Article on Gaudy Night by Amanda Cross (Carolyn Heilbrun) from Shakespeare’s Mother and Other Women (written in 1986)

Having read Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers and then In the Last Analysis by Amanda Cross, analyzing both of their styles, I decided to read an article by Cross about Sayers’s book. It was very interesting and thought-provoking, especially since it looked at the story from a different view than I did since I was reading Gaudy Night focusing most of my attention on the academic mystery aspect of the novel.

From the article, I learned that Sayers attended Oxford and loved it just as she portrays her heroine Harriet Vane to love the fictional Shrewsbury College of Oxford. In fact, Cross discovers that many of Sayers’s life experiences were included in the novel. For example, Sayers knew somebody who was badly injured in a car crash, just like she described Wimsey’s nephew who was injured and hospitalized after a car accident. Also, in the novel, Harriet frequently noted how there were new buildings on campus, suggesting the old v. new battle to ensue as Sayers does in a letter to a friend as she comments about the opening of new buildings at the college she attended at Oxford. Cross learns a great deal about Sayers from these letters that she wrote her friends, especially those to Catherine H. Godfrey whom she refers to as Tony. (I’m curious as to why she gave Catherine this male name…)

I also thought it was interesting that Cross states the “moral center” of the novel is “we must abandon any idea that we are the slave of chance, or environment, or our subconscious; any vague notion that good and evil are merely relative terms, or that conduct and opinion do not really matter; any comfortable persuasion that, however, shiftlessly we muddle through life, it will somehow or other all come right on the night” (254). The first thought, in which Cross uses the strong, connotative word “slave,” suggests that the novel was about forcing us to realize that we are not held down by chance and/or the area we live in but instead, we can lead our own lives. Based on the book, this leads me to believe that Cross is referring to the fact that women don’t have to be just wives and mothers, as was customary of the time, but could be more—like intellectuals. At the same time, I think it reflects the idea that even these intellectual women, although many were opposed to marrying, could marry if they chose, even though it may have been unconventional by society’s standards or by standards of the women at Shrewsbury. The rest of the quote conveys the fact that we should not be influenced by others' conduct or opinions and that these people’s true views will be revealed in the night as they were on the night of the gaudy in the novel, when all the mayhem began. I think Cross presented this concept in an eloquent way, and after analyzing it, I am able to agree with it.