Gaudy Night - chapters 1-2

[shinyopals]

Chapters 1-2: in which we meet a whole host of complicated characters talking about complicated things.

Brief synopsis:
Our story begins with our intrepid heroine, who clearly feels she hasn’t had enough to angst about the last few years so has decided to attend her High School reunion college’s Gaudy. It turns out she was BFFs with one of the

Comments

[shinyopals]

OH YES. I remember that quote now. And I am impressed with your learnings.

I feel like Miss de Vine is one of those characters on my list of People I Could Not Write. Harriet and Peter are also on that list, to be fair. XD

Miss S-S bothers me. Like, ok, lecture intelligent people about making babies. I don't give a crap about that. But the eugenics is creepy.

And lol ANYTHING is better than "lover", really. My sister actually decided, based on that blurb that she didn't want to read the book ever and I had to assure her Peter is not Harriet's ~lover~ to convince her it might be worth a read.

[colonial_abroad]

Do blurb people actually read the books?

Come to think of it.... who does write book blurbs??

[mrv3000]

I tend to just glaze over whenever school details pop up, since I have no clue. :D

Also, in my experience of uni, all the lecturers have doctorates, whereas of the Shrewsbury lot, only Dr Baring does. The rest are all clearly “Miss”. Something has changed?

Maybe since higher education for women was so new, that they didn't require doctorates at first?

What did you think of seeing Harriet talking to friends and not-so-friends? It’s the first time we really see her in this sort of environment.

I was amused at the Peter talk and Harriet NOT WANTING TO TALK ABOUT PETER but maybe just a bit.

Missing the point just a wee bit, aren’t they?

XD

[shinyopals]

JUST LIKE HOGWARTS, MICHELLE. XD

Maybe since higher education for women was so new, that they didn't require doctorates at first?

Yeah, I guess that seems logical? I am not really aware of when Oxford started letting women in, but it was unreasonably recent.

I was amused at the Peter talk and Harriet NOT WANTING TO TALK ABOUT PETER but maybe just a bit.

Lol *pets Harriet*

[colonial_abroad]

Well Sayers was one of the first class of women to get a degree granted at oxford (1920) but I'm not sure when they were first let in...

And Harriet doesn't want to talk to Peter, just like she *never* wants to see him again...

[nineveh_uk]

The doctorates isn't really a women thing - at the time, very, very few lecturers at Oxford would have had doctorates, which took off late in the UK. Tolkien, the contemporary of the Shrewsbury dons, didn't - and there are still academics around in the born just post-war generation (including Oxford heads of departments) who don't have doctorates. So the significance lies not in that the other women haven't, because that's the norm for all, but that Dr Baring has.

[colonial_abroad]

I've always thought that the beginning of Gaudy Night suffers from the simple problem of too many characters. One just stops being interested in what happened to people Harriet didn't seem to like ten years ago

[shinyopals]

Definitely. And especially when you realise that 90% of them never appear again. I can appreciate it a lot more on reread, because I know who they all are and can be amused by things and know who to ignore, and I did get quite fond of Phoebe

[colonial_abroad]

But Padgett also doesn't approve of university women... so secretly he must be a SCOUNDREL!

I dunno, I always figure if anyone lower class or uneducated is saying it- she's probably making fun of them. (Except Bunter, there is never anything but love for Bunter!)

[shinyopals]

Lol my main memory of Padgett is working with camels at the zoo. He's just the MOST RIDICULOUS CHARACTER EVER.

And that's probably a good rule of thumb, tbh, even if I am quite fond of a lot of her working class characters. AND EVERYBODY LOVES BUNTER. BUNTER IS AMAZING.

[jennyrad]

You're pretty much spot on on the collegiate nature of Oxford (and Cambridge, and Durham; London is ... weird and different); at Oxford now, and I think also then, a lot of teaching is based in the colleges

[shinyopals]

Lol all my knowledge of collegiate university life is from applying to Durham and then deciding to go elsewhere, so.. LUCKY GUESS. XD

And I would probably have learned more of this sort of Senior Member stuff if I had... attended my own graduation. Which I didn't do. XD

Yeah, I know it was more common. I just could never quite tell if we were supposed to be viewing it fondly, indifferently, or side-eyeing the crap out of it.

XD I always avoided my own school reunion dos/old student associations because of the weirdness of like... everything changing and nothing changing at all.

[of_polyhymnia]

I'm sorry, I just have to indulge in a moment of "I'm at Oxford!!!!" (American, etc. I apologize

[shinyopals]

Bwah! Have you been punting yet?

Yeah, multiple years is definitely the case. It's pretty standard for reunions of that sort to be: a couple of my various schools have old student associations that do reunions and you'd see people from all up and down the ages (I helped with the organisation when still a student, iirc). I think it seems to be the case for uni things as well.

Senior/junior, probably is that. My uni just never used that. We'd be undergrads and post-grads, if at all.

And this is my favourite book ever! (Atm, anyway. XD)

[azdak]

Senior/junior, probably is that. My uni just never used that. We'd be undergrads and post-grads, if at all.

Senior members are the fellows and lecturers of a college, though, not post-grads (hence the SCR - Senior Common Room - refers to the teaching staff and JCR - Junior Common Room - to the undergrads). Historically, post-grads were few and far between, and probably already had Fellowships of one kind or another when they embarked on their doctoral work, thus making them senior members, but modern postgrads count as junior members of a college, though they have their own commmon room, the MCR - Middle Common Room - to spare them from having to rub shoulders with the less mature JCR.

See, it's simply really.

[read2day]

Oxford (like Cambridge) uses Senior and Junior rather differently to the rest of the world (because, hey, they are soooo like the rest of the world in every other way). A Senior member of Oxford University is one of the following:
- a University officer (on the governing body)
a Fellow of a College
- a member of Convocation (ie: all Oxford MAs)

The junior members are those in statu pupillari - ie: all undergraduates and all BAs who haven't yet taken their MA.

Oxford graduates are entitled to take their MA without further examination once they have graduated as a BA and more than seven years have passed since matriculation (ie: the date when they became an undergraduate). This tends to lead to cries of "unfair", which I used to agree with. Up to the point where I realised that the requirements for my Finals thesis were more demanding than those for an MA dissertation in many other universities, so I refuse to apologise for it these days .