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• In Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey proposes to Harriet Vane in Latin. What does "Placetne, magistra?" mean?

Q. In Gaudy Night, Lord Peter Wimsey proposes to Harriet Vane in Latin. What does "Placetne, magistra?" mean? And what about Harriet's reply, "Placet."?
A. The following explanation is courtesy of Sara Bowen:

The point of the proposal language is not the Latin but the Oxford context. As Barbara Reynolds writes in her 1993 biography, Dorothy L. Sayers: Her Life and Soul, Dorothy wrote her friend Catherine Godfrey in 1913 about getting tickets for the degree-granting ceremony at Oxford. She noted that the format called for the Vice-Chancellor to address all the assembled Oxonian doctors "in a sing-song little speech, beginning something about 'Does it please you doctors of the University that so-and-so should be admitted to such-and-such a degree -- placet-ne?' and then he took off his cap; then said 'placet' without leaving time for anyone to make an objection if he wanted to, and put it on again."

And of course, Sayers herself was one of the first group of women to be given the title of Oxford magistra -- Master (of Arts) -- in the first degree-granting ceremony for women in 1920. Harriet Vane as well would have been a domina (Bachelor of Arts) and then after the passage of 5 years from her exams, a magistra.

Put all this Oxford background together and those three words in Latin of Peter's proposal and Harriet's acceptance summarize the whole point of the book -- only once he addresses her as his equal, as an Oxford magistra, in a totally Oxonian idiom that belonged to them both as Oxford graduates, does she feel comfortable enough as his equal to accept the proposal. "Placetne magistra?" "Placet" sums up the whole emotional content of the book in 3 words.

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