A Brief Note on The Scapegoat (1957) by Daphne du Maurier

Virago (2004)

I'm sorry to say, but Daphne du Maurier's eleventh novel, The Scapegoat (1957), isn't one I'll be adding to my list of favourite books (not even my list of favourite books by her).

For whilst Lisa Appignanesi writes in her Introduction to the work that it has "terse economy of style [and] great literary sophistication" [v], I'm afraid I found it rather tedious at times and - despite the great promise of its premise to do with the performance of identity and the struggle to consciously maintain a lie - philosophically disappointing.

Just to be clear: I loved the first couple of chapters: I loved the final three chapters. It was the twenty-odd chapters in between that I had problems with ...

And one of the main problems was the feeble and depressing protagonist-narrator; a character in stark contrast to his fascinating French double.* One wishes the novel had been more about the latter and less about the former's attempt to live (and redeem) Jean's de Gué's life.

In addition, the other characters in the book - particularly the family members - are also extremely unsympathetic. The English imposter might learn to love them, but I'm afraid Monsieur le Comte is right:

(i) His mother, an obese morphine addict, is the most egotistical, the most rapacious, and the most monstrous of old women ...

(ii) His younger brother, Paul, is a painfully inferior and provincial oaf with a "thoroughly disagreeable personality" [355]...

(iii) His sister-in-law (and lover), Renée, might have an enchanting body, but possesses "a mind like an empty box" [355] ...

(iv) His sister, Blanche, is "so twisted with repressed sex and frustrated passion" [355] that she has become fanatically pious as well as resentful ...

(v) And, finally, his daughter, Marie-Noel, is an affected and manipulative little brat who puts on an act of sweetness and innocence, whilst really just wanting to be the centre of attention.         

Of course, there's Béla, who seems a good sort (cooks like an angel; fucks like a beast) and she performs an interesting role in the novel. As understanding and compassionate as she is, however, I suspect that even she was glad to see the back of a self-harming substitute with suicidal fantasies, and keenly awaited the return of the man who had been her lover for three years.

He may lack tendresse, but at least Jean de Gué knows who he is, what he wants, and how to whistle for his dog.    

Notes

*I'm assuming that there are two actual characters - English John and Jean de Gué - and not two distinct personalities belonging to the same schizophrenic subject, although, in many ways, this would be more believable and more interesting and I rather wish du Maurier had openly explored what is now referrred to as dissociative identity disorder. She might even have given us a dramatic Fight Club moment when it's revealed that the Narrator is Tyler Durden and that it takes a Marla Singer - or, in this case, a Béla - to enable John to know the true from the false and realise that he's Dr Jekyll and Mr Jackass, i.e., somebody with deep seated problems for which he should seek professional help. See Fight Club (1999), dir. David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter, based on the 1996 novel of the same title by Chuck Palahniuk.   

Daphne du Maurier, The Scapegoat, with an Introduction by Lisa Appignanesi, (Virago Press, 2004). The page numbers given in the post refer to this edition. 

For another post on The Scapegoat, click here. 

Bonus: to watch the trailer for the 1959 film adaptation dir. Robert Hamer, starring Alec Guiness, click here. 

Never Give a Doppelgänger the Keys to Your Car ...

Roger Moore in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

There is always a part of ourselves by which we are haunted; 

an avenging apparition which stands between us and our own lives, 

thwarting our attempt to remain whole.

I.

What is it with doppelgängers [i] and their urge to drive recklessly? I ask this having just read the opening chapters of Daphne du Maurier's 1957 novel The Scapegoat [ii] ...

In the book, a dull (and depressed) historian with no real connections to the present, dreams of belonging and acting directly in the world and of establishing human relations; he's sick of living in the past and of merely recording events; tired of being alone. He wants another, more meaningful life; a life shared and experienced with friends and family.

Then, by chance, he comes face to face with his double in a busy station buffet:

"Someone jolted my elbow as I drank and said, 'je vous demande pardon,' and as I moved to give him space he turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realized, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well.
      I was looking at myself." [9]

The narrator continues:

"We did not speak: we went on staring at one another. I had heard of these things happening [...] and the idea is amusing, or perhaps fraught with tragedy [...]
      This was not funny: nor was it tragic. The resemblance made me slightly sick, reminding me of moments when, passing a shop window, I had suddenly seen my own reflection, and the man in the mirror had been a grotesque caricature of what, conceitedly, I had believed myself to be. Such incidents left me chastened, sore, with ego deflated, but they never gave me a chill down the spine, as this encounter did, nor the desire to turn and run." [10]

The man doesn't run, however. Rather, he accepts the double's invitation to have a drink and tells him of his life in London. And he allows him to drive his car, that he had left parked outside a nearby cathedral.

"He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in besdide him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral [...] he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, 'Magnificent, excellent!' under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When he had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained, to try the car's pace. 'You know,' he said, 'it amuses me enormously to use other people's possessions. It is one of life's greatest pleasures.' I closed my eyes as we took a corner like a bob-sleigh." [16]

This is doubtless intended to be humorous, but, strangely, it reminded me of a far more sinister scene involving a dull man, his car, and a reckless driving doppelgänger ...  


II.

What I have in mind is the opening scene of spooky psychological thriller, The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), in which Roger Moore puts in a superb performance as staid business executive Harold Pelham [iii] ...

When driving home from work one day, Pelham appears to suffer - quite literally - a splitting of his personality and begins to drive recklessly and at speed, as if no longer himself and no longer behind the wheel of his Rover saloon, but seated, rather, in a silver sports car (a Lamborghini Islero, to be precise).

Following the inevitable crash, Pelham is shown on the operating table where he experiences clinical death. Fortunately, the surgical team manage to restore his vital functions. However, they notice that, for a moment, there appear to be two heartbeats on the monitor - his alter-ego or shadow self having become fully manifest.

This figure of both identity and non-identity challenges both epistemological certainties and ontological securities. Further, he is intent on making the original Pelham's existence his own (with a little added spice and an attractive mistress played by Olga Georges-Picot). Ultimately, as there is only room in the world for one Harold Pelham, things are destined to turn out badly for at least one of the two men.

I suspect that will be the case also for either John or Jean de Gué (having only read the first fifty-five pages of The Scapegoat, I don't know this for sure). The moral has to be this: Never give a doppelgänger the keys to your car ... because they'll drive off with your life! [iv]

Notes

[i] From earliest times, human beings have felt themselves to be accompanied by a double; be it a spirit, a shadow, a reflection, or what in more recent times the Germans termed a doppelgänger - a sinister figure which became a familiar trope in Gothic and Romantic literature, as well as in the modern thriller. For Freud, the doppelgänger constituted the definitive manifestation of the unheimlich (i.e., the strangely familiar realm that in English is known as the uncanny).

[ii] Daphne du Maurier, The Scapegoat, (Virago Press, 2004). Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

[iii] To watch the trailer to The Man Who Haunted Himself, (written and dir. Basil Dearden, 1970): click here. The film was an adaptation of Anthony Armstrong's, The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham, which appeared first as a short story in 1940, before being developed and published as a novel in 1957.
 
[iv] Jean Baudrillard, who was a big fan of demonic doubles and evil twins, also insists that an individual cannot survive an encounter with their doppelgänger. But, interestingly, he also argues that neither can the latter survive in the age of the clone.