DLS: Miss Climpson
May. 1st, 2003 08:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyPrevious DLS posts: Concerning Lord Peter Wimsey, the Hon. Freddy Arbuthnot, Whose Body?, Clouds of Witness, Unnatural Death, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 1, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club 2.
I lied. Although this post will discuss Strong Poison, it's really about Miss Climpson, Spiritualism, and Lord Peter as Mephistopheles.
Spoilers, of course.
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naomichana suggested as a possible topic the significance of Spiritualism in the context of Strong Poison. I have a personal fascination with Spiritualism--someday, when the dissertation is finished and deposited, I am going to do an orgy of research so I can write a novel set in a world where Spiritualism is the magic system--so I've decided to take a look at that question.
Partly, I think, it's just good theater. They're wonderful scenes and leave me breathless with admiration for Miss Climpson's inventiveness and quick wits. And they must have been incredibly fun to write.
I wonder, though, if there may have been a thematic strand to the series that got abandoned when Harriet emerged as a major character (although considering that DLS originally intended Strong Poison to be the last Wimsey book, maybe not). Because it seems to me that one thing that happens with Miss Climpson in Unnatural Death and Strong Poison is the corruption of her High Church ideals by Lord Peter's more pragmatic ethics. (Hang on here, because I'm going to trace this in detail.) We see this in Unnatural Death, beginning almost immediately upon Miss Climpson's plunge into detective work:
Miss Climpson's High Church conscience is portrayed as constantly at odds with her inquisitiveness and desire to do good in the world. (Although, significantly, it is that same High Church conscience which enables her to hold out against the rest of the jury in Strong Poison, so it is not regarded entirely as a vermiform appendix.) And each time the two come in conflict, it is the religious scruples which lose out, nowhere more blatantly than in the matter of Vera Findlater's confession notes:
And Miss Climpson's religion, its perfect sincerity and its perfect ineffectuality as a brake on her behavior, are summed up in the words with which she cements her choice to read the confession: "'Well,' said Miss Climpson, 'if this is a sin I am going to do it, and may I be forgiven'" (UD 238).
Now, As You Know Bob, DLS herself was a devout Anglo-Catholic (Roman Catholic, even? I can't remember); Lord Peter's secular, atheist humanism cannot be read as autobiography (although I am always, personally, tremendously grateful to her for letting her main character espouse a personal set of beliefs she herself did not hold). And thus, Miss Climpson's struggles cannot be read merely as satire--although certainly DLS is poking fun at the High Church spinsters of whom Miss Climpson is the concentrated extract--a fact likewise bolstered by the likability of her character. (At least for me. I hope other people don't hate Miss Climpson.) But it is worth noticing that by going against her religious beliefs, Miss Climpson is instrumental in the apprehension of both Mary Whittaker and Norman Urquhart. Without the evidence she gains, neither murderer could be brought to justice. So there is a definite ambivalence toward religion brought forth in her character.
Moreover, in Miss Climpson's struggles with her conscience, Lord Peter emerges as a kind of Mephistopheles. This is evident in the above quote, where her religious scruples are specifically put up against "her duty to Wimsey," as well as her own innate curiosity. It is even more pronounced in Strong Poison, when she conceives of her plan:
Peter here is clearly Miss Climpson's Mephistopheles, tempting her away from the straight and narrow. But it is also true that Miss Climpson's question--Even in a righteous cause, could anything so wicked be justified?--is not answered, except by the evidence of this and later books that Harriet Vane's life was worth saving. In fact, in this very lack of retribution, the books suggest that Miss Climpson's "wickedness" is not really so very dreadful at all, that much much worse would be the effects of her refusing to move a finger beyond the bounds proscribed by church doctrine.
I am not a scholar of religion(s), nor am I an expert on DLS post-Wimsey. I don't know what her theology said about this kind of thing. But Miss Climpson's tribulations do remind me of Huck Finn, deciding that if he's going to go to Hell for liking and helping Jim, then he'll just go to Hell.
So one thing that the Spiritualist subplot does is further this little late-life bildungsroman of Miss Kitty Climpson. Also, by juxtaposing Miss Climpson with Miss Booth (the naive and uncritical believer, albeit of another belief system) and Mrs. Craig (the unscrupulous fraud), we see that the line she is learning to tread is a valuable one, between those two polar opposites.
