Harriet Vane - Influences

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 most such characters.

Sayers was among the first generation of women to receive an Oxford education, ending with a first-class honours in 1915 and graduating in 1920 as an MA. 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.

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.