Either Cornwall suffers a persistent rain of invariable and miserable quality, or du Maurier would have benefited from using her thesaurus a little more often. A glowing figure for feminism, she is not.įor all that, it’s not a bad book in terms of writing quality, though I think if I see the words ‘mizzling rain’ one more time I may actually scream. Worse, Mary Yellen turns out to be petulant and obstinate, granted, but quick wits and courage were in short(lived) supply. The plot was hopelessly obvious (I guessed both the mystery villain and future lover instantly on their introductions and found almost all the scenes predictable) and male characters rather pathetic and truly incompetent – unfortunate when they were all supposed to be strong, wild, brilliant and terrifying to some degree or another. Such is the excellent craftsmanship of the opening that I looked forward to the story unfolding.Īlas, du Maurier’s book has not aged too well.
The girl is presented as strong and courageous – admired by all, good and bad alike – and it was good to read a woman’s perspective on a female character rather than a man’s, as we so often read. Mary Yellen soon finds her life and her sanity are in grave danger as she unravels the secrets. But her aunt has married a terrible man who is the landlord of the infamous ‘Jamaica Inn’ where evil and murderous deeds take place in the dead of night. Remembering her aunt in childhood as a joyful soul, she’s looking forward to this. Mary Yellen, after the death of her mother, has gone to live with her aunt at Jamaica Inn. ‘Jamaica Inn’ shares many of the same qualities. The author and director were a perfect match for one another it seems. I recall watching Hitchcock’s rendering of the author’s most famous work, ‘Rebecca’, many years ago as a child and enjoying the brooding intensity of the plot. Over time, curiosity got the better of me – I wanted to know more of this elusive Mary Yellen mentioned so intriguingly in the first two paragraphs to mention her. I have, along with my students, pored over every single word of the first 8-10 paragraphs. It was an extract given in a past paper and I found it served wonderfully well as a first foray into analysing text.
I know the opening pages of Daphne du Maurier’s classic novel extremely well having used the opening for several years with my GCSE English students.
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