Notes on My Cousin Rachel (1951)

Rachel Weisz as Rachel Ashley

My Cousin Rachel (2017)

I.

Cousin Rachel: what is she; lamb, witch, or vixen? Possibly all these things: probably none. [1]

That, of course, is the fiendishly frustrating charm of du Maurier's beautifully ambiguous novel; we don't know and can never hope to find out whether Rachel is as liberal with her use of poison as she is extravagant with other people's money. Il n'y a pas de hors-texte - and this text refuses to reveal its secrets.

As Roger Michell, director and screenwriter of the 2017 film adaptation, writes:

"Did she? Didn't she? Was she? Wasn't she? This simple device fuels the novel's spectacular slalom ride of unclarity. It's a brilliant trick played out with smoke and mirrors: candles, fires, moonlight, low light, back-light, characters moving up and out and into the darkness." [2]

II.

When reading of the affair between Philip and Rachel, I was reminded of the pure young fool Arthur Dimmesdale and the beautiful seductress Hester Prynne; though I suppose if Rachel had a scarlet letter 'A' embroidered with golden thread upon her black dress it might stand for avvelenatrice rather than adultress. 

Like Hawthorne, du Maurier writes romance. But neither The Scarlet Letter nor My Cousin Rachel  are pleasant, pretty little tales; they are, as D. H. Lawrence would say, earthly stories with a hellish meaning - although what the meaning of the latter work is remains hidden and uncertain.

Ultimately, perhaps all it tells is beware of beautiful strangers and be careful about drinking too much herbal tea ... Or perhaps it echoes Wilde's great lesson: Each man kills the thing he loves - for it should always be remembered that it's Rachel - not Philip - who lies dead amongst timber and stone at the end of this tragic tale. 


Notes

[1] The witch aspect of Rachel's character is certainly played up in the book by du Maurier; her extensive knowledge of herbs and remedies, for example, is enough for Philip to exclaim at one point "'That's witchcraft!'" And she does seem to be a dangerously seductive feminine force, if not an out-and-out malevolent spirit; as Lawrence says of Hester Prynne, her very love is a subtle poison. Thus, if Rachel bolsters Philip up from the outside and helps make a man of him, she destroys him from the inside (with or without the use of laburnum seeds).

In a crucial passage, Lawrence writes:

"Woman is a strange and rather terrible phenomenon, to man. When the subconscious soul of woman recoils from its creative union with man [following a miscarriage, for example, as in Rachel's case], it becomes a destructive force. It exerts, willy nilly, an invisible destructive influence. The woman herself may be as nice as [a cup of tisana], to all appearances [...] But she is sending out waves of silent destruction of the faltering spirit in men, all the same. She doesn't know it. She can't even help it. But she does it. The devil is in her. [...] A woman can use her sex in sheer malevolence and poison, while she is behaving as meek and as good as gold."

This, of course, is very similar to the conclusion reached by Philip: "I saw her [Rachel] as someone not responsible for what she did, besmirched by evil." 

See: 

D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter', Studies in Classic American Literature (Final Version), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 89-90.

Daphne du Maurier, My Cousin Rachel, (Virago, 2017). Lines quoted are on pp. 150 and 319.  

[2] Roger Michell, Introduction to My Cousin Rachel, Ibid. p. vi. 


This post is for Ann Willmore in recognition of all the good work she does on the Daphne du Maurier website: click here. 

Greta Thunberg: Child Saviour or Witch?

We cannot help regarding the phenomenon of Greta with wonder, fear, 
amazement, and respect. For in her the spirit of modern childhood 
is profoundly, almost magically revealed.  

Following a recent post, someone who identifies as a practicing Christian and environmental activist writes quoting scripture in support of Greta Thunberg: And a little child shall lead them [Isaiah 11:6].    

I have to say, I'm always a little troubled by this idea of an infant saviour - even when it turns up in Nietzsche's Zarathustra. And with reference to the case of Miss Thunberg, it's a startling model of redemption she offers; one that denies people hope, deliberately spreads panic, and desires that the entire world suffers, as she herself has suffered, on a daily basis.

Addressing a UN climate conference last year, she virtually placed a curse on all their houses, as if she were less salvator mundi and more some kind of witch. Indeed, seeing how she's enchanted an entire generation and left so many world leaders - including the Pope - spellbound, describing Greta Thunberg as a witch seems entirely justified: she's like a Swedish Joan of Arc.
   

I'm not saying this to denigrate her, or dismiss her message. But I do think we need to exercise caution when dealing with charismatic individuals who claim to possess (or be possessed by) special gifts and who speak with absolute conviction, seeing the world as they do in stark black and white terms.

When Greta presents her arguments within the bounds of science, I don't have a problem. But when she offers us an interpretation of the facts that veers towards apocalyptic vision, then I have my concerns - for her and for all those who share her vision. Their love - for the planet, for humanity - becomes questionable and subtly diabolic, to borrow a phrase from Lawrence, exerting as it does a destructive force. 

Women like Greta - and her mother - who campaign to save the world and save the future, may have kind hearts and the very best of intentions. But, underneath, there's something malevolent; an unconscious desire for revenge on those they blame for the crisis that afflicts them at a personal level. You can almost see it in their eyes. Still, this malevolence is just as necessary as superficial goodness - maybe more so, especially when it comes to exposing the world's own corruption and stupidity. 
  

