Don't Look Now! The compulsions and revelations of Daphne du Maurier's horror writing

Abstract

Daphne du Maurier is one of the great twentieth century women horror writers. With the current revival of and women's interventions in the genre, Daphne du Maurier's use of psychological and body horror, her manipulations of and innovations in the genre are seen to lie behind much of the power of contemporary women's horror writing. Horror, its roots in the Gothic, can be much more than 'schlock'. At its best it is politically, socially, sexually and psychologically interventionist, and critical. Horror enables an exploration and dramatisation of fears and nightmares, bringing them into the pale light of our consciousness, in order to return them (perhaps) safely to their coffins. Daphne du Maurier's Don't Look Now and The Birds are the main focus in this paper which will also refer to the novel Rebecca, and to other short stories in its investigation of how readers'/viewers' terrors and fears are dramatised, explored, and, unusually for the genre, only very rarely laid to rest. Daphne du Maurier's roots in the Gothic, the horror of Poe and the great nineteenth and early twentieth century women's ghost stories will be explored. So will her legacy in confrontational, oppositional, and carnivalesque contemporary women's horror which, like much of her writing, provides an entertaining and provocative vehicle for interrogating gender representations and assumptions, as well as other configurations of power.