The newest of the articles on the website is a paper I wrote on Dorothy L. Sayers‘ The Nine Tailors. It allowed me to explore a supposition I had about how Sayers viewed her Harriet Vane character. I hadn’t run across anyone commenting on the similarities between Harriet Vane in the novels she had appeared in and the character of Hilary Thorpe in The Nine Tailors.
There are also some interesting observations made about the nature of being a writer, since Harriet is a novelist and Hilary wants to become one. I’ve always been attracted to what Sayers has the characters say about this. I’m sure it reflected her own experiences.
As I state in the paper, because the first of the Lord Peter novels I read was Gaudy Night, I never felt that Harriet was an out-of-place insertion into his existence. I know that there are many who don’t like her, feeling that as a character, she is a self-indulgence on the part of the author. As a writer myself, my reaction is: “So what? Does the character work within the story? That is the important thing. Does it matter that she reflects many of the characteristics of Sayers herself? I do not think it does.”
That’s my two cents worth on that matter.
Now, I’ll just let you enjoy the paper: “Harriet in Rehearsal”
