Dorothy L Sayers Books

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

Sarah Harrison  00:54
Carolyn, I’m really excited about our episode today.

Carolyn Daughters  00:59
I’m always excited about our episodes.

Sarah Harrison  01:01
But before we jump in to our exciting episode, we have an even more exciting sponsor. It’s Carolyn Daughters. Carolyn runs game changing corporate brand therapy workshops, teaches Online Marketing Boot Camp courses and leads persuasive writing workshops. Carolyn empowers startups, small businesses, enterprise organizations and government agencies to win hearts, minds, deals and dollars. You can learn more at carolyndaughters.com. Carolyn, we have our guest Z.J. back again.

Carolyn Daughters  01:43
I’m very excited about that. We’re going to talk about Gaudy Night with them, with Z.J. and Gaudy Night, one of the most complex of the Dorothy L Sayers books. But before we get too deep, we’re gonna we have a special listen. We have a listener. Our listener, as John Zep from Selden, New York.

Sarah Harrison  02:02
Congratulations, John.

Carolyn Daughters  02:05
He actually won a copy of The Maltese Falcon and one of our little online.

Sarah Harrison  02:11
Oh, that’s true. Terrific. We should put a sticker in there.

Carolyn Daughters  02:14
Well, he already has the book, so he’s acknowledged receipt of the book, so I need to now mail him a sticker. I will take care of that. But awesome. He did what we want everyone to do. He’s engaging on social media. We are on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. You can comment on any of those pages. Certainly follow us on them, or you can just write us from our website. We’ve got tons of contact links and a contact page on the site.

Sarah Harrison  02:45
We have so many things. You can actually comment on Spotify now I put polls up there. You can comment on the YouTube clips we put up. You can reach us in so many ways. Please do it.

Carolyn Daughters  02:58
Sarah, tell us more about our guest.

Sarah Harrison  03:03
Yes, I am excited. If you have not listened to the last episode, or if it’s been a couple of weeks, I want you to remember our guest, Z.J. Czupor. Zoltan James is the pen name of Z.J. Czupor. He writes mysteries, thrillers and the occasional poem, actually, a whole bunch of Haiku poems, right? And is proud to be represented by Terry Wolf, founder and owner of AKA Literary Management. His monthly column on tour with dead writers features vignettes about famous mystery writers, and is available exclusively on the Rogue Women Writers blog. And we will put the link to that in the show notes. Welcome Z.J.!

Z.J. Czupor  03:43
Thank you. Pleasure to be here.

Carolyn Daughters  03:45
Is it still on that blog? Because some of your content, I think, is now being reserved.

Z.J. Czupor  03:54
In preparation for publication, but yes, On Tour with Dead Writers is alive on the blog, and I give clues every month, usually picking a location where the author may have done something nice, and see if the readers can guess who it is. And then they can guess and have a chance to win a free book from one of the thriller writers.

Sarah Harrison  04:24
That’s very cool.

Carolyn Daughters  04:26
This episode is our second episode on Gaudy Night, one of the best known Dorothy L Sayers books. It’s the third classic mystery to feature Harriet Vane, companion salute to the dashing, perennially popular private investigator, Lord Peter Wimsey. It’s a lot of letter P’s there. It’s very difficult from written by the writer, widely considered the greatest mystery novelist of the Golden Age, Dorothy L Sayers, so when Harriet Vane attends her Oxford reunion. Now it is the Gaudy, the prim, academic setting is haunted by a rash of bizarre pranks, scrawled obscenities, burnt effigies and poison pen letters, including one that says, ask your boyfriend with the title if he likes arsenic in his soup. Some of the notes threaten murder. All are perfectly ghastly, yet in spite of their scurrilous nature, all are perfectly worded, and Harriet finds herself as ensnared in a nightmare of romance and terror with only the tiniest shreds of clues to challenge her powers of detection and those of her paramour, Lord Peter Wimsey and Z.J., I think you’re going to read a little bit.

Sarah Harrison  05:39
We just picked a small selection, if you wouldn’t mind reading it.

Z.J. Czupor  05:42
This is Miss Devine speaking to the protagonist, Harriet Vane, and she says, detachment is a rare virtue, and very few people find it lovable, either in themselves or in others. If you ever find a person who likes you, in spite of it, still more because of it, that liking has very great value, because it is perfectly sincere, and because with that person, you will never need to be anything but sincere yourself.

Sarah Harrison  06:17
Thanks. That’s an interesting summary of Harriet’s feelings, even though she didn’t even say it.

Z.J. Czupor  06:27
I think that’s a good example of a key theme in the Dorothy L Sayers books.

Carolyn Daughters  06:38
This is the third novel that Harriet Vane appears in. She’s introduced in Strong Poison.

Sarah Harrison  06:53
I can’t remember, that’s the one we didn’t read. We read Strong Poison.

Z.J. Czupor  06:56
Strong Poison was where she was introduced.

Carolyn Daughters  06:58
I think it’s Have His Carcase. Have His Carcase is the second one I believe that she’s in, and then the fourth one will be Busman’s Honeymoon.

Z.J. Czupor  07:10
That’s the last Peter Wimsey one, Busman’s Honeymoon.

