Barbelith Underground > Books, Criticism & Writing > Why is Barbelith a haven for Dorothy L Sayers freaks?

Are people ready to talk about Unnatural Death?

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I'm jumping off two points that plums raised in the early days of this thread:

Why is Barbelith a haven for Dorothy L Sayers freaks? Which I suppose is not answerable in the sense that "Barbelith" isn't a definable entity, if you're going to be rigorous with definitions. But I think it's enough to say --and I already said this in the Book Personals thread-- that DLS is fairly packed with the stuff that some of us can't seem to leave alone.

And:

dorothy l sayers is a gender radical and a racial reactionary. discuss, with reference to Have His Carcase. Which certainly could also be discussed with reference to Unnatural Death, I'm afraid.

Before I do that... I'm not quite sure about dividing up DLS into her treatment of gender and and her treatment of race. Because I'm not sure how to approach it. It eventually comes down to DLS being an Oxford-educated British woman in the early 20th century, doesn't it? Even today, you have friction re: latent racism between white and non-white feminists. How much do we expect from DLS? Is it because she seems to be so ahead of her time on gender --and even more so on class-- that her take on race seems retrograde? But it's interesting... and more importantly, it's definitely *there* ...so perhaps there is a way to get at it.

But I wonder if there's some sort of hierarchy or priority list that people usually tackle when they're going for a paradigm shift. That is, do you think that it's almost always class that's the first to get shot at, then gender, then race? Now I'm thinking back to plums's thread about class, and how it occurred to me then that class isn't so much an issue in the U.S. Obviously we have rich and poor, but rich and poor doesn't constitute class as it seems to exist in the U.K. I can't really speak about this, of course, not having experienced class in the U.K. myself. But I've come to the idea that class like that doesn't exist in the U.S., so the battlegrounds have more definitely shifted over to gender and race. It seems to me that conventional wisdom says that the U.S. has to deal with race, because the U.S. --uniquely?-- has different races to deal with. But we're not unique, or we're not *that* unique... it's not as if England is populated just with English people, or even just with white people. So I just got this idea that that the reason that race is such a dominant issue in the U.S. isn't because of the presence of race, but the absence of class. So then my question would be, how is race dealt with in the presence of class? Which is what DLS is doing, I think.

There is a whole thing to be said about class, of course; but as I say, I know almost nothing about class. Except to be terrified by it at times, as in not knowing that a "bubbling hot Helix Pomatia" is a snail. If I may ask, actually, are oysters considered a common alternative to escargot? Because as far as I'm concerned, only rich people eat oysters --that's how low I am.

So I will start with gender and with the character of Miss Climpson, whom I simultaneously love and feel a little uncomfortable with. I do wish that she wouldn't talk quite so much in italics.

Some prosaic questions:

What are penny stamps and what is Miss Climpson using them for? (It has to do with giving Wimsey a receipt for some money that he advances to her; she signs over the stamps.)

And actually, I have a side question about Miss Climpson's underwear... can anyone tell me what sort of underwear she's wearing, or rather has had to purchase in her role as "a retired lady in easy circumstances" ...she says it's wool underwear, and I'm pretty sure that I've got the wrong picture for that.

Beautiful segue, though, because we first get the wrong picture for Miss Climpson. It's not too often, I think, that DLS misleads her reader (this time, via Wimsey misleading Parker by allowing him to think that Miss Climpson is his kept woman). Do you think that's true? It's what I hate about Agatha Christie, always hiding stuff from you. But in this case, it's such a rich misleading... and also such a rich revealing about Wimsey, and poor old middle-class Parker.

Here's what Wimsey has to say about her:

"Miss Climpson," said Lord Peter, "is a manifestation of the wasteful way in which this country is run. Look at electricity. Look at water-power. Look at the tides. Look at the sun. Millions of power units being given off into space every minute. Thousands of old maids, simply bursting with useful energy, forced by our stupid social system into hydros and hotels and communities and hostels and posts as companions, where their magnificent gossip-powers and units of inquisitiveness are allowed to dissipate themselves or even become harmful to the community, while the rate-payers' money is spent on getting work for which these women are providentially fitted, inefficiently carried out by ill-equipped policemen like you."

Which isn't annoying, exactly... well, it would be annoying if one wasn't committed to liking Wimsey.

Next chapter, though, this is what he says about himself:

"I sleuth, you know. For a hobby. Harmless outlet for natural inquisitiveness, don't you see, which might otherwise strike inward and produce introspection an' suicide."

Which is the sort of thing that cements my fascination with this author. Wimsey identifies as a spinster! Wimsey identifies as a woman! Do you suppose consciously? Or how about the author, conscious or not?

This also ties back to plums's post above about logic and rationality, and how Wimsey solves his crimes. And *that* ties back to my untenable feminism...

...but this is *quite* long enough. Great scott, I haven't even mentioned the schwärmerei...