DLS: Clouds of Witness
Apr. 24th, 2003 05:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyPart 3 in the ongoing critical edda. (Can I have a critical edda? Does anybody mind? I think it's a cooler word than "saga" or "epic," and something around those synonyms is what I want.)
Part 1: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey.
Part 2: Whose Body?.
Spoilers for the DLS canon behind the cut tag.
Okay, I admit it. Clouds of Witness is my least favorite Wimsey novel. I skip huge chunks of it rereading: the Grimethorpe subplot bores me, as do the details of Denis Cathcart's decline and fall. And much of Denver's trial is over-written. As with Whose Body?, it feels less like a novel to me and more like a series of set-pieces, some successful, some not.
But what I do find interesting in it is this question of love vs. marriage vs. sex. Let me lay out the parallels.
Of these relationships, only Parker and Mary have any genuine mutual attachment--and it won't actually emerge into the open for another two books. All of the others--Cathcart & Mary, Cathcart & Simone, Mary & Goyles, Denver & Helen, Denver & Medusa, Medusa & her husband--are either marriages of convenience (Cathcart & Mary, Denver & Helen) in which no great affection is felt, relationships in a terrible imbalance (Cathcart's obsession with Simone, Mr. Grimethorpe's pathological jealousy--one wonders if that's how Heathcliff would have turned out if he and Catherine had actually gotten married), or relationships which are entered into for reasons of desperation and desire for escape, and which lead nowhere: Mary's "love" for Goyles is clearly much more about his politics than his personality, and Medusa's feelings for Denver are brilliantly anticlimactic: "... on this occasion, the whole business fell flat. The lady was not interested" (CW 245).
Sir Impey Biggs is introduced in this book, of whom "the Dowager Duchess had once remarked: 'Sir Impey Biggs is the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him'" (62). We also get the story of Mr. Murbles's very odd old client who preferred fantasy to reality: "People used to say that the dream-lady had not always been a dream, but that he could never bring himself to propose" (148). This is in many ways a loveless book, just as Cathcart's was a loveless life.
And of course the book's persistent intertext is Manon Lescaut (a story of a mutually-destructive passion) and "those odd French novels ... frightfully hot stuff, but absolutely impersonal" (134). Sexuality runs rampant through the novel, but love is in dreadfully short supply. Peter doesn't get over Barbara by falling in love again (that, like the declaration of Mary and Parker's love for each other, won't happen until Strong Poison) but by being exposed to the bewitching beauty of Simone Vonderaa. Simone and Medusa, in fact, seem to have comparable effects on the men they come in contact with, but it is also perfectly clear that their beauty traps them in loveless relationships, whether they are aware of it (Medusa) or not (Simone).
Romanticism also takes it on the chin, parodied in Mary and Goyles's failed elopement, revealed as self-destructive pathology in Cathcart's fate, simply inapplicable to Medusa's choices. Mary's facade of romanticism in the wake of Cathcart's death is (a.) unconvincing ("Peter thought, 'She's talking like somebody in a blood-and-thunder novel'" (72)) and (b.) completely exploded. Nothing could be less romantic than ipecacuanha. Also, as we know from what Peter tells Harriet in Strong Poision, his love for Barbara was of the most exaggeratedly romantic kind possible, and it too does not survive this book.
Women are not punished for infidelity (a refreshing change from most Western literature). Medusa is liberated by the chain of events begun by her affair with Denver; Simone comes out entirely unscathed. Marriage is an imprisoning institution (Medusa and Grimethorpe, Denver and Helen--also what Mary's life would have been like if she had married Cathcart).
If DLS has a thesis here, I'd argue that it's the same idea which the Vane quartet goes into at great length: love and passion must go together, and the combination is the only proper basis for a marriage.
I think there's something allegorical about Peter and Bunter wandering through the fog and getting trapped in quicksand, but I can't quite tease it out. And, of course, there's a whole class-based deconstruction of the presentation of Goyles and the Soviet Club and Mary's fling with communism. But that seems obvious enough that it isn't necessary to go into it. I quite like the Soviet Club, but it is a place where DLS's biases persistently show up.
Like Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness is an uneven book--also the last time DLS has to rely on a confession to make her plot come out right. Her mastery of her form is improving, but she's not all the way there yet.
Next up, Unnatural Death.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Clouds of Witness. 1927. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, 1987.
Part 1: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey.
Part 2: Whose Body?.
Spoilers for the DLS canon behind the cut tag.
