Happy Wednesday!

[cimorene]

I actually bought the Emily Wilson Iliad recently and got unexpectedly absorbed by the introduction, which is over 100 pages. I also made pretty good progress on The Silmarillion this week, and got past the Children of Hurin and Thingol finally dying, but I'm finding the dwarf-racist slant of the narration tough to stomach.

Also I finished The Sundering Flood, the last of William Morris's 'medieval romances' that I hadn't read except The House of the Wolfings, which is a poem and doesn't have any real fantasy elements, and its sequel. The end was a bit limp in comparison to many of his other efforts, actually, but it was still a good time in general.

But then also a few minutes ago I saw Unnatural Death lying out of place on top of the bookshelf and couldn't resist, even though the last time I read it must've only been two years ago at most. This was the first Sayers book I read as a child and it's still my favorite, which seems to be quite unusual of me. I used to see discussion or raving about the Wimsey books on the regular on Tumblr, but I don't think I've ever seen a mention of this one, except for the quote about Wimsey and Bunter picking out the perfect suit to spuriously suggest that he is an anxious expectant father, which is the pretext he uses to interrogate a nurse. To jog the memories of people who have forgotten it in the background, the mysterious death of an old lady who had cancer but died for no understandable reason suddenly is the case, and it's introduced by a stranger who overhears Wimsey and his detective friend talking in a restaurant. I think my favorite parts are the parts about Miss Climpson, the middle-aged lady he hires to research and snoop for him.

Comments

[princessofgeeks]

I heart Miss Climpson. And all the Wimsey books. And this one has a truly scary villain.

[cimorene]

Yeah, maybe that's why. The villains turn out to be basically unimpressive in a lot of mysteries, by the end.

[mrkinch]

Five Red Herrings and Unnatural Death are the only Wimsey books I don't own, the first because clockwork mysteries don't do much for me and the second because it struck me (probably in the 70's) as uncomfortably homophobic. But I do love Miss Climpson and should perhaps read it again for her sake. She's amazing in Strong Poison!

[cimorene]

Oh, yeah, that's true.

Most of that is in the POV of Miss Climpson, actually, who has some fascinatingly specific lesbophobic ideas about how 'unnatural' and 'unhealthy' the attachment of Miss Findlater for Miss Whittaker is.

On the other hand though, the background of the book also includes a historical lesbian couple - the victim is the surviving half of it. And nobody ever expresses any censure of it, I think - just a few people variously inform the sleuths that some people (notably a father) disapproved, but all the informants seem respectful and affectionate. The character of the victim that emerges through the investigation seems a bit ignorant, stubborn, and foolish, in a way that could perhaps be compared to Miss Findlater; but she also appears pretty sympathetic, not only to the sleuths, but to the reader.

Of course, it's quite likely that the fact that the victim's partner was a wealthy and opinionated woman with a very strong personality helped to ensure her acceptance (and I don't think it's unrealistic in spite of its setting for that reason). And it's also true that on a meta level, it seems that Sayers perhaps actually believes that romance between female-presenting people is some sort of psychological phenomenon which, while not inherently harmful or unnatural or unsympathetic, does inherently involve one strong character and one weak one (and the examples we see are of 'weaker' characters who are also less intelligent and rather gullible). Gender essentialism seems to be built into the world presented in the book.

I think that as a kid I was pretty dazzled just to have the lesbians on the page at all, because that's rather a rare occurrence. And I think the villain is pretty definitely aro/ace in the text, not lesbian or bisexual or trans (or any pre-term approximations thereof), but I don't think that her evil is associated with her queerness on the surface level of the text (that definitely would have caught my notice, and negatively, as the fates of queer characters in Agatha Christie did later when I read those). The subtext is another matter - you could definitely make a case analyzing the text there. I wonder if Sayers was even aware of it, though.

[asumacx3]

I view the wlw (or what-have-you) in this book in the same way as the Jewish characters, and the speaking characters' views on them, in Whose Body?: very much of the time, certainly including bigotry, certainly based in outdated notions of the possible causes of inversion* and superseded terminology about race, could have been much worse, more sympathetic than might be expected for the time.

I understand if, in both cases, the characters' opinions about Jews and wlw (and what we can infer about Sayers' opinions from them) make the books too unpleasant for some people now.

Certainly the bigotry toward wlw in Unnatural Witness book is more intense than antisemitism in Whose Body? - in large part because the murder victim rather than the perpetrator was a Jew. And if Sayers had written (or has ever written) a murder mystery in which the murderer had been a Jew or of Jewish descent, then I expect at least one character would use that as at least partial explanation for their motives.

