Daphne
Du Maurier: A biography
Daphne du Maurier
was born in London in 1907, the second daughter
of the actress Muriel Beaumont and Sir Gerald du Maurier,
a famous actor-manager of his day who performed plays by writers such as Edgar
Wallace and J.M Barrie at London’s
Wyndham’s Theatre. She was also the grand-daughter of George du Maurier, himself famous for his career as a cartoonist and
author of Peter Ibbetson,
The Martians and Trilby. Born into a talented theatrical and artistic family, Daphne
du Maurier inherited a vivid imagination which was to
be followed by a strong desire to write.
Imagination was not only an integral part of the du Maurier’s
life, but was also encouraged in all its aspects, as we learn from Margaret
Foster’s biography [3]. For example, the du Maurier’s
speech was constantly sprinkled wi
th code words or nicknames which enhanced
conversations with a magical and secret aspect. Like any member of the family,
each new friend was traditionally given various nicknames. By the end of her
life, Daphne du Maurier herself was either "Bing", "Tray", or "Track" and she used a great
number of code words, in any form of communication. This very special language
could seem impenetrable and as a result, the family circle often appeared
closed and beyond the comprehension of outsiders. However, the delight Daphne
du Maurier and her two sisters Angela and Jeanne took
in using their imagination never waned for they naturally recreated in private
or in public the theatrical world of their beloved father. But soon Daphne du Maurier expressed an obvious need to exploit her
imagination more extensively. As Margaret Foster points out, "Daphne, alone of the three du Maurier girls had a fascination with lives different from
her own" [4].
However, Daphne du Maurier’s tendency to daydream came as a response to a
profound malaise, and to a need to escape an environment she found more and
more oppressive. Indeed, Daphne du Maurier strongly
suffered from a jealous father who, in contrast to her mother’s lack of
tenderness, openly showed affection and refused to see his daughter grow up.
Thus, protecting herself from her father’s passionate possessiveness which she
could no longer endure became a priority. She also felt smothered by her
environment because she hated London
which was both associated with her father, and with the inescapable socializing
process it required. Moreover, Daphne du Maurier grew
up wishing she had been born a boy, conscious of her father’s strong desire to
carry on the du Maurier name. Consequently Daphne du Maurier showed a distinct preference for behaving like a
boy, and adopted a markedly boyish look. Subsequently, her love life grew
complex and tormented, for she had to face her ambivalent reactions towards
boys and what she refused to admit but thought could be "venetian tendencies" (her
personal transformation of the word lesbian) towards girls. This marked the
beginnings of Daphne du Maurier’s longstanding
confused sense of her self, a confusion probably reinforced by the emergence of
conservative ideas about female identity and conventional attitudes towards
women’s role in society. As correctly underlined by Avril Horner and Sue Zlosnik, "she was an adolescent and young woman
during a period when ideas about female identity and sexuality were undergoing
a radical shift and moving towards a more rigid categorization" [5].
Consequently, she gradually retreated into a fantasy world, became more and
more withdrawn and isolated, craving the unveiling of the mysterious thing
which could help her feel happier, until she discovered Cornwall and… writing.
In the 1920’s, her parents bought a
holiday home overlooking the River Fowey. It was, to be precise, on the 13th of
Septernber, 1926, that Daphne du Maurier
caught her first glimpse of Cornwall,
and immediately realized the freedom it offered. The first sight of the house
represented the start of Du Maurier’s eternal love
for Cornwall.
Being still too young after the initial discovery of the house to settle down
in Cornwall alone,
she spent the first holidays in Fowey with the family, and did not instantly
enjoy complete freedom. Instead, she enjoyed hours of walks in the countryside
whatever the weather or devoured books as she had always done from her earliest
years. Indeed, Daphne du Maurier had not only been
fascinated by the magical theatrical world in which she had grown up, but had
always been captivated by the freedom of imagination provided by books. J.M
Barrie, one of Gerald du Maurier’s great friends,
literally enchanted the girl with his works of imagination [6]. Peter Pan, which had been especially written
for Daphne du Maurier’s cousins, delighted the girl
and she "identified totally with his
creations of fantasy lives" [7] After she read Robert Louis Stevenson’s
Treasure Island when she was eight, her interest in books never faded, her readings
included a wide range of authors such as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, The Brontës or Katherine Mansfield. In Du Maurier’s
opinion, Cornwall was the ideal place to let her imagination flow [8] and she was definitely convinced that if she
could stay in the holiday house on her own, she would fulfil her deepest
wish : to write. After endless negotiations with her parents, the young
Daphne was at last permitted to stay in Cornwall
alone, on condition that she managed to become financially independant
thanks to her writing. This was a real challenge and Daphne du Maurier seized the opportunity.
