Like the clever and witty character developments in her detective fiction, Dorothy L. Sayers's life unfolds only with careful sleuthing. Nothing integral to the plot is uncovered easily. Sayers's fiction, theology, and daily life left little room for the mundane and meandering.
Born in 1893 at Oxford to a clergy family, Dorothy L. Sayers lived through the mad destruction of two world wars. A contemporary of C.S. Lewis and Charles Williams, she was one of the first women to receive a degree from Oxford University, and this she achieved with scholastic honors. Later, disproving criticisms that the detective writer was no longer an academic, she translated Dante's Divine Comedy into accessible and entertaining English.
Obviously, the woman initially famous for creating Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane still holds the curiosity of many. To commemorate the centennial year of her birth, two new biographies have been written. Alzina Stone Dale titles her biography Maker & Craftsman: The Story of Dorothy L. Sayers and David Coomes calls his Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life. As the titles suggest, these biographers differ in how they approach the significant influences and features of D.L. Sayers' life.
Compensating for previous attention given Sayers's fictional writings and her preponderance for good food, intellectual conversation, and eccentricity, her Christian beliefs predominate in the books. Both Coomes and Dale discuss how these beliefs influenced all her writings and how they affected her daily life.
Dale adapts her title from a verse found in a memorial to Sayers: "Praise him that he hath made man in his own image, a maker and craftsman like himself." It is the verse that Sayers used as the crux in her drama "The Zeal of Thy House." Dale feels that it is within this play that her religious and creative aesthetic begins to work itself out.
William of Sens, the protagonist of "Zeal," when asked to rebuild a cathedral choir section, allows his pride to place him as equal and indispensable to God. Consequently he falls. It is only through this inevitability that he learns to understand himself and his work in relation to God: "That the integrity of the work can redeem personal weakness and vanity." As a woman noted for protecting her privacy, Sayers saw in her religious writing a certain salvific process taking place. Being aware of her own flaws and people's propensity to gossip, she did not like personal questions, only those related to her work.
In the book postscript, Dale describes Sayers as a "woman for all seasons," derived from her ability to adapt to a variety of genres and social circumstances. Although she typified the middle-upper class privilege and the robust severity of the intellectual, Sayers was a radical woman.
However, Dale's chronological portrayal limits the treatment of some of these important factors. Dale only briefly mentions Sayers' notions on women's issues, for instance. Feminists presumed upon her advocacy because she wore men's clothing and retained her own name for professional reasons after her marriage. In this context, Sayers wanted to distinguish herself from the tendency to impose mutually exclusive responses upon the genders. For example, in her essay "Are Women Human?" she sought to show that all people are individuals and that the mystery of their interactions is not due to gender, but to the overall complexity of what it means to be human.
Dale does little to contrast the public and private Sayers. Sayers could be opinionated and demanding as well as intensely loyal and companionable. Strangely, Dale provides minimal clues as to why few of her friends knew she had a son out of wedlock or out of what spiritual struggles her art arose. Why? The extraordinary essence of Dorothy L. Sayers remains an unsolved mystery.
IN CONTRAST, DAVID Coomes quotes liberally from Dorothy L. Sayers' writings. Dale, in her attempt to be fair to the work of Sayers, fails to give blood to her skeleton. Coomes takes his subtitle, A Careless Rage for Life, from her own description about how life should be lived. But he shows that she was far from careless.
Her clerical father's influence was extensive, and her knowledge of the Bible was as far-reaching as her knowledge of literature. What Coomes' research details is a life that constantly struggled with personal realities and the church's watering down of Christian dogma. She was amazed at the inattention given to the drama existent within Christianity.
D.L. Sayers sought a tangible solution to this malaise. Plays became a comprehensive vehicle capable of giving contemporary meaning to the life of Christ through innovative and provocative illustrations. Christian dogma was not relegated to the realm of flabby intellects. Instead she saw in dogma "the greatest drama ever to have staggered the imagination of man [sic]."
The church's constrictive deference to tradition completely neglected the drama staring at it out of the creeds. Jesus was not some gentle-voiced pacifier, but a person who insulted the Pharisees and met with prostitutes. Sayers wanted people to realize the great relevance the story of Jesus had for their time. Christianity was intellectually and practically tenable for all.
Coomes allows Sayers' diverse writings to show the conflict between the awareness of her own fallibility and the need to rigorously apply her standards to others. Often she was a volatile mixture. Sayers hardly epitomizes the saintly woman, but rather a person endeavoring to find the most appropriate expression of her beliefs, while still cognizant of her own limitations.
Catherine Olson was receptionist of Sojourners when this review appeared.
Dorothy L. Sayers: A Careless Rage for Life. By David Coomes. Lion Publishing, 1992, $19.95, cloth.
Maker & Craftsman: The Story of Dorothy L. Sayers. By Alzina Stone Dale. Harold Shaw Publishers, 1992. $12.95, paper.
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