DLS: Whose Body?
Apr. 15th, 2003 05:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyBlah blah spoiler-cakes. (See 1st DLS post for details.)
This may be more than a little scattershot. I'm not feeling at my most coherent today.
The first thing I want to point out about Whose Body? is its bizarre reversal of the Fall from Eden. Sir Julian Freke's contention, if you remember, is that "the knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of the brain-cells, which is removable" (WB? 127). In theological terms, Sir Julian is proposing a return to the pre-Lapsarian state before Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the Tree of--hey, wouldya look at that?--the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the argument of the book is that achieving the pre-Lapsarian state in a post-Lapsarian world is ... well, it's going to make you a self-satisfied murderer, like Sir Julian Freke. The story of Cain and Abel also springs to mind.
I certainly don't think that Sayers is suggesting Adam and Eve were sociopathic monsters like Freke. But she is suggesting that the Fall is irrecuperable. (In fact, WB? is reminding me weirdly of Andrew Marvell's Upon Appleton House, which also deals with characters who want to become un-Fallen and can't--and then there's the part where the two works are nothing whatsoever alike.) We live in a world which contains both good and evil and disavowing that knowledge makes us less than human, not more.
***
Peter Dickinson has a wonderful essay in Murder Ink called "The Lure of the Reichenbach," where he talks about series detectives and the difference between those who are created deliberately and those who are found, who just grow out of the demands of the story. One of my favorite things about the Wimsey books (and this is also one of the reasons I like Ellery Queen probably better than he deserves) is the fact that we get to watch Peter move from being a created detective, a checklist of mannerisms, into a found detective, a real human being. WB? is over at the "created" end of the spectrum, with the books and the arch footnotes; the obtrusiveness of Bunter's passion for photography; the histrionic intrusion of Peter's shellshock; the Dowager Duchess at really her least sympathetic; and the worst excesses of Peter's "silly ass" act, including him swallowing half his words. (I'm always very grateful when I get to the point in the series where DLS decides she can let Peter enunciate properly.) Also, of course, Sugg, who is a deliberate metatextual excrescence: "'Sugg's a beautiful, braying ass,' said Lord Peter. 'He's like a detective in a novel'" (WB? 22). Sugg, along with the other most mannered of DLS's mannerisms, does not survive intact past this first book, and by the third and fourth books in the series, things have settled down considerably--until Harriet appears on the scene and stirs Peter's psychology up into a roiling boil.
But I'm not to Strong Poison yet.
The other thing about Whose Body? that seems worth at least a mention is Charles Parker. Parker is Peter's closest friend, but WB? also shows us very plainly why the two men do not stay close working partners, why Parker evaporates gently out of the books starting in Strong Poison and why Harriet takes his place. Parker has no empathy. He's rational, loyal (very Horatio-like, come to think of it), but he doesn't understand Peter in the way that Harriet and Bunter do, the way Peter needs to be understood. The best Parker can do in the wake of Peter's shellshock relapse is: "'Sorry you've been having a bad turn, old man,' said Parker, vaguely sympathetic; 'you're looking a bit seedy'" (WB? 132). Parker (like Lady Mary, his eventual bride) has very little imagination. I think it is not accidental that Peter meets Harriet because Parker's lack of empathy has caused him completely to misread the Philip Boyes case.
Parker makes a wonderful straight-man and Watson for Peter, but he does not speak Peter's language. As a pervasive example, Parker won't play the quoting game with Peter, and while I certainly wouldn't argue that that's a make-or-break issue in a friendship, I think it does show us a fundamental schism between the two men and explains at least one reason why we see less and less of Parker as the books delve deeper into Peter's psychology.
WB? has some wonderful set-pieces: the Dowager Duchess and John P. Milligan; Peter interrogating Mr. Piggott; the exhumation of Sir Reuben Levy. It doesn't seem entirely coherent to me as a novel, but I can't quite put my finger on why. But, honestly, I wish all first novels were as good as this one.
Next up, Clouds of Witness.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Whose Body? 1923. New York: Avon Books, 1961.
This may be more than a little scattershot. I'm not feeling at my most coherent today.
The first thing I want to point out about Whose Body? is its bizarre reversal of the Fall from Eden. Sir Julian Freke's contention, if you remember, is that "the knowledge of good and evil is an observed phenomenon, attendant upon a certain condition of the brain-cells, which is removable" (WB? 127). In theological terms, Sir Julian is proposing a return to the pre-Lapsarian state before Adam and Eve had eaten the fruit of the Tree of--hey, wouldya look at that?--the Knowledge of Good and Evil, and the argument of the book is that achieving the pre-Lapsarian state in a post-Lapsarian world is ... well, it's going to make you a self-satisfied murderer, like Sir Julian Freke. The story of Cain and Abel also springs to mind.