Okay, I admit it. Clouds of Witness is my least favorite Wimsey novel. I skip huge chunks of it rereading: the Grimethorpe subplot bores me, as do the details of Denis Cathcart's decline and fall. And much of Denver's trial is over-written. As with Whose Body?, it feels less like a novel to me and more like a series of set-pieces, some successful, some not.
But what I do find interesting in it is this question of love vs. marriage vs. sex. Let me lay out the parallels.
- Lady Mary, engaged to Cathcart, believing herself to be in love with Goyles.
- Cathcart, engaged to Lady Mary, obsessed with Simone Vonderaa. (I'm not sure if I'd call Cathcart's feelings "love" or not. Actually, I'm quite sure I wouldn't.)
- Gerald, Duke of Denver, married to his appalling Duchess, having an affair with Mrs. Grimethorpe. (And it does truly, truly bug me that DLS didn't see fit to give the poor woman a Christian name. I'm going to call her Medusa, because it's less trouble to type.)
- Medusa, married to her even more appalling husband, having an affair with Denver.
- Charles Parker, falling goopily in love with Lady Mary and Lady Mary returning the favor. (They deserve each other.)
- And Lord Peter, realizing from his reaction to Simone that he's gotten over his ill-fated love for Barbara.
Of these relationships, only Parker and Mary have any genuine mutual attachment--and it won't actually emerge into the open for another two books. All of the others--Cathcart & Mary, Cathcart & Simone, Mary & Goyles, Denver & Helen, Denver & Medusa, Medusa & her husband--are either marriages of convenience (Cathcart & Mary, Denver & Helen) in which no great affection is felt, relationships in a terrible imbalance (Cathcart's obsession with Simone, Mr. Grimethorpe's pathological jealousy--one wonders if that's how Heathcliff would have turned out if he and Catherine had actually gotten married), or relationships which are entered into for reasons of desperation and desire for escape, and which lead nowhere: Mary's "love" for Goyles is clearly much more about his politics than his personality, and Medusa's feelings for Denver are brilliantly anticlimactic: "... on this occasion, the whole business fell flat. The lady was not interested" (CW 245).
Sir Impey Biggs is introduced in this book, of whom "the Dowager Duchess had once remarked: 'Sir Impey Biggs is the handsomest man in England, and no woman will ever care twopence for him'" (62). We also get the story of Mr. Murbles's very odd old client who preferred fantasy to reality: "People used to say that the dream-lady had not always been a dream, but that he could never bring himself to propose" (148). This is in many ways a loveless book, just as Cathcart's was a loveless life.
And of course the book's persistent intertext is Manon Lescaut (a story of a mutually-destructive passion) and "those odd French novels ... frightfully hot stuff, but absolutely impersonal" (134). Sexuality runs rampant through the novel, but love is in dreadfully short supply. Peter doesn't get over Barbara by falling in love again (that, like the declaration of Mary and Parker's love for each other, won't happen until Strong Poison) but by being exposed to the bewitching beauty of Simone Vonderaa. Simone and Medusa, in fact, seem to have comparable effects on the men they come in contact with, but it is also perfectly clear that their beauty traps them in loveless relationships, whether they are aware of it (Medusa) or not (Simone).
Romanticism also takes it on the chin, parodied in Mary and Goyles's failed elopement, revealed as self-destructive pathology in Cathcart's fate, simply inapplicable to Medusa's choices. Mary's facade of romanticism in the wake of Cathcart's death is (a.) unconvincing ("Peter thought, 'She's talking like somebody in a blood-and-thunder novel'" (72)) and (b.) completely exploded. Nothing could be less romantic than ipecacuanha. Also, as we know from what Peter tells Harriet in Strong Poision, his love for Barbara was of the most exaggeratedly romantic kind possible, and it too does not survive this book.
Women are not punished for infidelity (a refreshing change from most Western literature). Medusa is liberated by the chain of events begun by her affair with Denver; Simone comes out entirely unscathed. Marriage is an imprisoning institution (Medusa and Grimethorpe, Denver and Helen--also what Mary's life would have been like if she had married Cathcart).
If DLS has a thesis here, I'd argue that it's the same idea which the Vane quartet goes into at great length: love and passion must go together, and the combination is the only proper basis for a marriage.
I think there's something allegorical about Peter and Bunter wandering through the fog and getting trapped in quicksand, but I can't quite tease it out. And, of course, there's a whole class-based deconstruction of the presentation of Goyles and the Soviet Club and Mary's fling with communism. But that seems obvious enough that it isn't necessary to go into it. I quite like the Soviet Club, but it is a place where DLS's biases persistently show up.
Like Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness is an uneven book--also the last time DLS has to rely on a confession to make her plot come out right. Her mastery of her form is improving, but she's not all the way there yet.
