‘I suppose I’ve never been really right since the war’: Traumatised Masculinities in Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey Novels

Abstract

The shell-shocked ex-serviceman was a controversial and troubling figure in interwar society. While the soldier was an ideal of masculinity in the Victorian and Edwardian eras, post-World War One, the presence of the wounded soldier questioned and challenged the authority and reliability of this masculine ideal. Dorothy L. Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels explore the gendered tensions pervading through interwar society by placing a vulnerable and shell-shocked soldier detective at the forefront of their narratives. Through the perceived stability and generic reliability of the detective genre, Sayers critiques post-war attitudes to wounded ex-servicemen and details the impacts of the war and mental illness on concepts of masculinity, gender norms and the domestic space. Closely analysing the shell-shocked Wimsey in relation to performativity, employment and marriage, the article reveals an anxious and divided society that acknowledges the wounded soldier and a loss of pre-war gender norms but is ill-equipped and reticent to address the lasting and gendered impacts of industrial war.