Gaudy Night

“Here was a fighter, indeed; but one to whom the quadrangle of Shrewsbury was a native and proper arena: a soldier knowing no personal loyalties, whose sole allegiance was to the fact.” 

Harriet is describing her first impression of Miss de Vine. She admires the scholar’s unswerving devotion to truth. Ironically, it is this very dedication to cold, hard fact that triggers the string of disasters that follow in the novel. 

“The fact is, thought Harriet, I have got a bad inferiority complex; unfortunately, the fact that I know it doesn’t help me to get rid of it. I could have liked him so much if I could have met him on an equal footing.” 

Harriet is revealing one of the reasons why she’s rejected Wimsey’s proposals. Personal indebtedness to the man who saved her life isn’t a good reason to marry someone. As an independent woman, Harriet can’t tolerate the subordinate position in which she finds herself relative to Wimsey. 

“To be true to one’s calling, whatever follies one might commit in one’s emotional life, that was the way to spiritual peace.” 

Harriet defines the life of a scholar as a higher calling. The scholar champions truth above all else. At this point in the story, she fails to understand that this devotion to an ideal can have dire consequences in the real world. 

“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.” 

Miss de Vine applauds Harriet’s refusal to bow to popular opinion about how she ought to feel. Harriet always speaks the truth. This is the same virtue that Wimsey prizes in her. Miss de Vine’s comment hints that Harriet ought to prize Wimsey’s response equally highly. 

“Which of all these normal and cheerful-looking women had dropped that unpleasant paper in the quad the night before? Because you never knew; and the trouble of not knowing was that you dimly suspected everybody.” 

In making this comment, Harriet foreshadows the paranoid atmosphere that will soon prevail in the common room. A large part of her motivation in apprehending the Poison-Pen is a desire to end her own uncertainty. Until she does, the tranquil atmosphere that she prizes so highly at her beloved college will be at risk. 

“It’s disquieting to reflect that one’s dreams never symbolize one’s real wishes, but always something Much Worse.” 

Harriet has just awakened from a romantic dream involving Wimsey. Her statement is unintentionally ironic because Wimsey does represent her real wishes; she doesn’t want to acknowledge that fact yet. 

“Why do they send these people here? Making themselves miserable and taking up the place of people who would enjoy Oxford. We haven’t got room for women who aren’t and never will be scholars.” 

Harriet is expressing her frustration about Miss Cattermole, who clearly doesn’t belong in college. The observation highlights the scarcity of institutions of higher learning for women in 1935. At the time, Oxford has dozens of colleges open to men, but the resources for female scholars are severely limited. 

“I quite agree with you […] about the difficulty of combining intellectual and emotional interests. I don’t think it affects women only; it affects men as well. But when men put their public lives before their private lives, it causes less outcry than when a woman does the same thing.” 

Miss de Vine offers Harriet this observation as the latter continues the struggle between her head and heart. Again, the time period of 1935 is critical to an understanding of this quote. Male scholars aren’t castigated for neglecting their families, while females are still primarily viewed as caregivers. 

“‘But you say you don’t despise those who make some other person their job?’ ‘Far from despising them,’ said Miss de Vine; ‘I think they are dangerous.’” 

Miss de Vine is talking about relationships in which one partner makes the other partner the focus of their life. She feels each partner will either be the devourer or the devoured. Unwittingly, she is describing Annie’s relationship with her deceased husband. Annie has become dangerous in her monomania to avenge her husband’s death because he was everything to her; he was her job. 

“‘Disagreeableness and danger will not turn you back, and God forbid they should.’ That was an admission of equality, and she had not expected it of him. If he conceived of marriage along those lines, then the whole problem would have to be reviewed in that new light.” 

Harriet is commenting on a line in Wimsey’s letter to her. He doesn’t treat her like a foolish child who needs protection. As an independent woman living in 1935, Harriet greatly fears marriage because domineering husbands are the cultural norm. This suggestion of equality makes her want to reconsider her qualms about Wimsey. 

“She admired the strange nexus of interests that unites the male half of mankind into a close honeycomb of cells, each touching the other on one side only, and yet constituting a tough and closely adhering fabric.” 

Harriet is making an observation about gender differences in relationships. Wimsey shares a friendship with a man simply because they share a single interest. They have nothing else in common. Harriet seems to be suggesting that the male brain doesn’t bond based on totality but on fragments of common experience. 

“However loudly we may assert our own unworthiness, few of us are really offended by hearing the assertion contradicted by a disinterested party.” 

