The Seven Deadly Sins in the Work of Dorothy L. Sayers

The impact of Dorothy L. Sayers's work is powerful one. She was a gifted artist who worked in many genres and addressed many issues, but her achievement goes beyond creative skill and variety of range. What she consistently communicates about Sin -- the basic problem of human existence -- provides a core of content which evokes, as she believed artistic work should, a spiritual "response in the lively soul" (The Zeal of Thy House).

Janice Brown examines Sayers's major works, beginning with her early poetry and moving through her works of fiction to the dramas, essays, and lectures written in the last years of her life. She illustrates how Sayers used popular genres to teach about sin and redemption, how she redefined the Seven Deadly Sins for the twentieth century, why she stopped writing mysteries, and her application of the concepts of sin and redemption to society as a whole. She also considers the relationship between Sayers's spiritual life and her work and traces Lord Peter Wimsey's change from worldliness to something approaching Christianity.

In Sayers's earlier work, particularly her fiction, the concept of the Seven Deadly Sins provides part of the background for her characterization, which is based on a Christian view of humanity as "fallen". In these works, Sayers considered the worst Sins to be the spiritual, or cold-hearted ones, particularly Pride (the root of all others) and Envy. In the dramatic and discursive works of her later years she is more direct and didactic; the Sin of Sloth becomes a major theme in this period.