Students and Alumni
The college setting of the novel is extremely important and that setting extends not just to the physical place, but the people who inhabit it. A kind of reunion atmosphere in which past and present, young and old, students and alumni collide offers an excellent opportunity for descriptive opinionated imagery of strangers:
“the curious round-shouldered woman in a yellow djibbah and sandals, with her hair coiled in two snail-shells over her ears…that tall, haggard, tragedy- queen in black silk marocain who looked like Hamlet’s aunt, but was actually Aunt Beatrice who ran the Household Column…that unconquerably merry and bright little dumpling of a creature who was the valued secretary of a political secretary…a gawky and unfinished-looking young person, very badly made up, who had a pathetic air of seeking to win hearts and never succeeding…The rest were nondescript, as yet undifferentiated”
Gender Equality
Gaudy Night is a kind of manifesto for gender equality masquerading as a murder mystery. For this reason, reaction to the novel has been the most extreme of any in the canon of the author. It seems to be uniquely fashioned for readers either to love it because of what it is or hate it because of what it isn’t. What is especially fascinating are the small touches that give the disguise away such as this hiding in plain sight as subtle imagery:
“He snatched up cap and gown and was gone before she had time even to think of seeing him down to the Lodge.
`But it’s just as well,’ she thought, watching him run across the quad like an undergraduate, `he hasn’t too much time as it is. Bless the man, if he hasn’t taken my gown instead of his own! Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. We’re much of a height and mine’s pretty wide on the shoulders, so it’s exactly the same thing.’” And then it struck her as strange that it should be the same thing.”
Dreams Behind Closed Doors
Another especially effective piece of imagery brings into question conventional expectations about the role of women in society; even those who enter that society with the kind of education afforded men whose expectations are usually less one-dimensional. The situation of this example within the image of anonymous girls behind closed doors identified only as Miss followed by the name of their father seals the deal: they aren’t even individualized by their own first names. The whole scene smacks of oppressive homogeneity:
“Outside their doors lay little heaps of soiled crockery for the scouts to collect and wash. Also shoes. On the doors were cards, bearing their names: Miss H. Brown, Miss Jones, Miss Colburn, Miss Szleposky, Miss Isaacson—so many unknown quantities. So many destined wives and mothers of the race; or, alternatively, so many potential historians, scientists, schoolteachers, doctors, lawyers; as you liked to think one thing of more importance than the other.”
Hiding Clues in Plain Sight
Foreshadowing can be subtly implanted among imagery when the author is careful to disguise that imagery through the magic of literary technique. A stream-of-consciousness delivery of backstory that does not indulge in details or unnecessary tangential information is the perfect place to subtly hide a clue in a mystery story. Just another of the many advantages of learning the art of the literary trade:
“Mary had led and Harriet had followed; when they punted up the Cher with strawberries and thermos flasks; when they climbed Magdalen tower together before sunrise on May-Day and felt it swing beneath them with the swing of the reeling bells; when they sat up late at night over the fire with coffee and parkin, it was always Mary who took the lead in all the long discussions about love and art, religion and citizenship. Mary, said all her friends, was marked for a First; only the dim, inscrutable dons had not been surprised when the lists came out with Harriet’s name in the First Class and Mary’s in the Second.”
