HODDER STOUGHTON Gaudy Night: the classic Oxford college mystery

A brilliant book, the plot developing slowly but confidently without resorting to any red herring devices of misleading plethora of events. The ending was dragged out a bit and I got impatient to find out "who did it". The witty badinage between Wimsey and Harriet can often be skipped with little loss.

Her celebrity as a writer of detective fiction gives Harriet Vane the confidence to visit 1930s Oxford for a “Gaudy Night” celebration for the first time since graduating from Shrewsbury College where she was so happy before the trauma of being falsely accused of poisoning her lover and saved from the gallows by the intervention of amateur sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey. When the activities of a poison pen poltergeist begin to threaten the peace and the reputation of the College, Harriet is called back to investigate.I found this novel entertaining although it proved as dated as I had feared, including in ways I had not expected. In terms of style, it often feels like a novel written a century earlier than it was.The frequent Latin quotations and Greek tags with no translations provided are particularly irritating, but perhaps an educated reader of the time would have had no trouble knowing what they meant. Alternatively, having been taught Latin since the age of six by her father, perhaps Dorothy Sayers overestimated the capacity of her readers, or with the dismissive arrogance often shown by Harriet maybe considered that if they could not understand it they could lump it. There is a similar kind of academic elitism in the often abstruse quotations from sixteenth century writers included at the start of most chapters. Yet the irony is that the female dons of Shrewsbury College frequently behave with the emotional immaturity of the pupils of Enid Blyton’s “Mallory Towers”.As a detective mystery, the plot is rather thin. This is much more a psychological study of a group of women pursuing careers in a privileged cocoon, yet continually troubled by the sense that they are regarded as inferior to their male counterparts (in separate cocoons) and by doubts as to whether they have made the right choice. Should they have satisfied the desire for a man instead, even at the cost of having to further his career rather than their own, or of sacrificing self-fulfilment to putting their children first? Harriet naturally arouses resentment since she appears to “have it all”: a career in the big wide world, the option to become an academic, and a very wealthy suitor offering her future security for the taking.For the most part Harriet and Lord Peter (Why does he have to be an aristocrat except to feed some fantasy of the author’s?) communicate for the most part through the exchange of literary quotations and witty ripostes. One of Harriet’s reasons for refusing his regular proposals of marriage seems to be that he makes her feel inferior. With justice, it would seem, in that she has to call him in to solve the crime, and even rewrites her novel to take account of his criticisms of her leading character Wilfred. There is also a double standard in the indulgent attitude to the idleness of Lord Peter’s student nephew, whereas Harriet rages against the “waste” of the place offered to an “ordinary” girl who has only come to Oxford to please her parents.Many scenes make me uneasy in their elitism: Lord Peter calling a waiter continually to pick up the napkin which has slipped off Harriet’s silk skirt, or Harriet betting in a College sweepstake, not on a horse, but on the student most likely to win a prize.Despite Dorothy Sayers apparently unconscious snobbery – a product of her times – she sometimes mocks the conventions: the male dons’ ludicrous popping formal shirt-fronts; the pleasure of “snuffing the faint, musty odour of slowly perishing leather” in the Bodleian Library; the possible futility of the complex mechanistic analysis of poetry.

I first read `Gaudy Night' about 40 years ago and I have re-read it many times since. It's a book which can be read on many levels. First for the mystery of who is writing the poison pen letters; second for the growing relationship between Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey; thirdly for the position of women in 1930s society; and fourth for the consequences of a crime on those connected with both criminal and victim.Set in a fictitious Oxford College - Shrewsbury - the story features an outbreak of graffiti and poison pen letters sent to students and staff at the college. Shrewsbury is Harriet Vane's alma mater and she is asked to try and help the dons unravel the mystery. Harriet returns to Oxford to attend the college Gaudy (reunion) and finds no one pays attention to her own chequered past (see `Strong Poison'). When she receives an unpleasant anonymous letter the thing becomes personal and she feel compelled to get involved.There is tension around the issue of married women not putting their jobs before their families and much ill feeling between certain members of the college on this issue. Should women have careers or should they have families? Can they have both and do both well? There are examples, good and bad, of all situations in the novel. Truth and honesty are also philosophical questions which are involved in the story. Should people be punished for suppressing facts which interfere with their theories especially if the punishment adversely affects their dependents?Relationships between men and women and the proper basis for these are also explored. Harriet values honesty in herself and others and does not see her role in society as looking after a man and bringing up his children. Should women always put their husband and children first? This is a novel way ahead of its time as it foreshadows the questions posed by the second wave of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s.If you read this novel solely for the crime element you may be disappointed as there is no murder and the crimes involved are relatively minor. The book needs to be read in the context of the mores and morals of the 1930s rather than applying the standards of the 21st century to the behaviour of the characters. That said, there is much in this complex novel which is still of relevance in today's world and it is well worth reading several times in order to appreciate its structure and the way the clues and red herrings are placed. It is a masterpiece of plotting and its sheer craftsmanship far outweighs the odd jarring note which may be apparent to modern readers.

Part of set now. Love these books.

At last, I have reached the end of Ms. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels (having, for reasons difficult to explain, read the last one—Busman’s Honeymoon—first). For the most part, I have enjoyed them immensely. This one, too, is very good, though it is somewhat different from the previous novels.How different? Well, as has happened once before, Harriet Vane leads in this novel. Wimsey doesn’t really show up until near the end, where he takes Vane’s record of the evidence and quickly determines the culprit. More strikingly, this is the only novel where murder is not the crime being investigated. Instead, it is a series of nasty vandalism at Ms. Vane’s college that is the primary problem. In some ways, the stakes seem quite low here.Still, Ms. Sayers is brilliant at creating a sense of time and place. The Oxford women’s college and its inhabitants created here, much like the advertising world in Murder Must Advertise, are wonderfully based on Ms. Sayers’ own experience. She also brings to the fore many controversies of her time between the wars, like feminism, class, and education. Not to mention the fact that she finally brings Vane and Wimsey together in the culmination of a relationship that has been simmering for years.The solution to the mystery here is not as challenging as in many of her previous novels and I would not rate this at the top of her work. (I think The Nine Tailors is probably the best with three or four others running a close second.) On the other hand, I like how, similar to much of her work, this one is a true, full novel and not just a detective story. I enjoyed it.