Quote:
Originally Posted by Bookpossum
No-one has mentioned the flashback to the Great War, which I think was important for several reasons: it explained why Lord Peter was so highly strung, with his rather forced jollity, and it also told us a lot about the close relationship between him and Bunter.
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In some ways, I thought the Great War flashback to be most interesting because otherwise the war was like the dog who didn't bark in the night. In the early 20s the country was still in the first throes of recovery from the war, with legions of disabled men, a devastating post-war depression from which the country was only starting to emerge and according to the popular figure, two million "superfluous" women who'd never be able to marry. Virtually no family was untouched by grief and the losses in the upper classes were worse than those of the working classes. And yet in the context of
Whose Body? it might not have happened, if not for Peter's bad night.
But I think the book itself is a sign of the times, meant to be escapist literature and it was the flashback that was the anomaly rather than the light-hearted tone otherwise throughout. It wouldn't be until late in the decade that the seminal works of Great War literature would start to appeal; I believe the thinking was that the public wasn't ready for them yet.
Going back to those "superfluous" women, though, it was extremely odd that Peter, a wealthy young aristocrat in his early 30s, hadn't married. His family makes an issue of it, in fact. I think it's strongly implied that Peter might be gay; his characterization bears the hallmarks of the stereotypically gay man of the 20s and quite flamboyantly at times.
I think it's possible to take the references to Jews and, implied, gays as either and both a marker of the times and somewhat subversive. In fact, I think Sayers might just have been striving for the sensational; the whole business was rather over-the-top.