The most memorable thing for me about the characters' reactions to and opinions about Jews in Whose Body was the duchess saying, in the midst of a long ramble about Jews, how much of a hassle it must be to have to pay attention to the phases of the moon. And in my experience, goyim aren't even aware that there's a Jewish calendar, much less the significance of moon phases to the calendar and to certain aspects of ritual observance. Given how ignorant goyim are about us in general, that was a bit impressive to me. And her rambling was, overall, sympathetic. And more importantly her *behavior* toward the murder victim's wife and daughter was as sympathetic as to any of the various vulnerable people who come into her orbit during the course of one of her son's investigations.

By our own standards, it was of course deeply uncool of the duchess to effectively cut off a friend because her husband was an antisemitic aristocrat who didn't want his wife mixing with a self-made Jew and his family. I think it's difficult to grasp now how fuckin exceptional and impressive it would have been for her to go against her husband's wishes in that matter. And Sayers could have put much worse antisemitism in the mouths of her characters.

I've read Whose Body maybe three times now, and Unnatural Death only the once, and not very recently, though I plan to reread - but hence why I don't recall well enough to describe anything similar from that Unnatural. My recollection of Unnatural book leads me to think that if a wlw had gotten mixed up in one of Wimsey's mysteries, but not as a perpetrator, he would have been as sympathetic as would have been believable and in character. Like, if a wlw hadn't been forthcoming about some important information because she didn't want to out herself or another wlw, then I suspect that Wimsey would have responded much as he did to Grimethorpe's wife in Clouds of Witness - not have condemned her or used her vulnerability against her, tried to persuade her to testify, but have continued to seek evidence presentable in court by other means.

I expect both Wimsey and his mother would burble on about wlw and mlm in a faintly condescending, sort of baffled, certainly ignorant, but overall friendly way. Not too dissimilar to most speaking characters' attitudes toward political leftists, but with less condescension: from their perspective, you can't choose to be an invert, but if you're a bit politically wooly-headed and fall in with the wrong crowd you might wind up a socialist or anarchist, and that's a choice you made, something you can change.

And of course we ought to expect better of contemporary writers, and of writers who grew up and published more recently than Sayers. Just saying that for the sake of clarity.

*to use the appropriate historical term for wlw and mlm

[cimorene]

the murder victim rather than the perpetrator was a Jew.

I agree with your assessment of Whose Body, and the antisemitism is why I haven't read it more often (three times I think, but not recently).

However, the victim in Unnatural Death is definitely a lifelong romantic partner of another woman, whereas the perpetrator... seems to be actually aro and/or ace, although she's in a lesbian relationship which seems to have been a calculated cover. The victim and her partner, and even the perpetrator's partner, are treated pretty much sympathetically by the text, and the only character who says anything negative about the relationship on the page is Miss Climpson, although we hear about other disapproval of the victim's relationship in the past.

[cimorene]

Ps. Sorry, I was trying to answer these on my phone and completely missed that this was the comment you were replying to or I wouldn't have said all the same stuff again!

[mrkinch]

My responses to attitudes toward Jews in Whose Body? have been similar to yours, although I was young and very inexperienced when I first read it and may have taken some time to get there. That Lord Peter is relatively nonjudgmental of lifestyle, chosen or inherent, is for me an attractive part of his character. I think he learned it from his mother.:)

[cimorene]

Yeah, I remember not actually getting the antisemitism all the time in the earliest vintage things I read, mainly because I remember the reaction when I read them again later. Like, the fact that Peter himself isn't really prejudiced helps in that I was able to keep liking him as a character! Same with some of the worse Christie and R. Austin Freeman books. But it definitely made the books themselves un fun.

[mrkinch]

I just ordered it from Alibris; we shall see if I can read it with equanimity and nuance after all these years. I mean, I didn't know I was queer at the time, though whether that made it worse or better I have no idea.

[viggorlijah]

I’m listening to the audiobook this week! My first sayers

[cimorene]

Oh, that's nice! I hope you enjoy it!

[oracne]

YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS MISS CLIMPSON. Stuff that went over my head about her and her agency made a ton more sense years later while doing research on WWI. There's a nonfiction book, SINGLED OUT, about post-WWI spinsters that you might find interesting.

[asumacx3]

I really enjoy Miss Climpson and the agency, and Wimsey as a character who does his best to see beyond conventional assumptions in order to identify skill and knowledge wherever it may be. A useful skill for solving mysteries, certainly, but also he uses it in a compassionate way. He benefits from the agency Miss Climpson runs, of course, but she and the agency wouldn't have to be reliant on his charity. He has genuine respect for her and all the other women so well qualified for so much work which is not open to them.