Halloween Bingo 2022
That was delightful, reminding me vividly of my own university experience. I would gladly have devoted myself to the life of the mind had I thought that I could have made a living out of it. I love research, I enjoy writing, I'm comfortable teaching. It could have been a good life. I was saved from it by my own ignorance of how to get my foot in the door. Now I know how many scholars are kept dangling around campuses by temporary contracts and vague promises, while earning barely enough to keep body and soul together. I'm not sure that I did tremendously better by choosing library work, but at least I had a union to make sure that I wasn't completely flattened by a parsimonious administration.
Harriet seems to be a stand in for the author in many ways. Sayers was a scholar as well as a novelist. I appreciate the breadth of her knowledge as I read the Peter Wimsey books. She can discourse intelligently on so many subjects. Like Harriet, Sayers didn't have the best luck in her choice of men—her first love, like Harriet's, scorned the institution of marriage, although he did marry another writer. [Bastard!] Her next relationship resulted in her pregnancy and it was revealed that her partner was already married. [Bastard!] However, she didn't give Harriet an illegitimate child to support and she did provide the devotion of Sir Peter.
Reading this has made me rather wistful for those student days, translating Greek texts, learning linguistics, analyzing poetry or Shakespeare, writing history papers. One of my instructors committed suicide halfway through term and we were supervised thereafter by a locally well known historian. He offered to edit one of my papers for publication, but it was so wrapped up in my mind with the deceased instructor that I couldn't face it. Probably one paper wouldn't have made any great difference in my life, but I do look back with regret at that lost chance at academic achievement.
The mystery in this novel keeps things ticking along, but it is mostly an argument in favour of the academic life and intellectual striving, plus a persuasive championing of women's right to be admitted to the fold. We take it for granted now—in fact, here in Canada, universities have more female students than male. But it is because of women like Dorothy Sayers that the door has been opened for us.
I chose to convert The River Styx Bingo square to Vintage Mystery by virtue of the Sleepy Hollow wild card in order to include this book in my Halloween reading.
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