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Lady Fancifull

~ adventures in a mainly literary obsession

Lady Fancifull

Tag Archives: Gothic Romance

Daphne du Maurier – Rebecca

18 Friday Dec 2015

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Classic writers and their works, Fiction, Literary Fiction, Reading, Thriller and Suspense

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

Book Review, Daphne du Maurier, Gothic Novel, Gothic Romance, Psychological Thriller, Rebecca

“The salt wind from the sea”

RebeccaI must have read Rebecca at least twice, over the years, the first time in my teens, and have seen the film also at least once, but reading it again after many years is a bit of a revelation.

I’m amazed that the very obvious homage to Jane Eyre did not strike me when I read it previously, because this time, that came into clear focus – no doubt helped by the rather excellent forward by Sally Beauman, in the Virago Modern Classics version I recently found in a charity shop, and snapped up, thinking a re-read would be a very good thing.

Now I always knew that du Maurier was a good writer, as well as a popular one, but, again, my re-read this time absolutely underlined how good she was. Freed from any ‘what happens next’ I soaked up structure, atmosphere, and could not help but compare this book to the sometimes relentless ‘psychological thrillers’ subgenre which burgeons on the bestsellers. Rebecca is a literary fiction book, surely, and it’s easy to see how Hitchcock was enamoured by her wonderfully structured, tellingly visual, darkly sub-textural visions

From that wonderfully brilliant, evocative opening line and paragraph, to the masterly ending where she trusts her readers, so that there is no need to spell out, as though to a child, exactly what has happened, but expects that the reader will connect the little clues, the phrases, and complete the picture themselves, she kept me close and spellbound on a disturbing, unsettling, dreamlike journey, almost skating over all sorts of myths lying beneath. Not only were there the clear nods to Jane Eyre, the scary archetypes of female madness, the charismatic, domineering older man – but I thought also of Bluebeard.

Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine

Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine

I won’t spell plot, in case, despite this book’s perennial popularity, a lucky person who has never met it happens on this review, but something which struck me forcibly on this reading is the rightness of never naming our narrator, despite the fact that Max de Winter informs her that she has a lovely name. The second ‘Mrs de Winter’ is remarkably unformed. Here is where the young, innocent, exploited ‘companion’ to a spoilt, rich, emotionally unintelligent woman, differs from the innocent and also sometimes exploited Jane Eyre. Jane may be gauche at times, but she has such a clear sense of herself, such discernment. Mrs de Winter has no boundaries, she has incredibly fine empathy and ‘feels the feelings’ of others, but she lacks a healthy and resilient sense of self-worth. She is almost like a mirror-image, or extreme opposite of Rebecca. In this book, we have not one, but I think two (and of course three, if you count the fearsome Mrs Danvers) women with some kind of psychological flaw. Rebecca, the charismatic, is deeply narcissistic, and has boundaries of steel and rock. She is invulnerable to the needs of others. The second ‘Mrs de Winter’ deeply imagines and inhabits what others are feeling; so much so that she loses herself. The other archetype which is played out, is that of Svengali/Trilby – almost anyone can be the second Mrs de Winter’s Svengali – Rebecca’s pervading presence, Mrs Danvers, Maxim, Mrs Van Hopper, and she is manipulated with ease.

Judith Anderson, Joan Fontaine

Judith Anderson, Joan Fontaine

And of course Trilby was a work of fiction written by du Maurier’s grandfather, George.

Although I can’t read this as part of my ‘Reading the Twentieth’ challenge, as I am still firmly stuck in 1900, I am finding that my reading or re-reading of books from the first half of the twentieth is being influenced by ‘Reading the Twentieth’ Given that the book was published in 1938, it is surprising that there is absolutely no reference to the events brewing in the wider world, although of course the implacable, sociopathic Rebecca, might be a domestic version of tyranny and dictatorship. Du Maurier is I think creating a dark and mythic world here. It is assuredly realistic, not magical realism, yet the at times highly charged language, the implied, destructive eroticism, take the book into a kind of free-floating world of myth, metaphor and sub-consciousness. The only glancing intrusion of politics happens when Max’s sister, Beatrice, imagines that the central crime which the book leads towards might have been carried out by:

a Communist perhaps. There are heaps of them about. Just the sort of thing a Communist would do

I was intrigued to discover, that when the book came out it was pretty well dismissed by the ‘literaries’ – who only saw its populist appeal, and little more. The Times dismissively said “the material is of the humblest…nothing in this is beyond the novelette.” . The novelist V.S. Pritchett predicted the book “would be here today, gone tomorrow”. Inevitably, one can’t help but wonder how the book would have been viewed if the author had been male. Post-feminism, it has been re-assessed by readers and writers precisely with a feminist perspective, in its examination of the power differential between powerful, worldly men, and young inexperienced women.

Menabilly House, Fowey, du Maurier's Manderley

Menabilly House, Fowey, du Maurier’s Manderley

Du Maurier interestingly wrote this not in her beloved Cornwall, but in Alexandria, Egypt, where her husband, ‘Boy’ Browning, an officer in the Grenadier Guards, was posted with his battalion. She longed for home, and that longing is most powerfully expressed in this book. There was also, by all accounts, a close to home exploration for du Maurier herself, of the powerful drive of female jealousy ‘Boy’ Browning had been engaged before, to a brilliantly dark haired beauty.

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited

I will, in fairly short due course, before the wonderful atmosphere of the book begins to let me go, be watching the film on DVD. It will be interesting to compare. I believe (though I can’t quite remember) that Hitchcock went for a less dark ending.dumaurier_daphne

Certainly, du Maurier, in the ‘present’ of the book – most of it involved the second Mrs de Winter looking back at the events of her new married life – gives us a sense of a terrible sterility. The polite forms are observed, and they are used to paper over the chasms of what must remain unsaid.