I think the seances also suggest, as Miss Climpson's other appearances do, the incredible waste of talent she represents. This was a theme of DLS's, as Catherine Kenney points out in her useful study, The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers (Kent State University Press, 1990), the idea that everyone is better off if they have something to define as their work. Miss Climpson, like all the other women of the Cattery, has been denied that until the eruption of Lord Peter into her life, and the talents she displays in his service shout loudly and pointedly that merely being an unmarried woman does not make one "superfluous," as the rhetoric of the day had it. Miss Climpson is as active and engaging a character as Peter or Charles Parker (more so than Parker, for me), and therefore--as Harriet will do far more explicitly--furthers a feminist argument which is pervasive throughout the canon.
As for why Spiritualism? Why specifically this cult of speaking to the dead? No rational and trustworthy character in Strong Poison believes in Spiritualism; Miss Booth and Miss Etheredge are both clearly a bit mental. And the apparatus of fraud was clearly well known and accessible, as Miss Climpson's "quaint little man from the Pyschical Research Society" demonstrates (SP 163-4). In other words, it's an easy tool for the particular needs of the narrative at this point. But it is also interesting that one thing this specific deceit offers is a chance for one particular victim to "speak." Rosanna Wrayburn is not murdered, certainly, but she is nevertheless a victim of Norman Urquhart's cupidity. She might not care particularly about Philip Boyes's murder (there is no evidence she'd ever even met him), but she would certainly, from everything we know about her character, object strenuously to Norman playing fast and loose with her money, even more so to his losing it all, and probably most violently to his plan to defraud her chosen heir. Again, not because of any concern for Philip, but because she was an autocratic creature, and accustomed to getting her own way. So, ironically, Miss Climpson's fraud circles around by a backdoor to be not fraudulent at all.
There is no way for the murder victim to speak in traditional mysteries, as Harriet points out to Miss Barton in Gaudy Night, and despite the lapse into the supernatural in Busman's Honeymoon, DLS abides quite strictly by traditional mystery rules. Although she does get around it another way in Clouds of Witness with Denis Cathcart's letter--but that suggests precisely an interest in circumventing the rules without breaking them. I don't know that that had any part in her choices about Strong Poison, but I throw it out as an interesting line of analysis. It's also the sort of thing I'd say if Strong Poison were in my dissertation, which of course it isn't. And I don't for a moment mean to suggest that Rosanna Wrayburn is really speaking through Miss Climpson--it's clear that the seances are fabrications from one end to the other, and are not intended to be interpreted as anything else. But the effect of the seances in exposing Norman Urquhart's crimes indicate--explicitly and emphatically--that while the means are meretricious, the enterprise is not.
I'm always sorry we don't get to see more of Miss Climpson; she brings to the books she's in a set of concerns and dilemmas that the other characters do not, especially on feminist issues (Harriet is so incredibly self-sufficient and forthright that her angle on that whole problem is worlds away from Miss Climpson's, though no less interesting), and her breathlessly italicized style of communication is a remarkable contrast to the suavity of the narrative and the light rattle of Lord Peter's speech--although I can imagine she would get fatiguing for her author. Miss Climpson, even more so than Freddy, offers a window on the realistic underpinnings of the world through which Lord Peter floats.
Next up, Strong Poison. This time for sure!
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Strong Poison. 1930. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.
---. Unnatural Death. 1927. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.
I lied. Although this post will discuss Strong Poison, it's really about Miss Climpson, Spiritualism, and Lord Peter as Mephistopheles.
Spoilers, of course.
naomichana suggested as a possible topic the significance of Spiritualism in the context of Strong Poison. I have a personal fascination with Spiritualism--someday, when the dissertation is finished and deposited, I am going to do an orgy of research so I can write a novel set in a world where Spiritualism is the magic system--so I've decided to take a look at that question.Partly, I think, it's just good theater. They're wonderful scenes and leave me breathless with admiration for Miss Climpson's inventiveness and quick wits. And they must have been incredibly fun to write.
