"Not a Man, But a Miracle": Escape(s) from Heteronormativity in Dorothy L. Sayers's GAUDY

Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Van Tuyl, Jocelyn

Keywords

Heteronormativity, Feminism, Sayers, Dorothy L.

Area of Concentration

Literature

Abstract

This thesis examines Dorothy Sayers's 1936 novel Gaudy Night, her 1938 essay "Are Women Human?," Virginia Woolf's 1928 extended essay A Room of One's Own, and other feminist works. It constitutes a close reading of novelist Harriet Vane's psychological and artistic struggle with the competing claims of work and love in the social context of interwar England. As a woman, Harriet struggles against limiting sex roles derived from still-present patriarchal structures in the social world following the reforms of first-wave feminism. The thesis demonstrates that Harriet's choice of a deliberately separatist, intellectual life at an allfemale college ultimately suppresses her emotional appetites to the point of psychic disturbance. The novel's solution comes in the demonstration by Harriet's lover, Lord Peter Wimsey, that her desires are not mutually exclusive. Wimsey communicates this to Harriet by collaborating with her on several writing projects, suggesting that she use the linguistic playing-field to work through the perceived conflicts in her social world. These collaborations allow Harriet to lead a heterosexual married life without sacrificing her creative work. Sayers fictionalizes an ideal example of a female writer overcoming heteronormativity in an unlikely social context.

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