Carolyn Daughters  07:14
I think she’s in four books. Years ago, Sarah, we read Gaudy Night as part of a book club that was not a podcast, and you had some strong feelings about Harriet Vane. So where when you were first introduced to Harriet? Because this was the first of the Dorothy L Sayers books you had read. It’s also the first one I’ve read. What did you think of Harriet? And now that you’ve read Whose Body, The Nine Tailors, and Strong Poison, and you’ve come back a second time, where are you now with Harriet Vane?

Sarah Harrison  07:54
Overall, I think the book does well when you read all the other Dorothy L Sayers books that come before it Harriet. Still, I had a couple of points I was struggling with. I would say I struggled more with no context. I was like, What is her deal? Why is she so rude? What’s wrong with Lord Peter Wimsey seems delightful, like she seems like a bit of a navel gazer. She’s just obsessed with this weird academic lifestyle, like I just I was not feeling her.

Carolyn Daughters  08:28
What is a naval gazer?

Sarah Harrison  08:31
It’s a wonderful term. It’s a self-absorbed person that’s just obsessed with their own belly button, right? They’re just always thinking about themselves and how they feel about everything. And I don’t know, Z.J., are you familiar with the term? Or my turns out, I first heard it, uh, when was it? I heard it in photojournalism school, and it was referring to art photographers, which had come from a fine arts background, and then went into photo. So I was like, yeah, that feels right. That lands. So I really struggled with her there. And after reading more of the Dorothy L Sayers books, I feel like I understand Harriet a lot better, but I still do struggle with a couple of things. I’m wondering, Z.J., your take on this. The first and foremost thing is her treatment of her old friend, Mary Stokes, and how, like, the whole book starts with Mary writes her a letter. And by the way, I’m gonna make this a quiz on the Spotify.

Sarah Harrison  09:41
So Mary invites her to the Gaudy. They were best friends in college, and now Mary’s sick, possibly dying. Would love to see her again. And she gives Mary about five minutes before she just insults her and avoids her for the rest of the party. It was. Is, to me, so cruel and also so inconsistent. Like Harriet spends so much time talking to people that actively annoy her, like this Schuster slat person were introduced this American woman, who does seem like a difficult pill to swallow, but, but why are you talking to her 100 times more, and then you talked to your former best friend just because you grew apart. She’s like, well, I can’t, I can’t pretend to like someone just because they’re sick. But how about you just be a decent human, right? So I really struggled with Harriet in that aspect, in the way she would take on this aspect of boredom anytime she felt obliged to inquire after someone’s family or children, and I was just like, Are you a human person? Like, what’s going on with you that you can just be so to me, it comes across as very snobby, very self-absorbed.

Z.J. Czupor  10:51
Well, when I read that, I had the same impression at first, and then I thought, Harriet’s entering into this gaudy reunion with her classmates. And from my reading of it, Harriet was insecure about her own career because she didn’t go on to become a professor or teacher or an intellectual. She’s writing mysteries, which was not highly regarded, although every now and then people say, Well, they’re interested in her stories and where she comes up with ideas and that kind of thing. And so I think there’s that insecurity within Harriet, and she sees her old friend who also didn’t become an intellectual or work in high society. She’s working on their farm. I believe, if I remember right.

Sarah Harrison  11:46
I think that was a different one. Was that a different Mary’s just sick. And then there’s another woman who was super smart.

Z.J. Czupor  11:53
I’m sorry, that’s who I was confused.

Carolyn Daughters  11:55
There are two women. Harriet says Mary is one of these who has a small, summery brain that flowers early and runs to seed. Then the second woman, who’s on the farm, is described as a racehorse hitched to a plow.

Z.J. Czupor  12:11
Okay, yes, my mistake.

Carolyn Daughters  12:14
She’s seeing these women and placing them. It feels like in this hierarchy, and she’s got herself fitting somewhere in this hierarchy. What you’re suggesting is maybe she’s not at the top. It’s not like she’s marching and saying, I’m at the top of the hierarchy. She’s feeling maybe she’s not, but she’s finding people below her on the hierarchy as well.

Z.J. Czupor  12:35
I think that’s a good description.

Sarah Harrison  12:38
I like Z.J. pointing to her own insecurity in that she’s in the middle here, right? She’s not an academic, and she’s not a gardener, either, so, but she’s still a snob.

Carolyn Daughters  12:55
She’s also not a wife or a mother.

Sarah Harrison  12:57
She’s finding the levels and finding the people that she feels are below her level. She’d rather hobnob with the dean than just show some kindness to a potentially dying friend, which doesn’t seem so hard.

Carolyn Daughters  13:10
And that friend reached out to her and was so excited to have her coming. Like, why can’t you just be nice? Phone it in a little bit.

Z.J. Czupor  13:19
I think we have to remember that what the author is doing in the Dorothy L Sayers books is she’s using Harriet to tell us about society. These are opinions that real people have. These are emotions people have. This is how people treat other people. And yes, I’m part of that, but part of that I don’t like either.

Sarah Harrison  13:41
That’s an interesting point. When you take a character like Harriet Vane, who is partly autobiographical of the author, just to know where the author ends and where the character begins.

Z.J. Czupor  13:54
Well, that’s a tough one. I think it’s probably different for every author or every character that they create. From what I’ve read, Dorothy L Sayers admits that Harriet is part her, but not completely. She’s using her as a mouthpiece, I think, as a reflection on society.

