Maybe my favorite thing about the whole Harriet and Peter romance in Gaudy Night is this.
Harriet's spent an entire book wondering how one could possibly reconcile a life of the mind and a life of the heart, because it seems like your only options are to give yourself over to passionate emotions that destroy your mind, or to retreat into an emotionless intellectual life that withers the heart.
Both seem dangerous because on the one hand, she suspected that the lonely intellectual life could drive someone insane, but what drove someone insane in this case was focusing on emotions to the exclusion of all rational thought. She can't choose either, but can't see a way to have both.
Then in the final moment before Peter's final marriage proposal, they go to a concert. Not just a concert, but a duet. Two musicians working in counterpoint--playing individual tunes that weave perfectly into one complete song.
To the appreciative Peter, music is
ravishing heart and mind together.
And here's the solution. The perfect analogy. In music, the heart and mind aren't opposites, but partners. Emotion turns the orderly and intellectual into something beautiful. Order elevates emotion into something sublime. You don't have to cut out all passion or give it free rein--you can control it. You don't have to suppress the mind to experience passion--knowledge can enhance the passion.
As a romantic analogy, it goes even further, because music can be played by two people in different ways. They can be individuals whose melodies entwine into counterpoint. One person's melody can be supported by the other's harmony. Neither one is necessarily better or worse--it's a matter of taste. Which do you prefer? Which can you best play, best appreciate?
Harriet didn't have to reject marriage because of some bad examples of marriage, just as she doesn't have to reject all music because bad songs exist. What matters is this particular person, this particular song. Can she and Peter work together to make something she finds beautiful?
That's why it's so perfect that the very next thing Peter does is make his final proposal. Only moments before, Harriet found the solution to her intellectual problem. Now, at last, can she love Peter with her heart and her mind.