I wonder, though, if there may have been a thematic strand to the series that got abandoned when Harriet emerged as a major character (although considering that DLS originally intended Strong Poison to be the last Wimsey book, maybe not). Because it seems to me that one thing that happens with Miss Climpson in Unnatural Death and Strong Poison is the corruption of her High Church ideals by Lord Peter's more pragmatic ethics. (Hang on here, because I'm going to trace this in detail.) We see this in Unnatural Death, beginning almost immediately upon Miss Climpson's plunge into detective work:
I also made careful inquiries about the Vicar, and was much gratified to find that he teaches sound Catholic doctrine, so that I shall be able to attend the Church (S. Onesimus) without doing violence to my religious beliefs--a thing I could not undertake to do, even in your interests. I am sure you will understand this. As it happens, all is well, and I have written to my very good friend, the Vicar of S. Edfrith's, Holborn, to ask for an introduction to Mr. Tredgold. By this means, I feel sure of meeting Miss Whittaker before long, as I hear she is quite a 'pillar of the Church'! I do hope it is not wrong to make use of the Church of God to a worldly end; but after all, you are only seeking to establish Truth and Justice!--and in so good a cause, we may perhaps permit ourselves to be a little bit JESUITICAL!!!
(UD 32)
[I am incredibly disappointed in LJ's spell-checker for not knowing jesuitical. Words cannot even express.]
Miss Climpson's High Church conscience is portrayed as constantly at odds with her inquisitiveness and desire to do good in the world. (Although, significantly, it is that same High Church conscience which enables her to hold out against the rest of the jury in Strong Poison, so it is not regarded entirely as a vermiform appendix.) And each time the two come in conflict, it is the religious scruples which lose out, nowhere more blatantly than in the matter of Vera Findlater's confession notes:
For a full half-hour Miss Climpson sat alone, struggling with her conscience. Her natural inquisitiveness said "Read"; her religious training said, "You must not read"; her sense of duty to Wimsey, who employed her, said, "Find out"; her own sense of decency said, "Do no such thing"; a dreadful, harsh voice muttered gratingly, "Murder is the question. Are you going to be the accomplice of Murder?" She felt like Lancelot Gobbo between conscience and the fiend--but which was the fiend and which was conscience?
(UD 236-7)
And Miss Climpson's religion, its perfect sincerity and its perfect ineffectuality as a brake on her behavior, are summed up in the words with which she cements her choice to read the confession: "'Well,' said Miss Climpson, 'if this is a sin I am going to do it, and may I be forgiven'" (UD 238).
Now, As You Know Bob, DLS herself was a devout Anglo-Catholic (Roman Catholic, even? I can't remember); Lord Peter's secular, atheist humanism cannot be read as autobiography (although I am always, personally, tremendously grateful to her for letting her main character espouse a personal set of beliefs she herself did not hold). And thus, Miss Climpson's struggles cannot be read merely as satire--although certainly DLS is poking fun at the High Church spinsters of whom Miss Climpson is the concentrated extract--a fact likewise bolstered by the likability of her character. (At least for me. I hope other people don't hate Miss Climpson.) But it is worth noticing that by going against her religious beliefs, Miss Climpson is instrumental in the apprehension of both Mary Whittaker and Norman Urquhart. Without the evidence she gains, neither murderer could be brought to justice. So there is a definite ambivalence toward religion brought forth in her character.
Moreover, in Miss Climpson's struggles with her conscience, Lord Peter emerges as a kind of Mephistopheles. This is evident in the above quote, where her religious scruples are specifically put up against "her duty to Wimsey," as well as her own innate curiosity. It is even more pronounced in Strong Poison, when she conceives of her plan:
In a single moment of illumination, Miss Climpson saw her plan complete and perfect in every detail. It involved a course of deception from which her conscience shrank appalled, but it was certain. She wrestled with the demon. Even in a righteous cause, could anything so wicked be justified?
She breathed what she thought was a prayer for guidance, but the only answer was a small whisper in her ear, "Oh, jolly good work, Miss Climpson!" and the voice was the voice of Peter Wimsey.
(SP 163)
Peter here is clearly Miss Climpson's Mephistopheles, tempting her away from the straight and narrow. But it is also true that Miss Climpson's question--Even in a righteous cause, could anything so wicked be justified?--is not answered, except by the evidence of this and later books that Harriet Vane's life was worth saving. In fact, in this very lack of retribution, the books suggest that Miss Climpson's "wickedness" is not really so very dreadful at all, that much much worse would be the effects of her refusing to move a finger beyond the bounds proscribed by church doctrine.
I am not a scholar of religion(s), nor am I an expert on DLS post-Wimsey. I don't know what her theology said about this kind of thing. But Miss Climpson's tribulations do remind me of Huck Finn, deciding that if he's going to go to Hell for liking and helping Jim, then he'll just go to Hell.