Harriet frequently proclaims that she feels inferior because of the past scandals that haunt her. However, she is delighted to be the object of Pomfret’s affection, no matter how inappropriate it may be. She compensates for her sense of inferiority by this feeling of grandiosity. 

“It was delightful to believe, if only for an hour, that all human difficulties could be dealt with in this detached and amiable spirit. ‘The University is a Paradise’—true, but—‘then saw I that there was a way to hell even from the gates of Heaven.’

At several points in the story, Harriet attends church services. This comment presumably explains the attraction. It also suggests that her experience with the Poison-Pen has tainted her perception of Oxford as a heavenly refuge. Shrewsbury seems to contain a portal to hell. 

“For good or evil, she had called in something explosive from the outside world to break up the ordered tranquility of the place; she had sold the breach to an alien force; she had sided with London against Oxford and with the world against the cloister.” 

Harriet has deep misgivings about bringing Wimsey to Shrewsbury. She has segregated him to a place in her consciousness associated with London, not Oxford. Ironically, she doesn’t realize that without help from the outside, Oxford cannot solve this mystery internally. No one has a detached enough perspective to see the facts of the case.

“Peter. I seem to be behaving very stupidly. But the reason why I want to—to get clear of people and feelings and go back to the intellectual side is that that is the only side of life I haven’t betrayed and made a mess of.” 

In this quote, Harriet reveals the real attraction that Oxford holds for her. Three years afterward, she is still blaming herself for bad life choices. The only part of her existence untainted by scandal is her scholarship. This is also why she fights so hard to keep Wimsey out of the investigation. In her mind, he is associated with her shady past. 

“As she got into bed she recalled the extempore prayer of a well-meaning but incoherent curate, heard once and never forgotten: ‘Lord, teach us to take our hearts and look them in the face, however difficult it may be.’” 

Throughout the novel, Harriet has done her best to bury her feelings for Wimsey into her subconscious. This comment suggests that she may finally be ready to examine her own heart. The final step, of course, is to reconcile the conflict between that same heart and her head. 

“‘You’ve got us in a cleft stick,’ said the Dean. ‘If we say it, you can point out that womanliness unfits us for learning; and if we don’t, you can point out that learning makes us unwomanly.’” 

Wimsey has just offered a philosophical proposition. Depending on the answer given, a female scholar can be condemned either way. This damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t reaction was quite common in 1935 when the entire debate over the value of female education was still raging in Britain, and the novel’s author experienced it firsthand. 

“If it ever occurs to people to value the honor of the mind equally with the honor of the body, we shall get a social revolution of a quite unparalleled sort—and very different from the kind that is being made at the moment.” 

Wimsey is debating a question with one of the Shrewsbury scholars. They are all in favor of honoring principles over material considerations. Wimsey points out that their values are at odds with the world at large, making Oxford a rarefied atmosphere indeed. 

“Of all devils let loose in the world there was no devil like devoted love. …I don’t mean passion.” 

Wimsey is offering Harriet a hint about the identity of the Poison-Pen. Annie’s rampage is the result of her devotion to her dead husband. Wimsey’s comment seems to echo Miss de Vine’s observation that people who make their partners the job of their lives are truly dangerous. 

“Could there ever be any alliance between the intellect and the flesh? It was this business of asking questions and analyzing everything that sterilized and stultified all one’s passions.” 

Harriet still cannot believe that the head and heart can combine in a single relationship. She wants to keep her romantic partners separate from her intellectual ones.

“Six centuries of possessive blood would not be dictated to by a bare forty-five years of over-sensitized intellect. Let the male animal take the female and be content.” 

Harriet believes that if she were to marry Wimsey, he would revert into a controlling male brute. Her view would be accurate when describing most British husbands in 1935. At this point in the story, she has little faith that his refinement would control his primitive nature. 

“The one thing which frustrated the whole attack from first to last was the remarkable solidarity and public spirit displayed by your college as a body. I think that was the last obstacle that X expected to encounter in a community of women.” 

Wimsey’s comment highlights Annie’s misogynistic expectations. She frequently parrots the conventional belief about women as competitive, scheming backbiters. Her expectations are subverted by intellectual females who stick together even when they feel paranoid doubts creeping in. 

“You’d destroy your own husbands, if you had any, for an old book or bit of writing […] It wouldn’t have helped a single man or woman or child in the world—it wouldn’t have kept a cat alive; but you killed him for it.” 

Annie is ranting about the value that female scholars place on intellectual truth while she is approaching human experience from the standpoint of material survival. She also implies that no true woman should ever place thought above feeling.