Sayers Part II

 Dorothy Sayers went to Godolphin School, where she studied until she went to Oxford.  She had mixed feelings about school.  She had never been away from home, or her parents and had usually mixed with older people.  The school had an emphasis on academic subjects but there were also games, which she enjoyed less. She had always loved music, writing and drama and at home had acted out scenes from her favourite novels including Dumas' Three Musketeers, and at school, she developed an even greater love of music, including singing and took part in plays and school entertainments.  She was good at languages and seemed as if she would end up as a teacher or a college lecturer. 

She made friends and kept in touch with her younger relatives by letter.  However she had some health problems and in her last year, got seriously ill and had to go home.. taking her final exams after she had left and been tutored by letter, by her teachers.  She had grown rather tired of the restrictions of school life, and noted that "everyone thought she loved school but she hated it"... 

After leaving school, she got a scholarship to Oxford, which she was to love much more than her school....

Sayers enjoyed her life at Oxford very much.  She was studying languages and she not only wrote poetry of her own but also translated works into different languages for enjoyment.  She made many women friends at Somerville College, many of whom also became writers and she remained friends with some of them for her life.  She also took part in musical activities and in acting.  The young women at Oxford were somewhat restricted in their social lives, much more so than male undergraduates.  They were new to the college, and it was expected that they would conform to almost Victorian standards of propriety, in order to win the approval of male dons and academic men in general.  It was felt that learning made women unfeminine or even immoral but the girls seemed to accept their probationary status with good humour, rather than resenting it too much.  Dorothy would later say that the restrictions of undergraduate life for young women meant that they didnt learn much about men and were inexperienced when going out into the wider world.. but while at college she seems to have been happy enough with her life.