Ferryside
So, the discovery of the boat-house
named "ferryside" changed Du Maurier’ s
life for ever. Once she was alone in Cornwall,
she explored the countryside as much as possible and disciplined herself to
combine her writing with her outings. Within a few months, she had already
completed a set of short stories. These were not her first efforts, but they
presaged the young woman’s future career. The following years were to bring her
initial success with the publication in 1931 of her first novel, written in
three months when she was only 23 : The Loving
Spirit. From that point on, she wrote at an astonishing rate, and it was for
the stories set in Cornwall
that she became world reknowned. Piers Dudgeon’s
foreword to Daphne du Maurier’ s Cornwall [9], makes us aware that "Cornwall
met the challenge of her developping imagination in a
creative fashion".
Indeed for Daphne du Maurier, creation and freedom were indissociable,
and it is in Vanishing Cornwall, one of her non-fiction books, that she
revealed, years later, her deep attachment to Cornwall confessing that, "here was the freedom I desire, long
sought for, not yet known. Freedom to write, to climb hills,
to pull a boat, to be alone" [10].
Later, when Daphne assumed her
various roles as a wife, a mother and what she called a "career woman", Cornwall
became more significant than ever, principally for the special freedom it
represented. She stayed in Cornwall until her dying breath, mostly because she
felt free to write but also because, far from the public eye, she could let out
her true identity, "neither girl nor
boy but disembodied spirit dance in the evening when there was no one to see" [11].
As a consequence,
the make-believe world of Daphne du Maurier more
freely ernbraced her writing. From the early stories, Daphne had
found a way to explore various personal issues through her writing, notably the
boundaries between men and women, and she eventually expressed her deepest
thoughts on the nature of love, questioning the balance of power in marriage
and society. ln fact, if Cornwall provided the
inspiration for her novels, Daphne du Maurier also
covertly fuelled her writing with sorne intimate
aspects of her private life. Thus, for Daphne du Maurier,
writing became a means of externalizing the malaise linked to her fractured
identity, a way of analysing her anxieties. Daphne du Maurier’s
writing was therefore the fruit of deep reflection, also likely to raise the
issue of women condition. Unfortunately, this aspect of her writing was ignored
by most critics and readers, for her reputation, largely built on her best
known novels, tended to freeze her within a certain categorization. She was
constantly associated with the romantic landscape of the county she so
beautifully depicted. As a result, in the minds of sorne
critics [12], Daphne du Maurier
was merely a romantic novelist.
Underlining the popular appeal and
the romantic glamour of her work, the critics’ approaches to her writing were
far from what she expected them to read. The covers of her books too, still rernain largely sentimental and are generally shelved in
bookshops among ’cheap’ popular fiction. Although the films inspired by her
novels have become cinema classics, (Rebecca, The Birds, My cousin Rachel,
Frenchman’s Creek … ) some of the cinematographic
adaptations reflect the writer’ s reputation, being exaggeratedly romantic and
this did not always please the writer. For example, Foster recalls that Daphne
du Maurier hated what Hitchcock had made of Jamaica
Inn [13], "Instead of being violent and ugly, they [the wreckers] had been
made into Peter Pan pirates, and the effect was quite opposite of her intention".
ln fact, it seems that
Daphne du Maurier’s novels were mostly read on a
superficial level and consequently, the critics often failed to detect any
psychological depths to her writing. For example, although Daphne du Maurier’s most popular novel, Rebecca, was widely read and
almost met general approval, the study of jealousy, the major theme of her
book, had scarcely been noticed [14]. ln a letter to Oriel Malet, Daphne du Maurier wrote
about her twelfth novel, The Scapegoat, and also deplores that "the psychological politics, and the
religious significance […] will be only seen by the few, and that most people
will read it as a semi-thriller". Then, referring to the main
character, she supposes he would be perceived as "a chap involved with a crowd of women [15]". In fact, the general
misunderstanding of her works sadly extended to the readers’ apprehension of
her novels.
Daphne du Maurier,
who once vigorously affirmed that she was not a romantic writer [16] was neither, at least for sorne critics [17], a talented and serious writer.
However, the study of Jarnaica Inn tends to refute the latter comment. Indeed,
behind a strongly atmospheric tone and an exceptional writing style, Daphne du Maurier’s subtext is as fascinating as the surface story
and undoubtedly demands a close analysis, as is precisely the case for Jamaica
Inn.
