Editing Harriet Vane

{{Short description|Fictional character by Dorothy L. Sayers}}
{{more citations needed|date=December 2020}}
{{Use British English|date=September 2013}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=May 2024}}
{{Infobox character
| name = Harriet Deborah Vane
| first = ''[[Strong Poison]]'' (1930)
| last = ''[[The Late Scholar]]'' (2013)
| creator = [[Dorothy L. Sayers]]
| portrayer = {{Plainlist|
*[[Constance Cummings]] (1940)
*[[Sarah Badel]] (1983)
*[[Harriet Walter]] (1987)
*[[Emily Richard]] (1988)}}
| voice = {{Plainlist|
*[[Anne Bell]] (1976)
*[[Maria Aitken]] (1981)
*[[Joanna David]] (2005)
}}
| occupation = Author of detective stories
| spouse = [[Lord Peter Wimsey]]
| gender = Female
| children = Bredon Wimsey (son)<br />Roger Wimsey (son)<br />Paul Wimsey (son)<br />(possibly two more)
| nationality = British
}}

'''Harriet Deborah Vane''', later '''Lady Peter Wimsey''', is a fictional character in the works of British writer [[Dorothy L. Sayers]] (1893–1957) and the sequels by [[Jill Paton Walsh]].

Vane, a mystery writer, initially meets [[Lord Peter Wimsey]] while she is on trial for poisoning her lover (''[[Strong Poison]]''). The detective falls in love with her and proposes marriage, but she refuses to begin a relationship with him, traumatised as she is by her dead lover's treatment of her and her recent ordeal. In ''[[Have His Carcase]]'', she collaborates with Wimsey to solve a murder but still finds him to be overbearing and superficial. She eventually returns his love (''[[Gaudy Night]]'') and marries him (''[[Busman's Honeymoon]]'').

==Character biography==
Harriet Vane was born in 1903,<ref>Scowcroft, Philip L. “HARRIET VANE’S BIRTHDAY.” Sidelights on Sayers 15 (1985): 16–18. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45305469.</ref> the only daughter of a country doctor. She was an undergraduate at [[Shrewsbury College (fictional)|Shrewsbury College]], [[University of Oxford|Oxford]] (based on Sayers' own [[Somerville College, Oxford|Somerville College]],<ref>[http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3606/Dorothy-L-Sayers.html Somerville Stories – Dorothy L Sayers] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20131005002943/http://www.some.ox.ac.uk/3606/Dorothy-L-Sayers.html |date=5 October 2013 }}, Somerville College, [[University of Oxford]], UK.</ref> the location of which is given as the Balliol College Sports Grounds, now partly occupied by a residential annexe, on Holywell Street) and took a [[British undergraduate degree classification|First]] in English. Her parents both died while she was quite young and she was left to make her own fortune at the age of 23. She has had some success as a writer of detective stories, living and socialising with other artists in [[Bloomsbury]]. She begins a relationship with Philip Boyes, a more literary but far less successful writer who professes not to believe in marriage, and she agrees to live with him without marrying. After a year of this arrangement, Boyes believes that she truly loves him and proposes marriage. Angered by his hypocrisy and aghast at being offered marriage as "a bad-conduct prize", Harriet breaks off the relationship.

Boyes dies soon afterwards of arsenic poisoning&nbsp;– the method Harriet had researched for her new book. She is arrested and tried for murdering Boyes. Wimsey comes to her rescue by proving who really poisoned Boyes.

After Harriet is acquitted, she remains quite notorious. Sales of her books skyrocket. Wimsey continues to pursue her romantically, but Harriet repeatedly declines marriage on the principle that gratitude is not a good basis for it. To relax, she takes a walking tour, during which she finds a corpse on a beach, adding to her notoriety. The press is naturally interested; Wimsey hastens to the scene, after receiving a tip from a journalist friend, to help shield Harriet from suspicion. The two investigate the death (when they are not romantically sparring) and unmask the murderer.

