DLS: Gaudy Night 1

[truepenny]

Previous 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, & 3.

Still feeling ill, headachy, and fretful. Need a break from George Eliot. But I've finally figured out where to start talking about Gaudy Night. I don't know how coherent or insightful this is going to be, but it gives me something to do.

Spoilers for the whole book.


And where I'm starting is with the blindingly obvious. Gaudy Night is about women. We get, if I recall correctly, only one snippet from Peter's point of view, and he is off-stage for most of the book. The other men--Reggie Pomfret, Lionel Farringdon, Dr. Threep, Jukes--appear very much in context of women. Pomfret and Farringdon are adjuncts of the Cattermole disaster; Dr. Threep is brought on stage for the purpose of discussing the College's problem. And Jukes, nasty piece of work that he is, is of concern to the SCR only in the context of his wife. Women populate this novel; women drive it. Peter appears to perform his conjuring trick, but only because Harriet invites him in. And Peter himself is important in the novel largely for his place in the moral/ethical/emotional equation it is trying to solve.

That equation, very broadly, is one that Sayers has been struggling with throughout the series of Wimsey novels, but this is the first time it is allowed to upstage her hero. The question is: what can and should a woman do? Miss Climpson offers one perspective on the question, as do Mary Whittaker, Ann Dorland, Gilda Farren, and even Dian de Momerie. But it is with Harriet that Sayers plunges most deeply into the heart of the thing.

Gaudy Night is set up quite explicitly to present Harriet with a series of alternatives, both in the old students who attend the Gaudy:

the Old Students in the body of the Hall--all types, all ages, all varieties of costume. ... the curious round-shouldered woman in a yellow djibbah and sandals, with her hair coiled in two snail-shells over her ears ... or the sturdy, curly-headed person in tweeds, with a masculine-looking waist-coat and the face like the back of a cab ... the tightly-corseted peroxide of sixty, whose had would better have suited an eighteen-year-old débutante at Ascot ... the innumerable women with "school-teacher" stamped on their resolutely cheery countenances ... the plain person of indeterminate age who sat at the head of her table with the air of a chairman of committee ... that curious little creature dressed in unbecoming pink, who looked as though she had been carelessly packed away in a drawer all winter and put into circulation again without being ironed ... that handsome well-preserved business woman of fifty with the well-manicured hands, who broke into the conversation of total strangers to inform them that she had just opened a new hairdressing establishment "just off Bond Street" ... that tall, haggard, tragedy-queen in black silk marocain who looked like Hamlet's aunt, but was actually Aunt Beatrice who ran the Household Column of the Daily Mercury ... the bony woman with the long horse-face who had devoted herself to Settlement work ... that unconquerably merry and bright little dumpling of a creature who was the highly-valued secretary of a political secretary and had secretaries under her
(51-52)

the students currently at Shrewsbury:

so many unknown quantities. So many destined wives and mothers of the race; or, alternatively, so many potential historians, scientists, schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers; as you liked to think one thing of more importance than the other.
(109)

and, most pointedly, in the balanced chiasmus surrounding Harriet at the Gaudy: "Was it worse to be a Mary Attwood (née Stokes) or a Miss Schuster-Slatt? Was it better to be a Phoebe Bancroft (née Tucker) or a Miss Lydgate? And would all these people have turned out exactly the same, married or single?" (47). This pattern continues throughout the book, most notably in the clever play of red herring against culprit, Miss Hillyard against Annie Wilson.

Moreover, the question of marriage is inextricably bound up in the question of work. We see that for the first time in Harriet's encounter with Catherine Freemantle Bendick (47-50); it reappears in Harriet's conversation with Peter (67), and again in a conversation with Miss de Vine (179-82). And it emerges again and again in the SCR's squabbles, as they struggle with the question of whether woman's traditional work as wife and mother is more or less important than the work she can do intellectually and artistically.

By setting the novel in a women's college, and by keeping her charismatic hero in Europe most of the time, Sayers keeps her spotlight trained on the women and the choices they are making, and in that way contrives at last to clear the "romance" out of Harriet's relationship with Peter, leaving author and character to deal with the question of what marriage means to an independent woman. By presenting all these options--Phoebe Tucker or Annie Wilson, Miss de Vine or Miss Hillyard, Miss Chilperic, Miss Martin, Mrs. Godwin, Miss Shaw--Sayers demonstrates what is at stake for Harriet, that the question is not one of woman's rightful place or what woman is suited for. It's perfectly clear that the women in this novel are suited for a wide range of different things. It's a question of how, as a human being and a woman, Harriet is to deal with her own intellectual and emotional needs--and to deal with Peter's as well.

