Gaudy Night is a 1935 mystery novel by Dorothy L. Sayers. It's the tenth in the Lord Peter Wimsey series.
Harriet Vane is invited back to her college for the Gaudy
celebrations. Things start to go wrong when someone in the college turns to vandalism, graffiti and sending nasty anonymous messages. Harriet asks Lord Peter to investigate.
The novel has been adapted into a 1987 miniseries and a 2005 audiobook.
Contains examples of:
- Absent-Minded Professor: Miss Lydgate of Shrewsbury College.
- Always Murder: Notably averted. No one dies during the novel itself, and the criminal only resorts to violence towards the end.
- Badass Boast: Wimsey, when asked by a drunken Pomfret why he won't stand up and fight: "First, because I'm twenty years older than you. Secondly, because you're six inches taller than I am. And thirdly, because I don't want to hurt you."
- Beautiful Dreamer: Harriet watches Lord Peter nap in a punt.
- Because I'm Good At It: Harriet is asked why she writes detective literature — isn't it trivialising crime? Shouldn't she, who was acquitted of murder herself, refuse to do such work? She replies in part "I know what you're thinking — that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well."
- The Big Damn Kiss: Peter and Harriet's clinch at the end, bringing a conclusion to five years of Unresolved Sexual Tension.
- Bilingual Bonus: The novel contains lines in Greek (in the original alphabet!) and Latin. The reader is simply assumed to be educated enough to read them. (Which would have been largely true of the target audience in Sayers' day. Nowadays, not so much.)
- Breaking Speech: The villain goes on a long, intensely vitriolic rant about their motives and how much they hate the college and specific people in it. Everyone else in the room is so shocked that only the main target of the speech can give a response, and even Peter just sits there with his head in his hands by the end of it.
- Capital Letters Are Magic: Harriet hears at her college reunion about a former fellow student who has gone in for new age mysticism and written a book about Higher Wisdom and Beautiful Thought and that sort of thing.
- Complaining About Shows You Don't Watch: In-Universe, Harriet attends a literary party, where a gang of authors take turns theorizing why some thoroughly arty and undeserving novel has been awarded a reviewer's prize — because of advertising deals, or political loyalties, or familial connections, or other underhand reasons. Naturally, none of them have actually read the book, or have the faintest idea what it's even about.
- Cut-and-Paste Note: The poison-pen writer uses letters cut from newspapers for their notes. A search for the source papers forms part of the investigation.
- Dirty Business: Lord Peter has Harriet help him draw out information from the senior college members. She tells him that she feels like Judas, he tells her it's part of the job, and she soldiers on.
- Driven to Suicide:
- Discussed; when Peter is asked how he would have handled accusing his brother (or sister) of murder, Harriet suggests that the correct etiquette in a murder mystery is "poison for two in the library".
- More seriously, an important part of the backstory is the death of Arthur Robinson, Annie's husband, who lost his position, turned to drink, and eventually shot himself.
- Erotic Dream: At one point Harriet dreams of being held in Peter's manly arms, but by this point she's had a lot of practice at denying her feelings, so she shrugs it off by saying that dreams are never what they appear to be about and it must have been a metaphor for something.
- Everybody Lives: The least bloody book in the series, as the only death was some years ago and all of the criminal's victims survive.
- Family Versus Career: One of the major themes of the book and of Harriet's arc as a whole. The staff and students of the college reflect a range of approaches to the issue, from Miss Hillyard who Does Not Like Men and hates family women and thinks career should always come first, to Annie Wilson, who believes women should serve their husbands and Stay in the Kitchen. Harriet contrasts both extremes with fellow alumna Phoebe Tucker, who has three children and a flourishing archaeology career alongside her husband.
- Female Misogynist: Annie Wilson, who thinks that women should only ever be homemakers and utterly despises women who choose to have a career. She also loathes women who have relationships, but who she thinks treat their partners like they're beneath them.
- A Friend in Need: After Harriet has defended Lord Peter's detecting — even if he does it for fun, he does do it, and many people have reason to thank him — another woman brings up a neighbour who had helped with her drains for nothing because he liked working with them.
- Full-Name Ultimatum: Peter sends a letter to his nephew, Gerald, Viscount Saint-George, who has got into trouble largely of his own making. Jerry notes that he can tell how angry Uncle Peter is by whether the letter salutes him by his nickname (Gherkins), as "Jerry", or as "Gerald" — and in this case, Uncle Peter's blazingly furious, because the salutation is "My dear Saint-George" and it's signed with Peter's full name. (The next letter, following some bridge-mending, begins "Dear Jerry" and ends "your querulous and rapidly decaying uncle, P.W.".)
- Genre Savvy: The villain attempts to lure Harriet into a trap with a fake phone message from a friend. Harriet nearly falls for it, but then remembers a conversation with Peter laughing about how characters in novels never think to ring back and check the authenticity of messages like this.
- Hideous Hangover Cure: A female student is badly hung over. Harriet Vane writes out a recipe for a hangover remedy and tells another student to go to the chemist (Americans would say "drug store") and have them make up a batch. It works. The book doesn't say what's in it, though Harriet says that she suspects from the ingredients that it will be awful and hopes that it is because that might encourage the student to avoid needing it again.
- High-Class Glass; Peter began wearing a monocle in his college days. He even wore it during his active military service, which suggests it's not entirely an affectation.
