One of my favorite authors has always been Daphne du
Maurier, the author of The Birds
(made into the famous Alfred Hitchcock movie), Rebecca, Jamaica Inn and
many others. But though her books are considered classics today, she was
overlooked by critics during much of her lifetime.
In an industry and country largely monopolized by men, she
was dismissed as a “romance novelist” which at the time meant her writing did
not consist of serious works of art. Today she is known as a mistress of
suspense and a master storyteller. She was born in London in 1907. Her
grandfather was George du Maurier, the author of Trilby which introduced the character Svengali, a character soon to
become a word in the English language that means someone who controls,
manipulates or excessively influences another person. Her cousins were the
Llewelyn Davies boys, who influenced J. M. Barrie’s imagination so much that he
patterned the boys in Peter Pan after
them.
Despite the critics’ disdain for her, when Rebecca was originally published in
1938, it became an instant hit, leading to the movie starring Laurence Olivier
and Joan Fontaine and directed by Alfred Hitchcock.
Du Maurier enjoyed gothic tales, the sinister and the
paranormal. A more recently discovered short story written when she was around
21 years old is entitled The Doll and
was about a woman’s infatuation with a male sex doll; in 1928, I can only
imagine what a scandal that might have caused had she tried to publish it!
She married Frederick Browning in 1932, who later became
known as the “father of the British Airborne”. He was portrayed by actor Dirk
Bogarde in the award-winning movie A
Bridge Too Far, in which he led Airborne troops during Operation Market
Garden. He later became treasurer in the Office of the Duke of Edinburgh under
Queen Elizabeth II’s reign.
Daphne and Frederick lived in a mansion (now an historic
estate) called Menabilly, which inspired Manderley, the home in Rebecca. The home is hidden behind acres
of woods and cannot even be seen from the shoreline. The home also inspired Du
Maurier’s novel The King’s General,
in which a skeleton is found in the cellar.
Though her books were dismissed as romance, they are not
typical romantic fare, as they tend toward the dark, the mysterious, and to
psychological suspense. Her books have influenced my own writing; when I
awakened one night in a cold sweat after reading a chapter of Jamaica Inn, I had to sit up in the
middle of the night and read it again in an attempt to discover how she caused
me to be so terrified. Her heroines almost always caused me to shout out loud, “Go
back!” even when I knew they would not; they would venture into places that
would put them in peril, causing me to read wide-eyed until the last page.
Daphne du Maurier died in 1989 at the age of 82, having
lived 24 years after her husband died in 1965. They had two daughters, Flavia
and Tessa, and a son, Christian.
Have you ever read a Daphne du Maurier novel? Which is your
favorite?