This is the first book where we begin to see that Peter needs Harriet. In Strong Poison, there's a persistent, gaily Wodehousian air to his courtship. He's in earnest, but it's not terribly serious. In Have His Carcase, Peter and Harriet form one of many dysfunctional couples. But in Gaudy Night, their relationship finally begins to balance. We see weakness in Peter for the first time since Whose Body?; what's more, Harriet sees it, too. Peter is at last reduced to the status of a human being, and Harriet is there waiting for him, having been a human being all along.


I am open to suggestions for other topics in relation to GN. I feel like I've only scratched the surface.

---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Gaudy Night. 1936. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, n.d.

Comments

[calanthe-b.livejournal.com]

I think here you've isolated both the thing I love most about Gaudy Night, and the most important element of it. It is a book about women, and its focus on women independent of men--on female community--is both very unusual and very important. Everything turns on that theme, of women and work. And the point about male characters being seen in relation to women, rather than the other way around, is very true. Even Peter is seen as an adjunct to Harriet--by the SCR and the readers--rather than the other way around.

Some other ideas which always catch at me when I'm reading, if you're interested, are the class issue--which is very much present, though it tends to be obscured by the gender debate--and definitions of integrity.

[marith.livejournal.com]

*cheers* GN is hands down my favorite of the series.

Integrity, definitely, and also work even apart from the matter of gender. The SCR early on discusses Peter and why he does what he does, a male neighbor is mentioned in the context of drains and jobs one likes, and of course Arthur whatsisname comes in for analysis. And I'm sure Lord St. George's errant behavior is relevant too.

So it's not just women. Everyone is wrestling with questions of work. "I don't think proper feeling should stop me from doing my proper job," says Harriet, and everyone agrees with her, but what is one's proper job? The thing that one is best at? The thing that overmasters one? The person one loves most?

Too fuzzybrained to take this any further, but some possible examples:

Catherine Freemantle who married a farmer
The hypothetical artist and his family to feed
The drunken student who wants to be a cook
Peter himself not being sure what his proper place is, as an outmoded aristocrat / the concept of public service
Freddy Arbuthnot and his skill with money
Annie having to go into service, a job she is not suited for
Ms. de Vine's former lover
The secretary with the sick kid
Lord St. George having an assigned job, which his family and his college define in two different ways

and there must be others.

[kate_nepveu]

Very good point. I found the discussions around this point somewhat odd, as I'm not used to thinking of people as having *a* proper job, but rather a range of possibilities that they are suited for in various degrees.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Whee! This is pretty coherent, I think. Can't think of anything I want to add right now. Too early in the morning.

I first read GAUDY NIGHT in 8th grade, and missed a lot of things...I felt much smarter when I read it again towards the end of high school, and when I read it while attending a women's college, my deep love for the book solidified.

I convinced L. to read it by beginning to read it to her aloud. Now it's one of her favorite books.

[marypcb.livejournal.com]

GN is the book I thrust at people when I want them to understand my view of what matters in relationships, so I'm short a copy at the moment

I also love the way it inverts traditional courtship tropes like the love poem (Harriet's sonnet and Peter's sestet), and the way music and poetry and song are a way for Harriet to understand Peter - for me it hearks forward to when Peter complains that the poets ahve stolen all the words and Harriet tells him that he's made her understand them.

[pameladean]

This is my favorite Sayers novel as well.

Not sure this observation is good for more than a footnote, but there are some interesting unexamined assumptions in Sayers's arrangements. I gather, though I do not know, that even at the time the novel is set, if one wished to teach at Oxford and was female, one must be unmarried. I know this was the arrangement generally earlier on, and it doesn't seem to have changed. Mrs. Goodwin is married, but she's a secretary, not a don; Miss Chilperic is engaged, but the implication is that she will stop teaching once married.

Men can be married and have a job, naturally, but for women, it's different. This is addressed only indirectly, but there is a really strong implication that for the most part, men have jobs, with or without marriage; women have jobs and one of them IS marriage. I can't think of an example in the book where a woman has a job and her marriage is her husband's job. Harriet feels undeservedly lucky because she'd get to keep writing even if she married Peter; but you may notice that, in "Tallboys," it is she who is struggling to write while keeping an eye on several young children. You don't see Peter removing them from her supervision so she can get in some quiet work.

