A final common ground is what I will call moral attitudes. From “Other Women Novelists of the Time – A Comparison” in Diane McFarlan’s book Delicious Prose (page 122-123) I quote:

 “Two fellow Scotswomen I find particularly interesting to compare with Angela Thirkell. I compare them not because the two wrote often about English people in an English county -…- but because they too impose their strong opinions and standards on the reader with hidden force and persuasiveness equal to that of Mrs. Thirkell. The first is the ‘mistress of the light novel’ Dorothy Emily Peploe who wrote under her maiden name D. E. Stevenson. How deceptive is her simple style and her apparently ordinary stories. In nearly forty novels, not all of equal strength, she tells extremely interesting tales of relatively ordinary people in England or Scotland. In these she puts over with an assurance equal to that of Mrs. Thirkell the excellent standards of the Scottish gentlewoman and persuades one to her own opinions of goodness and badness. Her plots are always as interesting as her characters and they are described with a statement of facts that looks naïve but is really a very subtle form of setting the scene. In this they resemble Mrs. Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels, but neither writer influenced each other in the very least, if they ever read each other’s works. The resemblance is in the imposition of the writer’s standards upon the reader; in the case of D. E. Stevenson particularly it is morality without tears or effort. One can truly say that the pleasure she has given to countless readers equals that supplied over the same years by the Barsetshire novels; and that both ladies had the same supreme confidence in the way they were brought up and in the standards they uphold.”

While both Stevenson and Thirkell were firmly upholding similar standards, there were some differences. For example, Thirkell’s characters make their feelings plain on many issues, including the war, the government, servants, development and “progress”. Stevenson’s characters often have similar thoughts, but their reticence doesn’t usually allow them to express their feelings in the same way.

Stevenson’s characters think about the needs and feelings of others a bit more.  For example, in the end of Listening Valley, published in 1944, the heroine worries not only about the fighter pilot to whom she has just become engaged, but also about all the splendid men on both sides who were being killed each day and the wives and mothers who would ‘carry hearts of lead’ on their account.  It is hard to imagine one of Thirkell’s characters voicing such concerns.

After her detective novels Dorothy L. Sayers directly addressed moral issues in her religious plays and writings. However, a close reading of her detective fiction shows that she also imposed a moral framework on the world she created here. To quote from The Remarkable Case of Dorothy L. Sayers, page 192:

“Moral fiction – that is, fiction that probes the meaning of good and evil – is not limited to writers with a clearly religious slant, of course. A writer can be interested in exploring what constitutes moral action without reference to a supreme arbiter outside of human experience. In the case of Dorothy L. Sayers, however, her fiction is informed by Christian assumptions about sin and salvation, guilt and responsibility, and the implied definition of right conduct that emerges in her created world reflects the Christian dogma she accepted as the essential truth of the universe.”

The careful reader of Heyer’s period romances will find that they are set in a world with its own moral values and views of what constitutes proper behaviour – a blend of those Heyer grew up with in early 20th century England and those she found in her researching into history. From The Private World of Georgette Heyer, page 49 I quote:

“She must have recognized this problem at an early stage and solved it brilliantly by retreating into her private Regency world, which had snobbery built in, historical and therefore respectable. We are all snobs of some kind, and it is comfortable to find oneself in a world where the rules are so clearly established, where privilege and duty go hand in hand, and a terrible mockery awaits anyone who takes advantage of position. This is a world, like that of Shakespeare’s comedies, where laughter is the touchstone and the purifier, where exposure to the mockery of one’s equals is punishment enough equally for Montagu Revesby in Friday’s Child or Parolles in All’s Well that Ends Well.”

This, then may be one major underlying assumption common to all four writers works: a good “proper” gentleman (or gentlewoman) has obligations and these must be carried out, by their protagonists. Is this sense of responsibility lacking in much modern fiction?
 

next  page	page 1
Talk Bibliography	page 2
Booklist	page 3