Comment on Gaudeamus Igitur, Maturae Dum Sumus: A Detective Story With Love Interruptions

  1. Raya

    Ever since I read this (and "Gentleman's Relish," *sniffle*) I am haunted by Bunter/Saint-George, a pairing that had never occurred to me before. I love the way your Bunter talks to Saint-George, letting some of his working class roots show through -- partly by way of letting his hair down, partly because it's part of the manliness that drives Saint-George wild about him, and partly (so I've decided) as a kind of subconscious punishment he's inflicting on Saint-George for being a pampered idiot who nonetheless penetrates his defenses with ease -- a way of letting Saint-George know HIS place, to speak.

    Also, “Bitch, eh? Takes me back to Eton.” = LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLZ.

    Posted Sun 29 Jan 2012 12:49PM EST

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    1. Raya

      a kind of subconscious punishment he's inflicting on Saint-George for being a pampered idiot who nonetheless penetrates his defenses with ease

      ...or, perhaps, for trapping him in a relationship he can neither get fully out of nor fully into, and for being the one who has more, yet less to lose. There's *something* aggressive about the way he lets his mask slip -- doffing his "perfect valet" dialect but adopting one that no less forcibly highlights the distance between them ("The Western Front was a bit hotter than this little lot), that simultaneously plays to and protests against S-G's fetishization of that distance. ("Chaps like you *know* how to do things and we don’t"....and that is exactly why you will never have to owe me anything, isn't it, "my" lord.)

      Anyway, it is haunting, like I said.

      Posted Sun 29 Jan 2012 02:05PM EST

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    2. executrix

      I can't even remember why it occurred to *me*--maybe because LPW was one of the few Golden Age detectives to actually have a documented history of heterosexual contacts?--so I thought that Bunter might be attracted to someone who resembled LPW in some ways but was less impossible as a partner. And I think Bunter spends the whole relationship hoping that S-G will just GO AWAY and solve the problems inherent in trying to get involved with someone of a caste so much higher.

      In contrast, Miss Lydgate is of a somewhat higher class that Miss Climpson, but they're both "women men don't see" so it's much less of a problem.

      Posted Sun 29 Jan 2012 04:01PM EST

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