In The Beginning

[sonetka]

One thing about Dorothy Sayers' books which I've wondered about for a long time (though my interest was refreshed by a combox discussion in, I think, October) is the question of what brought Philip Boyes and Harriet Vane together in the first place. The explanation in Strong Poison is reasonable enough on the face of it, but while we're told that

Comments

[nineveh_uk]

Much as I wish I'd been able to get to this sooner, it was worth the wait to read it properly, because it's fabulous. Harriet feels completely in character, and early Boyes is very plausible as someone who can do charm when it suits him, but is fundamentally focussed on himself. I note that his opinion of Harriet's physical attraction increases the more that he thinks about what she could do for him practically! The sense of Harriet's isolation you mention in your comment below is very striking; Boyes is asking her out, and for her opinion, even if he's doing it for himself and not her. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that Sylvia has taken herself out of the running as a person that Harriet is likely to turn to for some good advice on what to do...

All the little canon touches are great - the explanation of Mary Attwell's attractions, and the quoting, with PB telling Harriet to make sure she knows how clever he is.

Ed. And how could I forget to say, I love the title of Phil's book :-) At least I chose the username principally because I find it's printed appearance attractive, and first came across it in a Yeats poem in which it looks mysterious. He is presumably thinking of himself as making some sort of devastating comment on modern living. Oh, and it is painfully obvious that if he were selling 6000 copies he would not be disparaging the public taste, but lauding it and saying that Harriet was obviously rubbish by comparison as the public didn't want to read her.

[sonetka]

I'm glad you liked it! I'm especially glad that Harriet sounds IC -- she was tricky to work with, especially since this is the pre-arrest Harriet. Her attractiveness growing along with her usefulness to Philip was very much intentional, though I doubt he makes the connection himself. As for Sylvia, I think everyone's had an experience like that -- assuming that someone else found something amusing or ridiculous and discovering a few sentences too late that they didn't see it that way At. All. She's in an awkward position because she didn't expect Harriet to take to Philip, and while she thinks he's an obnoxious egomaniac she doesn't really have any concrete reasons to offer as to why seeing him would be a bad idea and she doesn't want to alienate Harriet by being too strident about her dislike of him. (I don't know if you read the second part yet or not, but her leaving the country for a few months also makes confidences difficult. It's not quite the same in a letter as it is when you're just sitting and talking).

And yes, I'm sure Nineveh is full of the bleak, sordid lives of the moderns. (I got my screen name from a book as well -- I needed a handle for a webmail account and happened to be reading The Lady Macbeth Of The Mtsensk District at the time. I can't imagine what I was thinking, since the character is so horrible -- I must have really liked how the name sounded).

[nineveh_uk]

I think that Harriet is miles trickier to write than Peter. It isn't that she hasn't got a distinctive voice/personality in canon, because of course she has, but it's not got convenient handles. I think your take on her is very convincing as the person who might grow into the woman we see a bit later.

[lopezuna_writes]

Agreed 100% about Harriet. She's impossible. Especially when she makes claims about herself (devilish temper) for which there is relatively little canonical evidence (I don't count her losing her temper with Peter because mostly he deserves it). Now I want so badly to see her losing it with Phil who obviously deserves it too!

[sonetka]

Oh, she will :). The hard to live with / devilish temper line bothers me as well, though it may well be she's generalizing; she had a hard time living with Philip, therefore she'll have a hard time living with anyone. Or she's just grasping at straws in order to avoid facing the obvious.

[nineveh_uk]

Or she's just grasping at straws in order to avoid facing the obvious.

Quite possibly :-)

But I think Harriet does have a bad temper in some respects. She doesn't get explosively furious most of the time (except with Peter), but in GN in particular we do see her getting irritated by things quite a lot, and impatient as a result, and she's quite critical of other people. If she experienced that getting on her nerves thing with Phil, then being worried about it if she was living with Peter would seem fair - especially when she is looking for reasons not to marry him, rather than why it would be Ok, and so wouldn't be countering herself with the fact that Peter is not as monumentally selfish and inconsiderate as Phil.

[sonetka]

She's definitely prickly and bad-tempered -- I think it's more about the phrasing. A devilish temper, to me, means a lot of shouting at minimum and possible object breakage as well. To Harriet, though, it probably doesn't mean anything quite that overwrought.