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A review by laurenmichellebrock
Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier
4.0
What I liked most about this book was its use of elements across several eras of literature, most namely romantic, gothic, and modern. The language is written with a romantic’s love for descriptive narrative, while the content deals with a gothic’s flare for mystery and superstition, but the book was published in 1935 and features a female character in the ultimate act of feminism: struggling against the plights of men to be seen as an equal threat, which she became.
One of the things that intrigued me most was the way Mary constantly created stories in her head of how things could’ve happened or might’ve been if other factors had come into play. In the beginning pages she wonders about the lady who warns her of Jamaica Inn, “how she might have followed her from the coach, and prayed her company, and asked her for a home,” and forty pages later when she imagines the life her aunt might’ve had if she’d stayed in Bodmin and not married her uncle Joss.
The most detailed story she created in her mind was on page 32 when she considers how Joss’s brother, Matthew, might’ve died in the moors.
“In her fancy she saw him stride across the high ground, whistling a song, the murmur of the brook in his ears, and somehow evening came upon him before he was aware, and his footsteps faltered as he turned in his tracks. In her fancy she watched him pause, and think a moment, and curse softly, and then with a shrug of his shoulder he plunged down into the mist, his confidence returning; but before he had taken five steps he felt the ground sag under his feet, and he stumbled, and fell, and suddenly he was up above his knees in weed and slime. He reached out for a tuft of grass, and it sank beneath his weight. He kicked with his feet, and they would not answer him. He kicked once more, and one foot sucked itself free, but, as he plunged forward, reckless and panic stricken, he trod deeper water still, and now he floundered helplessly, beating the weed with his hands. She heard him scream in terror, and a curlew rose from the marsh in front of him, flapping his wings and whistling his mournful cry. When the curlew had flown from sight, disappearing behind a ridge of land, the marsh was still again; only a few grass stems shivered in the wind, and there was silence.”
It is this paragraph, perhaps, that we see more than just a girl imagining the death of a boy, but a combination of elements at work: The romantic poeticism of how she envisions Matthew’s death, and the gothic foreshadowing of the stickiness to come in the suction of this new home Mary has found herself in and in the goings-on of her uncle and his crew. Mary’s attention to the act of dying, though, is interesting, especially when you read on and consider her attitude towards death further on in the book. Her uncle’s business is so grotesque and threatening to Mary and her aunt that she soon yields to the idea that she could die in the fight against her uncle. Also her mother has just died, so her fascination with the moment of death could be a way to empathize with all her mother suffered in dying.
We also see in this passage the foothold mortality has in the story, in general, and Mary’s mother’s death opens us up to the idea that hers is only the beginning of more to come. When Joss’s younger brother, Jem, takes Mary to the fair and a gypsy tells him he will soon kill a man, we get a different perspective on mortality. It switches from the passivity of death to the assertion of taking a life and we are left to wonder who it will be that Jem kills and in what context. When the true head of Joss’s organization is discovered and we see that Jem is to kill the man orchestrating the events, the characters are given justice in the mortality of men.
The final death orchestrates a new life for the characters, as well. Nothing can ever be as it once was, and Mary tries hard to convince herself of going back home and picking up the family farm, which would’ve been like dying all over again. But, Jem, always having represented to Mary a relentless opportunity she tried her hardest to deny, offers her the idea that she could move forward and let go of the past without having to feel responsible to bearing its memory. He gives her the chance to reemerge into the world, and, in a way, be reborn again, so that Jem and Mary become the only two characters who seem to completely live on in our memories at the end of the book; the only ones not struck down by their own mortality.
One of the things that intrigued me most was the way Mary constantly created stories in her head of how things could’ve happened or might’ve been if other factors had come into play. In the beginning pages she wonders about the lady who warns her of Jamaica Inn, “how she might have followed her from the coach, and prayed her company, and asked her for a home,” and forty pages later when she imagines the life her aunt might’ve had if she’d stayed in Bodmin and not married her uncle Joss.
The most detailed story she created in her mind was on page 32 when she considers how Joss’s brother, Matthew, might’ve died in the moors.
“In her fancy she saw him stride across the high ground, whistling a song, the murmur of the brook in his ears, and somehow evening came upon him before he was aware, and his footsteps faltered as he turned in his tracks. In her fancy she watched him pause, and think a moment, and curse softly, and then with a shrug of his shoulder he plunged down into the mist, his confidence returning; but before he had taken five steps he felt the ground sag under his feet, and he stumbled, and fell, and suddenly he was up above his knees in weed and slime. He reached out for a tuft of grass, and it sank beneath his weight. He kicked with his feet, and they would not answer him. He kicked once more, and one foot sucked itself free, but, as he plunged forward, reckless and panic stricken, he trod deeper water still, and now he floundered helplessly, beating the weed with his hands. She heard him scream in terror, and a curlew rose from the marsh in front of him, flapping his wings and whistling his mournful cry. When the curlew had flown from sight, disappearing behind a ridge of land, the marsh was still again; only a few grass stems shivered in the wind, and there was silence.”
It is this paragraph, perhaps, that we see more than just a girl imagining the death of a boy, but a combination of elements at work: The romantic poeticism of how she envisions Matthew’s death, and the gothic foreshadowing of the stickiness to come in the suction of this new home Mary has found herself in and in the goings-on of her uncle and his crew. Mary’s attention to the act of dying, though, is interesting, especially when you read on and consider her attitude towards death further on in the book. Her uncle’s business is so grotesque and threatening to Mary and her aunt that she soon yields to the idea that she could die in the fight against her uncle. Also her mother has just died, so her fascination with the moment of death could be a way to empathize with all her mother suffered in dying.
We also see in this passage the foothold mortality has in the story, in general, and Mary’s mother’s death opens us up to the idea that hers is only the beginning of more to come. When Joss’s younger brother, Jem, takes Mary to the fair and a gypsy tells him he will soon kill a man, we get a different perspective on mortality. It switches from the passivity of death to the assertion of taking a life and we are left to wonder who it will be that Jem kills and in what context. When the true head of Joss’s organization is discovered and we see that Jem is to kill the man orchestrating the events, the characters are given justice in the mortality of men.
The final death orchestrates a new life for the characters, as well. Nothing can ever be as it once was, and Mary tries hard to convince herself of going back home and picking up the family farm, which would’ve been like dying all over again. But, Jem, always having represented to Mary a relentless opportunity she tried her hardest to deny, offers her the idea that she could move forward and let go of the past without having to feel responsible to bearing its memory. He gives her the chance to reemerge into the world, and, in a way, be reborn again, so that Jem and Mary become the only two characters who seem to completely live on in our memories at the end of the book; the only ones not struck down by their own mortality.