Jamaica Inn/Daphne du Maurier
oAfter reading non-fiction it was a pleasure to return to a Daphne du Maurier novel I had not read.
Jamaica Inn showcases Daphne du Maurer’s ability as a writer: she can tell a good story and conveys a fine sense of location and atmosphere.
The story’s heroine is 23 year old Mary Yellan who hails from Helford in Southern Cornwall. After her mother dies she makes a coach trip to Jamaica Inn on Bodmin Moor – now a more customer pit-stop for coaches – but then where her aunt Patience has married a drunken brute called Joss Merlyn, the landlord of the Jamaica Inn.
Despite its position in the centre of Bodmin Moor it has little custom and is the centre of a smuggling ring.
After getting lost on the moor she encounters another sinister character – the albino vicar of Altarnum – Francis Davey. She is given a lift to Launceston by Jem Merlyn, brother of Joss, a horse thief with whom she falls in love.
Daphne du Maurier is not reticent in putting herself into her novels.
The headstrong Mary is typical of Daphne herself – ruled by her heart not her head. Once, when riding on the moor of Bodmin with her close friend Foy Quiller Couch, she got hopelessly lost and left it to the horses to get her to safety. There is also a strong connection between the Brontë family and Daphne. The girls were brought up by their Cornish aunt and Daphne wrote a biography of the only son Branwell. So the Heathcliff/Cathy Wuthering Heights romance on the moors would have been an inspiration to her.
Her novels are often described as gothic, a loose term for the interaction of the location and the plot.
Think Manderley in her most celebrated novel Rebecca.
This may explain why fourteen films have been made made of du Maurier novels.
Modern authors reveal little of themselves in their novels unless it is their gay sexuality (e.g. Alan Hollingshurst and Sara Waters). One knows little of Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes or Robert Harris.
That you can see Daphne in her novels is one more reason why I find them so engrossing.
