Research Paper On Daphne Du Maurier

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Daphne du Maurier, sometimes known as “Lady Browning,” was a British writer and playwright. She wrote many romantic suspense novels. Her best-known works are Rebecca and “The Birds,” which were both adapted into films by Alfred Hitchcock. Du Maurier was a talented writer and many events in her life influenced her writings, which led her to become a renowned and successful writer.
Du Maurier was the second of three daughters and was born into a very artistic family. Her father, Gerald du Maurier, was an actor-manager and her mother, Muriel Beaumont, was an actress. She was the granddaughter of the famous caricaturist, George du Maurier and she was the niece of magazine editor, J.M. Barrie. “Because her childhood contained many literary and …show more content…

She came from a very talented and unique family. This became a base for her literary talent. From a young age, she was encouraged to make something of herself. Because she had famous parents, she had the opportunity to meet many celebrities who persuaded her to want to be in the limelight. Du Maurier was also inspired by the town of Cornwall, England:
Houses always stirred du Maurier’s imagination. The several she inhabited with her husband on his various military postings invariably provoked her to fantasize about the lives of their former residents. But it was Menabilly, in her beloved Cornwall, that provided one model for the fictional Manderley. For a decade, Menabilly had been her enduring passion, exciting fantasies about the family whose descendants had lived there since the sixteenth century. And so it would remain until the end of her life (Commire 825).
The houses in Cornwall inspired the settings for Du Maurier’s novels and stories, specifically the Menabilly house. The settings of the short story, “The Birds,” and of the novel, Rebecca, both were influenced by the houses in the town of Cornwall. Due to her nature, Du Maurier was inspired to write imaginatively and …show more content…

After her death, it was revealed that Du Maurier had an extramarital affair with actress Gertrude Lawrence and professed an attraction to Ellen Doubleday, the wife of her American publisher. According to her biographer, Margaret Forster, Du Maurier viewed herself as two distinct individuals: first, a wife and mother, and second, a lover (comprised of male energy) which inspired her creative process (“The” 2)
Because she viewed herself as two different entities, her writings were much more inventive and diverse because she related to both the qualities of a woman and a man. As said by Nina Auerbach:
Despite the fame of the female-centered Rebecca, Hungry Hill, like Daphne du Maurier’s best, most characteristic novels, is dominated by powerful men: women are there to torment, to soothe, to prop up men and cover up for them, to die conveniently or inconveniently…Throughout Daphne du Maurier’s novels, the falls of men are more compelling than those of women because her men have everything to lose; while women are humble by definition, men embody power and privilege. In their magnitude, they are all like heroes of Greek tragedy, but their heroism is a posture: we know them so well that we share their embarrassed ineptitude in their role. (Auerbach 4 and

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