Du Maurier’s work lends itself to film.  Atmospheric, plot driven, psychological… 

For those of you who have read REBECCA, you’ll notice that in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 production Laurence Olivier’s Maxim de Winter isn’t a murderer at all…what’s up with that?  Most people think it is because Hitchcock felt it was too much of a challenge to make a murderer seem sympathetic.  From what I’ve researched, however, it seems it was actually a little more political.  Although the producer wanted to be faithful to the novel, the censors demanded that Maxim de Winter could not kill his wife without paying the penalty. Suicide was also frowned upon. After a hard-fought but futile battle, Selznick had to settle for Rebecca being accidentally killed when she falls while attacking Max.

But on to Hitchcock and Du Maurier.  Despite the success of Hitchcock’s Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, and later, The Birds, Du Maurier did not like Hitchcock’s adaptations of her work.  Probably because Hitchcock was notorious for having his own agenda.  Du Maurier felt he changed her works a little too liberally, shaping them into his own vision.  I love Hitchcock as much as I love Du Maurier.  I think it is a good idea to take a look at both versions of the work and compare.  I do think that one especially interesting addition in the film version of Rebecca is the scene in which Maxim describes Rebecca’s death.  Hitchcock films an invisible Rebecca during the entire description to eerie effect.  With this gesture, Hitchcock embues the film with Rebecca — she looms throughout just as she does in the book.I’ll refrain from discussing the discrepancies between Hitchcock’s The Birds (one of my favorite films) and Du Maurier’s short story.  (Du Maurier especially hated this Hitchcock adaption.)  Indeed, they are quite different.  I recommend both though as each have their own merits.

In a comment, a reader mentioned DON’T LOOK NOW.  This is a terrific Du Maurier short story collection (which includes “The Birds”).  Nicolas Roeg’s film adaptation stars Julie Christie, Donald Sutherland, a pair of creepy elderly sisters and something even more sinister at the very end.  The setting is Venice.  The couple is on vacation, in an attempt to get over the death of their young daughter.  The short story and film are often classified as “horror” but both go somewhere deeper than conventional horror.  I promise you won’t forget the story or the film. 

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me”.

I feel like it is almost cliche to begin my post with Daphne Du Maurier’s opening lines to REBECCA, one of the most famous opening lines in English literature. Here, Du Maurier immediately establishes the voice, locale, and dream-like atmosphere of her story. We are sucked into another world and, like her nameless narrator, forever haunted by the imposing structure of Manderley and the larger than life ghost of her husband’s dead wife.

And yet, despite her timeless ability to compel readers, Du Maurier often gets a bad rap. Until recently, she was dismissed as an escapist romance novelist. The prevailing thought for some time was that her work was “middle-brow.” Others considered it trash. Why? Let me try to put it into context. The books REBECCA most closely resemble are JANE EYRE (Charlotte Bronte) and WUTHERING HEIGHTS (Emily Bronte), both published ninety-one years before Du Maurier’s bestseller. Meanwhile, James Joyce’s experimental FINNEGAN’S WAKE was published in 1939 (just a year after REBECCA) and Virginia Woolf’s modernist masterpiece, MRS. DALLOWAY was published thirteen years before REBECCA. So, Du Maurier was writing traditional historical romances and gothic thrillers at a time when her best known contemporaries were more concerned with experimenting with form. She, in fact, wrote — what we might now call — commercial women’s fiction.

In recent years, critics have revised their takes on Du Maurier and her status has been elevated. They have focused on the Freudian and Jungian subtexts of her books, news of her potential bi-sexuality, and the undeniably powerful psychological realism in her works. Her work is now commonly accepted as literature.

Yes, it might be true that there is a “trashy” element to REBECCA, if trashy is equivalent to page-turning and accessible (although that might not be it, exactly, either) but it seems far too easy to dismiss the novel or the author. First of all, as in REBECCA, Du Maurier’s endings are never quite happy. When one reads REBECCA, they enter a dark and queasy place full of twists and turns and never feel quite at rest even at the book’s close. (Not exactly a place you would want to escape to.) Second, I think Du Maurier touches on something profound in all of her novels and short stories: whether it is the loneliness at the heart of her book and their heroines, the complicated relationship between the narrator and Rebecca, or the way in which a house (Manderley) becomes a complex character in its own right.

-Jennifer Bassett

Someone (who was it, originally? T.S. Eliot? Anne Morrow Lindbergh? Chef from South Park? help me out here, WR Classics readers!) once said “It’s the journey, not the arrival, that matters.”

