I picked this book up in a used bookstore in Washburn, WI, a very small town
on the shore of Lake Superior just south of Bayfield. The year-round
population can’t be more than 500 but when we drove by and I spotted it, the
store looked so interesting we had to stop. And it was nearly the best used
bookstore I have been in for ages. They had everything from lit crit to
Roman history to regional stuff to a dynamite sci-fi section that my son
mined with glee. And they had a coffee shop attached so I could sip an iced
French roast coffee while browsing. What more could a girl ask for?

Anyway, I read the entire Lord Peter Wimsey series some years ago before the
kids went to school and I had two hours of naptime every single afternoon to
do with as I pleased. This one stuck with me as the best of the lot and, as
I recall, seemed to me more a feminist tract than a serious murder mystery.
When I saw it on the shelf I wondered whether my perception of it had
changed with the passing of time and my ever changing taste in books.

Essentially, it still strikes me as feminist in tone, though having recently
read Sayers’ essay on education and having read more about her classical
studies and work, I can see the emphasis on education and serious scholarly
work for women that she puts into the book. Originally I thought it just a
vehicle for her ideas about women and work. Now I see the emphasis on higher
education for women and allowing women the same respect for academic
achievement that is afforded to men. All of this is very dated, of course.
She was writing preWWII when college and work for women was a choice of the
upper class only and not taken more seriously than a way to bag a well
educated husband. It’s the same argument that Virginia Woolf makes in
A Room of One’s Own, another book I read about the same time.

The plot is quite simple on the surface. Harriet Vane has gone down to
Oxford for a reunion of graduates called a “Gaudy Night.” She has just
returned from a tour of the continent designed to give her some breathing
space from Wimsey’s attentions and allow her to come to some decisions. There
she meets old classmates, some who have married and given up intellectual
life and some who have gone on in their studies and missed marriage and
kids. On her way out, she finds a piece of hate mail tucked into her gown
sleeve and, thinking it the work of some belligerent undergrad, burns it and
travels back to London–only to be called back to Oxford when the
notes continue with other members of the college along with obscene graffiti
on the bathroom walls and burning gowns in the commons. The head of the
college wants it stopped with a minimum of fuss and, more importantly,
publicity so she calls on Harriet as a detective fiction writer to help them
out. She comes to Oxford under the pretense of doing research on Sheridan Le
Fanu and quietly tries to figure out who is doing it.

To a point, I really enjoyed the book. The mystery aspects of it were well
done. Although half way thru the book, I suddenly remembered the ending, I
still could follow the laying out of clues and the setting up of the plot
with enjoyment. The Oxford setting was interesting also since I now have a
dear friend who attended Oxford in the 50’s and has told me stories about
women in the academic setting there. What bugged me this time is that having
set the book up as feminist in tone, she cops out at the end and brings Wimsey
in to save the day. Ok, he IS the detective in the series and I have to
admit, I found him a compelling suitor for Harriet. I kept wanting to tell
her to quit thinking so much and just give him a kiss, you twit. On the
other hand, to be consistent, Wimsey shouldn’t have come into it until
Harriet had the whole thing figured out. After I finished it and thought
about it a bit, I was disappointed in Sayers for doing that.

However, I wasn’t disappointed enough to bypass the bookstore on the way
home rather than stopping and picking up some more in the series. I have to
find out if she marries him or not.