When we go to Heaven all I ask is that we shall be given some interesting job and allowed to get on with it. No management; no box-office; no dramatic critics; and an audience of cheerful angels who don’t mind laughing. – Dorothy L. Sayers
I did not immediately love the work of Dorothy L. Sayers. I tend to read detective novels as escapist fiction, and Sayers’ stories are often too sophisticated for that. Too many epigraphs by Shakespeare, Spencer, and other long-dead male writers; complex characters who represent various classes of modern Britain after WWI and quote Latin, French, or speak with a broad Cockney accent; plots and settings about spinsters, war veterans, churches, bell ringing, and advertising, to mention just a few. But as I was exposed to more of her work, to the range of genres in which she wrote and excelled – poetry, plays, radio dramas, Christian apologetics, and even translations, I became enamored. Her work began to speak to me, here, now. If you would ask me today, I would have much to say about why I read Sayers, but I will keep it simple: she’s smart; she’s funny; she’s relevant.
To say that Dorothy L. Sayers is smart is akin to commenting on the capability of a neuroscientist. As the precocious daughter of a clergyman, Dorothy began to study Latin at the age of six. As a child she read widely in English and French, wrote and acted out plays and stories, and generally excelled in creative efforts and academics. After graduation from secondary school, Sayers attended Somerville College in Oxford, England (1912-1915), at a time when women’s post-secondary programs were in development. Colleges for women, which included the same curriculum as comparable ones for men, were not yet granting degrees, but this did not stop Sayers from pursuing her studies in modern languages and medieval literature, even though she was not granted her master’s degree until 1920. As a founding member of the Mutual Admiration Society, Sayers joined several classmates as writers who would critique one another’s work, which set her on a path of writing that would guide her life. That path was not an easy one, and in her early twenties she lived as a single woman in poverty after WWI. This reality, and her lack of interest in applying herself to teaching, led her to accept a job in London in advertising – a field in which she worked successfully for nine years – and she began to write detective novels to subsidize her income.[i] Those detective novels brought unexpected fame to Sayers and created other opportunities for her, such as writing a play in 1937 for performance at the Canterbury Cathedral.
In accepting the invitation to follow in the footsteps of T.S. Eliot and Charles Williams, who also wrote plays for the Canterbury Festival, Sayers took a risk that changed the direction of her life. Her play, The Zeal of Thy House, was a success, which resulted in Sayers’ public statement of her endorsement of the Christian faith and ultimately her foray into apologetics. As if this was not enough, Sayers returned to her interest in languages and translation. When she was approached by the BBC in 1940 to write a twelve-play cycle on the life of Jesus Christ for radio, Sayers embarked on a plan to translate the gospels from the original Greek to capture the nuances of the language and the accounts of Jesus’ life as described by his disciples. Much of the language in The Man Born to Be King is from her direct translations, but she took things one step further by using “set stories” from the gospel accounts and adding her own dramatic flourishes, such as giving the apostles and the Roman soldiers accents that the British public would recognize and using slang terms to add realism to the dialogue. Although Sayers’ approach created an uproar among Christians in Britain – enough that thousands of people wrote letters of disapproval, urging Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the BBC to keep the plays off the air – she (and the BBC) did not back down and The Man Born to Be King ultimately told the gospel story to millions of inspired listeners.[ii] Then, in 1943, Sayers, now an established public intellectual, became obsessed with studying and translating Dante’s Divine Comedy for Penguin Books, and she taught herself Italian in order to translate from the original. For the next thirteen years until her death, she devoted herself to translating and giving lectures about the work. Significantly, her translations are still available as Penguin Classics over seventy years later. Sayers’ ability to write across genres, despite criticism and sometimes indifference, demonstrates her intellectual ability and conviction. Yet, what stands out to me is her ability to do this work with great wit and humor.
Did I mention that Sayers is funny? She is often compared to Jane Austen for her humourous depictions of British culture and manners. Beginning in her first detective novel, Sayers uses humor to depict her hero, Peter Wimsey. This can be seen in a brief description of Wimsey’s thoughts after hearing about the discovery of a dead body in a bathtub and deciding to visit the site of the murder: “Can I have the heart to fluster the flustered Thipps further – that’s very difficult to say quickly – by appearing in a top-hat and frock-coat? I think not. Ten to one he will overlook my trousers and mistake me for the undertaker.”[iii] Sayers’ depiction of Wimsey as a priggish aristocrat “with the golden pince-nez” who has a hobby of detecting, develops throughout her series of novels and informs some of the funniest aspects of her stories.