Carolyn Daughters  14:18
So do you both? This is not a very intellectual question. Do you like Harriet Vane?

Z.J. Czupor  14:28
I like her later.

Carolyn Daughters  14:30
Later in this book, later in the series.

Z.J. Czupor  14:33
In this book, I think she’s, as you were saying, Sarah, she’s in between trying to figure out where she fits in all this. She’s not a real lovable character, really.

Sarah Harrison  14:50
Well, and here was a major difference. I felt like in this book and all of other Dorothy L Sayers books, at least all the ones I’ve read, have very little insight into a character’s thoughts and almost never into Peter’s other than just a dip. And even in Strong Poison, we don’t have insights into Harriet’s. I liked her quite a bit in Strong Poison, because you’re seeing her exterior and how she handles herself, and her voice and her interactions. I thought those were all great, but here we’re stuck inside her head for the whole book. And I thought she was hard for me to deal with, but at the same time, I thought, Well, is she unrealistic though? Maybe I’m a lot like this and I can’t say I love being stuck inside my own head, day in and day out.

Carolyn Daughters  15:43
Did you think then there was like a familiarity there where you were seeing certain things and saying, This hits a little too close to home?

Sarah Harrison  15:50
Maybe upon reflection, right? So I think when our own maybe suboptimal thoughts pass into our minds, when we’re judging someone’s mode of attire or this or that, or thinking a critical thought, it comes in and out of our minds, and we’re not critiquing our every thought, but when we have to read it on a page, you can’t really escape that.

Z.J. Czupor  16:16
You can’t because this is how you’re seeing the scenes in front of you through Harriet’s eyes and her mind, and you don’t have any other choice, basically. Now maybe that was a conscious decision that Dorothy made to write it in her point of view. I mean, she could have taken the omniscient point of view, and then we could have seen more thoughts and internal dialog from other characters, but we can’t.

Carolyn Daughters  16:47
Which is, I mean, even in the 30s, though, I think that omniscience is probably less common. So you’re starting to channel a main voice or a main.

Z.J. Czupor  16:56
It’s the author projecting her ideas in the Dorothy L Sayers books, her emotions, her experiences through Harriet. And so it’s like watching a character in a movie that you don’t like, and then you have to step back and say, Wait, this is a movie. This is an actor playing a character, and that actor is probably a really nice person, so then, okay, I can accept it. This is just a role they’re playing.

Carolyn Daughters  17:26
Or ask yourself that next question, which is, why don’t I like them? So am I seeing so a lot of time people in books or movies that I don’t like? Not always, but some of the time, if I take a step back, I’m like, they do things that remind me of myself, and I don’t necessarily want to see myself reflected back. I don’t want that mirror held up. I’m like, put the mirror down. Maybe

Sarah Harrison  17:48
Maybe the parts of yourself you’re less excited about. I think Carolyn, you mentioned you identified with Harry in a few ways.

Carolyn Daughters  17:55
A lot of thoughts are running through her head. She’s questioning things, and she’s coming to Oxford for the first time since she finished the studies, and she’s apprehensive. At one point on her second trip back, she’s counting down the minute. She’s like, Oh, I’ve still got 20 minutes of peace, 10 minutes now. And so I can identify with that. I’ve had times where I’m like, be in the moment. Carolyn, right now, everything’s fine. And yes, you’re going to get to whatever this thing is that you’re dreading, or you get there and you’re now in the room and you’re not sure how you’re going to be received, or if you’re going to be received at all. I’ve felt that apprehension, that she feels she goes a step further. So she’s not very kind in her own mind toward Mary, and even snaps at her at one point. Then at the very end, she and Lord Peter Wimsey are at this concert, and this really bothered me. Harriet was musician enough to respect Lord Peter Wimsey’s aloofness. She knew well enough that the ecstatic rapture on the face of the man opposite meant only that he was hoping to be thought musical, and that the elderly lady across over the way, waving her fingers to the beat, was a musical moron. She knew enough herself to read the sounds a little with her brains, unwinding the twining chains of melody, link by link.

Peter could hear the whole intricate pattern, every part separately and simultaneously. And she goes on and on, waxing poetic about Lord Peter Wimsey, but looking at random people in the room and judging them. I just thought this seems so petty. Like, Why is she being so petty? And, of all of the Dorothy L Sayers books, why is Gaudy Night ending with this pettiness? Most people are not at this musical concert, right? This is a small subset of the population, and even among that subset of the population, she and Peter are special. And I just thought it bothered me. I’m like, don’t end it this way.

Sarah Harrison  20:22
On the pettiness against strangers, I can sympathize with more than what I consider cruelty to friends. So you have the Mary Stokes, and she was even pretty rude to Peter’s friend, Freddie. Arbuthnot, who we see in almost all of the Dorothy L Sayers books, shows up, and he is like a little bit of a ding dong, but he’s wildly helpful, and he adores Peter. Peter’s his best friend. He made Peter his best man at his wedding. He winds up marrying into the Levy family, which I thought was so cool, from Whose Body the very first book, and she’s just like, I don’t know why they’re friends. I don’t know why Peter is friends with this ding dong and so awful about friends like you don’t understand friends, they work. So that probably bothered me more than the casual pettiness to strangers.

