Obsession

[supergee]

…what with not working on Saturdays and circumcising the poor little babies and everything depending on the new moon and that funny kind of meat they have with such a slang-sounding name, and never being able to have bacon for breakfast

Dorothy Sayers and the Jews

Comments

[weofodthignen]

Your quote is of course from the dowager duchess. When I started to read this I didn't remember how many Jewish characters came into the books and stories, and particularly not that exchange with the lawyer, which is indeed peculiar. I mainly remembered that Lord Peter explains to Harriet the facts of financial life: that he lives off the rents from his property in London, which is very ably managed by a Jewish agent.

I found to my sadness that the books are sneered at by pundits in the UK these days; it reminded me how much pundits in the UK love to sneer, and how very much I don't miss that. In the main, I liked em.

I wasn't aware of her broken romance with a Jew, or that her husband refused to raise her son. Poor lass. That helps to explain her obsession with religion. So of course does the war, which was extremely nasty to live through over there; Americans generally fail to imagine.

So I doubt it's as obtrusive unless you're looking for it - to explain that weird thing at the end - and as I recalled things through the author's analysis, I remembered them as humane. She doesn't mention, for example, that the Levys are extremely reluctant to let Freddy marry their daughter: he finally gets their permission when he points out he has "served 7 years for Rachel". Their happy marriage - she's very good for the twit - is the flip side to Peter's best friend, who ascends up the ranks of the police force over the course of the book series, marrying Peter's sister ... after Peter gives him a stiff talking to about not daring to actually ask her. That's also a marriage that presumably gives staid matrons the vapors, but is also very happy. All of which is of course the background to Peter and Harriet's protracted and complex dance toward marriage. I suppose Sayers would have said the question to the lawyer was about Peter's own anxiety, although the answer remains peculiar. The short stories aren't very good, although like everyone else I went to great pains to get hold of them.

M