The tale and the reader : the art of storytelling in the novels of Daphne du Maurier

Abstract

Daphne du Maurier wrote more than thirty books of fiction, (auto)biographies, short stories, plays and other non-fictional works during her five-decade career, but although her oeuvre contains a variety of themes and genres, she continues to be known only as a writer of romantic suspense novels. The extraordinary success of her most famous work, Rebecca (1938), and her short story “The Birds”, both adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into films, has overshadowed the interesting work she did in other genres, including biographical fiction, family sagas, the historical romance, and science fiction. Her works, often dismissed as popular sensation fiction, have to date received little critical attention, though her stories continue to be adapted for the big and the small screen. This dissertation fills a critical vacuum in scholarship by analysing the generic, thematic, and narrative execution and, sometimes, experimentation in du Maurier’s novels. By offering close readings of her rather diverse novels, this dissertation acknowledges the literary merit of her works, and also intends to shed a possible light onto the reasons for this author’s success as a storyteller, then and now. The dissertation begins with questions of classification and how best to understand du Maurier’s place and oeuvre in the literary market. It suggests that – rather than following sociological or gender parameters as other critics of bestselling fiction, like Tania Modleski, Janice Radway and Nicola Humble, have done – a productive framework is to analyse du Maurier’s novels with the same analytical tools of ‘high-brow’ fiction to understand her writing techniques and resultant appeal. She is, as will emerge, a very skilled storyteller and craftswoman. Three chapters then elaborate on some of her techniques as the dissertation looks at du Maurier’s use of various themes, genres, focalisations, plot structures, narrative situations, and character portrayal techniques, to manipulate the distance between the tale and the reader. In her variety, she thus constantly frustrates any horizon of expectations a returning reader or a reader versed in a particular genre may have. Chapter One examines the suspense genre for which du Maurier is famous; Chapter Two analyses the fictional biographies and family sagas which reflect her fascination with the connection between, and narration of, time and space as well as character; and Chapter Three brings in her historical fiction, the time travel genre, and the dystopian genre, as her narrative tool kit will be further analysed. Through illuminating her mastery and exploitation of the relationship between the tale and the reader, this dissertation argues that du Maurier’s mastery of craft and variation contributes to her creation of fulfilling and stimulating reading experiences and her ongoing commercial and literary success.

(435 words)