Margaret Forster once wrote that Daphne du Maurier ‘satisfied all the questionable criteria of popular fiction, and yet satisfied too the exacting requirements of “real literature”, something very few novelists ever do.’ Having read Rebecca a year ago, I knew that du Maurier was particularly talented when it came to creating suspenseful stories, books that have lent themselves to being not only re-read but also re-adpated, again and again, making du Maurier one of the most beloved English language authors I have covered. But it was reading Jamaica Inn this summer that I realised how right Forster was. It’s difficult to find a reliable definition of either ‘real’ literature or ‘popular’ fiction, given that their criteria usually change based on who you ask. But I found that Jamaica Inn satisfies a multitude of the conditions most people would cite, making for easily digestible reading that avoids being shallow.
Major spoilers for Jamaica Inn ahead!
Language, Land and Laborers
What makes a book easy to digest? Personally, I think this often comes down to the language used; often, a writer who opts to use complex language in the pursuit of decadent or stylistic writing often inherently sacrifices clarity and reading ease. This definitely isn’t a criticism – I think of authors like Cormac McCarthy or William Faulkner and their incredible prose, beautifully and densley constructed, but which come with the trade off of being known as books that readers commonly struggle with. It’s therefore quite the feat to be able to write well without losing your reader’s understanding of the story at large.
Jamaica Inn is by no means the most flowery piece of fiction I’ve read. Du Maurier uses simple language, but with a diverse range, keeping vocabulary straightforward but varied. The types of words she uses to set the scene are evident from the start of the book, as our protagonist Mary Yellan makes her entry into the novel via a carriage on the moors, which are ‘grey, cold, dark, black’. Then, as Mary begins to explore the country around the inn, we see the marshes which are described as ‘soggy, soft, yellow, watery’. The climax is set rather dramatically on the summit of a tor, with words like ‘pale, white, halo, smoke’, and the conclusion sees things turn ‘hard, bright, warm’ with ‘rustling leaves’. These descriptions are all simple – monosyllabic words and the kind of vocabulary that my GCSE English teacher definitely would have scolded me for using. Yet they each have their own distinctive palette, clear hues that successfully paint a detailed image of each setting mostly through colour or the elements. Moving from the darkness of the moors, to the yellowed rot of the marshes, to the harsh, ghostly white tone of the climax (no doubt purposely mirroring the antagonist of the story), and then the final warm but subdued hopefulness of the ending.
They are words so simple that they might be used by a farmer or laborer such as Mary herself to describe the land and weather, and this lends each description a sense of purposefulness. The reader gets the sense that du Maurier describes things not just for the sake of writing prettily, but to be useful to the reader, and their comprehension of the world around Mary which we see through her eyes and terms.
Appropriately Cliché
The simple language, in a way, defines the two other features of du Maurier’s writing. Story-wise, Jamaica Inn is not groundbreaking. In fact, it is deliberately the opposite. It is the author’s take on the gothic stories of the Victorian times, and she remains pretty faithful to the tropes of these stories. There are elements of both horror and romance, and a mingling of the two when it becomes possible that Mary’s love interest might be as depraved as his brother, the landlord of Jamaica Inn. There are villains who are incredibly obvious, almost cartoonishly so. The landlord himself is a hulking brute of a man, a violent drunk with no regard for the lives of others, moral decency being the least of his worries. The novel’s other and main villain is very much reflective of the time when it was written, when a man who has albinism (and is an ex-priest!) must be the villain because of his appearance which is inhuman or otherworldly, according to the author, and because he is living a life in spite of religion and God.
Yet while some aspects of the story appear to lack nuance, other characters and their motives are far more ambiguous. Aunt Patience is one of many strange characters who perhaps isn’t quite evil, but isn’t exactly morally upstanding either. It’s easy to write off Aunt Patience as helpless, but she is at times frustratingly pathetic or willfully ignorant of her situation, to the point where it feels deliberate enough to be malicious. We pity her for the abusive situation she is in, but it is a fact that she allowed her young niece to enter an incredibly dangerous situation without any warning, and it’s hard to see this as anything less than selfish. It’s an extremely effective way of throwing the entire ending into question, by drawing parallels between Mary’s choice and that of her aunt. Mary chooses to go with Jem despite knowing that he is himself a rogue and, by her own words, born of ‘bad blood’. Her decision to go with him comes off as bittersweet in that, while she is following her heart, she is also following a dangerous man into a life without stability and full of plenty of morally grey areas – in other words, a situation not unlike that of her aunt. What I loved about this is that du Maurier never makes character’s intentions perfectly clear. Why does Aunt Patience refrain from turning in her husband? Why does Jem fall so hard for Mary, and vice versa? The reader ultimately decides the answer to these questions, and in doing so determines the overall tone of the novel.
Tonal Shift
I found it interesting when discussing this book elsewhere that not everyone shared my sentiment that this book felt less suspenseful than Rebecca and therefore was pleasanter to read. This comes down to the fact that Jamaica Inn plays with tone so often, it becomes difficult to tell what the overall atmosphere is, or whether the main protagonist might be leading us on a bit. Mary’s periods of investigation, either when snooping around the inn or racing across the moors, are accompanied by intense melodrama. This makes for fun reading, but like Rebecca, it does make one wonder if Mary is laying things on thicker than they actually are. I loved sections where Mary found herself recounting the events of the novel to other characters such as the Priest, or Jem. The Priest in particular makes Mary feel ‘silly’ on multiple occasions, and she becomes very self-conscious about the fact that she sounds like a typical ‘hysterical woman’. The priest obviously has an ulterior motive for making her feel this way, but there’s a sense of self-awareness there that throws into question once more whether Mary is being melodramatic after all, or if she is correct to react the way she does to her situation. I’m inclined to think the latter, as I count Mary among one of the better female protagonists I’ve encountered. The few characters who do buy into the excitement are those directly involved (i.e. her uncle and aunt), and the Mayor and his wife, who seem to relish their role in playing up the events of the novel later on. The result is that du Maurier’s work is exactly as dramatic as you want it to be – either this is a very suspenseful race against time and man to expose a terrible injustice and save the innocent people tied up in it, or it is the overexcited adventures of a girl who until now has spent her whole life on a farm, tending to her ill mother whose dying wish was that her daughter go out and live life fully.
Finishing Up and Carrying On
Forster’s quote ultimately paints du Maurier as a writer of conflicting quality, able to appeal to the masses with her writing without losing the nuance, meanings and themes that make ‘real literature’ special. Jamaica Inn turned out to be the perfect illustration of this, being both an exciting and thought provoking read. While I’m a little nervous about breaking the spell surrounding this great writer, I am very much looking forward to reading more of her books, and seeing how well Forster’s words hold true for the rest of her works.
What do you think about Daphne du Maurier as a writer? Did you read and enjoy Jamaica Inn? Be sure to leave a comment below!
