Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers as a modern artifact

This was a pleasant intellectual experience.  Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers.  She is known primarily as the author of the detective series of Lord Peter Wimsey and as a strong influence on the development of detective stories and murder mysteries.  However, she was also a playwright, poet, and produced numerous theological essays and other works.   

The main protagonist of Gaudy Night is Harriet Vane, love interest of Peter Wimsey who shows up late in the story.  

The book is a melange.  A murder mystery without a murder.  A romance with primarily an intellectual love interest.  A miscellany of philosophical and social debates.  In some ways, it is an anthropological study of class, sex, and education in Britain, replete with debates throughout the book on topical issues such as eugenics, capital punishment, feminism, contraception, class, crime and punishment, education, etc.  

Sayers received her First Class Honours in Medieval French from Somerville College, Oxford University in 1915. Gaudy Night was published in 1936, towards the end of the interwar years.  The Long Weekend: A Social History of Great Britain, 1918-1939 by Robert Graves and Alan Hodge is a useful complement to Gaudy Night.  

I was especially captured by the continuing debates about the role of women in modern society throughout the book.  Debates by women and among women in the story (which take place in a fictional women's college in Oxford, modeled on Sayers' alma mater.  

Here we are near a hundred years later and there is the same set of debates, similarly twisted by class, culture, privilege, values, etc.  In Gaudy Night, the professors of Shrewsbury College tend to fall into four camps, championing 1) women who play a traditional role with primary responsibilities in home and hearth, caring for husband and children as their prime focus; or 2) women who are married with children and who are also in the workplace; or 3) women who are married without children and in the workplace; or 4) women who are single without children in the workplace.  The debate is about which model is most rewarding and appropriate for women.  

There are plenty of other variances, then and now, but largely we are still dealign with the same camps, the same models.  Obviously society is entirely dependent on the first two models.  Otherwise, in theory, and in proper Classical Liberal fashion, everyone should be able to choose as they wish.  But the legal, social, and policy needs of the four models are radically different.  

I found myself, based on the structure of the debates, constantly returning to the economic implications of each. Model 1 (women at home with children and supporting husband) is, from an economic perspective, perhaps the most robustly sustainable, particularly if the woman has a market skill which is just not being used.  Model 1 is essentially a model for specialization of labor.  One of the two specializes in the market facing role and by specialization out earns peers.  Often by significant margins as all competitive endeavors follow power law distributions (winner take all).  Model 1 is robust because, should the market facing partner lose a job or be incapacitated, there is still the market skill of the spouse which can be reactivated.  

Model 2 (men and women both with home and market responsibilities) is tactically superior (two incomes) but often strategically inferior as labor specialization is absent and the corresponding rewards.  Even tactically, it is not uncommon for people in this model to live at the edge of their means so that any work disruption can mean economic peril.  

Model 3 and 4 are complicated because women are essentially labor market fungible with men.  Model 4 is especially perilous as the single employee, has no family safety net should their be a market disruption.

We still have these four today, supplemented by a very large segment which were minor in 1930 - single women with children in the market.  

People in Models 1 and 2 tend to want the government and society to support the family rather than the worker per se.

People in Models 3 and 4 tend to be more focused on the worker than the family and for women, tend to focus on special programs for women workers.  

The conversations mirror those of today.  Anne-Marie Slaughter had an essay a decade ago in The Atlantic Magazine on exactly these issues, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All.  The subheading was It’s time to stop fooling ourselves, says a woman who left a position of power: the women who have managed to be both mothers and top professionals are superhuman, rich, or self-employed. If we truly believe in equal opportunity for all women, here’s what has to change.

I have referenced her article a number of times because it is so clearly illustrates the tensions between family formation (Models 1-4) as it intersects with social status and class.  See, It is not a gender issue, it is a family structure issue.  The challenge is that the specialized labor model (Model 1) tends to generate superior productivity and performance and outsized opportunity and rewards.  

Ms. Slaughter falls into Model 2 - elite education, career in elite academia, policy position in government, supportive husband, sympathetic and accommodating employers, and she still was not able to compete with those in Models 1, 3, and 4 where the market facing person had maximum flexibility, able to work long hours, at any time and under most circumstances for any amount of duration.  And Model 1 is the one which most facilitates that kind of labor and is the model most characteristic of those who are able to rise to the heights of enterprises.  

Slaughter was characteristic of many latter day privileged feminists.  She wants the Model 1 benefits without the Model 1 costs.  Her quest was to find a way to restructure society and business could be remade so that upper class educated women could achieve those Model 1 rewards without those Model 1 costs.  

And it is all there, sometimes sotto voce, in Gaudy Night.  A nearly century old debate.  Which is pretty tired at this point.  The Classical Liberal answer remains the best.  Choose what you want and makes most sense given your goals and circumstances.  And often that might mean choosing different models at different points in time.  We have a clearer picture of the costs and rewards of the different models now but class still gets in the way.  We still have privileged people wanting more than they are willing to work for.

I enjoyed Gaudy Night as being thought provoking.  Less than a murder mystery, more than a period piece, it is a very modern artifact when our conversations were still new and uncertain and less tired than they are today.

And as an aside, the role of women in society and the marketplace isn't the only conversation with us.  Eugenics pops up a number of times as a not yet discredited popular idea.  The willingness to indulge criminals over their victims comes up several times.  All their at the beginning of the modern era and then being treated as fresh ideas not yet barnacled by bad experiences and ugly outcomes.