Philip Ashley inspecting the delicate white hands
of his cousin Rachel by candlelight [a]
'There are some women [...] who through no fault of their own impel disaster.
Whatever they touch, somehow turns to tragedy.' - Nick Kendall [b]
I.
Jean Baudrillard insists that the slender and lively hands of women are of greater symbolic and seductive beauty than their eyes or hidden sexual organs, and I suspect that Philip Ashley - the naive and inexperienced (possibly unreliable) narrator of Daphne du Maurier's Gothic novel My Cousin Rachel (1951) - may very well agree with this assertion.
For he certainly seems to be partial, shall we say, to the delicate white hands of his older, twice-widowed, half-Italian, very alluring cousin Rachel ...
II.
From the first time he meets her, with, at that time, hate in his heart for the woman he believes responsible for the death of his beloved guardian, Ambrose, Philip notices her hands clasped in her lap:
"I had never seen hands so small before on an adult person. They were very slender, very narrow, like the hands of someone in a portrait painted by an old master and left unfinished." [80]
When Rachel finishes drinking her tea and places her cup and saucer back on the tray, he is once again "aware of her hands, narrow and small and very white" [85], noticing also that she has "two rings, fine stones both of them, on her fingers" [85].
So, whilst I'm not saying Philip is a cheirophile or hand fetishist, it's certainly true that when talking to Rachel he finds it hard to retain eye contact and that his gaze does not wander from her face towards her breasts or feet, for example, but almost exclusively to her hands:
"I shifted my gaze from her eyes down to her hands. They were clasped in front of her, small and very still. It was easier to speak somehow if I did not look directly at her, but at her hands." [99]
It's true also that he is fascinated by the manner in which the fingers on her right hand would touch and play with the ring on her left hand: "I watched them tighten upon it" [99] and then gradually relax their hold.
No doubt Philip is hoping that Rachel will one day hold something of his own in her hands - and I don't mean his heart. At one point, whilst watching her hands, he imagines himself sitting naked in his chair before her; exposed and all his fantasies revealed unto her.
His childhood friend Louise is not mistaken to say to him: "'How simple it must be for a woman of the world, like
Mrs Ashley, to twist a young man like yourself around her finger'" [133].
III.
When not clasping her hands in front of her, or playing with her rings, or stroking the head of the dog, Rachel sometimes cups her chin in her hands or puts them to her face in a defensive gesture; at other times she gives Philip a hand to hold or kiss. And, like a true Italian, when she grows animated in conversation she gestures somewhat excessively with her hands.
It is sometime before Philip finally gets to hold her hands in his own, or to remove her gloves so as to passionately kiss her hands. But his joy in so doing doesn't last long. For after Rachel makes it perfectly clear that she has no intention of ever marrying him, Philip reflects how her hands lose their warmth and, when he does attempt to hold them, "the fingers struggled for release, and the rings scratched, cutting at my palm" [270].
During his prolonged period of illness, Philip is nursed by Rachel. But the feel of her hand upon his fevered brow and neck isn't soothing; it is, rather, hard and gripping like ice. When finally he begins to recover his senses and his strength, however, he is content to lie in bed holding her hand in silence:
"I ran my thumb along the pale blue veins that showed always on the back of hers, and turned the rings. I continued thus for quite a time, and did not talk." [289]
IV.
Finally, the questions that all readers must address arise: Are Rachel's the hands of a murderess? Does she stir ground laburnum seeds into his tisana?
By the end of the book, Philip certainly has his suspicions and after noticing how Rachel stirs the tisana with a spoon in her left hand [c], he comes to the following fatal conclusion:
"I had held [her hand] many times, in love, before. Felt the small size of it, turned the rings upon the fingers, seen the blue veins upon the back, touched the small close-filed nails. Now, as it rested in my hand, I saw it, for the first time, put to another purpose. I saw it take the laburnum pods, in deft fashion, and empty out the seeds; then crush the seeds, and rub them in her palm. I remembered once I had told her that her hands were beautiful, and she had answered, with a laugh, that I was the first to tell her so." [321]
Finally, Rachel has the accident that kills her (one that Philip is complicit in, if not criminally responsible for). Climbing down to where she lay "amongst the timber and the stones" [335], he takes her hands in his for the last time and, despite being cold, he "went on holding her hands until she died" [335].
Notes
[a] Screenshot from My Cousin Rachel (dir. Roger Michell, 2017), starring Rachel Weisz as Rachel Ashley and Sam Claflin as Philip Ashley.
[b] This
is the warning Philip's godfather, Nick Kendall, gives him on the eve
of his 25th birthday, with reference to his beloved cousin Rachel. See Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel (Virago Press, 2017), p. 246. All future page references to this edition of the novel will be given directly in the post.
[c] Whilst I'm sure most readers will accept that being left-handed is perfectly natural and not a sign of evil, the fact remains that left-handedness has long been associated with negative qualities and malevolent activity; the word sinister derives from the Latin word for left.
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