For Virginia Woolf’s work, there can be no more apt epigraph: following her stream-of-consciousness is more enriching than actually reaching the sea. Woolf may not be everyone’s cup of English tea, but few dispute her canonical status as one of the foremost Modernists.

So why does that matter?
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Join us on Tuesday, August 21, all day, as we chat about Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, arguably one of the finest novels written in the twentieth century. Whether you’ve read To The Lighthouse twenty years ago or you’ve only just discovered it, please join us!

It is a truth universally acknowledged… wait, wait, I’m supposed to be introducing you to Virginia Woolf, not Jane Austen! But still… it really is the truth that what you get out of a book depends on who you are when you read it. (You never forget your first reader-response theory… sigh. Now I need a cigarette.)

When I first read To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf’s masterwork, I was very young and newly engaged to be married. I was terrified that like generations of women before me that I would lose my identity when I became a wife, especially since very few of my peers were choosing the same path. Therefore, Mrs. Ramsay, ueber-earth-mother, terrified me: would my life’s triumph be perfecting some recipe, like her boeuf en daube?

In fact, Mrs. Ramsay’s presence loomed so large for me at that time (and deliberately so; Woolf wants her to cast a long shadow) that the only message I heard from the character of Lily Briscoe was the oft-repeated message of “Can’t paint, can’t write” that she’s taken in from Charles Tansley. (Odious man.) Combined with the metaphor of the boeuf en daube, Briscoe’s mental refrain gave me chills — and prevented me from seeing that Lily Briscoe ultimately breaks free of both Mrs. Ramsay’s chosen prison, and her own.

My own fears also, then, prevented me from understanding a central message of the book. Before I began reading To the Lighthouse in preparation for this week’s discussion, I thought: well, you imbecile, you also missed out on the largest point of all. Virignia Woolf, after all, wrote this amazing book. Why are you so caught up in the “can’ts” and not seeing the achievement?

Then I began reading… and both realized and remembered how plagued by doubt and dismay Woolf herself was. However, she was such a genius that she was able to use her doubt and dismay to create a vision that illuminates her own psyche and that of her characters. Reading To the Lighthouse is an experience as rich as eating a proper Provencal stew or seeing a beautiful painting. It may not be the same as cooking that stew or creating that painting — and that’s all right.

What has reading To the Lighthouse been like for you?

-Bethanne Patrick

Related Posts
Why Bethanne chose To the Lighthouse

Join us on Tuesday, August 21, all day, as we chat about Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse, arguably one of the finest novels written in the twentieth century. Leading up to the chat, Bethanne will post her thoughts on Woolf’s novel, themes to discuss, etc. Whether you’ve read To The Lighthouse twenty years ago or you’ve only just discovered it, please join us!

More about Virginia Woolf’s novel & Bethanne’s thoughts after the jump!

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For the past three months, Writers Revealed has introduced you to today’s most buzzworthy writers. You heard Leslie Bennetts discuss choice feminism in The Feminist Mistake, you listed in on a roundtable of accomplished novelists discuss mothers in contemporary fiction, you met Joshua Ferris, author of the poignant novel, Then We Came to the End, you shared your online dating story pitfalls and successes, and you learned of a Chicago riddled with reformers, harlots and politicians. And while we will continue to chat with the finest authors of contemporary fiction and non fiction, we realized there is always room to celebrate the classics and world literature published before 1945.

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Writers Revealed Classics - a monthly live chat where we’ll discuss our picks for great classic & world literature. And we invite you to join in on all the fun! Each month we’ll announce our classic selection. Leading up to the day-long chat on the Writers Revealed website, your host will offer her view of the book, including what she loved and didn’t love about the work and themes worthy of discussion. There is no obligation to join, there are no sign-ups, just pop in on the day of the chat to share your view of the book and connect with other readers.

Meet Our Hosts!
Jennifer Bassett, Writers Revealed Classics Host
Jennifer Bassett works in book publishing, is a Senior Editor for Swink magazine, Contributing Editor for KGB Bar Lit, and really likes playing her Farfisa VIP 345 Organ.

Bethanne Patrick, Writers Revealed Classics Host
Bethanne Patrick is a journalist and literary critic whose favorite novel is Middlemarch. She has a master’s degree in English from The University of Virginia and has written for publications and sites including PAGES magazine, The Washington Post Book World, Bookreporter.com, and The Writer Magazine. She has interviewed scores of best-selling authors, including Sue Grafton, Alice Walker, Alexander McCall Smith, Luanne Rice, Brad Meltzer, and more. She is a Contributing Editor at Publishers Weekly, where she blogs as The Book Maven.
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