Dreamtime in Cornwall

Abstract

Unlike J. B. Priestley, Daphne du Maurier was a ‘born novelist’. She came from a famous and well-connected family of artists, actors and writers, but finding London society uncongenial, fled to Cornwall in her early twenties where she was inspired to write. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit (1931), proved successful and with Rebecca, published in 1938, she became one of the most famous best-selling authors of the day.1 Even though her work continues to sell, its cultural significance is often overlooked, partly because as an author of middlebrow fiction for women, she is not taken seriously, and possibly even more so because of the strong focus in most discussions of du Maurier — or ‘Daphne’ as her fans are wont to speak of her — on the author’s biography. Certainly du Maurier herself set up some of the more ‘romantic’ autobiographical details like a smoke screen to satisfy her readers while protecting her privacy. Some accounts, such as when she discovered Menabilly, or when handsome ‘Boy’ Browning, her future husband, came sailing into Fowey Harbour, are repeated with fetishistic glee and, yes, the gate and drive described in Rebecca are exactly as she saw them when in search of Rashleigh’s elusive mansion. This mimetic furore has all but obscured any wider cultural concerns.2 Alison Light’s Forever England, published in 1991, is the only study to discuss in detail du Maurier’s work in the context of interwar discourses of Englishness.KeywordsGrey HarbourCommunicative MemoryMale ProtagonistFamily RomanceIncest TabooThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.