Many of us love a good mystery. Daphne du Maurier never disappoints her readers with her trove of mystery works. The Scapegoat is no exception.
Best known as the author of the 1938 thriller “Rebecca” and her short story, “The Birds” made famous by the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name, Du Maurier produced over forty works of literature in various genres over the course of fifty-six years of writing. She wrote novels, short stories, biographies, poetry, plays, and essays. Daphne began writing poetry and short stories as a teenager. She published her first novel, The Loving Spirit in 1931. Her last publication was Classics of the Macabre in 1987.
Daphne du Maurier born in 1907 was half English and half French. These two cultures are threaded throughout her work. This is obvious in her novel, The Scapegoat, that our RVA Classic Book Club just read and discussed. du Maurier presents two characters, one French and one English. She was the child of stage actors and the granddaughter of George du Maurier, a noted gothic novelist of the 19th century. J.M. Barrie, the author of “Peter Pan” was a good family friend and a strong influence on Daphne. She grew up in England as an aristocrat surrounded by the arts and literature. She graduated from a boarding school for women outside of Paris but did not attend a university after this because it was not fashionable for women at this time. She loved the poets Browning, Keats, Dryden, and Donne. Daphne had a complicated relationship with her father, Gerald du Maurier about whom she wrote a biography. This was reflected in her writing, especially in “The Scapegoat” when one studies the relationship between Marie Noelle and Jean. Many of her works explore the relationship between the roles of me and women and the balance of power.
She married a World War I military hero, Tommy Browning, and had three children. She did not care much for domestic responsibilities. Being independent and making her own money was paramount to her. The most important role in her life was being a writer. She wanted to be considered an intellectual writer. During her lifetime she was often called a “romance writer” which was very offensive to her. She was thrilled when Graham Greene, the noted author of The Quiet American compared her novel Rebecca to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. According to her biographer, Margaret Forster, Daphne was a “keen observer of life and shrunk from publicity and attention.”
The Scapegoat written in 1957 had great commercial success. There were even two movie versions of the book in 1959 with Alec Guinness and another one in 2012. Our book club members agreed that the movie versions altered many of the details and Du Maurier’s excellent nuanced ending for Hollywood. It is a psychological thriller that relates the story of two men, one English and one French who meet by chance in a railway station and are shocked to realize that they are physically so much alike and they could easily pass for each other. Their similarities stop with their physical characteristics. Otherwise, they indeed are very different people. John is an Englishman and a college professor of French language and culture and Jean is a French aristocrat who overseers a crumbling family and business. They switch places for a week. The story is told by the character John as the narrator. He is struggling with what he perceives as his life being a failure and what he should do going forward. Jean, on the other hand, is quite different. He said, “We are everyone of us failures. The secret of life is to recognize it early on and become reconciled… the only motive force in human nature is greed.”
In this novel du Maurier wanted to write about the duality of people; the good and the evil in us all. She once said, “We, all of us have our particular devil who ruses us and torments us and we must give battle in the end.”
Daphne du Maurier was bestowed with the honor of being named Dame of the British Empire. She died in 1989 at the age of 82. When she thought that she couldn’t write anymore, she stopped eating because she felt that she couldn’t live anymore. What an incredible life she led!
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