Gaudy Night

I am listening to a BBC dramatisation on CD of Dorothy L Sayers' Gaudy Night - which is very good though not as good as reading the book. So I started reading the book yet again last night. I was struck when I was listening to the CD about how much information the story contains about the choices women were able to make about their lives. The mystery hinges on whether women should support their husbands or expose them if they do anything wrong. The theme is repeated again and again in various small events. There is also a lot of discussion about women looking for fulfilment in a career and what happens to their intellectual interests when they marry and take on their husband's interests and give up their own.

The book was published in 1935 and yet if you set aside the somewhat different standards of morals and acceptable behaviour the same issues are current today. One of the dons rails against employing a woman with children as she needs time off to nurse a sick child and can't put her work first and again this is a recurring theme. There is much discussion about falsification of scientific results and historical research and whether such things are acceptable if the person concerned does it because they need the money they will earn to support wives and children.

This book has always been a favourite of mine which I re-read on a regular basis but the subtext - if you like - only struck me in the last few days having read several books on a feminism related theme. I didn't think women's rights were such an issue in the 1930s as they faded into the background after universal suffrage was brought in and only resurfaced in the 1950s and 1960s with Betty Frieden, Gloria Steinem etc all. Having said that though Dorothy L Sayers did apparently publish a book entitled Are Women Human? of which I have yet to track down a copy.

Heresy

I finished S J Parris's Heresy last night and I think it was worth reading. As mentioned before Giordano Bruno is an excommunicated monk now working for Elizabeth I's spymaster Walsingham in England. He is sent to Oxford University to try and find out how many Catholics there are at Lincoln College. He has reasons of his own for going there as he wants to track down a book he is particularly interested in.

Shortly after he arrives there is an attack on one of the masters by a large dog as a result the man dies - before he can tell Bruno something he particularly wanted him to know. Bruno himself is suspicious of various people and feels he is being watched and his room searched - added to which he is attracted to the Rector's clever daughter - Sophia. There follows a series of murders and Bruno encounters a sinister book seller who may be able to help him in his search. This is a fast paced story with some interesting characters and the author brings 16th century Oxford vividly to life. This is an author and a series to watch.

Short stories

I finished an excellent collection of short stories yesterday - The Sixpenny Debt and Other Oxford Stories. As might be deduced from the title the theme linking these otherwise disparate stories is the city of Oxford. There are tortoises running shops in Turl street, Medieval servants at the university, crimes which have already happened and those yet to come as well as people reminiscing about their past indiscretions. All the stories are excellent and enjoyable in their own ways, but my particular favourites are 'I Love You, Mr Chicken' and 'The Tortoises of Turl Street'. The first is about an elderly lady recalling her past and her favourite grocer in the 1950s and the second about the tortoises and how if they quarrel they may end up estranged for years, because everything moves slowly for them.

I've nearly finished reading The Importance of Being Emma by Juliet Archer - the modern day interpretation of Emma. This is an excellent sparkling story. I was put off when I first started because it is narrated alternately by Emma and Mr Knightley - in very short sections some less than a page. I seem to have read a lot of books with multiple narrators recently and my first reaction was oh no not another one, but I got used to it very quickly. It is very true to the spirit of the original showing how universal Jane Austen's characters are.