Class and social mobility in Daphne du Maurier’s novels

Posted on May 9, 2023 by Val Hewson

By Ellie Jackson

Here is the last of the guest blogs from Sheffield Hallam student, Ellie Jackson, about the novels of Daphne du Maurier. This is part of Ellie’s final year project. Here she sets out her thoughts on the issue of class.

I will be discussing Daphne du Maurier’s most famous novels; Rebecca (1938), Jamaica Inn (1935), and My Cousin Rachel (1951). The female protagonist in all of these novels are victims of the class division, but particularly in Rebecca.

Mrs de Winter’s decision to marry a man above her own class challenges the rules for social mobility, but it is important to consider whether this was Du Maurier’s intention. Not only does her decision challenge the rules for mobility, but also the expectations of a woman’s role in marriage, and whether the woman should choose herself or conform to those expectations. We quickly realise that the narrator’s decision to marry was not actually her decision at all. Maxim gives her the choice: ‘Either you go to America with Mrs. Van Hopper or you come home to Manderley with me.’ (du Maurier, 1938, 6). This suggests that a woman of her status cannot have the privilege of choice. It’s a matter of which upper class individual to be dependent upon.

Mrs de Winter is aware of the class division in her marriage, and of her lack of confidence and awkwardness. but eventually realises her ‘intense desire to please’ (du Maurier, 1938, 16), especially when it comes to Mrs Danvers, the late Rebecca’s maid. Mrs Danvers is a constant reminder of Rebecca’s presence in Manderley, retelling stories of her perfectly proper mistress and insulted by her replacement. We do not even learn the name of our protagonist throughout the entire novel – only the powerful Mr de Winter and his well-bred, upper class wife Rebecca, whom he could not control, unlike the second Mrs de Winter. Even before our narrator is betrothed to Maxim, her social status is reinforced through her paid companionship to the obnoxious Mrs Van Hopper. The narrator is very aware of her social class and what others think of her when travelling with Mrs Van Hopper. She wishes that she were ‘a woman of about thirty-six dressed in black satin with a string of pearls’ (du Maurier, 1938, 5). She makes her wish to be someone else early on in the novel, which foreshadows the identity she will replace – Rebecca – when she arrives at Manderley, something she will regret ever wishing for.

Similarly, in My Cousin Rachel, du Maurier demonstrates the class difference between Rachel and Philip, her nephew by marriage. He is completely perplexed by Rachel’s desire to make her own way in the world without the financial stability of a husband, and suggests that he would prefer to pay her for doing nothing. Rachel’s independence ultimately proves to be a threat to the social class she now belongs to, after her marriage to Ambrose. Throughout the novel, there is the uncertain question of whether Rachel is genuine, or if she murdered Ambrose in order to inherit his wealth and estate, to send money out of the country and leave the family in debt. Rachel becomes a villain as she is accused of poisoning Philip suddenly after he gives up his inheritance for her. Is she, however, presented this way for other reasons? Is the thought of a woman with a new upper-class status, being independent with her finances and refusing to marry, so hard to believe that she must be a villain? Rachel is a defiant character. She is difficult to relate to as a woman who has moved through the classes and has a strong, powerful influence on a man. With Philip’s inability to accept Rachel defying convention, he allows himself to be complicit in her death.

Du Maurier ultimately suggests the determination of society to eradicate those who pose a threat to societal norms – especially those who aim for a higher social class. Mary Yellen in Jamaica Inn is another of du Maurier’s female characters who defy the societal norms of women being completely dependent on a man, as she is happy to continue her free, quiet life on the farm following the death of her mother. However, this independence is not unusual for a woman of Mary’s lower class and the main class difference that we see in Jamaica Inn is the type of work her uncle Joss undertakes. Joss is not an upper class man with a good economic situation, and so his dangerous smuggling operation contrasts the comfortable lives of the men in the other novels (despite their often endangering the lives of the women they know). The characters in Jamaica Inn are much lower in the social order than those in Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel, and therefore have less security and may have to take risks. The dark, depressing and abysmal dwelling in which Jamaica Inn is set, confirms the impact of the lower social class in terms of the lacking opportunities and freedom. The smuggling operation is not only a symbol of a lower social class and the pressure to have money in their pockets, but their lack of freedom to live regular lives.

