Love and Gratitude: How Dorothy L. Sayers’s 1930 Novel Challenges Modern Rescue Romance

“So you won’t marry me?”
The prisoner shook her head.
“No, that wouldn’t be fair to you…”
“Well, I won’t worry you,” said Wemsey. Not fair. Abusing my privileges etc.

-(Strong poisonthe chapter. 21)

The backstory for the above dialogue begins like countless other romances: a woman is in a critical situation until a man shows up to save her. In Dorothy L. Sayers published in 1930, Strong poisonHarriet Vane is accused of murdering her lover. The evidence against her has piled up to the point that even those who have read the story multiple times may wonder if she really did it. Without the tireless efforts of Lord Peter Wimsey, a successful amateur detective by many accounts, she would almost certainly have been condemned.

Naturally, Peter falls in love with her. It’s also not a spoiler to reveal that Harriet is not guilty and that the hero saves her (the plot tensions revolve around the means of her redemption, not whether or not she will be extradited). So far, so romantic.

How does Harriet feel about all this? Does it matter?

After all, it was originally expendable, a way to get rid of Peter so Sayers could move on to other literary projects. In an article written several years later Strong poison (Its title is A Dazzling Night (not to be confused with her novel).) Good night), Sayers admitted that she had written the novel “with the intention of killing the children to get rid of Peter; that is, to marry him off and get rid of him. But she immediately realized that Harriet would not, and could not, cooperate. It is worth quoting Sayers at length here.

I could not marry Peter to the young woman whom he had saved (in traditional Perseus fashion) from death and disgrace, because I could find no form of words by which she could accept him without loss of self-respect. I put my two main puppets in a situation where, by all the conventional rules of a detective novel, they had nothing to do but fall into each other’s arms; But they won’t. (“Merry Night” 1937)

According to its creator, for Harriet Vane to fall in love after such a traumatic ordeal would be a violation of her character.

Not that Peter doesn’t hope otherwise. At the beginning of the novel, Sayers depicts a strange display, especially for someone of Peter’s kindness. On his first visit to her prison, before the warden, he introduced himself and declared at the end: “What I mean to say is, when all this is over, I want to marry you, if you can handle me and everything.” “Which.” I highly recommend watching the BBC version Strong poison To get the full effect of his terrible timing. It’s like watching the end Romeo and Juliet —You know it’s coming, but you hope it doesn’t.

“Oh, are you the last of them? That’s forty-seven,” Harriet responds with distaste. (Strong poisonthe chapter. 4). Thus begins a real-life love story that is not resolved until after two novels. Lord Peter eventually gets Harriet off the hook, but she won’t particularly accept him because Hand it over. Moreover, he is an aristocrat, and she is not. He is rich and she has to work for a living. Peter also feels inequality and hates it. And long after she had been acquitted, he asked her: “Do you think it would be nice for any man who feels for a woman as I feel for you, to have to fight to get ahead under this hateful burden of gratitude?” “I know I’m terribly ungrateful,” Harriet replies, and Peter bursts in: “Grateful! Good God! Shall I never get away with bleating that dirty adjective?”Do you have his body?the chapter. 1)

This hot depiction of a 1930s relationship makes for good reading, and contains a great deal of wisdom – especially when compared to many popular modern love stories.

I have read or seen many women in Christian circles Redemption of love By Francine Rivers (2022 film version produced by Universal Pictures). The film tells the story of Angel, a woman who was manipulated into prostitution, hardened by that life, and eventually redeemed through the lifelong love of her fiancé, Michael. In the film version, one morning, after she is brutalized by one of the story’s villains, Michael finds her and proposes to her again. Her answer through swollen lips is “Absolutely.”

CAPC author Tegan Cooper pointed out the problems with this love story in her article “The redemption of love harms Hosea and women” (February 28, 2024). But what struck me were the similarities between the proposals in this story and in Strong poison. Just as Michael proposes to Angel when she has no other escape route, so Lord Peter proposes to Harriet in prison. Angel agrees, in understandable desperation, and enters a life with nothing to contribute but her beauty. After all, Michael is a virtuous farmer and Angel is an abused city girl: she is ignorant of everything from fishing to cooking to living as an emotionally complete human being. On the other hand, Harriet rejects Peter’s advances, both inside and outside prison. It literally takes chapters of him giving her space, appreciating her work as a writer (she’s a novelist), and respecting her scholarship (she’s an Oxford graduate) before she trusts him not to give up on her.

To be fair to Francine Rivers, Redemption of love It shows the difficulties of Michael and Angel’s situation, as well as the owners’ need to maintain a level of self-sufficiency. On the other hand, Michael saving the angel is part of the romance. As Sayers writes, Lord Peter’s rescue of Harriet actually presents an obstacle. Sure, she survives, but they spend the rest of their literary lives trying to overcome the obstacle of inequality that such redemption creates.

Cooper concludes her article with the following observation: “Confusing God’s uncompromising, literally unconditional love with the romantic love of a man and a woman is ultimately harmful.” I agree. What’s more, in Harriet Vane, Sayers offers a counterexample: the tense consequences that follow a relationship built on an unequal foundation.

Four of Sayers’s novels feature Harriet Vane: Strong poison, Do you have his body?, Good nightand Honeymoon in Boseman. In the 1980s, the BBC produced short versions of the first three books. The BBC versions are worth watching, although it’s time for an update. But the books are irreplaceable, because they vividly depict what is rare in rescue novels: the heroine’s struggle, the hero’s learning process, and their mutual respect.

There is an important moment at the end Good night When peter and harriet—About to fall into each other’s arms but still need to clarify a few things—Have a frank discussion about their early encounters:

“Harriet, I want to ask your forgiveness for these past five years,” Peter said.

“I think it must be the other way around,” said Harriet.

“I don’t think so. When I remember how we first met—“

“Peter, don’t think about that horrible time. I was tired of myself, my body and my soul. I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“And I chose that time, when I should have been thinking only of you, to impose myself on you, to demand of you, like a damned arrogant fool…”

(Dazzling Night, Chapter 23)

This exchange goes beyond savior and saved; It reveals the hearts of two flawed people in a relationship. It reminds us that the only One worthy of our humble gratitude should be our infinitely loving God, not any other human being, not even Lord Peter.