Have His Carcase Recaps: Chps 1 - 3

[nineveh_uk]

Last time on talking_piffle: Lord Peter solved the case, Harriet Vane was proved innocent, and our hero failed to get the girl. Then followed a book set in rural Scotland, focussed on painting and railway timetables, and inexplicably omitting Miss Vane.

Eighteen months later (although the heroine has actually got younger)...

Comments

[mrv3000]

This absence notwithstanding, what impression do you get of his and Harriet's relationship in the period since Strong Poison?

It kind of sounded like Peter had been badgering Harriet in his own way - ones where they go to dinner and he proposes but also insists there are no strings attached to the evening. But it's obvious he's gotten under her skin with her "I'M NOT THINKING ABOUT HIM!"

[nineveh_uk]

It's funny how Harriet's not thinking about Peter involves a great deal of thinking about not thinking about Peter. You'd almost suspect there was something subconscious going on.

I do wish we had a glimpse of Peter's little dates between SP and HHC.

"No pressure - but will you marry me?"

[rosathome]

I have two questions: how do we know Harriet has got younger? Are there actual dates and things that someone has compiled in a timeline and shown that DLS's maths is about as good as JKR's? Or is it based on her general youthfulness and joie de vivre or something?

And second, for those of us who have never managed to read Tristram Shandy, what is the clue to the theme?

[soniag]

Well, I can answer the first one. In the beginning of Strong Poison, when the judge is summarizing the facts, he says of Harriet: "she is now twenty-nine years old." In the first chapter of HHC, the narrator tells us "She was twenty-eight years old, dark, slight, with a skin naturally a little sallow," etc. OOPS!

[nineveh_uk]

I tell myself that it's artistically necessary ;-) SP really needs Harriet to be older than 26, but increasing the age gap in HHC ups the ante in terms of Harriet's 'inferiority' to Peter (there's some good comment on this, if not in terms of the two-book ages, by truepenny in her series of posts on the novels.

[nineveh_uk]

I've never managed to read Tristram Shandy all the way through, either (if you haven't seen it, I strongly recommend the film with Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon, it's very clever and very funny). But I'd say that it connects to themes of narrative construction and story-telling in HHC. One of the things I love about HHC - and I appreciate that some people don't! - is the strand that is pretty much about the construction of narratives, linked to how a detective novel works, and how this relates to how 'real life' works.

Not to mention that they go round and round in circles. Harriet does either get through TS or read a crib by Busman's Honeymoon, though, as she is able to say to Peter that "Mrs Shandy would be shocked" (the film will tell you why).

[nineveh_uk]

A "Reduced Wimsey Company" would be brilliant!

[nineveh_uk]

Sounds like you'd better write it!

[nineveh_uk]

I'd never thought about that re. the BBC costume department. Sports skirts would get longer in the 30s, but it's a bit long for 1931. .Mind you, I can't remember the script, but I think they set the book a bit later/earlier in the season, so I suppose it fits the chillier weather (I have hiked - not mountain-climbing - in a knee-length skirt in summer, and it was really very comfortable. But I wasn't wearing stockings as well...)

Harriet is really very level-headed about her first corpse, even as she's being shocked about how different it is from fiction.