Pamela

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I think "Talboys" suffers intensely from Sayers's roseate and over-romanticized view of what the Wimseys' domestic life would be like, and I am personally very loath to count it in the canon at all--except that I do like Bredon. I frankly think Harriet would be a terrible mother; she is nowhere less plausible than she is in her dealings with Roger.

My understanding, like yours, is that female dons at Oxford could not be married. Mrs. Godwin is a widow, and the subject of Miss Chilperic's future is never addressed. But I think, at bottom, Harriet's agony of indecision is partly based precisely on what you point out. For Peter, marriage is a welcome and deeply desired addition to his life; for Harriet it is an upheaval, requiring massive thought and self-scrutiny. Notice that it's Harriet who has to sacrifice her pride to their marriage, not Peter, whereas in the comparable situation with Lady Mary and Charles, it's Charles's pride that must be cosseted.

Sayers was clearly arguing that women could do just as well with marriage or without, and her argument in Busman's Honeymoon is clearly that marriage should be a matter of equality: equal passion, equal power. I don't know whether the fact that there are no men represented who consider their wives their job is a failure in sexual-political theorizing, or an accurate observation of social reality.

[pameladean]

Eeep, yes, of course she's a widow, or she wouldn't be working.

What you say ties in with Harriet's mischievous discussion with Miss Hillyard about whether women of distinction have a great father behind them, perhaps. It's hard to find an acknowledged situation where the support and taking the back seat flows the other way.

I bet it happened, though. I just bet it did. People just didn't see it; they crammed it into different preconceived patterns.

Given the degree of speculation in GN, I can't help thinking that Sayers just didn't think far enough. But who knows; she was, after all, writing a novel, not a social disquisition.

Pamela

Women, marriage, academia

[oursin.livejournal.com]

There were women around at the time Sayers was writing who did manage to combine careers in some kind of academic field with marriage and even maternity, though it was not easy. Janet Vaughan, who later became Mistress of Somerville (the exact title of this post eludes me at the moment) was one of them (though she seems to have found it much easier to find research jobs on short-term funding rather than a teaching post). Sayers did not manage to write in to GN whichever one it was of Chloe or Olivia who was, according to V Woolf, married and a mother, but still mincing liver in the laboratory (and possibly based on Vaughan). But Sayers was, as stated above, 'writing a novel, not a social disquisition'. Though (along with Woolf) I do think it a bit sad that while women did manage the combination in real life so few made it into fiction. Sayers does have that archaeologist working with her husband on digs (but doesn't mention whose name got on the papers they published).

[marith.livejournal.com]

My guess would be that Sayers found it hard to imagine a man who would make his marriage his job, never mind write one in a way people would believe. ( It's *still* pretty darn rare.) Peter is already idealized to the point where he seems a different species of man altogether, sometimes.

Hrm. Perhaps the closest Sayers gets is Freddy Arbuthnot. He's a minor, comic figure and the reader is not encouraged to take him seriously - but his romance sounds as intriguing as Peter's. Freddy also patiently woos and waits for his ladylove ("I got round Lady Levy by explaining that I had served nearly seven years for Rachel.") and is willing to do whatever it takes. The inequity between Charles and Mary has to be balanced out with clever financing so that Charles doesn't feel inferior, and Harriet spends a lot of time fighting her own pride. But Freddy doesn't seem to have any . Sure, the kids can be raised Jewish. Sure, I'll convert (in the 30s!). Sure, my wife's father's business will be "the family business", it will be good for the kids to be part of that.

Of course Freddy isn't going to give up his own career. But that's a pretty impressive display of mature non-machismo, isn't it? Maybe it was only possible for a dim and laughable sidekick?

[loligo.livejournal.com]

but there is a really strong implication that for the most part, men have jobs, with or without marriage; women have jobs and one of them IS marriage. [...] but you may notice that, in "Tallboys," it is she who is struggling to write while keeping an eye on several young children.