*Mrs de Winter (Joan Fontaine) and Mrs Danvers (Judith Anderson) from Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca (1940) (Creative Commons licence)*

*Francis Davey (Ben Daniels) and Mary Yellan (Jessica Brown Findlay) in the 2014 adaptation of Jamaica Inn (Creative Commons licence)*

Here are Ellie’s previous blogs: Daphne du Maurier and the Gothic and Rebecca, Mary and Rachel: Daphne du Maurier’s unconventional, strong women.

Bibliography

Du Maurier. D. (1938). Rebecca. HarperCollins.

Du Maurier, D. (1951). My Cousin Rachel. Penguin Books.

Du Maurier, D. (1935). Jamaica Inn. Penguin Books.

Daphne du Maurier and the Gothic

Posted on April 11, 2023 by Val Hewson

By Ellie Jackson

Our guest blogger, Ellie Jackson, a student at Sheffield Hallam University, is looking at the novels of Daphne du Maurier for her final year project. Here are her thoughts about how du Maurier used the aesthetic of the Gothic to great effect in her novels.

The first recognised Gothic novel was written by Horace Walpole in 1764, The Castle of Otranto. The traditional Gothic novel has a number of recognisable key characteristics: death and decay, haunted castles and remote landscapes, intense emotion or fear in the reader. Since the 18th century, the idea of a new, modern Gothic has emerged, and the castle is no longer an essential element to the literature. The narratives of the modern Gothic focus on ‘the urban present, refracting contemporary concerns through the lens of a literature of terror’ (Dryden, 2003).

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca is an exemplar model of the modern Gothic; it contains a large mansion, a murder, a great fire and a sinister servant. The pre-eminent Gothic trope is the setting: Manderley, the colossal mansion which the heroine, Mrs de Winter, comes to know after marrying Maxim de Winter. Even her first impressions of Manderley are negative, and leave an impact on her perceptions. The ‘gates crashing’, ‘serpent-like drive’ and the ‘roof of branches’ (du Maurier, 1938, 7) envision entrapment and a sense of a hidden evil. The emphasis on a picturesque landscape casts Manderley with a supernatural mystique, with du Maurier exploring her protagonist’s feelings of sublimity and her relationship with her natural surroundings. Mrs de Winter’s inquisitiveness reflects the twentieth century curiosity and thirst for the unknown. Du Maurier plays on this curiosity in the novel – for example, the murder mystery and the supernatural.

The use of the weather in Gothic literature is important, with storms seen as omens of evil, representing the inner self of the protagonist in externalising fears and conflict. The fog has a significant role in the novel, both literally and figuratively. For much of the novel, the fog completely blinds the narrator, Mrs de Winter, but once the truth of Rebecca is revealed, ‘The mist entered my nostrils and lay upon my lips rank and sour. It was stifling, like a blanket, like an anaesthetic. I was beginning to forget about being unhappy, and about loving Maxim. I was beginning to forget Rebecca,’ (du Maurier, 1938, 18). The lingering presence of the late Mrs de Winter was like the fog, clouding the protagonist’s vision and judgement. However, it is not suggested that Rebecca’s presence in Manderley disappears as the fog does. Even when Manderley is burned at the end, the foreboding first line of the novel, ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’ (du Maurier, 1938, 1) suggests not that the presence of Rebecca has been destroyed with it, but that both the house and Rebecca still haunt Mrs de Winter and her husband.

