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I'm not trying to excuse the undoubted classism, but it was very much a part of the time and the class of the characters in this book. Yes, a viable middle-class was starting to take hold. Driven in part by the lack of a generation of males, which forced more women into the workforce, and also, in no small part, by the sea-change in taxation brought in by the Liberals just before the first world war. But the 'upstairs-downstairs' way of life was still hanging on, and Sayers came out of it. To have expressed her characters in any other way would have been contrary to who she was, and what she knew. And to inspect her work with the lens of the 21st century and our values is hardly appropriate.
In many ways, I wish we'd chosen a later work, perhaps Strong Poison, which introduces us to Harriet Vane. However, we chose the first book for reasons that are well known. I'd urge those who hadn't been introduced to Wimsey to try one of the later books even if you found some of the issues with this one problematic. There's a reason these have remained so popular after all these years. Try Strong Poison, or the second in the series, Clouds of Witness. Or one of my personal favourites, Murder Must Advertise.
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