A few years later, in 1935, Harriet returns to her old Oxford college for a reunion (or [[Gaudy]]) and is later asked to investigate some strange occurrences there. She protests that she is not a sleuth, and recommends that the college hire professional detectives. However, failing to reach either [[Miss Climpson]], at the female detective agency set up by Wimsey, or Wimsey himself, she agrees to assist the college. Her cover is research into [[Sheridan Le Fanu]] (in the books spelled ''Lefanu''), an Anglo-Irish writer of Gothic tales and mystery novels of the 19th century. (In ''[[Thrones, Dominations]]'', the Authors' Note – plural, since the novel was finished posthumously by another author – states that Vane published a monograph on Le Fanu in 1946.) After months of unpleasant incidents at the college and with no solution in sight, Harriet turns once again to Wimsey for help. By the end of the book the villain has been discovered and Harriet has finally accepted Wimsey's proposal.

The press is delighted to have a woman once accused of murder engaged to a duke's son, and happily publicises the fact. Wimsey and Vane have a quiet wedding in Oxford with no notice to the press, and escape to their new country residence, Talboys, a Tudor farmhouse in North [[Hertfordshire]] which Harriet had admired as a child and which Peter has given her as a wedding present. The body of the former owner is discovered in the cellar, leading them to investigate.

''[[Thrones, Dominations]]'', a novel abandoned by Sayers and finished by [[Jill Paton Walsh]], is set in and around London, shortly after Wimsey and Vane return from their honeymoon.

The first of their children is born in the story "The Haunted Policeman".

By the time of the short story "Talboys", they have three sons: Bredon Delagardie Peter Wimsey (born in October 1936), Paul Wimsey (born 1938), and Roger Wimsey (born 1940 or 1941).<ref>A Presumption of Death, Ch 1</ref> Chronologically between the two are ''The Wimsey Papers'', a series of [[epistolary novel|epistolary]] articles Sayers wrote for ''The Spectator'' at the beginning of [[World War II]]. Jill Paton Walsh referenced ''The Wimsey Papers'' in writing ''[[A Presumption of Death]]'', set at the beginning of the Second World War, in which Harriet takes a leading role. Sayers told friends orally that Harriet and Peter Wimsey were to have five children in all, though she did not disclose the names and sexes of the two youngest children.<ref>Reynolds (1993), ''p. 340''</ref> However, Paton Walsh did not follow this part of the Sayers heritage, and in her Wimsey books no further children come after the original three.

==Fictional works by Harriet Vane==
The following is a list of works mentioned by Dorothy Sayers and/or Jill Paton Walsh in their novels. The protagonist in most of the books is private sleuth Robert Templeton.

*Blades of Hatred in Chapter 8 of ''The Late Scholar''.
*Curiosity Killed the Cat in chapter 13 of ''Busman’s Honeymoon''. Possibly as a joke.
*Death ‘Twixt Wind and Water in Chapter 11 of ''Gaudy Night''; Chapter 10 of ''Thrones, Dominations'', and Chapter 10 of ''The Late Scholar''.
*Death in the Pot in Chapter 4 of ''A Presumption of Death''.
*The Fountain Pen Mystery in Chapter 1 of ''Have His Carcase''; Chapter 17 of ''The Attenbury Emeralds''; chapter 4 of ''A Presumption of Death''.
*Murder by Degrees in Chapter 1 of ''Have His Carcase''; Chapter 4 of Presumption of Death''; Chapter 9 of ''The Late Scholar''.
*The Sands of Crime in chapter 1 of ''Gaudy Night''.
*Sheridan Le Fanu Monograph in ''Thrones, Dominations'', Author’s Note. In ''Gaudy Night'', its tentative title is given as ''Study of Le Fanu''.
*Three short stories are mentioned in chapter 14 of ''Busman’s Honeymoon''.
*A novel set in Carcassonne and one set in Madrid in the first chapter of ''Have His Carcase''.
*Series of short stories set in Berlin in the first chapter of ''Have His Carcase''.

==Influences==
Sayers consciously modelled Vane on herself, although perhaps not as closely as her fans (and even friends) sometimes thought. Some view Vane as a stand-in for the author, although Vane has many more faults than [[Self-insertion|most such characters]].

