“Wherever you find a great man, you will find a great mother or a great wife standing behind him -- or so they used to say. It would be interesting to know how many great women have had great fathers and husbands behind them.” ― Gaudy Night
As with most of Americans, when I read the title, I thought, "What the heck is a Gaudy??" The definition of 'Gaudy', references to A feast; esp., an annual dinner or reunion at a British university. And this is how the story began with our heroine, Harriet Vane has been invited back to her alma mater, an all-female Shrewsbury College, in Oxford, to attend the annual Gaudy celebrations.
Although, this is not a 'Murder Mystery', nor is a 'Cozy Mystery', I was a little intrigued to find this a 'literal masterpiece' and wondering why I had never heard of Dorothy Sayers before. This Psychological Thriller, does have several moments that have you on the edge of your seat. When Harriet is not running into trouble or having the 'perpetrator' of poison letters, attempting to strangle her, she enjoys a lighter more romantic filler between her and her paramour Lord Peter Wimsey, as they enjoy a Sunday afternoon 'punting', picnicking, and feeding ducks, as he repeatedly asks her to marry him. At the heart, you can tell that Dorothy Sayers, wrote this novel to present another theme in that of 'Women's Independence'. Even here now in 2021 almost a hundred years later, (I would like to say we've come a long way baby, with a woman for Vice President), but still feel so far away as there is still a rift between, Women's choice in cheering each other on. Should a woman feel less for choosing a family as a wife, mother, home maker? Or is a career and a college degree more something of what should be desired and obtained?? Or why not both? Can she have her cake and eat it too, or would she be spreading herself to thin, as the dons at this fictional school discussed a mother would always choose her family over her job any day. Which for me has always been true. Working on and off again, my thoughts have always been 'Family comes First', and these dons at the college looked down on this as to the point of discrimination, not to hire a mother, because this was a fault, that when a child is sick, she would neglect her work. This filler part of the story was interesting as these thoughts on working mothers still exists today.
Back to the mystery, another one of my favorite facets to the story that I love are all the literary gems and references to literary works, like Shakespeare, Dickens, stories from Greek Mythology, Voltaire, lines in French and Latin, "O les beaux jours que ce siecle de fer " which roughly translates into “O beautiful days in this age of iron.”
The only negative things I can say about this novel are I enjoy murder mysteries, and as glad as I am that one of the students is not successful in committing suicide because of these 'poison pen letters', a good murder always gives the story a more 'suspenseful and tense' atmosphere, because the reader does not want the hero or heroine to get killed themselves. Dorothy Sayers did have that in 'Gaudy Night', where Harriet is almost strangled to death. It's just that if there was already a murder how much more 'tense' that scene would have been. And the last negative note, there were several parts where I just wanted to finish the book, filler parts that I didn't find the connection between 'finding out the suspect' and again the 'women's right to choose', some of these parts could have been shorter.
All in all I'd give this book a 9 out of 10.
This novel satisfies A Classic by a new-to-you author Back to the Classics 2021 Challenge.
