This wasn't what I was expecting at all. Maybe I was deluded. I had read the first five novels in the Lord Peter Wimsey sequence and found some detective stories that were slowly deepening into full-fledged psychological studies and then skipped straight to the penultimate novel 'Gaudy Night' and discovered a full scale classic.
Lord Peter Wimsey was an aristocrat detective of the highest intelligence. He may have concealed himself a little as a seeming fop but he was a serious proposition in practically any circumstance, and his substance was emphasised increasingly as the series moves on and his detective work transitioned from a hobby to a hardfought profession. Having started off seemingly as a generic novelty sleuth with aristocratic tendencies and shellshock from World War I, he ends a deeply complex character. Having said all that, the first of 'Gaudy Night's many decoys is that it's not really a novel about Lord Peter Wimsey at all, but is actually the story of his reluctant love interest Harriet Vane. He saved her from a wrongful execution in 'Strong Poison' and professed his love, but it's only here that their whole shared story comes to a resolution, seven books later. It's Harriet's story first, probably as it must have been lest it all come apart in a shower of literary debris.
The second decoy is perhaps the title, which I initially thought referred to the adjective 'gaudy' but actually relates apparently to a type of university reunion apparently celebrated at the time in some Oxford colleges. Hence when discovering the book you wonder what could be so gaudy about it all. The eponymous Gaudy Night is the start point of the novel, the launching point for Harriet as the protagonist as she goes to her first reunion, and the first portion of what will be the nominal mystery for the narrative.
The third decoy is the presumption that this is a detective story, as it is really a romance of the first order masquerading as a mystery. That all begs the question of what this book is really about, and therein lies the question of all questions. This mammoth and epic story is a study of the implications of educated women, the conflict between said education and the traditional roles of women in society, the ongoing tension between Wimsey and Vane, the subtext of Sayers' real life, and perhaps is a deliberate step toward the resolution of the entire series of Wimsey novels as only one more novel would be written.
To talk about the story briefly, a seeming prank at Gaudy Night escalates over a number of months into a potentially lethal tirade of incidents, which leads the Lady Dons of the College to summon Old Student Harriet to surreptitiously determine who is behind it all, and to stop them before someone dies in the process. The mystery is really only a tool of the plot to raise social issues and far more importantly to illuminate the desperate struggle in Harriet's heart as she comes to realise that the man whose proposals she has been refusing for five years may have been the man for her all along. It is hard to know how to feel about someone who saved you from the hangman's noose, after all. In addition, the introduction of Wimsey far past the mid-point of the narrative and in his old studying grounds of Oxford effectively reintroduces everyone to his brilliance via his academic reputation and how he relates to his nephew. We are reintroduced to Wimsey at the same time as Harriet is, and it is impressive. The psychology of the whole novel is impressive, and the coalescence of the disparate plots into a completely satisfying conclusion is dramatic for a mystery novel of the 1930s.
Somewhere there will be massive critical appreciations of 'Gaudy Night', which I could never hope to recreate, so my post will finish with an appreciation of this being a highly enjoyable and successful novel by a woman, about a college full of women and with a female protagonist. I hope I'm not a sexist but I would have been a little perturbed at the thought of what was to come with all that femininity considered, and then delighted because it all makes sense and is an example of the work standing on its own merits.
Go, woman power!
O.
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