A good day for short pants

[icepixie]

OMG, it's too hot to breathe outside. The worst part is that it stays humid all day, but won't rain. And believe me, we could use the rain.

*

I finished Dorothy Sayers's Gaudy Night early last week, and I have a question for those of you who've also read it. At the end, why does Harriet finally accept Wimsey's proposal? Just because of that odd little bit of introspection on the river in the middle? If so, that seems remarkably facile. It was a nice little scene, with the Magdalene Bridge and the "Placetne, magistra?"/"Placet," but...hmmm. Perhaps it would make more sense if I watched the BBC adaptation.

(Confession: I have yet to read Strong Poison. It all might become clearer once/if I do.)

I started Busman's Honeymoon, but Harriet and Wimsey have both become irritatingly sappy and smarmy in equal measures, and I don't think I'll end up finishing it. I might try the short story where they evacuate during WWII, though. I like Homefront stories.

Comments

[loneraven.livejournal.com]

I always link it with the scene earlier in the novel, just after Peter arrives in Oxford - they talk in her room, and when he leaves he takes her gown rather than his own. I can't remember the scene exactly, but she thinks idly, that they're both the same anyway, but then, that it's "strange that they should be the same." (paraphrasing wildly there, sorry!)

The point being made is that he's the rich aristocrat who saved her from the gallows, and she resents him for it - she resents having had to be saved, mostly - and she resents that his charm and money can get him whatever he wants, which seemingly includes her, but that here, he doesn't have superiority - they both have BA degrees from Oxford, they were both scholars, they are intellectual equals. And she agrees to marry him only when he addresses her as "magistra" - a title she's only entitled to because of her degree - because it emphasises that theirs will be a marriage of equals.

Sorry for being lengthy - it's one of my favourite books, so I've thought about it a lot. :)

[icepixie]

Oh, I like that interpretation! Interesting.