What Influenced Daphne Du Maurier

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,”—this is the famous and evocative opening line from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, often considered the first gothic romance novel of the 20th century and one of Britain’s most beloved fictional literary works. Du Maurier, who was an active writer from 1931 until her death in 1989, came from a prominent, creative, and well-to-do British family and published several novels, short stories, biographies, and plays over her lifetime. One of the great shapers of British popular culture, du Maurier is renowned for her application of realistic psychological suspense, dark and often macabre plot lines, and bold writing style. Her unique writing style was influenced by genres such as mystery, Gothicism,

Although she is often categorized as a “romantic novelist”, she abhorred this term. In the period between the wars, selecting books by genre became the norm and was a way for authors to gain readership, but du Maurier avoided categorizing herself (Light 160). Although romance is an element present in her works, there is also murder, mystery, adventure, suspense, and Gothicism, but “rather than see du Maurier as a writer who ‘crosses genres’, we might see her as one who resists them” (Light 164). In order to create something new that would appeal to the population because of its unique nature, du Maurier includes elements of different genres in her stories but never fully commits to them. Society’s desire for something ‘new’ may have stemmed from their eagerness to escape the harsh reality of the interwar

From a young age, she was always interested in history. She and her family often visited Cornwall, a British seaside holiday destination, and she was fascinated by its bountiful history (Shallcross 54). It is said, “the richness and romance of local legends captured her vivid imagination and stimulated her creative powers”, and she was always eager to “listen to the elderly and their stories of forgotten days” (Shallcross 56). It is also Cornwall where Menabilly, a historic estate that du Maurier relished as an adolescent and later purchased, is located. In her book, Letters from Menabilly: Portrait of a Friendship, Oriel Malet, du Maurier’s French pen pal, describes Menabilly as “one of these houses, in which layers of time seemed to have worn thin in places, so that the past now and then showed through”. After her father passed away and her husband was away for months at a time, du Maurier spent much of her time at Menabilly discussing the past with her mother and sisters (Shallcross