It really annoys me that no one in the book seems to be able to cognitively disentangle marriage and maternity. I don't know much about the history of contraception, but it is my impression that by the 1930's there were reasonably effective condoms available and married men wouldn't have any difficulty purchasing them. There's no reason why getting married should necessitate having children, but even these educated professional women can't seem to make the mental leap that would allow that as a possibility. (I know that somewhere in one of the books or stories Peter and Harriet have a conversation about whether Harriet wants children or not, but I think Peter's the one who brings it up, and it's not in GN.)

So it creeps me out throughout the book to hear *one person* discussed as a possible life's work. I just can't imagine how either person in the couple could enjoy that; it seems like it would demean them both. Now, a whole family as a life's work -- there you've got something that's worth debating. Children simply *are* a huge and asymmetric suck of time and energy, in a way that an adult never could (or rather, should) be.

(And while I've got you here, is it a coincidence that you have the same name as a character in Murder Must Advertise? Or were your parents Sayers fans?)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Historical note (because apparently today everything I read about George Eliot connects back to Sayers): Barbara Leigh Smith (later Barbara Bodichon) after talking to George Eliot, "Without using the exact words, ... explained [to Bessie Parkes] that the Leweses practiced some form of birth control, and intended to have no children" (Haight 205). Since Haight doesn't quote her directly and does not himself offer any sort of speculation on "interesting revelations of the marriage-bed," I have no idea of what their methods might have entailed, but they were successful.

Also, the conversation about children is in Chapter One of Busman's Honeymoon.

[pameladean]

It's a coincidence. I really dislike it. "Smart as paint, but rather silly, I thought." Feh.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Oh, very nice points. I always did like Freddy.

I think you're right about how far Peter could be idealized in that direction. When, in GN, Harriet gets the letter from him saying, "I know that, if you have put anything in hand, disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should," she thinks that this is an admission of equality, and that if he conceives of marriage along those lines, then her whole attitude will have to be rethought from the beginning; but she thinks also that to hold such an opinion, he would have to be "not a man but a miracle." This is a reasonable thing for her to think, but it's also one of those moments when one (often wrongly, but one can't seem to help it) seems to see the author thinking away above the whole tapestry, can I get away with that?

This is actually rather encouraging. Sometimes I read Sayers's feminist essays (they are, no matter what she thinks) and despair because the same points still need to be made repeatedly to this very day. But you know, I've got a marriage like that; I've got three relationships like that, so we've got somewhere.

Pamela

[papersky.livejournal.com]

When I was studying Chaucer's Wyf of Bath's Tale for A level, we tried to come up with a list of Awful Husbands to parallel the list of Awful Wives in the book the poor Wife has read to her. All we could think of were Bluebeard and Henry VIII, while there were whole pages of wives.

It occurs to me now that possibly this is because while many women are identified as wives, far fewer men are identified as husbands, even though the actual numbers of each must be at parity. (Well, until now, anyway. Huzzah for gay marriage.)

As for husbands supporting their wives' careers, what about Pavlova and Dandre?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

And to prove your point, I had no idea that Pavlova was married.

Men simply aren't tagged as "husbands" the way women are tagged as "wives."

Again, as I said in my post on Eliot, Lewes truly seems to have been the caretaking partner, the "wife," in their relationship. I've been amused by the fact that all of their contemporaries Haight quotes seem not to have liked him very much--he gets called things like vulgar, facile, and shallow--while they all worshipped Eliot (some of them quite frighteningly literally). A rare case of the "great woman" married to an ordinary (or at least less great) man.

A great deal of the novel's subject-matter...

[anneth.livejournal.com]

springs from the tension between the intellect and the emotions. Lord Peter and Harriet spend five years trying to meet each other as equals; by the end of GN, they finally have. She spends a great deal of the novel worrying about whether he, as a fearsome intellect, would consume her utterly or whether they could ever meet as mates. Sayers presents Harriet with several examples of partnerships, equal and unequal, and how they influence women: Annie is wholly consumed by her emotions while Miss DeVine is given over entirely to her intellect; both are lacking in some fundamental quality and thus unacceptable romantic endings for Harriet. Phoebe Tucker, presented at the novel's beginning, illustrates the benefits of a marriage of equals, and gives Harriet something to strive for, even if she's not aware of it.

Harriet's overhaul of Wilbur (I believe) in Twixt Wind and Water becomes a metaphore for Harriet's final realization that she and Lord Peter can meet as equals. She realizes that her book will never work unless she makes Wilbur a fully-realized human, both intellectually and emotionally, but that doing so will "hurt like hell." She rewrites the book, and in the process rewrites herself, and in the process comes out of her 5-yr-long emotional hibernation. In the meantime, Lord Peter begins to let her inside his heart, to see how he feels (as opposed to merely what he thinks) about people, situations, etc.