Carolyn Daughters  21:21
To me, it felt that she doesn’t have a whole lot of grace. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have as much grace as I would like. And so when I see that reflected but amped up, it really bothers me, maybe more than it should. Agatha Christie also wrote something about how Lord Peter Wimsey has a lengthy courtship with this tiresome young woman called Harriet, so I think readers were and certainly are divided on Harriet. This is a feminist novel, and we really get this voice and this character and this philosophy, and it’s, it’s interesting, and we like her, or the opposite, where we’re like, oh, Harriet …

Z.J. Czupor  22:20
Can’t get a life, huh? Harriet is an interesting character, no doubt, in several of the Dorothy L Sayers books. I’m projecting here, because I don’t know what was in Dorothy’s mind, but I can only surmise that she was trying to give us a picture of this couple, where you’ve got this erudite, successful man and this woman who’s grappling with who she is and bringing them together at The very end, where she finally will accept his proposal. And juxtaposing that conflict and that confusion with, gee, there’s nice music going on. People are doing these things over here and just acting normal. So it’s hard to say what was in Dorothy’s mind there, but I think she was driving towards some an ending that would be acceptable.

Sarah Harrison  23:35
I like your perspective there, Z.J., and I think that’s what made me a little more sympathetic to Harriet is we talked about Hercule Poirot and how he’s always the same static character. When I first read this book, I was just like, who is this character? This Harriet Vane is intolerable. I’m glad I’m not her friend. She would just throw me under the bus for no reason, but from seeing it in the context of the longer story arc, I feel like, actually, I’m seeing a woman who’s trying to unravel her own baggage, and she’s having a hard time doing it, a woman who’s been overcome by shame and scandal, and it’s very inwardly focused, and doesn’t know how to evaluate the things and people around her. It’s not a static character, and she’s not who she is at one moment, isn’t who she necessarily is at the next moment.

Carolyn Daughters  24:30
It seemed like this binary choice, right? Like I can be this writer and independent and make my own way in the world. She made four times what her fiancé Philip Boyes made. Or she can, in her mind, be married with children, but does not see these as options that can be combined into one package. Or she’s trying to figure it out in this book, is this something I can have? Intellect and heart. Can these two things be combined?

Sarah Harrison  25:06
Z.J., I don’t know if you know about the moment in time, but it actually seems like that was very much the choice at the time. All the professors are single and live at the college.

Z.J. Czupor  25:18
I think Harriet is struggling to be who she is, and she wants to be Peter’s equal as a detective, even though she admits that he’s better, but she has this idea, I’m just as good, although she doesn’t have the notoriety yet. She wants to be a successful writer, and she is, in many ways, but in her own mind, she’s not there yet. That raises the question, did Sayers struggle with these same questions we’re talking about in the Dorothy L Sayers books, or did she really see that character arc down the road when they get married, they’re happy, they have kids and blah, blah, blah, or did that involve in Dorothy’s mind over the years?

Carolyn Daughters  26:10
Was she grappling with these same questions with the characters that Harriet herself is grappling with through Gaudy Night?

Z.J. Czupor  26:19
Could very well be because she grappled with some of that in her subsequent marriage.

Carolyn Daughters  26:28
She’s seen these women coming back to this celebration, this where everybody starts the book, and several of them have husbands and children, and in Harriet vane’s mind, their intellects have basically gone on vacation or done and then Sarah, like you mentioned, there’s all these female dons who are single and have immersed themselves in this academic life. And so there, there are two choices potentially, and she’s saying she’s having trouble envisioning this bridge between the two, which arguably, she’s actually building that bridge with Peter, maybe in the previous Dorothy L Sayers books, but certainly in this book, they’re both evolving to a place, even at the outset, When he first meets everybody at the senior common room, the SCR and he’s saying, this is a sanctuary, Oxford. We don’t have these dilemmas here about men and women and careers. And of course, he just writes it off as an issue because of the haven where they happen to be located.

This isn’t a microcosm of the world. It’s actually this exception from the world, this space where they are. So is this book a mystery? I want to hear what you both think. I mean, is it a love story? Is it a philosophical treatise? Is it a feminist manifesto? Is it a mystery? Some of the criticism from Julian Symons and George Orwell, Julian Symons says it’s the book is long-winded and ludicrously hard word to say snobbish. And George Orwell says slickness in writing has blinded readers to the fact that Dorothy L Sayers books are very bad detective stories. When you read this, is this a detective story?

Z.J. Czupor  28:36
I didn’t think so, because there was no murder. No one was harmed, so to speak.

Sarah Harrison  28:45
A lot of vandalism.

Z.J. Czupor  28:47
But it’s a mystery. In the respect that you’re trying to figure out who sent these doggone notes, who’s behind this and why, right? And so in that respect, I would say it’s a mystery. And so that leaves us, the readers, trying to figure this out, along with Harriet, as we would in any typical murder mystery, we’re trying to figure it out with the detective or the amateur sleuth. So I’m just arguing both sides.

Carolyn Daughters  29:22
That makes the book complex. It’s good. So Sarah, is it a detective novel?

Sarah Harrison  29:26
I leaned on the side of yes, but it’s definitely more, and I think that’s where we get the Dorothy L Sayers books being this long lasting. What were they? The Queens of Crime. I was like, what the queen of what?

Z.J. Czupor  29:50
The Dairy Queens of Crime.

