Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
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.
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I also got a bit of vibe about Peter’s sexuality at a few places in the text.
I felt that Sayers was having a lark with the book. For example, the suggestion that the unidentified might be “An Australian colonist, for instance, who had made money?” - this seems like a nod at Magwitch from Great Expectations.
I found the modernity of the language interesting - “Before the fire he sat down with his pipe in his mouth and his jazzy coloured peacocks gathered about him.”
Another interesting thing for me was the way that marketing language crept into the text -surely a reflection of Sayer’s day job as a copy writer.
“She wore a charming wrap from Liberty’s”), "vulcanite" and the repeated references to Formamint.
Here is a near contemporary advert for Formamint - “them nasty jujubes”
https://www.illustratedfirstworldwar...1109-0025-001/