- I Did What I Had to Do: Miss de Vine relates how she reported a case of academic malfeasance that was so bad it destroyed the man in question's entire career. (She had, by chance, discovered that not only did a letter exist that disproved his entire thesis, but that he knew of it and deliberately suppressed it.) She regrets that his life was ruined, especially since he had a family to support, but as a matter of principle simply couldn't allow the fraud to stand.
- In-Series Nickname: One of the men who served under Peter in the War tells Harriet that his unit used to call him "Windowpane", on account of his High-Class Glass.
- Last-Name Basis: The SCR all refer to each other by title or honorific, except for very close friends, who use last-name-based nicknames, like "Teddy" for Miss Edwards.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Harriet and Peter have a conversation about her latest detective novel and the pros and cons of stretching herself beyond the genre standards to give the protagonists authentic psychological depth — in a detective novel that's all about stretching beyond the genre standards to give the protagonists authentic psychological depth.
- Likes Older Women: Reggie Pomfret, an undergraduate of twenty or so, is taken with Harriet (who's in her early-to-mid-thirties).
- Malicious Slander: The villain distributes slanderous letters to turn her victims against each other and themselves.
- Metafiction: Gaudy Night grapples with the characters' emotional lives more than any previous novel in the series. One of its sub-plots concerns Harriet trying to write her most emotionally-engaging novel yet, and how challenging it will be after writing lightweight, purely intellectual stories as a form of escapism.
- Misplaced Retribution: The villain is revealed to be the widow of a disgraced academic who attempted to commit fraud with his thesis, was exposed, saw his career ruined as a result and killed himself several years later after his family's fortunes went downhill. When her misdeeds — including stalking and attempting to attack the examiner who exposed her husband's fraud — are exposed, the widow primarily casts the blame on the examiner, calling her a murderer, and brings out multiple excuses: her husband's fraud didn't hurt anyone, it wasn't really anything wrong to begin with, the examiner shouldn't have had her job to begin with, the examiner and everyone else were just jealous of how much she loved her husband — anything and everything she can come up with to avoid admitting that her husband did do something wrong and his suicide wasn't anyone else's fault or responsibility.
- Motive Rant: Annie Wilson berates the S.C.R. for what she sees as a betrayal of the feminine ideal (never mind that the S.C.R. are actually for the most part fairly girly — they're bluestockings, not tomboys). She is arguably the only ideologically-motivated villain in the entire series (although revenge also plays a part), and the scene in question is both highly effective and unbelievably offensive and disturbing. This single scene is typically considered Sayers's masterpiece.
- Mysterious Note: Mysterious poison-pen letters (together with pranks and outright vandalism) are part of a plot against Shrewsbury College, Oxford.
- Noodle Incident: Something happened during the war. A pig was involved. That's all we know.
- Not Listening to Me, Are You?: Peter has been investigating the backgrounds of the suspects, but Harriet is too distracted to take in what he's saying. She's able to recite some of his findings back to him, but misses the clues that would have allowed her to join the dots and identify the criminal herself.
- Old-Fashioned Rowboat Date: Wimsey and Harriet Vane go punting, and the scene is retained in the 1987 BBC television production. Such boating excursions are traditional at Oxford, where the story is set. The modern twists on this are their practical discussion of Harriet's poison pen prankster investigation and the "spot of celibacy" Harriet is maintaining, despite Wimsey's numerous proposals of matrimony.
- Old Flame Fizzle: A platonic version. Harriet goes to the Shrewsbury Gaudy for the chance to see an old schoolmate who was her inseparable best friend in their college days. She discovers that they've changed too much in the intervening years and now have nothing in common.
- Priceless Ming Vase: Played for drama. Harriet spends several chapters desiring an ancient and delicate chess set, which Peter eventually buys for her, marking a turning point in their relationship. It lasts less than a chapter before being smashed to pieces by the Shrewsbury vandal.
- Quitting to Get Married: Harriet tries to get hold of Miss Murchison (the lady from the typing bureau who did the infiltration) only to find that she has left the typing bureau to get married.
- Sneaking Snacks: The students at the college, both in Harriet's day and in the present, have been known to sneak down to the college kitchen for late-night snacks, and that although the kitchen's supposed to be locked up at night it's not unknown for students to find a sympathetic staff member to leave it unlocked for them.
- Spiteful Spit: The antagonist finishes up her Motive Rant by spitting in Peter's face.
- Straw Feminist: Miss Hillyard, whose prejudice against "womanly" women, married women and mothers, especially in the workplace, is implied to arise from simple jealousy and is contrasted against the various more reasoned models of feminism displayed by the university staff and students.
- Theory Tunnelvision: While reviewing Harriet's case dossier, Peter poses a theory and Harriet points him to a contradictory fact; he apologizes for — borrowing a phrase from Sherlock Holmes — "theorizing ahead of my data."
- Tranquil Fury: Peter's first letter to his nephew. As his nephew knows, if Peter addresses him as "My dear Saint-George" and signs with his full name, run.
- Wacky Americans Have Wacky Names: The book has a comic-relief group of American visitors whose leader rejoices in the name of Mrs. J. Poppelhinken.
- Wrong Genre Savvy: Harriet spends the book assuming she's in a cautionary tale about women's education, and that one of her university colleagues has been driven to violent crime by the repressive effects of a sexless academic lifestyle. This causes her to miss several clues that the criminal is a married non-academic with children, motivated by her hatred of academic career women.
- You Need to Get Laid: After one of the faculty of the women's college makes a rather obnoxious speech and leaves, another one says, "I always thought it was a great pity she never married." The narrator remarks that she had a way of putting what everyone was thinking in terms a child could understand.
