Does anyone want to chat about Dorothy L Sayers' books with me?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

From a feministy perspective, I mean. I've just recently got into them so haven't read that many, but things keep striking me. Not just Sayers herself having a feminist perspective (though she obviously does), but also details about the time period I wouldn't have known about.

The thing that made me smile most recently was in Gaudy Night, she has a conversation between Harriet Vane and one of the dons at her fictional Oxford college, who observe that the women undergraduates have a bad habit of sunbathing in their underwear and really, this is unfair ('not on the [male] undergraduates - they're used to it') on the male dons who might wander through the quad and see them.

It just struck me that it's such a different image from the rather buttoned-up idea of attitudes towards women's bodies I'd expect from that time.

What does anyone else think?

And what do you think of Jill Paton Walsh finishing of Sayers' last unfinished draft and writing continuations? Is it a travesty, or is this the kind of collaboration that feminism ought to be supporting? There being that argument that the 'lone genius author' is a concept that's always associated more with men than with women.

[BlueEyeshadow]

Michael Innes drives me potty - he really can be smug and pedantic.

The thing about DLS not wanting to put in a translation of the long letter in French - I read somewhere, possibly in the introduction to Striding Folly, that people accused her of intellectual snobbery, i.e. of only writing for clever people, whereas she just assumed that everybody WAS clever, IYSWIM. (Not at all intending to imply that a knowledge of French is a necessary condition of cleverness!)

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Yy to the first JPW book. "The Attenbury Emeralds" was a perfectly tolerable novel, it just didn't happen to include LPW and HV, just some characters with those names.

[stealthsquiggle]

Amanda is fairly independent and emancipated, IIRC. She certainly has to rescue Albert often enough.

[LadyPeterWimsey]

My French is so ropey that I struggled for years to understand what Wicked Uncle Paul was writing to Harriet and Peter in BH. Fortunately the internet came along and now I google whenever I get to that bit. Although I have got the drift by now.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Do I curtsey?!

I'm sorry, I'm mostly just looking at your name.

There's a Harriet Vane around somewhere, too, IIRC.

[LadyPeterWimsey]

I was drawn to this thread like a moth to a flame...

Please don't curtsey; I think that would have embarassed my alter ego enormously.

I envy you immensely not having read all of DLS yet. Only the pleasure of re-reading is left and that is quite a different pleasure.

[LadyPeterWimsey]

Meant to say I don't use google translate but someone has kindly translated the passages on a blog somewhere.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Oh, I am very much looking forward to the rest.

And I will check out the French now I know there's a translation kicking around.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Sorry, we're not doing much feminist analysis here, are we?

I'm conscious that not everyone has read all the books, so will try not to spoil any whodunnits. But what do we make of Lady Mary not working after marriage when her whole character beforehand was seething for "something useful" to do?

Also, in GN, how far towards the solution was HV before LPW swooped in to draw it all together? She seemed to gather all the data but he had the brilliant insights.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Back to "Thrones, Dominations" - I would love to know which parts DLS actually wrote. The death seemed more modern than a DLS death, somehow.

[seeker]

Gaudy Night isn't available on audio book :( the others are, though- read by Ian Carmichael- very good.

[EmilyAlice]

Have read all the PWs about ten times and have all the DVDs too. I prefer Edward Petherbridge to Ian Carmichael as PW, but can't stand Harriet Walter as Harriet Vane, in fact the only thing I liked her in is Louis Malle's film Milou en Mai (fab is you haven't seen it and even better if you remember May 1968), where she plays a batty English woman.
Haven't read JIM Stewart for years, but still read Margery Allingham, though the style is very mannered and grates a bit. What about Ngaio Marsh and her detective, Roderick Alleyn?

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

Thanks doctrine. I am bad at digressing.

I don't know if Peter did have all the brilliant insights - isn't there a bit where he implies she knows who it is, and she replies she does know, but wishes she was wrong?

I think it fits neatly with the wider theme about women having this issue of feeling responsible for other women's welfare, and that being both positive and negative. So the women's college carefully gives jobs to women who need them and makes allowances for the married servant who needs time off for her children - but eventually this is problematic.

I don't think that particular dilemma has changed that much, has it? There's still the basic issue of how to be collaborative and think about 'the sisterhood' without giving away all your power in a society that finds it offensive women should have any power to give away. And there's still the issue of how come some women are at least as anti-women as men.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Seeker, yes it is, via Audible.

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

I mean, Peter can swoop in brilliantly because, although he respects a lot of the women and loves Harriet, he doesn't have the same loyalties they all do.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

One (long) post before work:

In GN I think HV was too caught up with all the emotional side of things that she was getting a bit lost. I think she had the disadvantage of having to consider these things, being a woman, while PW didn't, due to his male (and aristocratic) privilege.

I think DLS was a bit mocking of Lady Mary and her sympathies. But Mary broke out of her class and upbringing a fair bit in the end. (Is that sufficiently spoiler-free?)

I can't remember which JPW continuation I read, but it was the conversation between HV and PW that really jarred. Too much mansplaining, if I recall correctly. HV holds her own and PW knows it. Honestly. I would rather not understand the stuff myself than have PW mansplaining things to HV. (Taking it all too seriously!?)

As for Allingham, there were some rather odd bits about women. Has anyone read the Fashion in Shrouds? To avoid spoiler: Man demands whole life from Woman but will only give part of his (explicitly said) and Woman consented! A line that stuck in my head: she would rather die than admit that her fella was not as able and as intelligent as she was. There is also a similar view expressed in Pride and Prejudice - that Mr Bennet had married a woman not quite up to him intellectually, and he suffered for it. What do people think of that?


And now to my day job.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

She says she's beginning to have an idea but can't make it fit. It's hard to know if she does know at that point.

Interesting point about sisterhood though. I shall ponder.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

Ooo. xpost with lots of people. Typed too slowly. Will read later.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

Yes the personal loyalties point is good and explored further in BH ("we didn't know these people then!").

[LRDtheFeministDragon]

upto - YY, Peter's aristocratic privilege is a fairly big issue, isn't it? I think that's very cleverly done, so you realize at some point how much of an advantage he's starting out with.

I need to read more books to keep up with this thread! I shoulda waited to start the bloody thing, but it is so nice looking forward to it all.

doctrine - mmm, see, I read that as her saying she couldn't make it fit partly because she didn't like it? I don't know. But yes, it's hard to know.

[EmilyAlice]

I think it is relevant that DLS didn't have much luck with the men in her life and that having an illegitimate baby was a big thing at the time, which was why she didn't bring her son up herself. I have always assumed that she was in love with PW and he was everything she would have liked in a man, but didn't get. I am sure she would have been a seventies feminist, but her generation didn't have that opportunity.

[SconeRhymesWithGone]

This thread has made me think of another mystery writer I read and liked some years back: Carolyn Heilbrun, who wrote under the pen name, Amanda Cross. Heilbrun was a professor of English at Columbia University and her sleuth, Kate Fansler, was also an academic. As I recall, some of her books were better than others, but they all had strong feminist themes, and some were written contemporaneously with the heyday of second wave feminism in the US. The one I remember best is Death in a Tenured Position.

[TheDoctrineOfSnatch]

I have a biography of DLS which I'm part way through, tis good.

[UptoapointLordCopper]

Thank you scones. Will look that up.

I tried Ngaio Marsh - one short stories collection - but no deep impression. Might try more.

[seeker]

Roderick Alleyne, Adam Dalgliesh, Alan Grant, Peter Wimsey - all cut from same cloth!