Lord Peter Wimsey

A naturalist tragedy

“The critics greeted this book with a churlish and horrified outcry. Certain virtuous people, in newspapers no less virtuous, made a grimace of disgust as they picked it up with the tongs to throw it into the fire. Even the minor literary reviews, the ones that retail nightly the tittle-tattle from alcoves and private rooms, held their noses and talked of filth and stench. I am not complaining about this reception; on the contrary I am delighted to observe that my colleagues have such maidenly susceptibilities.”

This is what Zola wrote after the publication of his first literary success, Thérèse Raquin. He probably knew how the book would be greeted, as it is the first real example of literary naturalism, a new movement he instigated and promoted towards the end of the 19th century. Naturalism in literature followed realism, both rejecting romanticism but naturalism adding a dose of determinism and physiologic science (very popular at the time) to the empiricism of the realistic approach. Characters in a novel were to be put through an experiment and studied as phenomena, with every moral appreciation removed. As Zola would precise, he was most interested in their respective temperaments and how it determined their lives, a look at human nature that would enlighten and disturb his readers at the same time (human nature always interestingly compared with the animal world in many Zola’s books). That kind of writing is never easy or pleasant, and it is taken to extreme heights in Thérèse Raquin.

The story is simple. Thérèse is made an orphan when her father abandons her as a baby to his sister Mme Raquin. The good but very anxious woman raises her as her own, alongside her sickly son Camille. Thérèse’s nature is wild and free, but she is forced to live the life of her weakly cousin, always exaggeratedly pampered by Mme Raquin, even taking the same medicine as him. Not taking chances with possible intruders to their little circle, Mme Raquin marries Thérèse to Camille. Her son, spoiled and selfish, decides he wants an administrative career in Paris and the whole family leaves green Normandy to move to a dark and humid little passage near the banks of the Seine. Life is dull, repetitive, stifling, until Thérèse meets Camille’s sanguine friend Laurent. An affair develops, and a crime is planned and executed, flinging the two lovers into a merciless spiral towards folly.

I can safely say I have never read anything so raw and so disturbing. The atmosphere is claustrophobic and menacing. It is painful to read but at the same time hard to put down. The characters are all very selfish and exasperating, but mostly because Zola manages to create a good portrait (and critique) of the suffocating social conventions of the late 19th century, and a really good exposé on how environment (economic or natural) shapes human beings and their actions. Even if a lot has changed today, some of it remains valid. Of course, from a modern perspective, I’m not sure that life is as fatalistic as Zola and many of his contemporaries saw it, or that our humours and natures are so deterministic in our choices. But reading this book is uncomfortable because we do recognise parts of ourselves in Thérèse, in Laurent and Camille, or even in the cat François. It is chilling to the bone. Don’t read it if you are depressed. Also, crime doesn’t pay.

Thérèse Raquin by Emile Zola
Penguin Classics, UK, 2004
240 pages

Unpleasantnesses Galore

It is the season for mysteries, right? So I needed a mood pick-me-up after the depressing Thérèse Raquin. I turned to dear Dorothy again, and the 4th Peter Wimsey mystery, The Unpleasantness at the Bellona Club. Published in 1928, it is a bit already above in quality compared to the 3rd book in the series, which I reviewed recently. It is moodier, trickier, more delicate, and most importantly, more plausible. Those who have read them all assure me that every instalment is an improvement on the other. So I’m really looking forward to slowly discover her work.

“Yes, and look at the corpses. Place always reminds me of that old thing in Punch, you know—‘Waiter, take away Lord Whatsisname, he’s been dead two days.’ Look at Old Ormsby there, snoring”

When old General Fentiman dies suddenly on Armistice Day at his club, the Bellona, it is not so much a shock as an unpleasantness. A veteran of the Crimean War, he was really lucky just to have lived such a long and fulfilled life, considering everything. Another member of the Bellona, our aristocratic sleuth Lord Peter Wimsey, still finds something odd with the old boy’s departure to the Almighty. All the more so as it seems the General had a very rich estranged old sister who died approximately at the same time, after both had finally met again and reconciled. The coincidence would simply be an emotional denouement if the old sister hadn’t left a very specific and annoying will. Who of the two died first? The answer to that question is half a million pounds. Wimsey and his Scotland Yard friend Parker are drawn into a merry-go-round of disappointed grandsons, efficient solicitors and butlers, and would-be chance heiresses of the artistic type. Astonishing discoveries follow each other until the rather unorthodox ending.

This book is not only about a mystery. It is a collection of people trying to avoid unpleasantnesses of all kind and is thus a great critique of British society in the 1920s. I love the way Sayers weaves social comment into the story: the difficult aftermath of WWI, the new position of women, the sometimes ridiculous provisions of British inheritance laws (a recurring theme), the class divisions. This is what really makes me like Sayers, the entertainment mixed with passages of great analyses disguised as matter of fact conversations and jabs. Lord Wimsey is now a more developed character. He is multifaceted, witty and even tender at times. A man who, despite his high position in life, never looses touch with reality and the vagaries of the human condition. Other characters are more rounded as well, with their strengths and weaknesses shown throughout, and with many allusions to their sexual lives, their psychological hardships, and sometimes their greediness and neediness.