Wimsey

The first time I read Gaudy Night, finishing it was like waking amid the flotsam and jetsam of my former self. 

That’s what I wrote at the time: “Gaudy Night has left me wrecked on the shore.”  When I picked it up again last week, I noticed that my copy had no creases down the spine—meaning I hadn’t once set it down, open, to mark my place.  I barreled through it.  Sleep was no option for me.

            The Intergalactic Coffeeship hasn’t given a book review yet, but Gaudy Night is worthy of being the first.  It’s the penultimate Lord Peter Wimsey mystery, a series written by the British author Dorothy L. Sayers.  I recommend the Wimsey novels to anyone with a taste for well-developed characters, witty dialogue, and period detail.  They were written from 1922 to (roughly) 1938—between the wars.

Gaudy Night isn’t really the same species of novel as Sayers’ other books, though.  Rather than sticking with the loquacious, penetrating, and impeccably dressed Lord Peter, the story follows the actions of one Harriet Vane—a detective novelist who, a few books earlier, had been tried for murdering her lover and acquitted only because of Wimsey’s powers of deduction. 

The books follow real time; Lord Peter spends the next five years asking Harriet to marry him, and being categorically refused.  Harriet Vane is both a necessarily independent woman, and a completely disillusioned one.  In Gaudy Night, she returns for the first time in a decade to her alma mater, a women’s college in Oxford (rather humorously named ‘Shrewsbury’).  Shrewsbury has been under siege by a “poison pen”—someone who leaves violent sexual drawings around the school at night.  Viewing Harriet as a kind of detective, the dons of Shrewsbury plead for her intervention—so Harriet sets out to disentangle the evidence and catch the poltergeist.

Personally, I find mystery and romance to be the easiest plot-types to read.  I know this isn’t universally the case—but Gaudy Night has both.  Furthermore, it’s a respectful and complex look at the social position of British women in the 1930s.  The story is, in one way, about Harriet’s quest to discover if she can get married and be independent.  Would marriage necessarily entail a sacrifice?  Is Wimsey enamored of her, or only of an idea of her that he's created in his head?  The writing is precise; it grasps concepts that I haven’t otherwise encountered in any books published before the 70s.

Here’s an example.  Lord Peter Wimsey is talking with the Warden of Shrewsbury.  She says, “But probably you are not specially interested in all this question of women’s education.”

Lord Peter replies, “Is it still a question?  It ought not to be.  I hope you are not going to ask me whether I approve of women’s doing this and that.”

“Why not?” asks the Warden.

“You should not imply that I have any right either to approve or disapprove.”

&

Harriet Vane decides, midway through the novel, that she wants to write a book about “actual human beings.”  Given the fact that Dorothy Sayers, like her leading lady, is a mystery novelist, I’m tempted to take this as Ms. Sayers’ reflection on her own writing.  She certainly does herself a disservice—Lord Peter Wimsey is simultaneously endearing and intimidating, and no flat character could be both.  With his monocle and dapper suits, his love of wine, penchant for quotation, and the guilt he feels about sending criminals to the gallows, he cuts an unforgettable figure.

            Gaudy Night, though, has more scope than Sayers’ other mysteries, and certainly more audacity.  If I was going to teach a class on the most under-read (but deserving) literature of the 20th century, I would assign Gaudy Night right before Cold Comfort Farm.  The novel’s only problem, I think, is an excess of scholarliness: Miss Vane’s emotions are described in such articulate and thorough detail that the narrative occasionally becomes surreal.  She remains a solid character, though—a character whose struggles are familiar to anyone who’s tried to decide between personal ideals and the expectations of society.  

Don’t think the novel is all somber reflections, though: at points, it’s a comedy of manners worthy of Jane Austen.  At other instances, Gaudy Night is chillingly prescient: the specter of the Nazis and World War II are looming on the horizon. 

You can find the works of Dorothy L. Sayers in the mystery section of most bookstores (except, for some reason, in Canada).  One word of advice: read the novel Have His Carcase before Gaudy Night.  It is hilarious, gripping, and sets the scene.