Sayers was among the first generation of women to receive an Oxford education, graduating BA with first-class honours in 1915 and as an [[Master of Arts (Oxbridge and Dublin)|MA]] in 1920. She gave Harriet Vane, too, an Oxford education. Vane's relationship with Boyes has many similarities with Sayers' love affair (1921–1922) with the author [[John Cournos]] (1881–1966), a Russian-born American Jew.<ref>{{Cite web |last=caroline |date=2020-06-10 |title=Dorothy's Secret Transcript |url=https://shedunnitshow.com/dorothyssecrettranscript/ |access-date=2024-01-14 |website=Shedunnit |language=en-GB}}</ref>

Biographers note that Sayers' later relationship with Bill White and her marriage to the fellow writer Oswald Atherton "Mac" Fleming provide grist for Vane's struggle to balance love (and perhaps marriage to Wimsey) and her work. After Sayers' affairs with Cournos and White were revealed, the comparisons between Sayers and Vane became more emphatic. (Neither of these affairs was publicly known during Sayers' lifetime.)

McGregor and Lewis suggest that some of Vane's and Wimsey's observations about mystery in story versus real life – though in the context of a mystery story – reflect Sayers' sense of fun and ability to laugh with her characters.

==Bibliography==
===Books by Dorothy L. Sayers===
* ''[[Strong Poison]]'' (1930)
* ''[[Have His Carcase]]'' (1932)
* ''[[Gaudy Night]]'' (1936)
* ''[[Busman's Honeymoon]]'' (1937) (As Lady Peter Wimsey)
* ''[[In the Teeth of the Evidence]]'' (1939) (editions published after 1942 usually add ''Talboys'', the last story Sayers wrote to feature Lord and Lady Peter Wimsey)

===Books by Jill Paton Walsh===
* ''[[Thrones, Dominations]]'' (1998) by Dorothy L. Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh (as Lady Peter Wimsey)
* ''[[A Presumption of Death]]'' (2002) by Jill Paton Walsh (as Lady Peter Wimsey)
* ''[[The Attenbury Emeralds]]'' (2010) by Jill Paton Walsh (as Lady Peter Wimsey)
* ''[[The Late Scholar]]'' (2013) by Jill Paton Walsh (as Duchess of Denver)

==Portrayal in film, TV or theatre==
Harriet Vane was portrayed by [[Constance Cummings]] in a 1940 film adaptation of ''[[Busman's Honeymoon (film)|Busman's Honeymoon]]'' (US: ''The Haunted Honeymoon''), with [[Robert Montgomery (actor)|Robert Montgomery]] as Peter Wimsey. However, the film bore little resemblance to Sayers' writing, and she refused to see it. Vane was voiced by [[Sarah Badel]] in a BBC Radio 4 serialization of 'Busman's Honeymoon' in 1983 and was played by [[Harriet Walter]] in the 1987 [[BBC]] television adaptations of ''Strong Poison'', ''Have his Carcase'' and ''Gaudy Night'' and by [[Emily Richard]] in the 1988 stage adaptation of ''Busman's Honeymoon'' at The Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith. In a 2005 BBC audio production of ''Gaudy Night'', Harriet Vane was played by [[Joanna David]].

==References==
;Citations
{{Reflist}}

;Bibliography
*{{cite book|first=Barbara|last= Reynolds|title=Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul|year=1998|publisher=Sceptre|isbn=978-0-340-72845-1|authorlink=Barbara Reynolds}}
*{{cite book|author1=Robert Kuhn McGregor|author2=Ethan Lewis|title=Conundrums for the Long Week-end: England, Dorothy L. Sayers, and Lord Peter Wimsey|date=January 2000|publisher=Kent State University Press|isbn=978-0-87338-665-4}}
* [[James Brabazon]] (1981) ''Dorothy L. Sayers: A Biography''
* [https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007jvn6 Strong Poison] - Ian Carmichael stars in the BBC's 1976 series

{{Lord Peter Wimsey}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Vane, Harriet}}
[[Category:Characters of the Golden Age of Detective Fiction]]
[[Category:Fictional writers]]
[[Category:Dorothy L. Sayers characters]]
[[Category:Female characters in literature]]
[[Category:Literary characters introduced in 1930]]
[[Category:Lord Peter Wimsey]]