Sarah Harrison  29:52
This long-lasting queen of crime, still read today, largely considered a master in so many ways. Is because, sure, there’s a mystery there. And to me, I’ll be honest, it was an annoying mystery. The first time I read it, I was like, could somebody die?

Carolyn Daughters  30:10
Did I miss the murder? The young woman almost committed suicide.

Sarah Harrison  30:12
I was like, Oh, finally, a death. Where’s the blood? And since then, there was nobody dying. And I’ll throw this aspect out there. Well before I do that, I would say she was writing so much more, because there was a lot of this cultural juxtaposition, male versus female, high class versus low class, and a lot of married versus unmarried, academia versus chill. And there was a lot of just set up opposites involved here that address so many cultural issues at this time period in the context of a mystery. And so that’s what I think she’s considered much more literary than other mystery writers.

Carolyn Daughters  31:01
It’s very literary. Dorothy L Sayers is an excellent writer. I think somebody be hard pressed to read one of the Dorothy L Sayers books and say, she’s all right. I think she’s a great writer. Is she a mystery writer? Well, in this book, it gets confusing a little bit.

Sarah Harrison  31:19
That was the other thing that drove me bananas, and I’m interested how you guys felt about it. But one of the overarching themes that I could not sympathize with was, but we mustn’t create a scandal. We must preserve Oxford’s face at all costs. And everybody was like, definitely, for the sake of Oxford, for the sake of womankind, for the sake of women’s education and the movement, we must not allow there to be a scandal, and by doing so I think almost inarguably, they made things worse, sure.

Z.J. Czupor  31:55
Well, juxtapose that with what we see happening in the world today. There’s so many institutions where we read about scandals and they want to put it under the rug, even at a time when institutions and people talking about transparency. A lot of those issues that we saw in the 1930s are repeating, if you look at that. And I think Dorothy was really smart about being satirical about the times that she was observing with height, with academia and so on. But at the same time, she was reflecting back the social turmoil that was happening with the change of more freedom for women was starting to open up, and so she was using conflict to help us try to understand that and how people were arguing both sides of that, that point in this novel.

Sarah Harrison  32:59
I was a little surprised how on board everyone was saving face and the necessity of it.

Z.J. Czupor  33:07
Well, that’s, that’s the British way.

Sarah Harrison  33:10
Maybe it is a cultural thing that us Americans, or myself as an American, can’t fully understand. But it’s not until I think it was Newland. Was her name, the young woman that tried to commit suicide, and because, and I just felt it was because the senior common room didn’t want everyone to know that they were, in fact, the suspects they kept it from the students. Meanwhile, this poor girl had received like, 30 letters from the poison pen, and had no idea of the true situation, and because they hid that from her, she became suicidal. So they made it worse. They made it they made it worse.

Carolyn Daughters  33:49
Let’s talk about this university setting. Rarely in this book are we outside of Oxford. We’re on the Oxford campus for almost the entirety of the story, which as I’ve argued, is not necessarily a microcosm of the world, but it’s this whole other animal. It’s this magical, cloistered place with all these single, unmarried women, no children. Female dons can have intellectual conversations at every meal. They sit at table together, and they have conversations far and beyond anything I have with most people, the two of you are exceptions. But what about this space? This is a conscious decision, where Dorothy L Sayers said, I’m going to write a 500-page book, and I’m putting everybody at Oxford. Of all the Dorothy L Sayers books, why is she doing this in Gaudy Night in your opinion? What is she getting out of this setting?

Z.J. Czupor  34:56
Many authors look at setting as also a character. And so if you think of Oxford and this milieu as a character, that character of Oxford has a certain tone, if you will, of eruditeness and hide a high literature. This is how we learn about the world here. You people out there, you have no idea how the world works. I think that setting puts us in into this notion that, oh, this is how people think here.

Carolyn Daughters  35:46
Are you thinking that? You just close the walls in a little bit and you’re able to put a lens or a focus on, like a movie camera.

Z.J. Czupor  35:57
Sure. You focus in on Sarah. So now we’re looking at Sarah’s face and her body language, and we’re getting a perspective of how Sarah fits into this room and how she interacts with it.

Sarah Harrison  36:24
I think Z.J. is making a good point, that the setting, if I’m understanding your point, is, is adding to the conflict that Harriet’s trying to work through. I got the sense that she was really romanticizing, perhaps her time at Oxford. And the thing that I struggled with here, well, I can understand romanticizing your time in college or the joy of learning was the continued reference by multiple characters that like, this is where real life happens. This is the real life. Not all that outside nonsense. And I’m like, Well, I feel it’s a little the opposite. I think it’s the opposite. I think this is where you give into your whims, to delve into some obscure matter of history that no one is going to read in 30 years. And they seem to take the opposite tack, that, in fact, you were uncovering the reality that would be lasting. And I think no, it’s likely not. And from my perspective, the reality that’s lasting is actually more about like people in your life and the relationships and the love that gets carried down generationally from your existence.

Z.J. Czupor  37:41
I think that setting helps us focus our understanding of what Dorothy’s trying to say about society today. If we moved Harriet and some of the characters off to Fleet Street or someplace else in London like in some of the other Dorothy L Sayers books, then we’ve got to look at those scenes. We’ve got to describe those scenes. And okay, then you ask the question, well, what does that mean to the story? What does that mean to the characters? And it’s that becomes a divergent from what I want the reader to focus on.