Next up, Unnatural Death.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Clouds of Witness. 1927. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, 1987.
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no subject
Date: 2003-04-25 03:31 am (UTC)I must, by the way, take this opportunity to flag up in relation to Sir Impey Biggs the tendency of DLS, however scholarly she may have been in other areas, to perpetrate absolute howlers in respect of legal procedure and etiquette. A barrister simply cannot turf up and have breakfast with a whole host of potential witnesses, discussing the case with them throughout. Nor is it proper for him to dine with the prosecution's key witness, and coach her in how to deal with the cross-examination she will get once she turns hostile. He commits worse howlers in later books (what he does in Busman's Honeymoon is spectacularly unethical)
no subject
Date: 2003-04-25 05:10 am (UTC)You're right about the weather, too. The storm the night of Cathcart's death, the fog, the storm that attends Peter's Atlantic crossing: bad weather all over the place. Partly the pathetic fallacy--the storm the night of Cathcart's death reflecting his own gothic feelings, the fog as an externalization of Peter's bewilderment wrt the true events of the night--although the third storm does seem a little more like a cheap generator of suspense. Which works, I have to say, and it is interesting that Peter's experience of the weather system is intermixed with his memories of Simone, who also inspired terrible weather in Cathcart's mind. It's only appropriate, I suppose, since Simone is treated by the narrative as a force of nature.
Weather
Date: 2003-04-25 07:10 am (UTC)I can't think of another of the Wimsey books in which it plays so vital a part, unless we count the snowstorm at the beginning of The Nine Tailors.
Re: Weather
Date: 2003-04-25 08:20 am (UTC)Okay, now I'm intrigued.
Whose Body?: Weather irrelevant, except for the fact that Sir Julian's traces on the roofs of Queen Caroline Mansions are mostly eradicated by ordinary London November weather.
Clouds of Witness: See above
Unnatural Death: Weather again irrelevant.
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club: Weather irrelevant and might not even exist--except for Lady Dormer dying of imprudent over-exposure to the cold.
Strong Poison: Weather irrelevant.
The Five Red Herrings: Weather irrelevant.
Have His Carcase: The weather prevents the recovery of Paul Alexis's body for a good long while.
The Nine Tailors: See above.
Gaudy Night: Weather irrelevant. GN is very much a book about interiority: the life of the mind, the life of the college, the psyches of Harriet, Peter, and Annie.
Busman's Honeymoon: Weather irrelevant. Again v. much about the interior life.
So, yes, Clouds of Witness and The Nine Tailors are the only Wimsey books in which the weather plays an important role (with an Honorable Mention for Have His Carcase). Both of these perceive weather as the enemy: destructive, dangerous, reflective of emotional turmoil. This is even more true in The Nine Tailors than in Clouds of Witness, as the guilt and anger and desperation in Fenchurch St. Paul seem to get sucked straight up into the clouds. The Nine Tailors always feels to me remarkably apocalyptic, and I think the relationship of weather to plot may be part of the reason why.
Re: Weather
Date: 2003-04-25 08:24 am (UTC)Apocalypse and bells ringing.
Clangor and blizzards.
Re: Weather
Date: 2003-04-26 05:54 am (UTC)Bad weather does show up in some of the short stories, IIRC: the stolen stomach one and the one where Peter dresses up as a wizard to save Mrs. Wetherall, if I'm not hallucinating, and possibly others. Harder to come up with a coherent theme in short works, though.
Erica, popping in from anonymous commentary at ajhall's journal and thoroughly enjoying these analyses
Re: Weather
Date: 2003-04-26 03:19 pm (UTC)*gets out Lord Peter to scan down the table of contents*
"The Abominable History of the Man with Copper Fingers," which has an ongoing joke about fate and coincidence, is enabled largely by a torrential downpour. There's rather a lot of rain in "The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention." As you say, there's a storm in "The Piscatorial Farce of the Stolen Stomach," and "The Incredible Elopement of Lord Peter Wimsey" opens in a storm. My memory of "Striding Folly" (my favorite of the short stories) includes a storm, but I think that's just because the story itself is so thunderous. (Also, to refer ahead to another post, another example of DLS's curious brand of magical realism.) So, no, not much in the way of a coherent thematic structure.
And I was forgetting the thunderstorm in Gaudy Night, which is a deliberate invocation of the pathetic fallacy.
Re: Weather
Date: 2004-04-27 09:44 am (UTC)A closer reading is undoubtedly needed to see what DLS's fancy had in mind.
--John Cowan