41 pages • 1 hour read
Dorothy L. SayersGaudy Night
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1935A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 1-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary
Thirty-one-year-old Harriet is a successful mystery author and graduate of Oxford University’s Shrewsbury women’s college. As the story opens, she is debating whether to answer an invitation she’s just received. Her college is holding a Gaudy Night, or reunion, celebration in June for its alumnae. Harriet has fond memories of her years in academia, but her own life has been tinged by scandal: “Harriet had broken all her old ties and half the commandments, dragged her reputation in the dust and made money […] and was full of energy and bitterness and the uncertain rewards of fame” (3-4).
A few years earlier, Harriet had been falsely accused of the murder of her lover. She was only acquitted through the efforts of gentleman detective, Lord Peter Wimsey. Wimsey subsequently fell in love with her and proposed. Though Harriet has repeatedly refused his offers of marriage, she frequently vacillates over the question, just as she now vacillates about attending the Shrewsbury Gaudy. She finally completes the invitation form and posts it.
As Harriet drives up to the college, she notices how little things have changed. When she encounters some of her old classmates, she’s depressed that so many have opted for marriage and never lived up to the intellectual promise of their youth. Harriet is also alarmed when people begin to press her for information about her murder trial and her relationship with Wimsey. Ducking these people, Harriet is somewhat more pleased to meet her old tutor, Miss Lydgate, and the Dean, for whom she feels a particular fondness. She also meets a formidable historian named Miss de Vine who is a fan of her detective stories.
Chapter 2 Summary
Harriet attends the Gaudy Ceremonial Dinner with a crowd of other students and professors. She notes, “Two hundred female tongues, released as though by a spring, burst into high, clamorous speech. She had forgotten what it was like […] But now it shattered her unaccustomed nerves with all and more than all its original violence” (28).
Harriet is treated to more impertinent questions from her tablemates about her colorful past but deflects them will ill-disguised irritation. After the meal, she is invited to take coffee with the Dean, which offers a much more pleasant alternative. The other guests in the Dean’s apartments ask Harriet about writing detective fiction. They question how she can write lightly about such a grave matter. Afterward, Miss de Vine compliments Harriet on being true to herself. Miss de Vine tells her, “But I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them” (43).
After the two women part, Harriet is walking back to her assigned quarters when she notices a piece of paper dropped on the flagstones of the quad:
It depicted a naked figure of exaggeratedly feminine outlines, inflicting savage and humiliating outrage upon some person of indeterminate gender clad in a cap and gown. It was neither sane nor healthy; it was, in fact, a nasty, dirty and lunatic scribble (45).
Unnerved by the disgusting image, Harriet flushes the paper down the toilet.
Chapter 3 Summary
The ceremonies continue through Sunday lunch, where Harriet meets an old school friend who is now married to a farmer in Wales. Harriet thinks quietly, “What damned waste! […] All that brilliance, all that trained intelligence, harnessed to a load that any uneducated country girl could have drawn, and drawn far better” (56). The encounter makes Harriet think once more of Wimsey’s persistent proposals. The two are far better suited to one another than Harriet’s friend and her Welsh farmer, but Harriet pushes the thought away. Evening prayers complete the weekend’s ceremonies. Harriet bids farewell to her past and the few female academics for whom she still feels affection. On her drive back to London, she stops into a pub for lunch. Realizing she’s left her cigarette case in her academic robe, she retrieves it along with a startling note. It reads, “YOU DIRTY MURDERESS. AREN’T YOU ASHAMED TO SHOW YOUR FACE?” (68).
Chapter 4 Summary
Back in London, Harriet reflects on the Shrewsbury Gaudy. She’s glad she went but wants to put the past firmly behind her. However, there is one bit of old business that refuses to die. Harriet thinks back over her three-year relationship with Wimsey. Shortly after he assisted in her murder case, he proposed marriage. Harriet has always kept him at a distance, but because she never had the will to terminate the relationship altogether, he says he will continue to propose to her periodically. Wimsey has never given up hope, and Harriet can’t make up her mind. The narrator says of Harriet, “So matters went on for some months. She made no further effort to discuss the conflicting claims of heart and brain” (86).
Shortly before Easter, Harriet receives a letter from the Dean asking her to come back to Shrewsbury. There has been a rash of poison-pen letters directed at members of the college. The Dean suspects these have not been written by outsiders. Harriet now believes that the letter she found in her pocket was written by the same person. She agrees to return to the college to help ferret out the culprit. Reluctantly, she decides to include Wimsey in the case. He writes that he’s on the continent but will definitely contact her on the first day of April. Harriet resolves to begin the investigation alone and concludes, “Whatever it was all about, she would have to carry on unaided and find consolation in a proper independence of spirit” (95).
Chapters 1-4 Analysis
The first segment of the novel foregrounds Oxford as a place apart from the real world. Harriet is pleased to find that so little has changed about her alma mater. That attitude comes under attack almost immediately when she sees how much time has altered her classmates. The issue of female intellect is emphasized by Harriet’s dismay that so many of her contemporaries have succumbed to marriage and childbearing. The reader is also introduced to the faculty, who will play a major role as suspects in the poison-pen mystery. Of particular significance is Harriet’s encounter with Miss de Vine. When people question Harriet’s lack of empathy in writing about gruesome murders, Miss de Vine compliments her on being true to her principles. It is Miss de Vine’s own devotion to truth and stubborn adherence to her principles that precipitates Annie’s attacks on the college.
We also see the power of the poison pen emerge in two separate incidents. Harriet stumbles across a gruesome sketch of a naked woman attacking a scholar and later receives a note accusing her of murder. Both the words and image are unnerving and set the scene for even more blatant attempts to intimidate and frighten the women of Shrewsbury through the power of the pen. The theme of choices and consequences is briefly examined when Harriet thinks about the consequences that she must face because of her reckless love affair and subsequent murder trial. She fears the reception she will receive among her classmates and teachers in the aftermath of the scandal. She also frets about her present inability to make any definitive choices regarding Wimsey. While she repeatedly declines his marriage proposals, she seems unable to let go of him permanently.