Carolyn Daughters  38:08
People are like, what am I having for lunch today? Or, why is this light so long I want to cross the stupid street? Or, like, you have real life, have I’ve got to get back to work. I only have an hour from my lunch break. And so you get, you get outside of real life in this setting, and you have this luxury of time to focus on thoughts that I think are important thoughts and philosophy about life, that this philosophy matters. But the luxury of being on this campus, in this cloistered environment, this is not normal for most people. Most people don’t have this opportunity to do this. Though, a part of me thinks I wouldn’t mind doing this for a good solid month.

Sarah Harrison  38:57
I don’t know for sure, but it’d be more like a vacation unless, like, I’m getting to real life now.

Z.J. Czupor  39:02
But it also heightens the suspense, because we know those notes are coming from somewhere around here, and so if they were coming from Parliament or Big Ben or something else, I mean, that would be a totally different story.

Carolyn Daughters  39:17
We know it’s a woman because of the access to the various buildings where the notes are discovered. We think it’s a don. We think it’s one of the senior common room women, right? Or we’re led down that path. But Sarah, I think you said on second reading, it’s more clear to you that it’s not one of the that it’s not one of the dons, that there could be a different solution to this puzzle.

Sarah Harrison  39:49
Definitely, yes, although, before I get into that, I want to just pause a moment on the setting of Oxford, because she also dives into this theme as part of the setting and part of the conflict. That was a little baffling to me, a little bit interesting, and I think, doesn’t exist today, which is this whole sexual repression theme. And so we’ve used the word cloister, because all of these female professors, she’s just, they’re always calling them like these elderly virgins. There’s this sexual repression. There’s this environment where you get too many repressed individuals together, and maybe they went crazy, and that’s part of the reason why they part in part why they suspect it’s a don is it’s a result of sexual oppression, and it was very difficult to get inside that theme, probably because that’s not an environment that exists today. But I don’t know what did you guys think about it, because it kept coming up over and over and over. She was like, Do I need a doctor? Do I need a psychologist? Or do I actually need a detective here? Because she was so invested in the psychology of it.

Carolyn Daughters  41:01
I felt that also in some of the dons. Here’s another admission of mine. I loved this book. I sometimes got lost in the characters, more than I usually do in Dorothy L Sayers books. So I said, Okay, this one’s the dean and this one’s the history professor, and facilitate between their name in their title, oh, and time and again, I’m like, Okay, let me go back to the start and figure out who this character is. Some of them are really adamant about their beliefs, and they strongly assert themselves. You could see the angry female trope here with some of them. So maybe a psychologist was warranted. At the end, they do suggest a psychologist is, in fact, warranted, because the woman guilty of the crimes, I mean, she seems very disordered to me, because this is just the strangest possible way to strike out.

Z.J. Czupor  42:00
But what did you feel? She really struck out with a very stressful, very hurt way of expressing her anger. So I think that’s why Dorothy set it up that way, that we have all these clues where we think it’s these dons, so and then we find out, Oh, it’s not the person we thought it was.

Carolyn Daughters  42:26
That bothered me, and I’d forgotten that from when I read it the first time. On this second reading, I’m reminded that it’s not one of the dons.

Sarah Harrison  42:39
Let’s jump in there. Because I think that touches on the class theme.

Carolyn Daughters  42:46
That bothered me. I felt that the classism was extremely problematic. I felt that Dorothy L Sayers and Harriet Vane are making this argument for educated women of a certain middle or upper class, not for women more broadly, but for women who are the intellectual counterpart or counterpoint to the middle class, wealthy men. And I’m waiting to find out which of these dons is going to be exposed as the culprit, and then I’m reminded of what I read years ago, which is that, no, it’s not one of the dons, it’s Annie, who is a scout. A scout is a servant, or housekeeper, a servant on the campus. And I thought, Oh no, I deliberately blocked this out.

Sarah Harrison  43:42
Although I feel like it did become obvious on the second reading is you have, I feel like Miss Hilliard represented the very don stance, which is, she was right. So again, she’s very masterful in her treatment of this, more so than in the other Dorothy L Sayers books. Miss Hilliard gives this really angry speech about why should married women be given privileges? Our work is just as important as having children, if not more so. At the end, Miss Lydgate is like, Oh, it’s a shame she never got married like she can see the root of the problem is more likely jealousy than belief in what she’s actually saying, which is still a very common theme. I mean, you’ll see all the time on social media, folks getting mad that I’m a single person, and this person with kids wants me to give up my day off, like their kids are more important than my activities. It’s a valid upset, whether whatever source that comes from, so you have Miss Hilliard there, but the notes weren’t. The notes were just like, clearly against academic women. So clearly, and there’s only one character in the book that expresses that opinion out loud, and that’s Annie. I mean, at one point, Harriet’s even like, what horrible opinions. Why do you work here? And Annie’s like, well, because I need the money, because my husband died.

Carolyn Daughters  45:11
Of course, go back to your work.

Sarah Harrison  45:13
Annie expresses these opinions over and over again. She’s the only one that does. She’s the only one whose opinions match that of the poison pen? I didn’t think it was that obvious on the first shooting, but on the second, I was like, Oh yeah, I was that one.

