of Arthur Robinson--but the fact remains that he has awareness of evil and conceals it, and by so doing does not in fact make his wife and children's position any better vis-a-vis God, but only in terms of public opinion. And I don't think we're meant to find Will's fate justified; my reading is that the tragedy of the book--and I do think The Nine Tailors is a tragedy--is the fact that Will's sufferings and self-sacrifice are undeserved. The "justice" in the book is Deacon's death, but even that is made uncomfortable and ambiguous by how close Peter comes to suffering the same fate:"Geoffrey Deacon was a bad man, but when I think of the helpless horror of his lonely and intolerable death-agony--"
He broke off, and put his head between his hands, as though instinctively seeking to shut out the riot of the bell-voices.
The Rector's mild voice came out of the silence.
"There have always," he said, "been legends about Batty Thomas. She has slain two other men in times past, and Hezekiah will tell you that the bells are said to be jealous of the presence of evil. Perhaps God speaks through those mouths of inarticulate metal. He is a righteous judge, strong and patient, and is provoked every day."
(Sayers 279)
This is not a message of comfort, any more than it partakes of the usual resolution and closure of the mystery genre. There is something intensely medieval about The Nine Tailors (as
vassilissa suggested (Deacon is very like a morality Vice), and part of that quality lies in the stark comfortlessness of the characters' relationships with God. Prayers are not answered (Hilary prays for her father not to die, for example), and there is no note of grace, except decent, ordinary, human kindness, to counterbalance the darkness.Which leads, of course, to the realism in the portrayal of the Venables and the people of Fenchurch St. Paul.
brisingamen has testified to the authentic feeling of the bell-ringers, and Mr. Venables has always seemed to me the most realized and human of Sayers's various clergymen. He is not a paragon (Catherine Kenney, in The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, argues that Mr. Venables's wisdom is the linch-pin of the book, the rock that both it and Peter rely on, and I think that's a gross over-idealization of the character Sayers presents), but is, very clearly, a human being sincere in his calling and performing his duty to the utmost of his abilities. His wife's exasperated pride, likewise, if you'll pardon the expression, rings true. (The Goodacres in Busman's Honeymoon seem to me like a caricature of the Venables.) And Will, Jim, and Mary Thoday, struggling in the trap made for them by circumstance and malignant coincidence, are many-sided and difficult, as human beings are wont to be.This and Gaudy Night (and the Pym's half of Murder Must Advertise) are the most carefully observed of Sayers's books. In Gaudy Night this is a matter of texture; for The Nine Tailors it's part of the book's architecture, the balance of the bell-ringers against the bells.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Nine Tailors. 1934. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., n.d.
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no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 10:42 am (UTC)Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 02:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 03:52 pm (UTC)Every time I see a mole or a porpentine icon of yours I want to do that, so I hope this will just get it out of my system for a while.
Pamela
no subject
Date: 2003-07-11 08:56 pm (UTC)I fond a lot of the published criticism of Sayers to be somewhat unbalanced and, as is typical when criticism deals with a female author, tending to pay entirely too much attention to her personal life. These essays are nice correctives
no subject
Date: 2003-07-12 06:54 am (UTC)Right. I'll step off my soap-box now. *g*
Re:
Date: 2003-07-12 09:38 pm (UTC)Or a particular author, I think.
'd like to have engraved in big letters over the entrance to every undergraduate English class ever taught, is that there's a big difference between MAKING a pattern and FINDING a pattern
Sigh. Yes. Getting that one through their little skulls takes a lot of work, doesn't it...
You're wolcome to soapbox all you like, thoguh--I rant on such subjects at the drop of a hat too!