I noticed that your interests page listed Buffy as well as Sayers; perhaps a correlation can be drawn between Buffy and Spike or Angel and Harriet and Lord Peter? (Chosen Spoilers follow)

By Chosen, Buffy seems to have come to the realization that she's not yet 'ready' for a relationship with Angel. I believe that their relationship was doomed initially because there was no way they could ever be equals; the slayer/vampire dichotomy aside, he is a thinker while she's a woman of action; where Angel's melancholy and thoughtful, Buffy is active and energetic - she lives for the moment. That realization, whether or not she was compeletely aware of it, was made manifest in her cookie-dough speech. It's after that speech that she returns to Spike, and I don't think it's accidental that the final shot we have of the two of them before the final battle has them both standing. (A nice contrast to the way their scenes in Touched were shot, where one would stand while the other sat.) For the moment, they had become equals; they could see eye-to-eye. Like Harriet and Lord Peter, Spike and Buffy had become partners in both the heart and the head.

I hope that makes sense. GN is my favorite novel and one of my friends clued me into your LJ. I was *very* excited to see your GN entry!

Princess Leia in Gaudy Night?

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

"curious round-shouldered woman in a yellow djibbah and sandals, with her hair coiled in two snail-shells over her ears"

[raincitygirl.livejournal.com]

As for husbands supporting their wives' careers, what about Pavlova and Dandre?

Leonard Woolf? He's best known for supporting his wife's work.

Integrity is the Key (for me)

[(Anonymous)]

I think Gaudy Night moves Harriet from being a sole woman trying to work out how to live with integrity in a man's world and puts her in a community of women trying to do the same thing, showing her various options and outcomes. The key to the results of the various choices, especially Catherine Freemantle's tragedy, is whether the choice they made accords with their abilities or conflicts. If it accords then you may be foolish, but so can men be (especially the man with the popping shirt front), but you have not violated your integrity. Annie Wilson and her husband are the prime examples of people who have done that.

I can't believe no-one has mentioned the chess set - its the destruction of that beauty, entirely separate from it being the first substantial gift Harriet accepts from Peter, which, to me, finally condems the perpetrator in Peter/DLS's eyes. Connects to Peter's condemnation of some of Alexis' clothes in HHC on grounds of ugliness - bad taste indicates foolishness and gullibility?.

Beauty, wholeness, truth are not casual things in DLS's universe, but moral and spiritual forces. Maybe this is why she turned away from detective fiction to Dante?

Love these postings - more please!

Caroline

Re: Integrity is the Key (for me)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I don't talk about the chess set because I can't bear to read that section of the novel. I love the chessmen as much as Harriet does.

Catherine Kenney argues that the destruction of the chess set represents Peter, Harriet, and DLS renouncing the chess-game style of mystery stories--in which context it's interesting that the only Lord Peter short story located concretely and weightily in a PoV character who isn't Peter is "Striding Folly," which is also about chess.

Re: Integrity is the Key (for me)

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting idea, but a bit 'mechanical'?

The the chess-set does tie into the importance of 'integrity' because of the description of Peter haggling over buying it. He says that he wouldn't have bought it if there had been something wrong with it, no matter how much he or Harriet loved it.

Mind you, I've never liked the dog-collar bit that follows.

Caroline

--

[remmirath.livejournal.com]

One thought: exactly. You've said everything I could have wanted to say--and more articulately, too.

Must friend you.

Unmarried dons

[(Anonymous)]

Indeed, until sometime in the 19th century or so, male dons couldn't marry either; if they did, they had to become tutors or whatever. They were all theoretically (and often in fact) in minor orders.

--John Cowan

[wint3rhart.livejournal.com]

While this is an old post, I still feel the need to leave a comment on it.

I found your journal from a post (http://mistful.livejournal.com/91426.html?thread=4283426) by mistful, trusting her very much in the process. I don't particularly like literary analysis much at all, and was absolutely terrified that I was about to read something which would point out flaws in some of my favorite books and which would make me ever-so-slightly and insidiously unsatisfied with them from then on...

What I found is the first analysis which has ever made me love the books in question even more, and for that I thank you.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You are welcome.

(Also, I love your icon.)