Carolyn Daughters  45:29
I had blocked out that detail, so I came to it fresh. And so I was like, Oh no, it’s not and no, oh, come on. It’s got to be one of the dons. I was very bothered by it, because it felt like a cop out to me. There are just there’s this whole body of dons to choose from. And instead, she chose the scout. Why?

Z.J. Czupor  45:58
Well, and yet the scout felt like her husband died because of the higher education, and that was evidence against his thesis.

Carolyn Daughters  46:10
I think Miss Devine discovers that he is a fraud, that some of his research is fraudulent. If I have the characters wrong, it’s because there were four million of them, and I get confused, but I think it was Miss Devine. Yes, because she has the same initials as Harriet D. Vane. This first note goes into the cloaks they’re wearing. Gowns. They wear the gowns everywhere. Wouldn’t a man eventually have figured out the fraud? It feels like womanhood and female scholarship are the scapegoats. It feels like Annie is not in her right mind, because not only then is she attacking Miss Devine, but she starts broadening it. She can write 30 letters to this poor girl who attempts suicide. I mean, it’s just incredible. The character of Annie really stands out for me among all the characters in the Dorothy L Sayers books.

Sarah Harrison  47:17
It feels, as you say, that it makes me think that Annie’s making almost the fundamental mistake Harriet’s making when you say, like, couldn’t a man have figured it out? Well, sure, but he didn’t. A woman did sure. And so when Harriet brings up the scenarios of like, marriage really ruined that woman. Wimsey is the one that points out. It goes both ways. Sure, this word cuts both ways. But Harriet’s not seeing that. She’s talking to women, and she’s seeing it as a gendered issue. And I think that’s what Annie’s doing too. She’s seeing it as a gendered issue.

Carolyn Daughters  47:51
A one eye open, one eye closed kind of thing, like she’s only she’s focused here.

Sarah Harrison  47:56
I think it does indict the don a bit, though, because their cruel behavior to her and Miss Hilliard in particular kicked her out of her nice rooms and put her in shared quarters with no regard whatsoever.

Carolyn Daughters  48:14
The kids go to the Jukes house, right?

Sarah Harrison  48:18
They act like they’re so sympathetic. I didn’t see a lot of sympathy there. It was like, you downgraded her in class. And it could happen to any of them. When you lose everything and you have to go out and get a job you didn’t think you’d ever have to get, so I think it does in their classism and their cruelty to her and driving her over the edge. That was my take on it.

Carolyn Daughters  48:43
Do you sympathize with Annie?

Sarah Harrison  48:44
Yeah.

Z.J. Czupor  48:45
Oh yeah.

Carolyn Daughters  48:49
I do. I still think the psychologist was warranted. I think my dilemma with Annie is the dons. We spend a lot of time with the dons, meal after meal, encounter after encounter, and Annie is interspersed periodically in a way that we are led down a path. It’s one of the dons. Oh no, at the end we’re going to discover it’s Annie. Well, I wanted to understand Annie better, at least as well as I understood many of the dons, none of whom I understood as well as Harriet. I’m not pretending we were in all of their heads, but I really felt that Annie is one-dimensional as a character, generally speaking.

Z.J. Czupor  49:41
I think in her acting out, she’s very multi-dimensional. Pardon me, excuse me, because her acting out is saying I blame you for what you did to my husband. But at the same time, what she did was not socially acceptable, and I was going to ask the two of you, do you think she committed a crime?

Carolyn Daughters  50:10
Annie, yes, I do. I do in the sense that she broke into people’s rooms and destroyed chess pieces and terrorized people bully. I mean, bullying is a serious thing, even in 2024, in this day and age, I think she bullied that girl to attempt to commit suicide. Do I think it’s on the same level as having committed a murder? I don’t, I do not. I think Sarah, I think you hit on it before, where this is, to some degree, a cry for help, and she keeps elevating Annie keeps doing more and more and more, going further, farther. Like, what if they had simply started exposing this? They might have shut this stuff down way before that.

Sarah Harrison  51:11
I wanted to go back to your point about Annie seeing one dimensionally, and I think that’s because we’re seeing her through Harriet’s somewhat classist gaze. When Harriet interacts with Annie, she talks to her, and then she’s like, why is Annie talking so much? I really don’t want to hear about her kids. And she’s very dismissive, completely forgetting that, however many years ago, Annie would have been her equal in society, the love the way in which she easily dismisses her, was one of the things that bothered me about Harriet and not just because Annie would have been her equal, as though that’s a valid classist thing to think, but it makes it sting that much more for Annie, and that’s what we don’t get a great picture of her because she’s constantly being ignored and dismissed by these dons.

Z.J. Czupor  52:01
In defense of the Dorothy L Sayers books, I think she meant to keep her in the background, because we didn’t want to reveal her too early or give too many clues that this is the person we ought to really be looking at.

Carolyn Daughters  52:21
I think it’s just her, her separation from most of the characters due to class, and then her being the culprit. And I thought, Oh, my goodness. Like, who’s the natural person who did it? It’s the washer woman, it’s the housekeeper, it’s the servant. We’re each bringing our own take and issues. This is my own take, my own issues, and I’m bringing in into this story.

Z.J. Czupor  52:55
I think that’s great, because it makes it that much richer. It creates more questions and more ideas that we can bounce off of each other, that things we hadn’t thought of before.

Carolyn Daughters  53:09
Z.J., do you have a secret you’re going to share with us?

