Feminists who are Lord Peter fans......

[BertrandRussell]

I just noticed this reference to domestic violence in Busman’s Honeymoon.
“"O-o-oh! I do hope he won't be violent."

"Violent?" said Harriet, half amused and half angry. "Oh, I shouldn't think so."

But alarm is infectious...and much-tried men have been known to vent their exasperation upon their[Pg 330] servants. The two women clung together, waiting for the explosion.

"Well," said the distant voice, "all I can say is, Bunter, don't let it happen again.... All right.... Good God, man, you needn't tell me that ...of course you didn't.... We'd better go and view the bodies."

The sounds died away, and the women breathed more freely. The dreadful menace of male violence lifted its shadow from the house”

Aren’t those last two sentences chilling?

Such a shame she got side tracked onto bloody Dante. Who needs Dante!

Thank you!

I now need a plane ticket to Illinois and a plausible excuse for going and reading just those fragments, in order to have her voice back in my ear.

Interesting. I read Gaudy Nights recently because I'd seen it recommended on here. I hated it. I thought it was full of the most horrible attitudes from women towards other women, and did not find it at all enjoyable.

Back to the Busman's Holiday quote - I'd always noticed it too. But the context is that the woman clutching Harriet was older, unmarried, and had been led on by the murderer (not a nice man) who later in the book completely humiliated her. She might have had every reason to be scared of men. Think it's also written in a pretty ironic way - the "explosion" is about bottles of wine which have been shaken up...

I have found my thread ☺️

There were all those letters as well that were published in war time. I want to read them!

I noticed a bit in The Nine Tailors when I re-read it recently, about Mary Thoday, whose first husband was a bastard but whose second is portrayed positively.

"He guessed her to be about forty, though, as is frequently the case with country women, she had lost most of her front teeth and looked older."

It's slipped in so casually.

She is, in some ways very much of the time. The fascination comes from the ways in which she isn’t. The classism is particulaly spectacular- but it’s interesting to see how Peter is seen by many of his relations as embarrassingly non class conscious- what with the Rumms as wedding guests and being friends with Parker and encouraging him to marry Mary. It’s the depiction of working class country people that grates most for me. And the least said about the Scots in Five Red Herrings the better!

I'd love to know, without prejudice of 21st eyes, how Sayers appeared to her contemporaries. Exactly how shocking or not that Harriet had lived with her lover in Strong Poison etc. And how Annie Wilson was seen at the time.

Sayers lived with (? not sure) and had a son with a lover who was possibly a bit below her intellectual level.

Back to Busman's Honeymoon -- I think little Miss Twitterton was probably quite frightened of both her cow-hand father and her nasty-tempered uncle. She probably took it out on the chickens.

Sorry, I meant contemporary readers, not friends.

I shouldn't be commenting on this thread because I've only read one, so just ignore me, but I'm interested and kind of thinking out loud.

The classism is spectacular, yes. Even bearing in mind the time she was writing, and that characters are characters and not the author, I thought there was so much author coming through, intrusively, and I didn't like her. I don't need to like characters in a book or find them sympathetic, and am happy reading many books with views very much of their time. But there was something so jarring and unpleasant to me about this author's voice, but there is so much love for these books and I feel confused by my reaction. Maybe I came to them too old. For example, I read a Monica Dickens book called Marianne when I was about 11 and liked it, but reading it now I see classism and sexism I didn't at the time, yet still find it a cosy, comfort read and can set those things aside.

Sorry to ramble unhelpfully on an interesting thread.

I think it's intellectual snobbery rather than straight classism - she's broadly sympathetic to anyone with a desire to think deeply, read widely and aim to 'better themselves'.

(I was terrified of being found out as an intellectual lightweight at university and having some shrewd middle-aged Dean kindly tell me that I had a 'small, summery kind of brain with the staying power of a mayfly'...)

Which one did you read, Carefully?

Gah, sorry, I see it was Gaudy Night!!

Yes, Gaudy, Helen. It was recommended as a good one to start with.

Yeah. I'd probably start with Murder Must Advertise as it's very standalone. It's also full of educated by not very aristocratic types

I will give it a go!

You should have read Strong Poison first

I love Gaudy Night, but I do see what you mean. The author’s voice about some characters is pretty unpleasant. And the denouement scene with Annie is very disquieting.

I will add Strong Poison to the shopping list too, as it were

Thanks.

The Harriet Vane books are Strong Poison, Have His Carcase, Gaudy Night, Busman's Honeymoon - so you started a fair way into the LPW/HV relationship!

GN probably has more characters with pagetime than any of her other books and the majority are women. I think for some she strays a bit far into one-dimensional nastiness!

@InvisibleUnicorn

The Wimsey Papers are in the Spectator Archive

archive.spectator.co.uk/article/5th-january-1940/12/wimsey-papers-viii

I think I love you, RustyBear.

But I have an urgent work deadline and had better not settle down to read those right now.

Well maybe just one...

I would suggest that you got them as audiobooks. But Audible has replaced their old ones read by Ian Carmichael with a new reader who can’t pronounce Baliol, so I wouldn’t recommend them

That's really helpful, thanks. I will certainly explore further.

Yes, with GN the denouement scene with Annie was one of the bits I had in mind.

I think with the setting of the women's college, I was disappointed in how stark were some of the things that are hurled at women as insults by people who don't like women much, eg women and girls being inherently bitchy rather than friendly and supportive. But then it's only quite recently that female friendship has been particularly celebrated more in books/media, at least that I've noticed, for example in things like Parks and Rec. I think my recent noticing of and being pleased about that improvement was uncomfortably juxtaposed with my first reading of the book, possibly.

In so many older books (I'm thinking again of Marianne here, but think it happened in GN too) there are so many throw away comments about women's looks, in particular whether or not they have 'good legs'. That's a particular one that always really bugs me

Yes, Bertrand, I was really disappointed by the Jane McDowell versions on Audible - I hate to think what she’s made of the three-page letter in French in Clouds of Witness!
Though they do have Whose Body, read by Nadia May, who has made quite a good job of several Ngaio Marsh books, and they also have the Paton Walsh books Thrones, Dominations read by Ian Carmichael and A Presumption of Death by Edward Petherbridge.

I do wonder how they dealt with the several instances of the n-word in Unnatural Death - I was surprised to see them still there in full in the Kindle edition. Most of them are said by a character who was obviously meant to be displaying outright prejudice, but at least one is from the supposedly ‘good’ character, Charles Parker, referring to a supposed ‘taste’ for boots and hair-oil. I suppose it just reflects the fact that it was an accepted word in the 30’s, even for those who would have thought themselves unprejudiced.