*Manderley burning in the 2020 film adaptation of Rebecca (Creative Commons licence)*

Jamaica Inn encompasses similar conventional Gothic tropes, involving ‘a frail protagonist in terrible danger’, because she ‘is placed in a hostile, threatening, mysterious environment, usually so prodigiously large that it dwarfs her; she is made prisoner, she is threatened by individuals who should protect her, parents and parent-figures’ (Grellet, Valentin, 1996). This describes Mary Yellen, as she becomes the perfect Gothic protagonist on her arrival at Jamaica Inn and is threatened both by her (new) parent figures and the house itself. Although the house is not a ruined castle as pictured in The Castle of Otranto, it embodies characteristics of the traditional Gothic setting, with dark secrets hidden within it, secret rooms, doors and passages which du Maurier uses to build the mystery and workings of Jamaica Inn.

*Jamaica Inn, as seen in the 2014 BBC adaptation (Creative Commons licence)*

While there are conventional elements of the Gothic seen in both Rebecca and Jamaica Inn, du Maurier portrays My Cousin Rachel as the exact opposite. Traditionally, the Gothic novel features a young, naïve heroine whose inexperience puts her in a disadvantaged position with her older male superior. However, this is not the case for Rachel. Though the Gothic trope of the large manor house on the Ashley estate is present in the novel, it has little power compared to the character of Rachel. She is a headstrong, sexually overt, (eventually) economically stable woman with little need for a man. Du Maurier has drawn on Rachel’s personality in this way to encompass fears and curiosity within the reader about the ‘wicked woman’ who is thought to have murdered her husband and attempted to murder Philip too. Both Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel feature the female villain in their stories, but are they really villains at all? Both women have a disruptive effect on the narrators in their novels, but are their actions actually villainous, or are the impressions offered to the reader unfair from the perspective of other characters?

Mystery, suspense and death are present in all of these novels: the lingering death of Rebecca; the dark, dangerous mystery around Jamaica Inn and the activities undertaken there; and the death of Ambrose and poisoning of Philip all convey traditional and modern elements of the Gothic.

Ellie’s blogs on Class and Social Mobility in the novels of Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca, Rachel and Mary: du Maurier’s Strong, Unconventional Women.

Bibliography

Du Maurier, D. (1938). Rebecca. HarperCollins.

Du Maurier, D. (1951). My Cousin Rachel. Penguin Books.

Du Maurier, D. (1935). Jamaica Inn. Penguin Books.

Dryden, L. (2003). The Modern Gothic. In: The Modern Gothic and Literary Doubles. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Rebecca, Mary and Rachel: Daphne du Maurier’s unconventional, strong women

Posted on April 1, 2023 by Val Hewson

By Ellie Jackson

It’s good to welcome back guest blogger, Ellie Jackson, from Sheffield Hallam University. Ellie has already written her reading journey and a review of Gaudy Night (1935) by Dorothy L Sayers for our blog. Now she is looking at the novels of Daphne du Maurier for her final year project and, as part of that, is writing three blogs for us. Here is the first.

Daphne du Maurier had already published four novels and two biographies by the age of 30 and went on to write many more novels, short stories etc. Search her name in Google, and the first three book titles to show are Rebecca (1938), Jamaica Inn (1935) and My Cousin Rachel (1951) as her most famous novels. Rebecca is undoubtedly the most recognised novel of the three, with multiple film adaptations and written ‘sequels’ by different authors, such as Mrs de Winter (1993) by Susan Hill or Rebecca’s Tale (2001) by Sally Beauman.

Throughout this blog I will be discussing how du Maurier represents her female protagonist in relation to the gender identities presented in these popular fictions. Du Maurier both demonstrates and also subverts the conventional views of femininity through the use of her protagonists.