Jamaica Inn, published in 1936, was
Daphne du Maurier’s fourth novel. This adventure
story, set in Cornwall,
is centered around the
smuggling activity of 1815. The writer clearly presents her intention to write
an imaginative tale from the very first page of the book, commenting that, "although existing place-names figure
in the pages, the characters and events described are entirely imaginary" [18]. But despite the imaginative
nature of the novel, the reader enters readily into the writer’s Cornish world,
weather, landscape, and becomes emotionally involved "within the limits of [a] book of ordinary length" [19]. However, Daphne du Maurier, contrary to Hamilton Jenkin,
never intended presenting Cornwall
exclusively from a historical point of view. Instead, it is thanks to her
imagination, and the inclusion of some aspects of reality, that the Cornwall she writes is
emotive, and makes a strong appeal to the reader’s sensibility. It then becomes
obvious that the interest in the novel lies primarily in the study of the
devices used by the writer to draw the reader. The writer’s narrative technique
logically allows the reader to appreciate the affective power of the texte. And a more detailed analysis of the text may also
reveal its numerous links with the Gothic genre, possibly used as a means to
raise the issue of gender. Finally, a last approach to Daphne du Maurier’s writing would inevitably focus on the symbolic
level of the text, because of its richness, complexity and possible connections
with the writer’s own intimate perception of reality. The exploration of
Jamaica Inn’s different levels of reading could possibly reinforce the idea that
Daphne du Maurier’s works, without being necessarily
autobiographical, may have largely contributed to the author’s self-evolution
and definitely enabled readers to discover a writer of great skill.
* * *
[1] Jenkin, A.K
Hamilton. Cornwall and its people London ; David and Charles INC, 1970.
[2] ln
fact, very few critical works and serious studies exist on Daphne du Maurier and her writing. Interesting elements about Daphne
du Maurier’s relation to her writing most notably
appear in Margaret Foster’s biography : Foster,
Margaret. Daphne du Maurier,
London : Chatto and windus, 1993. and in the recent
study of du Maurier’s writing in connection with the
Gothic genre : Horner, Avril and Zlosnik, Sue. Daphne
du Maurier, Writing, Identity and the Gothic
Imagination, ST. Martin’s press, INC,
1998.
[3] Foster, Margaret. Daphne du Maurier, London : Chatto and windus, 1993. (9)
[4] Foster, Margaret. Daphne du Maurier, London : Chatto and Windus, 1993.(10-11)
[5] Horner, Avril and Zlosnik, Sue. Daphne du Maurier. Writing. Indentity and the Gothic Imagination. ST. Martin’s Press, INC, 1998
(14).
[6] Daphne du Maurier Cornwall. Her Pictorial Mefioir Ed. Dudgeon Piers,
1995. (8).
[7] Foster, Margaret. Daphne du Maurier London :
Chatto and Windus,
1993.(22).
[8] Daphne du Maurier,
Vanishing Cornwall Harmondsworth : Peguin Books, 1972.(6).
[9] Daphne du Maurier Cornwall. Her Pictorial Mernoir Ed. Dudgeon Piers, 1995.(11).
[10] Vanishing Cornwall Harrnondsworth :
Penguin Books, 1972.(6)
[11] Extract of one of Daphne du Maurier’s Ietters to her intimate
friend Ellen Doubleday, dated from 10 December 1947, quoted in Margaret
Foster’s biography of Daphne du Maurier. (222).
[12] Daphne du Maurier
was commonly defined as "the world’s
most popular romantic novelist" as quoted in Foster’s biography,( 415) a label still used today by the tourist industry of Cornwall.
[13] Foster, Margaret. Daphne du Maurier London :
Chatto and windus,
1993.(144)
[14] Daphne du Maurier
overtly deplores the misinterpretation of her books in her interview with the
journalist Cliff Michelmore. Cliff, Michelmore. The make believe world of Daphne du Maurier. Banner Pictures.
[15] Letters from Menabilly.
Portrait of a friendship Ed. Oriel Malet, London :
Orion Books Ltd, 1994.(80).
[16] Interview with Cliff Michelmore. The Make believe World of Daphne du Maurier, Banner Pictures.
[17] Avril
Horner and Sue Zlosnik’s researches reveal that
Daphne du Maurier’s writing was even once compared to
"a glossy brand of entertaining nonsense",
in the words of Ronald Bryden, quoted in The
Spectator n°20, April 1962 (515-514).
[18] Daphne du Maurier,
Jamaica Inn, London : Arrow Books, 1992 (introductory note written by
Daphne du Maurier in 1935).
[19] Jenkin,
A.K Hamilton. Cornwall and its people London : David and Charles INC, 1970 (2).
Copyright : Ombeline Belkadi (odalavie@wanadoo.fr).
http://www.terresdecrivains.com/Jamaica-Inn-A-Reflection-of-Daphne
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