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truepennyPart 1: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey
Part 2: Whose Body?
Part 3: Clouds of Witness
Part 4: Unnatural Death
Part 5: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1
Having talked about The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club wrt its place in the series, I'm now going to talk about it as a thing-in-itself.
You know there'll be spoilers, right?
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, it seems to me, is very much about World War I and its after-effects. Unlike other Wimsey stories, which treat war veterans in the traditional and comforting fashion (Peter's encounter with Padgett in Gaudy Night, his visit to Major Lumsden in "The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention"), the veterans in TUatBC do not swap stories about their experiences. The bits of the war we hear about are deaths (Col. Marchbanks's son, Wetheridge's friend) or dismemberments and disabilities (Capt. Culyer's arm, the cloakroom attendant's leg, Challoner's stomach), and the lasting effects on George Fentiman (note that we are never told exactly what caused George's shell-shock; in the context of this book, knowing that it was the war is enough). The only "local color" type war story we hear in itself tells us something about how TUatBC regards WWI:
And Robert is also not unaffected (sorry about the extreme litotes) by the war, as his cynical use of the two-minutes silence on Armistice Day reveals; likewise, we see Penberthy's extreme callousness, self-absorption, and denial of culpability: "I never meant to get led into all this rotten way of doing things--it was just self-defense" (TUatBC 236), which are (by analogy with Robert) suggested to be partly caused by the war as well. The young men in the novel (Peter, George, Robert, and Penberthy) are all damaged to some extent or another by the war.
And the damage radiates outward from them, specifically to Sheila and Ann. Robert's contemptuous dismissal of Ann's claim to Lady Dormer's money--"I bet she never did anything in the Great War, Daddy" (138)--echoes not only with George's complaints about modern young women, but also with Penberthy's habit of treating women as useful accessories to his plans. His assertion: "It's true what I said--she's a bit cracked about sex. Lots of 'em are. Naomi Rushworth for instance" (TUatBC 235), shows not only some problems with Penberthy's psyche, but also the desperation Ann and Naomi and young women like them were feeling in post-WWI Britain, with so many of the men of their generation dead. Miss Climpson does not appear in TUatBC, but her shadow stretches over it.
The other prominent theme in TUatBC is the schism the war has caused between the generations in the Bellona Club. That's what the title refers to, of course; "unpleasantness" being a Victorian euphemism representing the attitudes and habits of mind of the senior members which find no correspondence in the younger men. Both his grandsons say General Fentiman couldn't understand what WWI was like, and the scenes in the Bellona Club are laden with unresolved and unresolvable tension for precisely this reason. The club is deeply divided, its members united only by their desire to retreat from the modern world--the older men because it is no longer their world (hence Wetheridge's shibboleth: "These things never happened before the War!" (TUatBC 243)), the younger because their experiences have rendered them variously unsuited for coping with it.
TUatBC is a coherent and complex mystery, as DLS's previous books were not. The narrative hangs together, and the complicated call and response between Robert Fentiman's crime and Penberthy's is strung together by the repeating element of George's shell-shock. She also has the problems of tone from Unnatural Death sorted out; TUatBC moves deftly between social satire, social commentary, and the matters of the mystery without putting a foot wrong. It's a lightweight book, but it holds its own.
Up next, Strong Poison.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. 1928. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.
Part 2: Whose Body?
Part 3: Clouds of Witness
Part 4: Unnatural Death
Part 5: The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1
Having talked about The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club wrt its place in the series, I'm now going to talk about it as a thing-in-itself.
You know there'll be spoilers, right?
The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club, it seems to me, is very much about World War I and its after-effects. Unlike other Wimsey stories, which treat war veterans in the traditional and comforting fashion (Peter's encounter with Padgett in Gaudy Night, his visit to Major Lumsden in "The Undignified Melodrama of the Bone of Contention"), the veterans in TUatBC do not swap stories about their experiences. The bits of the war we hear about are deaths (Col. Marchbanks's son, Wetheridge's friend) or dismemberments and disabilities (Capt. Culyer's arm, the cloakroom attendant's leg, Challoner's stomach), and the lasting effects on George Fentiman (note that we are never told exactly what caused George's shell-shock; in the context of this book, knowing that it was the war is enough). The only "local color" type war story we hear in itself tells us something about how TUatBC regards WWI:
"Robert was proverbial, you know, for never turning a hair. I remember Robert, at that ghastly hole at Carency, where the whole ground was rotten with corpses--ugh!--potting those swollen great rats for a penny a time, and laughing at them. Rats. Alive and putrid with what they'd been feeding on. Oh, yes, Robert was thought a damn good soldier."
(TUatBC 90-91)
And Robert is also not unaffected (sorry about the extreme litotes) by the war, as his cynical use of the two-minutes silence on Armistice Day reveals; likewise, we see Penberthy's extreme callousness, self-absorption, and denial of culpability: "I never meant to get led into all this rotten way of doing things--it was just self-defense" (TUatBC 236), which are (by analogy with Robert) suggested to be partly caused by the war as well. The young men in the novel (Peter, George, Robert, and Penberthy) are all damaged to some extent or another by the war.
And the damage radiates outward from them, specifically to Sheila and Ann. Robert's contemptuous dismissal of Ann's claim to Lady Dormer's money--"I bet she never did anything in the Great War, Daddy" (138)--echoes not only with George's complaints about modern young women, but also with Penberthy's habit of treating women as useful accessories to his plans. His assertion: "It's true what I said--she's a bit cracked about sex. Lots of 'em are. Naomi Rushworth for instance" (TUatBC 235), shows not only some problems with Penberthy's psyche, but also the desperation Ann and Naomi and young women like them were feeling in post-WWI Britain, with so many of the men of their generation dead. Miss Climpson does not appear in TUatBC, but her shadow stretches over it.
The other prominent theme in TUatBC is the schism the war has caused between the generations in the Bellona Club. That's what the title refers to, of course; "unpleasantness" being a Victorian euphemism representing the attitudes and habits of mind of the senior members which find no correspondence in the younger men. Both his grandsons say General Fentiman couldn't understand what WWI was like, and the scenes in the Bellona Club are laden with unresolved and unresolvable tension for precisely this reason. The club is deeply divided, its members united only by their desire to retreat from the modern world--the older men because it is no longer their world (hence Wetheridge's shibboleth: "These things never happened before the War!" (TUatBC 243)), the younger because their experiences have rendered them variously unsuited for coping with it.
TUatBC is a coherent and complex mystery, as DLS's previous books were not. The narrative hangs together, and the complicated call and response between Robert Fentiman's crime and Penberthy's is strung together by the repeating element of George's shell-shock. She also has the problems of tone from Unnatural Death sorted out; TUatBC moves deftly between social satire, social commentary, and the matters of the mystery without putting a foot wrong. It's a lightweight book, but it holds its own.
Up next, Strong Poison.
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. 1928. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.