This is, of course, a properly fabulous book. Perfectly inhabiting genre, and much, much more

Rebecca Amazon UK
Rebecca Amazon USA

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Mary Stewart – Nine Coaches Waiting

21 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by Lady Fancifull in Romance, Thriller and Suspense

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

1950s setting, Book Review, France, Gothic Romance, Jane Eyre, Mary Stewart, Nine Coaches Waiting, Romantic Thriller

Nine Coaches WaitingNow I am not, in the general run of things, a reader of the Romance genre. Not unless there is a lot more going on than just the simple story of boy/girl meets boy/girl, there is some sort of problem, there may also be some sort of rival boy/girl and the main couple will/will not surmount the obstacle and live happily ever after/die a horrible death.

In fact, it has to be said I infinitely (in literature!) prefer the tragic end/star crossed lovers scenario than the Hollywood, sunset, hearts, flowers, wedding bells wrap. Unless skilfully done, with lots more going on (yes, that’s you, Jane Austen, incomparable writer of fine romance and much more) the genre leads to a sugar overload which might predispose regular readers to diabetes.

So, it is no wonder that I never encountered Mary Stewart, as she does belong firmly on the Romance shelf – and, but, and, but I would therefore never have ventured there – till my interest was piqued by fellow blogger Fleur In Her World who likes the same sort of lit-ficcy stuff I do, and for very similar reasons. She was praising Stewart to the skies. So I asked her to recommend one. And this is it.

Cinderella's glasas slipper, JennaLee27, Deviant Art Commons

Cinderella’s glass slipper, JennaLee27, Deviant Art Commons

Now, for sure this sits firmly within the genre, in that there is a man and a woman who will meet, there are problems ahead, there is indeed some possible rival and there will be/or not some resolution of satisfaction or dissatisfaction for our central characters (and no, I shan’t tell, you’ll have to read the book if you really want to know) Suffice it to be said though that Mary Stewart, now having some of her work re-issued in the `Modern Classic’ category, was a prolific writer of Gothic romance-thrillers. Oh, and ‘Gothic’ is not used in the twenty first century sense to mean that you are going to be unpleasantly surprised to find a job lot of vampires werewolves zombies and ghosts have somehow got trapped within the pages. Think, more, the idea of dark secrets, high drama, possibly an isolated setting, or the idea of all this in the mind of our doughty probably female protagonist. She writes with a history which happily acknowledges `Gothic’ in the sense of Austen’s Northanger Abbey, or, even more pertinently for THIS book, Jane Eyre, rather than Hammer Horror Central Casting. The Gothic is very real and very human.

Jane Eyre still

Still from Robert Stevenson’s 1944 film of Jane Eyre

I was hooked from page one to page-the-end. There is indeed a dark thriller, we have men tall, dark, handsome, charismatic and probably not to be trusted. It is the 1950s. Our central character , Linda Martin. (shades of Jane Eyre, which even she acknowledges, as she is a well-read young woman) is an orphan, whose parents died when she was young. She spent the second half of her childhood in an orphanage, and then, as a young assistant in a dreary school. Chance comes Linda’s way to become a governess (hello Jane!) to a little boy, scion of a family with a dark past and a probably darker future, deep in the French countryside. The family have a slightly different version of Mr Rochester on board. For reasons which are perfectly intelligent Linda, who is half-French (French mother, English father) and who lived in France until her parents’ death pretends that she speaks very little French and understands even less – the employer was strict in their requirement for an ENGLISH governess as they wanted the boy spoken to only in English – though there may be other reasons for this. Linda’s hiding of her perfect French and her French ancestry gives rise to a lot of intentional humour for the reader.

if filet mignon can be translated as darling steak this was the very sweetheart of its kind

Linda is a most attractive heroine, given to self-mockery, and is someone who rather enjoys winding up the bad-tempered people she meets with deliberate mangling of `Franglais’ to annoy. And her incisive thoughts about certain people are a joy:

She radiated all the charm and grace of a bad-tempered skunk

Thonon-les-Bains, Haute Savoie, where the book is set. Wiki Commons

Thonon-les-Bains, Haute Savoie, where the book is set. Wiki Commons

There are apposite little quotes, often from Shakespeare, as sub-chapter headings – our heroine/narrator, as stated earlier, is a reader.

Stewart is a wonderful writer – and particularly, a wonderful evoker of landscape. As I did some exploration into her life and works, I was utterly unsurprised to find she was a passionate gardener. Anyone who can so beautifully and evocatively describe plants, trees, skies, light and the scents, sights and sounds of the natural world is someone who has spent loving time within that world.

….the little dell…was sheltered and sun-drenched, a green shelf in the middle of the wood. Behind us the trees and bushes of the wild forest crowded up the hill, dark holly and the bone-pale boughs of ash gleaming sharp through a mlst of birch as purple as bloom on a grape

And, just like Miss Austen and Miss Bronte, Miss Stewart comes from a time when what is undoubtedly sex and desire is rendered much more potent for the fact it is not laid out for us. She is much more interested in exploring the subtle workings of the human psyche, than the rather more prosaic exploration of removed garments and anatomical diagram!

Haute Savoie region, Wiki Commons

Haute Savoie region, Wiki Commons

And, suffice it to say I have now downloaded Stewart’s My Brother Michael, also highlyMary Stewart praised by Fleur, and will be skulking the Romance shelves of my local library to find more by this fine author.

Nine Coaches Waiting Amazon UK
Nine Coaches Waiting Amazon USA

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