I certainly don't think that Sayers is suggesting Adam and Eve were sociopathic monsters like Freke. But she is suggesting that the Fall is irrecuperable. (In fact, WB? is reminding me weirdly of Andrew Marvell's Upon Appleton House, which also deals with characters who want to become un-Fallen and can't--and then there's the part where the two works are nothing whatsoever alike.) We live in a world which contains both good and evil and disavowing that knowledge makes us less than human, not more.
***
Peter Dickinson has a wonderful essay in Murder Ink called "The Lure of the Reichenbach," where he talks about series detectives and the difference between those who are created deliberately and those who are found, who just grow out of the demands of the story. One of my favorite things about the Wimsey books (and this is also one of the reasons I like Ellery Queen probably better than he deserves) is the fact that we get to watch Peter move from being a created detective, a checklist of mannerisms, into a found detective, a real human being. WB? is over at the "created" end of the spectrum, with the books and the arch footnotes; the obtrusiveness of Bunter's passion for photography; the histrionic intrusion of Peter's shellshock; the Dowager Duchess at really her least sympathetic; and the worst excesses of Peter's "silly ass" act, including him swallowing half his words. (I'm always very grateful when I get to the point in the series where DLS decides she can let Peter enunciate properly.) Also, of course, Sugg, who is a deliberate metatextual excrescence: "'Sugg's a beautiful, braying ass,' said Lord Peter. 'He's like a detective in a novel'" (WB? 22). Sugg, along with the other most mannered of DLS's mannerisms, does not survive intact past this first book, and by the third and fourth books in the series, things have settled down considerably--until Harriet appears on the scene and stirs Peter's psychology up into a roiling boil.
But I'm not to Strong Poison yet.
The other thing about Whose Body? that seems worth at least a mention is Charles Parker. Parker is Peter's closest friend, but WB? also shows us very plainly why the two men do not stay close working partners, why Parker evaporates gently out of the books starting in Strong Poison and why Harriet takes his place. Parker has no empathy. He's rational, loyal (very Horatio-like, come to think of it), but he doesn't understand Peter in the way that Harriet and Bunter do, the way Peter needs to be understood. The best Parker can do in the wake of Peter's shellshock relapse is: "'Sorry you've been having a bad turn, old man,' said Parker, vaguely sympathetic; 'you're looking a bit seedy'" (WB? 132). Parker (like Lady Mary, his eventual bride) has very little imagination. I think it is not accidental that Peter meets Harriet because Parker's lack of empathy has caused him completely to misread the Philip Boyes case.
Parker makes a wonderful straight-man and Watson for Peter, but he does not speak Peter's language. As a pervasive example, Parker won't play the quoting game with Peter, and while I certainly wouldn't argue that that's a make-or-break issue in a friendship, I think it does show us a fundamental schism between the two men and explains at least one reason why we see less and less of Parker as the books delve deeper into Peter's psychology.
WB? has some wonderful set-pieces: the Dowager Duchess and John P. Milligan; Peter interrogating Mr. Piggott; the exhumation of Sir Reuben Levy. It doesn't seem entirely coherent to me as a novel, but I can't quite put my finger on why. But, honestly, I wish all first novels were as good as this one.
Next up, Clouds of Witness.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Whose Body? 1923. New York: Avon Books, 1961.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-16 06:43 am (UTC)The shell-shock thing, was that right before and during the exhumation, or was there another scene I've forgotten? Ah, never mind, I am driven to go look for myself.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-26 02:17 am (UTC)Anyway, it occurs to me that the 'mystery' of WB is almost incidental, Freke is pretty much the only credible suspect we're presented with. The pleasure is in watching how Peter goes about gathering his evidence; not just the set pieces you mention though. I was fascinated by, for instance, the dialogue between Peter and Parker about duty as Peter complains that they've reached the point in the investigation where it ceases to be fun. I rather think that conversations like this show that DLS was perfectly aware of her character's limitations as a rounded human being and has already started the spadework for, well, his growing up.
I find the parallels and differences between the Lord Peter books and the Jeeves books rather interesting as well, but I think I need more of a run up at that particular windmill.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-26 05:09 am (UTC)I think there's a difference between DLS using Lord Peter to say something about the genre, which is what I see happening in the first half of the canon (hmm, should probably say so in next DLS post), and writing about Peter in-and-of himself, which is much more the case in the later books. You're working your way through them for the first time; I shan't say more at the moment.
Three points
Date: 2004-04-27 09:35 am (UTC)2) Stephen Jay Gould quotes in one of his essays the scene in WB where the truth dawns upon Peter, and comments that this intuition-based thinking sets him fundamentally aside from rational/analytical detectives like Holmes, despite the Dowager's comment on mother-wit and Holmes. The "feminine" side of Peter's character is very marked.
3) Peter does (and has to) move on from his tics, because writing about a character who's all tics becomes "a monstrous weariness" for the writer, as DLS herself says (probably quoted in the Barbizon bio, I'm not sure).
--John Cowan