However, it is in Sayers’ two essays on gender, “Are Women Human?” and “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,” that Sayers combines both wit and intellect to demonstrate that her arguments are still relevant. The subject of gender and its relationship to work is explored both theologically and socially in these essays, demonstrating Sayers’ ability to engage in a multi-layered approach to controversial topics. In one example, Sayers identifies the problem of women being assessed in terms of maleness or femaleness, rather than as part of the “class” of human beings. After criticizing the ways in which society has turned men into employers and women into employees doing jobs that were typically shared, Sayers furthers her argument by writing about how a man might be described if treated as women typically are:
If he gave an interview to a reporter, or performed any unusual exploit, he would find it recorded in such terms as these: “Professor Bract, although a distinguished botanist, is not in any way an unmanly man. He has in fact, a wife and seven children. Tall and burly, the hands with which he handles his delicate specimens are as gnarled and powerful as those of a Canadian lumberjack, and when I swilled beer with him in his laboratory, he bawled his conclusions at me in a strong, gruff voice that implemented the promise of his swaggering moustache.[iv]
Sayers was often the subject of descriptions based on her appearance rather than her abilities. Like Professor Bract, she was described according to her societal role (wife and mother), her appearance (a masculine-looking, overweight smoker who liked motorcycles), and her demeanor (opinionated, assertive, even sour), rather than by her significant accomplishments. It is no wonder that she turned to humor to describe the relationships between men and women. As someone who endured poverty and illness, who financially supported her family in the face of great difficulty, and who worked in the male-dominated fields of advertising, novel writing, and apologetics, Sayers demonstrated throughout her life that her remarkable commitment to doing her work to the glory of God, in defiance of the social mores of her times, was an opportunity to worship God. In her essay, “Why Work?” Sayers argues that all human beings need meaningful work:
Work is not, primarily, a thing one does to live, but the thing one lives to do. It is, or it should be, the full expression of the worker’s faculties, the thing in which he finds spiritual, mental, and bodily satisfaction, and the medium in which he offers himself to God.[v]
She continues to elaborate on the subject in “Are Women Human?” using humor to emphasize the value of both genders. Sayers asserts that “Every woman is a human being – one cannot repeat that too often—and a human being must have occupation, if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world”; and she goes on to ask, “Are women really not human, that they should be expected to toddle along all in a flock like sheep?”[vi] In other words, are women human beings, or are they simply animals, following prescribed behaviors? Sayers argues that, no, we must allow the individual who can do the job best to have the opportunity to do so, and she gives several examples of why women, like men, need occupation. What can be more relevant in current times than a discussion of the value of good work, the theology of work as a form of worship, and the importance of recognizing all human beings for their contributions? The recent engagement of many scholars with Sayers’ work is a testament to its ongoing relevance.
Closely reading Sayers reveals her intelligence, her humor, and her relevance in contemporary discussions about all manner of subjects. Her observations about the society and culture of her time and place (especially Britain between the two world wars), and her clear and emphatic arguments about gender, work, war, theology, and even injustice or immorality, demonstrate the depth and complexity of her writing. That she is able to do this in a way that is engaging and funny, and that demonstrates her gregarious approach to life, proves that her work continues to speak. If you have not recently picked up a book by Dorothy L. Sayers, I urge you to find one and read it.
Jan Lermitte teaches in the English department at Trinity Western University in Langley, British Columbia and in the BA Leadership program for TWU GLOBAL. She is also a member of the Inklings Institute of Canada. Jan’s teaching and research focus on contemporary Canadian literary studies, with emphasis on depictions of Canadian involvement in WWI, especially by women and Indigenous Peoples. Her work on Sayers finds its home in the intersection between war and gender writing.
[i] Many biographies have been written about Sayers, but one that is both exhaustive and compassionate is that of Barbara Reynolds, who knew Sayers and edited a collection of her letters. See Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993).
[ii]For a full discussion see Crystal Downing, Subversive: Christ, Culture, and the Shocking Dorothy L. Sayers (Minneapolis: Broadleaf Books,2020), and Mary Ellen Ashcroft, “When the Incarnation Came to the BBC.” Christianity Today, Dec. 14, 1992. P. 14-16.
[iii] Dorothy L. Sayers, Whose Body? (New York: Vintage, 2019), 6.
[iv] Dorothy Sayers, “The Human-Not-Quite-Human,” in Are Women Human? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 58-59.
[v] Dorothy Sayers, “Why Work?” in Creed or Chaos? and other Essays in Popular Theology (London: Methuen, 1947) 134.[vi] Dorothy Sayers, “Are Women Human?” in Are Women Human? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 33,43.