Quote:
Originally Posted by Victoria
[...] But I do agree with gmw that Grant is very poor investigator! I kept reminding myself that Tey didn’t have the internet at her fingertips. But Grant seemed like an apologist for her position, than a trained investigator. His language is loaded with positive adjectives for everything Richard, and pejorative for the opposing side. And Carradine omits the evidence that goes against Richard.
Like CRussel, I try to take sexist language with a grain of salt. I think it’s inevitable that some of the sexism, racism and classism of the day will creep into older books.
But I’m not sure it crept in here. I thought Tey deliberately used sexist language to portray Grant as a hardened police office. But the descriptions of the nurses felt clumsy and overdone, so it wasn’t very believable - more like a stereotype than a person.
And it wasn’t consistent with Grant’s character anyway. His housekeeper, cousin and friend wouldn’t all be so fond of him, if he was really that dismissive of women as people. So I think she does Grant a disservice with the language.[...]
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I like that you point out the inconsistencies; I think they go some way to explaining my reaction (to both books I've read by Tey). It was never the sexism and dismissiveness on its own - I've read enough older fiction to get along well enough - it's the total picture of the character. And now I realise that part of the problem is that the picture is inconsistent. I dropped the first book because almost every interaction with Grant jarred heavily, I thought the awkwardness might have just been first book jitters, but hit it again in this book. But at least with this book the topic kept my interest despite my distaste for the character.