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I was one of those who brought up the anti-semitism in Whose Body? I did so because it jars to a modern reader. I'm fully aware it is not out of place for the time when the book was written. It still jars. Of course I can read past it but it makes the experience less nice. Fortunately for me, most of the occurrences are nearer the start of the book.
Actually I was more put off by the classism, the master-servant stuff. Here it wasn't just the fact of a hierachical social order with little mobility, that's authenic, it was the way it was seen to be right and good and kind of cosy. I think that's a rose-coloured glasses view of the world at best. And the fact that Sayers uses this as the basis of humour bothers me more than the situation per se. Because that means I'm supposed to not only recognise this state of affairs but basically approve of it.
There used to be a sitcom on UK TV called "The Last of the Summer Wine". In it all the men were portrayed as basically feckless, harmless, lovable fools. Their aim was to potter about planning nonsense schemes that never really amounted to anything. The women were mostly fierce humourless battle-axes, whose role was to control their men and curtail their fun.
It ran from the early 70s until 2010 but its heydey was the 70s and 80s I think. And I always hated the fact that its portrayal of the sexes was done with this sort of wink where it wanted you to think that it was subversive because - wink, wink - look it's really the women that are in control. And yet it was blatantly obvious if you thought about it for 5 mins that it ultimately supported the sexist stereotypes. Hen-pecked husbands and over-bearing wives are most funny if the men are supposed to be in charge and the women supposed to be submissive and demur. Once that becomes less true in society the joke, if it maintains that structure, becomes cartoonish rather than satirical.
And that's how I feel about some of the stuff in these old novels. At the time it probably felt daringly envelope-pushing to have the servant be in many ways the more competent mature adult whilst the aristocrat he works for is, or at least acts, the fool. Now it just seems to reinforce the inequality.
All of which can be read as "of its time" and ignored/endured for the sake of the whole. However I think to many it's this very dynamic that feels safe and cosy. I think that's at the heart of the success of shows like Downton Abbey. I get it but it's not my thing.
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