Du Maurier, Daphne (1907 - 1989) | Introduction
Introduction
English novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, and editor.
Regarded by many critics as a natural storyteller who made effective use of melodrama, du Maurier is best known for her Gothic novels and short stories. Unaffected by the literary fashions of her day, she wrote simple narratives that appealed to the average reader's love of adventure, fantasy, sensuality, and mystery. Perhaps best known for the Gothic novel Rebecca (1938), her writings have been extremely popular, and many have been adapted for film and television.
BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION
Du Maurier was born in London to a family whose members had been successful in arts and entertainment. Her father was a matinee idol and theater manager, and her grandfather was an artist for Punch and the author of several novels. Du Maurier was privately educated, and her youth was a swirl of yachting and skiing parties and trips abroad with wealthy friends. Her career as a novelist began on a visit to Cornwall when she was twenty. According to Margaret Forster (see Further Reading), du Maurier "was one of those writers in whom the right place releases a certain sort of psychic energy…. Cornwall, with its wild seas
MAJOR WORKS
In her long career as a writer du Maurier produced nineteen novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays, and other writings. According to critics, most of her fiction can be classified as either cloak-and-dagger romances or Gothic novels. Like her acknowledged master, Robert Louis Stevenson, du Maurier wrote fantasies involving pirates, smuggling, and ladies in distress. Yet du Maurier preferred to be thought of as an author of mystery and suspense. Rebecca is the story of a woman who feels a sense of competition with her husband's first wife, who died under mysterious circumstances. In the opinion of many reviewers, it is an interesting psychological study of a young woman married to an older man, as well as a gripping Gothic novel that includes murder, violence, and a mysterious, haunted mansion. In her short story "The Birds" (1959) du Maurier creates a nightmare world in which great flocks of birds inexplicably attack and kill humans. The work was made into a popular motion picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock. "Don't Look Now" (1971), a macabre tale about an English couple in Venice who receive visions of the future, has been described as compelling and suspenseful; it was adapted as a film that, in the words of Pauline Kael (see Further Reading), "is the fanciest, most carefully assembled Gothic enigma yet put on the screen."
CRITICAL RECEPTION
In spite of her popularity, du Maurier has never won the full approval of the literary establishment. Many critics find her prose clear but uninteresting and deplore what they perceive as a lack of symbolism or imagery in her books. According to some, du Maurier wrote mostly on the surface, only rarely probing the psychological depths of her characters, and her plots seem conventional or contrived. Other commentators, however, have praised her works as imaginative and evocative, lauding her ability to create suspense and atmosphere. Richard Kelly (see Further Reading) described Rebecca as "the first major Gothic romance in the twentieth century and perhaps the finest written to this day." He pointed out that Rebecca includes many key components of Gothic romances, including "a mysterious and haunting mansion, violence, murder, a sinister villain, sexual passion, a spectacular fire, brooding landscapes, and a version of the madwoman in the attic." Sylvia Berkman assessed du Maurier as a "specialist in horror," noting that "her creative intelligence is resourceful, her command of eerie atmosphere persuasive and precise, her sense of shock-timing exceptionally skilled." Even du Maurier's detractors acknowledge her ability to create fantasy worlds that transport readers out of their daily existence and into places of romance and adventure.
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