In The Beginning, Part 2

[sonetka]

In which Philip begins the pursuit, and Norman Urquhart slithers back into his life. (Part 1 is here.) I may change the title at some point, since this one isn't particularly inspiring (and while something like, say, Fifty Shades Of Boyes would definitely stand out more, I wouldn't want to be responsible for the resulting mental scars). As before,

Comments

[sonetka]

I've read a few of Cournos's short things (not his Sayers-inspired novel, though) and I don't know if I'd pay $20 to read more. However, I just looked at the UW catalogue a moment ago, and they have it! I'm in the area twice a week and now I absolutely must borrow it -- maybe I can do a write-up, I certainly have enough experience reading really atrocious fiction.

Boyes's line about the disadvantages of marriage was largely cribbed from Marriage And Morals, though I couldn't have him quote directly since that book didn't come out until 1929 (although of course the ideas and arguments in it had been floating around for some time). And he's very good at keeping Harriet off-balance -- he starts off not just by trying to justify free love but by presenting it as being practically a favour that he'd like to do her, and demanding that she justify her own desire for marriage -- which of course she can't manage to do on two seconds' notice after an exhausting evening. Their age gap makes a difference as well -- he's ten years older than she is and has had many years of experience in seizing control of conversations like these.

[lopezuna_writes]

If you manage to get hold of the Cournos book, please do report back!

Whatever about anything else, Harriet definitely has a thing for older men, which, given the war, is likely to leave her with a thin market of poor specimens. What's wrong with a nice ordinary fellow her own age??

[sonetka]

I know! So many more of them and with a lot fewer issues as well. Though who knows, if Philip and then Peter hadn't come along, maybe she would have decided to take the Pomfret Option eventually :).

[lopezuna_writes]

The Pomfret option (reminds me of Bill White actually). Now there's an entertaining premise. It might end disastrously. Or maybe Harriet will find him good in bed and extraordinarily restful, just like Peter enjoyed his previous women. After all one doesn't need to be married to a person to have intellectual conversations. She can go to all those literary parties and then come home and make fun of them with Pomfret. And he can be ridiculously proud of her achievements.

[nineveh_uk]

Whatever about anything else, Harriet definitely has a thing for older men

Now that you mention it, she does rather.

[castiron]

Hmm. If someone looked at my relationship history, they'd think I had a thing for older men. In actuality, I'd have been delighted to date a man my age or younger, if one had ever expressed interest -- which hasn't ever happened. So I can see Harriet being open to the possibility but never meeting an interested contemporary while she was available. (Though that does raise the question of whether she was seeing anyone while she was at university -- I can't remember off the top of my head whether there's any indication of this in Gaudy Night, which may lend weight towards "interested in older men" or just "not interested in undergraduate men".)

[sonetka]

I don't remember any reference at all to any man who might have preceded Philip -- not that it couldn't have happened but if it did, it obviously didn't leave much of an impression on her. I was always under the impression that Philip was the first man who took a serious interest in her and he pursued her really aggressively, then of course there was Peter, who did ... pretty much the same thing, in his own way. So perhaps it's less that she has a thing for older men, and more that older men have a serious thing for her. I suppose she might have become involved with someone during the six months between the breakup with Boyes and her arrest, but I don't see her rebounding that fast.

Also, it occurs to me that anyone looking at my relationship history would conclude that I have a thing for left-handers. I can't say I ever sought them out for their left-handedness, but somehow they always found me.