Dark mirrors and disembodied spirits : gender, sexuality and incest in selected fiction by Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier has long been considered chiefly as a writer of popular fiction. She is celebrated as a masterful constructor of plot and acclaimed for her ability to infuse novelistic narrative with a nameless and pervasive frisson of unease, but it is only recently that critics have begun seriously to investigate the shadowy complexities of her widely-read novels. In this thesis, three of du Maurier's best-known works 'Jamaica Inn', 'Rebecca' and 'My Cousin Rachel' are examined using psychoanalytic theory and close textual analysis together with autobiographical information. Each novel reveals an informing concern with the stability of identity, and the psychological perils by which the self is both shaped and haunted. In my discussion of Jamaica Inn, Julia Kristeva's theory of abjection elucidates Mary Yellan's confinement within the rigid boundaries of a violently imposed gender role, and her dangerous quest to transgress these limits. In the case of Rebecca, Nancy Chodorow's version of the female Oedipus complex illuminates the bisexual triangle in which du Maurier's nameless heroine finds herself trapped at Manderley, and brings into focus the anxiety which haunts her in her pursuit of maturity. Finally, in the chapter on My Cousin Rachel Jean Baudrillard's work on seduction and Gilles Deleuze's account of masochism help to explain Philip's compulsion to rid himself of his wealth, his land and the house in which he grew up, so that he might live like a servant with his cousin's maternal and alluring widow. In my reading of each of these novels, analysis uncovers a preoccupation with varying combinations of gender, sexuality and incest, a trinity of issues which beset the author in her own life, and which, in her fiction, inflect the protagonists' quest towards or away from a coherent identity. In conclusion it will be suggested that du Maurier's narratives are written with a double-edged pen: at once widely read, popular fiction, and darkly psychological, subvertive literature, in which deep-rooted social and cultural boundaries are destabilized.

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

Department of English Language and Literature

Year dc:date.issued

2010

Author dc:creator

• Duncan, Rebecca

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Marx, Lesley

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/11427/14269

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:open.uct.ac.za:11427/14269