It's a good thing Sayers was not too empatic about character development! What we have here is another case of a character being written by an author of the other gender--- and one asks how masculine a man a woman can write, or how feminine a gal a guy can write. In the case of the Fairy, she is
supposed to be butchy, but Lord Peter on the other hand is only supposed to be a fop. Fairy works, as a character. Lord Peter's all right, but not so great beyond his detective role. Perhaps in Miss Hardcastle, Lewis was consciously cashing in on (or parodying) this writer/character disparity.
The two worst cases I can think of are (on the woman-authors' side)
Little Lord Fauntleroy--- gag me with cute!--- and on the Guys-write-Dolls side a short story in the latest
Ellory Queen Mystery Magazine called "Chick Sweeny to the Rescue". In this one the narrator says of an elderly friend "her grandson and I are lovers"--- and it isn't until halfway through the story that we're actually
introduced to the speaker
as a woman! The preceeding narrative is too masculine, however, so all you can do is hope his homosexuality doesn't actually come
into the story. What?
It's a woman? You could have told me that earlier, don't you think?! :shocked:
Oh well.
False ideas may be refuted indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled. — Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Cardinal Newman
Freedom lost and then regained bites with deeper fangs than freedom never in danger. — Cicero
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. — Ray Bradbury