41 pages • 1 hour read
Dorothy L. SayersGaudy Night
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1935A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Female Intellectuals
The single most important theme in Gaudy Night is the changing role of women in British culture. The novel takes place in 1935 at a time when women were emerging in the public sphere as something more than wives and mothers. Women had only been granted the vote in 1928, so the events in the story follow closely on the heels of political emancipation. Oxford University itself still treats female education as something of a novelty with a single college devoted to women’s higher education. This is the context in which Sayers explores the issue of intellectually gifted females and their uneasy role in society.
The female academics who populate Shrewsbury College are all single. It is implicitly understood that women who pursue a life of the mind cannot also pursue the physical life of breeding children. This is an either-or proposition that no one seems to question. The only woman at the college who is married holds a secretarial position, and she is resented by one of the academics for receiving better accommodations simply because she has children. The servant class who support the academics are also allowed to have families, but no one who aspires to intellectual excellence is given that option.
Although Harriet isn’t a career academic, she wrestles with this same issue in debating whether she should marry Wimsey. She fears that although he is her intellectual equal, as a husband, he would be just as domineering as the average male of his era. She also seems to succumb to the Darwinian theory that males are innately dominant, while females are innately passive in fulfilling their breeding functions. The animosity that the average British citizen feels toward liberated women is articulated best by Annie, who believes that traditional gender roles ought to be fulfilled. She sees Harriet and her kind as monsters. In her battle to quell these anomalies, Annie becomes a monster herself.
Choices and Consequences
A number of characters in the novel make decidedly bad choices and come to understand the consequences of their behavior too late. Harriet is the prime example of this flaw. Five years after her notorious free love arrangement with a man who ends up murdered, she’s still berating herself for the bad decisions she made at that stage of her life. Of course, her indiscretion becomes fodder for the press when she is accused of his murder. When she attends the Gaudy celebration at her college, her first thought is how much gossip she will create by simply appearing at the event. Her self-flagellation results in a degree of self-absorption that prevents her from interpreting Wimsey’s behavior in the proper light.
Wimsey also confesses to blindness when he recalls his arrogant assumption that Harriet would naturally want to marry a wealthy aristocrat who had rescued her from the gallows. He understands how obnoxious his presumption might be to her and is willing to end his pursuit if this will ensure her future happiness. Both Harriet and Wimsey see the results of their bad choices and stoically accept the consequences.
In contrast, Miss de Vine never truly accepts the consequences of ruining Robinson’s career. Her devotion to truth in its pristine state is absolute. She believes she holds the moral high ground even in the face of the disasters that her actions set into motion. Robinson loses his job, descends into alcoholism, and commits suicide, leaving his wife and children destitute. Annie’s rampage only occurs because Miss de Vine doesn’t recognize the repercussions that her own choices will have on the lives of others who aren’t as financially secure as she is.
Privilege and Poverty
People who occupy a social position of privilege can afford to uphold abstract ideals like truth and honor. Annie and her husband have no such luxury. Her animosity toward the female academics of Shrewsbury College is as much a vendetta against their elite social class as it is an indictment against women thinkers. The scholars who teach at the college are supported by an army of lower-class workers who cater to their physical needs so that they can scale the lofty heights of intellectual eminence.
Annie’s role as a scout is especially galling because she sees this caregiving role as a natural function to be shared by all women. Her resentment toward her charges has a material basis in that female survival traditionally depends on a male breadwinner. If that male has lost his livelihood through the machinations of female elites, he can no longer provide for the wife and children who depend on him. The proof that Annie’s wrath isn’t purely misogynistic is demonstrated in her castigation of Wimsey along with the women he is helping. His support enables them to become educated, which in turn enables them to compete for the kind of jobs that her dead husband once held.
To Annie’s way of thinking, female survival within her social class depends on men who can earn a living. She doesn’t see herself as a petulant malcontent. She is defending her way of life by destroying females who have no business supplanting the men of her class from jobs they have traditionally held. When seen in this way, her insane vendetta against the intellectual elite makes logical sense.