In Rebecca, this is particularly suggested by the hidden character of Rebecca herself. In some ways, it is suggested that Maxim de Winter’s first wife is an evil villain, a woman who posed a great threat to the conventional rules of female conduct and therefore judged by her unfeminine behaviour and her subversion of the female ideal of pleasing her husband. But critics have suggested that Rebecca was not only a victim of sexism, but of her husband too. The novel is an important early work of feminism, certainly presenting the ways in which the male character dominates. We only ever hear Maxim’s side of the story. Rebecca is never given a voice to speak her truth. Is Maxim the real villain? A controlling husband who expects his wife to behave as an obedient child and when she refuses to abide by his rules, becomes hateful and lashes out at her? Though absent in the novel, Rebecca has a strong presence throughout. Our impression of her becomes increasingly negative and we are made to believe that she is the primary antagonist of the novel, a skilful manipulator having extramarital affairs, and Maxim is portrayed as her helpless victim. Is the novel ahead of its time in terms of gender roles or has it aged badly? Rebecca is a woman who refused to let marriage destroy her right to identity, but she is also judged according to conventional rules for female behaviour that by modern standards don’t carry much currency.

*Mrs de Winter (Joan Fontaine) and Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier) from Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film, Rebecca* *(Creative Commons licence)*

My Cousin Rachel is a second novel by du Maurier that undoubtedly demonstrates this feminist ideology through her independent protagonist Rachel. Du Maurier makes very clear that in the only sex scene in the novel, Rachel is at the height of her power. From the beginning of the novel, Philip lays down his thoughts on the fundamental rules of female behaviour, in which he suggests women are emotional, unpredictable, ‘erratic and unstable’ (du Maurier, 1951, 5) in contrast to the rationality of a man. Rachel’s expression of her comfortable and overt sexuality completely bewilders Philip, and ultimately du Maurier uses his ambivalence to demonstrate that the power of a man is much stronger than the sexual power Rachel exhibits. This is made evident through Rachel’s inability to become pregnant. Sex is independently an act of pleasure rather than a function of marriage or family, and it is definitively on her own terms as Rachel uses it to ‘thank [him], that’s all’ (du Maurier, 1951, 22). So Rachel denying Philip marriage after they slept together turns him rather violent, emphasising his intolerance of her sexual power by attempting to physically overpower her.

*Rachel (Rachel Weisz) and Philip (Sam Claflin) discussing marriage in Roger Michell’s 2017 film, My Cousin Rachel* *(Creative Commons licence)*

The subversion of conventional views of femininity is further shown through du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn. Mary, her protagonist, exhibits a profound loathing for the culturally defined identities which society has given to women. She attempts to ignore her own femaleness, questioning ‘why were women such fools?’ (du Maurier, 1935, 5) in relation to the cruel, powerful character of her uncle Joss. Despite Mary’s self-sufficient character, the lack of identity of a woman under patriarchal influence is demonstrated when she ends up at Jamaica Inn. The masculine power of Joss Merlyn is used as a means to control the women in the novel, as they are ‘trained by constant cruelty to implicit obedience’. (du Maurier, 1935, 2).

*Film poster for Alfred Hitchcock’s 1939 film, Jamaica Inn, with Maureen O’Hara as Mary Yellen. In the background, on the far right, is Leslie Banks as Joss Merlyn, Mary’s cruel uncle*. *(Fair use)*

Throughout all three of Du Maurier’s most popular novels, it is fair to suggest that she was ahead of her time in terms of gender identity, with her attempts to subvert the traditional societal roles given to women through her female protagonists, but ultimately positioning the male characters in such a way that they will always be superior. The lives of women are in the hands of the men in each of the novels. Mary is the only female protagonist that makes it out of the hands of her male superior. The same cannot be said for the characters of Rebecca and Rachel, who are both murdered for their ‘crimes’ against traditional feminine standards.

Here is Ellie’s second blog, on Daphne du Maurier’s use of the Gothic, and here is her third, on class in du Maurier’s novels.

Bibliography

Du Maurier, D. (1938). Rebecca. HarperCollins.

Du Maurier, D. (1951). My Cousin Rachel. Penguin Books.

Du Maurier, D. (1935). Jamaica Inn. Penguin Books.