So one thing that the Spiritualist subplot does is further this little late-life bildungsroman of Miss Kitty Climpson. Also, by juxtaposing Miss Climpson with Miss Booth (the naive and uncritical believer, albeit of another belief system) and Mrs. Craig (the unscrupulous fraud), we see that the line she is learning to tread is a valuable one, between those two polar opposites.
I think the seances also suggest, as Miss Climpson's other appearances do, the incredible waste of talent she represents. This was a theme of DLS's, as Catherine Kenney points out in her useful study, The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers (Kent State University Press, 1990), the idea that everyone is better off if they have something to define as their work. Miss Climpson, like all the other women of the Cattery, has been denied that until the eruption of Lord Peter into her life, and the talents she displays in his service shout loudly and pointedly that merely being an unmarried woman does not make one "superfluous," as the rhetoric of the day had it. Miss Climpson is as active and engaging a character as Peter or Charles Parker (more so than Parker, for me), and therefore--as Harriet will do far more explicitly--furthers a feminist argument which is pervasive throughout the canon.
As for why Spiritualism? Why specifically this cult of speaking to the dead? No rational and trustworthy character in Strong Poison believes in Spiritualism; Miss Booth and Miss Etheredge are both clearly a bit mental. And the apparatus of fraud was clearly well known and accessible, as Miss Climpson's "quaint little man from the Pyschical Research Society" demonstrates (SP 163-4). In other words, it's an easy tool for the particular needs of the narrative at this point. But it is also interesting that one thing this specific deceit offers is a chance for one particular victim to "speak." Rosanna Wrayburn is not murdered, certainly, but she is nevertheless a victim of Norman Urquhart's cupidity. She might not care particularly about Philip Boyes's murder (there is no evidence she'd ever even met him), but she would certainly, from everything we know about her character, object strenuously to Norman playing fast and loose with her money, even more so to his losing it all, and probably most violently to his plan to defraud her chosen heir. Again, not because of any concern for Philip, but because she was an autocratic creature, and accustomed to getting her own way. So, ironically, Miss Climpson's fraud circles around by a backdoor to be not fraudulent at all.
There is no way for the murder victim to speak in traditional mysteries, as Harriet points out to Miss Barton in Gaudy Night, and despite the lapse into the supernatural in Busman's Honeymoon, DLS abides quite strictly by traditional mystery rules. Although she does get around it another way in Clouds of Witness with Denis Cathcart's letter--but that suggests precisely an interest in circumventing the rules without breaking them. I don't know that that had any part in her choices about Strong Poison, but I throw it out as an interesting line of analysis. It's also the sort of thing I'd say if Strong Poison were in my dissertation, which of course it isn't. And I don't for a moment mean to suggest that Rosanna Wrayburn is really speaking through Miss Climpson--it's clear that the seances are fabrications from one end to the other, and are not intended to be interpreted as anything else. But the effect of the seances in exposing Norman Urquhart's crimes indicate--explicitly and emphatically--that while the means are meretricious, the enterprise is not.
I'm always sorry we don't get to see more of Miss Climpson; she brings to the books she's in a set of concerns and dilemmas that the other characters do not, especially on feminist issues (Harriet is so incredibly self-sufficient and forthright that her angle on that whole problem is worlds away from Miss Climpson's, though no less interesting), and her breathlessly italicized style of communication is a remarkable contrast to the suavity of the narrative and the light rattle of Lord Peter's speech--although I can imagine she would get fatiguing for her author. Miss Climpson, even more so than Freddy, offers a window on the realistic underpinnings of the world through which Lord Peter floats.
Next up, Strong Poison. This time for sure!
---
WORKS CITED
Sayers, Dorothy L. Strong Poison. 1930. New York: Perennial Library-Harper & Row, Publishers, 1987.
---. Unnatural Death. 1927. New York: HarperPaperbacks, 1995.
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no subject
Date: 2003-05-02 05:58 am (UTC)(I just realized I cannot call her Kitty, though I can call Peter by his first name. She's MISS Climpson, all the way.)
Now having many thoughts about Miss Murchison.
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Date: 2003-05-02 06:17 am (UTC)I can't call her Kitty either. I have the same problem with Charles Parker. I prefer using Peter's Christian name, because "Wimsey" seems so distant and stiff, but I have a dreadful time calling Parker "Charles." I think maybe it's because the narrator, while using "Wimsey," "Lord Peter," "Peter," and "his lordship" interchangeably, never calls either Miss Climpson or Parker by their first names unadorned.
Harriet, on the other hand, is universally Harriet.