Taller wrote: I think the point that you were originally making is that when she says 'no', she might really mean 'no'!
The world seems obseesed with rape and sexual abuse at the moment! I don't remember the 'rape' scene in one of the books. The shower scene in the film Thunderball arguably involves some coercion but, in the book, he actually seduces the therapist, over a meal, after he leaves the clinic. The Wimsey books are in the realm of literature; involving carefully defined characters; the Bond books are just ripping yarns and need to be seen in that light, as well as in the light of the behaviour of the age in which they were written. Moreover, I guess that, according to the strict moral code of any age, say the bed-hopping in OHMSS is oprobrious but Bond is never put forward as an icon of moral probity - after all his job is killing people! The books and the films were intended just as entertainment, in the realm of phantasy fiction.
NJS
NJS,
I was trying to juggle two cones here: 1) the then popular false myth among a certain kind of men that when a woman says no, she's not serious; and 2) the elegant and lighthearted theory from which the abominable false theory was mistakenly condensed. (I'm guessing here, of course. But it seems plausible.
)
And you're right: the world is obsessed with all kinds of sexual abuse right now. On the other hand: James Bond would nowadays not even dream of a roll in the hay à la
Goldfinger as a demonstration of his cool. Which is a positive development, no?
I am delighted you consider the Wimsey novels to be literature - the official verdict is: detective novels are no good, by definition. I thoroughly enjoyed them. And they certainly had a positive influence on my development as an adolescent, and beyond.
Unfortunately, the author apparently had no clue about male clothing - the only thing I can now remember her writing about Wimsey's clothes is his lordship entertaining some ladies at a dinner table by making popping sounds with his stiff shirt-front, in a hilarious demonstration of one of the pitfalls of classic dinner attire...
.
Bart
The Goldfinger roll in the hay was, actually, drawn out of Fleming's own phantasy of 'converting' a lesbian - as, both in the book and the film, Pussy Galore and her flying circus of female aviators are lesbians. It is not a very right-on, modern concept but, perhaps, Fleming was not alone in wishing to rise to the challenge. Bond, nowadays, certainly since Quantum of Solace, does not remotely derive from any Fleming writing and will (note that he no longer smokes) more and more conform to modern norms of behaviour and expectations and, in the process, will become more and more removed from the outsider-Bond of the books; despite the Eton education, the book-Bond was something of an outsider, a loner and an odd-ball. He was also given to sentimental introspection and doubt over his life (albeit he dismissed such thoughts impatiently - e.g. see the beginning of the novel OHMSS).
Dorothy L Sayers was a brilliant (if rather bohemian) academic. She also wrote on theological themes and translated Dante. She seems to have written the Wimsey books as personal escapism and to make some dough. I guess that she largely leaves us to see Wimsey dressed as we should expect him to be dressed. However, returning to the theme of gentlemanliness regarding women - even Wimsey, in his youth, kept a mistress in Paris and, not at all as a soul-mate! The theme is returned to in Clouds of Witness - Cathcart and his Parisian mistress and Denver himself and the farmer's wife. Indeed it is (married) Denver's refusal to bring his married mistress's name into the matter that, effectively, lands him on trial for murder before the House of Lords. As I say, the mores of each age are different in relation to these matters and it is a complicated business to assess Mars and Venus in any age let alone one that is quite far-removed from our own.
ll very complicated. If a modern man pursued his intended mate as assiduously as the last Czar of the Russias had pursued his eventual Czarina, he would probably end up being subject to an injunction against molestation. But the human race needs to survive!
NJS
Perhaps it had to affirm the then popular myth of "if a girls says no, she means yes"?*
) but to a visiting academic (maybe even a 
