The Anti-Romantic Comedies of Dorothy L. Sayers

The Anti-Romantic Comedies of Dorothy L. Sayers MARTHA GREENE EADS "rWjhat on earth do women want?" Dorothy L. Sayers imagines men asking in her 1938 essay "Are Women Human?" Her answer is unequivocal: U] do not know that women, as women, want anything in particular, but as human beings they want, my good men, exactly what you want yourselves: interesting occupation, reasonable freedom for their pleasures. and a sufficient emotional outlet" (32). Many of Sayers's readers may suspect her of having created detective novelist Harriet Vane to embody her dream of a life that features satisfying work, creature comforts, and a passionate marriage. As the love interest Sayers developed for detective Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane illustrates the possibility of an intelligent woman's finding happiness in both her work and her marriage to a wealthy and interesting man. As Harriet develops from the damsel in distress in the novel Strong Poison (1930) into a successful writer and amateur sleuth in Have His Carcase (1932) and proves capable of serious scholarship in Gaudy Night (1935), her relationship with Lord Peter resembles the standard romance plot Janice Radway develops in Readillg the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Although the Vane-Wimsey romance depicted in the novels follows the romance trajecto !), Radway traces, Sayers veers from that path in Busman's Honeymoon (1937), her play about the first stage of the couple's marriage. This essay examines Sayers's use of that play and her next, Love All, to question the literary and cultural convention of romantic love. As she transplants Lord Peter and Harriet Vane from the page to the stage in Busman's Honeymooll, Sayers sows the seeds of anti-romanticism that bloom in Love All (1940). Moving away from the conventional courtship plot of the first three Vane-Wimsey novels, Sayers uses her early plays to assert the value of meaningful work, mutual respect, and loving service beyond the realm of romance. While she is best remembered for her mystery novels, Sayers's plays are among her strongest work. She wrote detective fiction, much like the advertisModern Drama, 44:2 (2001) 214 Sayers's Anti-Romantic Comedies 215 ing copy she produced for S.H. Benson from 1922 to 1929, primarily to make ends meet. Once she had established her reputation as a popular novelist, Sayers turned from fiction to drama, essays, poetry, and translations. The plays Busman's Honeymoon and Love All mark this transition and reflect the profound professional, personal, and philosophical changes taking place in her life during the mid- to late 1930s. Working with her friend Muriel St. Clare Byrne on the script of Busman's Honeymoon, Sayers began honing the skills she would need to become a successful playwright.' In Love All, she abandons Peter and Harriet altogether as she continue.s to work as a dramatist. More· over, as she leaves behind the lovers she created for her detective fiction, Sayers also abandons a fictional treatment of romance that her own experience had demonstrated to be unsatisfactory. While Busman's Honeymoon expresses Sayers's hope that women can find male partners like Lord Peter Wimsey who will prove accomplished lovers and generous husbands in addition to applauding their wives' professional successes, Love All suggests that women should forgo marriage. Love All's writing heroine looks for affirmation not to her husband but to her professional community, her swelling bank account, and even to a creative partnership with a fonner romantic rival. In questioning whether romance really can be a satisfying source of happiness, Sayers invites women to consider creativity and camaraderie as alternative sites of personal fulfillment. This shift in Sayers's literary treatments of love emerged not only from her own disappointing marriage but also from her deepening religious belief. Having been a scholar of medieval romance, Sayers came to eschew the conventional concept of romantic love as an all-consuming feeling in favor of a more deeply Christian model of love as a choice that accommodates meaningful work and a wide range of relationships. Like Denis de Rougemont, who questioned the popular modem conception of romance in Love in the Western World, Sayers became increasingly suspicious of Eros...