Sarah Harrison  53:13
Oh my goodness. I can’t believe this hour flew by. What is your secret Dorothy L Sayers books?

Z.J. Czupor  53:18
Actually, it’s Dorothy’s secret. So if you remember, in the last episode, we talked about Dorothy had an affair with this gentleman named John Cormos who wanted a sexual relationship but not marriage. She did not want to use contraceptives because of her religious beliefs, and so they split almost very quickly. After that, she started a new relationship with a man by the name of Bill White, who really was beneath her class. He was a car salesman and a motorcycle aficionado. He was living upstairs in the same house that Dorothy was living in, and they started an affair, and they had a child together. Soon as Dorothy announced that she’s pregnant, Bill wanted nothing to do with it, and he disappears. And then Dorothy found out that bill was already married, all right, had a wife and a child. Here’s what’s interesting, is that Bill’s wife, when she found out about this, became supportive of Dorothy and moved in to where Dorothy was living so that Dorothy could leave and have her child. No and Dorothy decided to keep it. She entertained abortion, but she decided she wanted to keep it so a young boy was born, and she named him John Anthony, and gave him up to a cousin of hers of Dorothy. Cousin who took in children, and she knew that her son would be safe there, so Dorothy kept in touch with him, but the Son only knew her as cousin Dorothy. Then when Dorothy got married later on to a gentleman named Fleming. Dorothy had hoped that they could take the child and move in okay with him, but he didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. So the boy continued to be raised at this cousin’s place, and it wasn’t until after Dorothy died, did he know that was his mother.

Sarah Harrison  55:42
No, that’s so sad.

Z.J. Czupor  55:45
The war was going on now, and she’d written a will that if she should die in bombing in London that he would inherit her estate. Of course, she survived the war, and he still didn’t know until after she passed away. So there is some of that that I think she’s talking about in her novels, where we talk about the kids and where they’re kept. She talks about these relationships and Harriet’s hesitancy to get married. Knowing that background, you get a better idea of maybe why she created the character of Harriet Vane.

Sarah Harrison  56:36
And why she created the perfect man, Lord Peter Wimsey, in the Dorothy L Sayers books. She certainly didn’t experience that. No way. She didn’t know. That’s really sad. That makes a lot of sense.

Carolyn Daughters  56:49
So before we wrap up, Z.J., I want to hear more about what, what you’re working on, about the groups that you’re actively involved in, how we can find you.

Sarah Harrison  57:02
You’re in a bunch of associations, it sounds like.

Z.J. Czupor  57:05
I’m active in three groups, the Rocky Mountain chapter of Mystery Writers of America, and I was on the board for several years. I’m the immediate past president of Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers, and we have about 600 members in 30 some states and four countries. We’ll have our annual conference in September, and I’ll be teaching a couple classes there, one on series fiction and one on how to be an author on Substack. In terms of what I’m doing, I’ve completed a novel, a mystery. My agent tells me that it’s being read by some houses great and also a nonfiction book, The Mystery Minutes, based on these authors. I’ve also completed two others, a thriller and another mystery that I’ve turned over to my agent, and I’m currently now releasing chapter by chapter, a new mystery on Substack. Plus, I’m writing the monthly column on Rogue Women Writers on two of his dead writers.

Sarah Harrison  58:15
How do people find you on Substack?

Z.J. Czupor  58:17
It’s zjames.substack.com, and you can subscribe for free or do a paid membership, whatever you prefer. I’m happy to have free readers. I’m still trying to grow the audience there, and you can comment. I appreciate the comments, because they help me understand and get some media feedback.

Sarah Harrison  58:41
We’ll put all that in the show notes.

Carolyn Daughters  58:43
We have a page on our website currently for you, but I’m going to add some of these other links. So I don’t know that the links are comprehensive yet, but readers aren’t readers, listeners and readers and readers, they will be. So I will update with Substack, for example, on your page.

Z.J. Czupor  59:02
Thank you. The other thing I’m involved is international thriller writers, and this has been my third year of judging novels for the best novel. And I love doing it. We get hundreds of novels that we have to look through, but I view it as a learning experience, and get a feel for what people are writing about.

Sarah Harrison  59:26
How do you read them all? Or do you read them all?

Z.J. Czupor  59:28
You’re not expected to read them all. You’re expected to read them as long as they hold your interest. And if they don’t hold your interest, go on to the next one.

Sarah Harrison  59:37
Then they didn’t win.

Z.J. Czupor  59:40
Kind of the way real people read.

Carolyn Daughters  59:41
No, I like that. They hold your interest, or they don’t. Wonderful.

Z.J. Czupor  59:49
This has been a treat. Thank you for having me, and I enjoyed the conversation. It’s been really interesting and caused me to think about some new things differently, about Dorothy L Sayers.

Sarah Harrison  1:00:00
Thanks so much for being on. You have such a great background on all of these writers.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:05
This conversation has been really fun, and like most of our conversations, we feel like we could do this all day, but our guests would flee the building. So we appreciate the two episodes you’ve joined us on.

Z.J. Czupor  1:00:19
Thank you for the gin and tonic.

Carolyn Daughters  1:00:23
We’re Tea, Tonic & Toxin, you know.

Z.J. Czupor  1:00:25
Perfect.

Sarah Harrison  1:00:27
We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe, and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters
You can learn more about Gaudy Night and all our 2024 book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.