Like that other witch-child, of whom Hawthorne writes, Greta is a being 'whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder, or with an order peculiar to themselves'. We say she's neurologically diverse, or has Asperger's, a condition that manifests itself in all kinds of ways; depression, obsessive-compulsive behaviour, selective mutism, etc.

And again, it gives Greta a peculiar look in her eyes that is also Pearl-like: 'a look so intelligent, yet so inexplicable, so perverse, sometimes so malicious' that one almost questions whether she's a human child. Who knows what this brave but tormented sixteen-year-old will be like as a fully grown woman. I wish her well and hope she discovers a little peace and happiness; hope, above all, that she doesn't martyr herself to her own cause.      

See: D. H. Lawrence, 'Nathaniel Hawthorne and The Scarlet Letter' (Final Version, 1923), Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). Quotes taken from Hawthorne's 1850 novel can be found on pp. 93-94.  

Note: The lines underneath the image of Greta Thunberg are paraphrased from Lawrence (writing of Pearl) in the First Version (1918-19) of the above essay, SCAL, p. 252. 

For a sister post to this one on Greta as Pippi Greenstocking, click here. 

D. H. Lawrence's Vision of a Demonic America

Jasper Johns: Flag (1954-55)

moma.org

I. 

I've never been to America. But I have always loved all things American, including the people. Perhaps this is due in some mysterious way to the fact that my mother-to-be dated a GI during the War (he even proposed and planned to take his teen-bride back with him to New York, but my mother-to-be said no).

Whatever the reason, I've always thought of myself as, in some sense, American and I fully appreciate why so many Brits - including Christopher Hitchens and Johnny Rotten - are proud to become US citizens.

Despite his determination to remain English in the teeth of all the world, I also believe D. H. Lawrence would have made a fine American. Indeed, it's rather surprising that he didn't settle in the States and turn his back forever on the country of his birth, which treated him so poorly on so many occasions.*        

For whilst Lawrence despised many aspects of modern life in America - telephones, tinned meat, automobiles, indoor plumbing, incomes and ideals, etc. - he was fascinated by the spirit of place and the alien quality also of American art-speech that he discovered in the classic literature:

"The furthest frenzies of French modernism or futurism have not yet reached the pitch of extreme consciousness that Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Whitman reached. The European moderns are all trying to be extreme. The great Americans I mention just were it." [12]

I think that's true: which is why, for example, I think The Scarlet Letter a more provocative novel than L'histoire de l'œil.

I also think Lawrence might be right to suggest that the real American day hasn't dawned as yet. And that when it does, it'll surprise everyone - not least the pale-faced, apple-pie loving idealists who think of themselves as the true Americans of today. For the America to come will be one that has reckoned at last with the full force of the daimon that belongs to the American continent itself.   

Troubling as it is to contemplate, I admire Lawrence's queer dark vision of a demonic America, inhabited by a people whose destiny "is to destroy the whole corpus of the white psyche, the white consciousness" [81]. This doesn't mean primitive regression - Lawrence is clear that there can be no going back - but it does entail a dusky-bodied posthumanism with a rattle snake coiled at its heart.**  

II.

Even before he had made his first visit in 1922, Lawrence was pinning his highest hopes on America. In a letter of October 1915 to the American editor, critic and poet Harriet Monroe, he writes:

"I must see America. I think one can feel hope there. I think that there life comes up from the roots, crude but vital. Here the whole tree of life is dying. It is like being dead: the underworld. I must see America. I believe it is beginning, not ending." 

Lawrence's contrasting of American vitality with European deadness is a constant in his work from this period. Thus, it's not surprising to find that in a foreword written for Studies in Classic American Literature, he attempts to persuade Americans to get up off their knees before European culture and tradition and be thankful for their own barbaric freedom from the past.

Like Nietzsche, Lawrence is only interested in serving history to the extent that it serves life; when it becomes disadvantageous - i.e., when it merely instructs without increasing or directly quickening human activity - then he's happy to draw a line under it.

It's a pity, says Lawrence, that Americans are always so wonderstruck by European monuments: "After all, a heap of stone is only a heap of stone - even if it is Milan cathedral. And who knows that it isn't a horrid bristly burden on the face of the earth?" [381]

He continues:

"America, therefore, should leave off being quite so prostrate with admiration. [...]
      Let Americans turn to America, and to that very America which has been rejected and almost annihilated. [...] America must turn again to catch the spirit of her own dark, aboriginal continent.
      That which was abhorrent to the Pilgrim Fathers and to the Spaniards, that which was called the Devil, the black demon of savage America, this great aboriginal spirit the Americans must recognise again, recognise, and embrace. The devil [...] of our forefathers hides the Godhead which we seek. [...]
       It means a surpassing of the old European life-form. It means a departure from the old European morality [...] It means even a departure from the old range of emotions and sensibilities. [...]
      [...] Now is the day when Americans must become fully, self-reliantly conscious of their own inner responsibility. They must be ready for a new act, a new extension of life. They must pass the bounds." [383-85]       

In a sense, as these lines indicate, Lawrence is transferring Nietzsche's project of a revaluation of all values into the wild west. One can almost picture the overman in a poncho, cowboy hat and spurs - a bit like Clint Eastwood's Man with No Name. (Readers might think I'm only teasing here, but, as Lawrence says, the essential American soul is hard, isolate, stoic ... and a killer.)*** 

 thedigitalpilgrimage.wordpress.com 

Notes

* In a letter written to his friend Catherine Carswell in 1916, Lawrence makes it clear that he had, at this time, determined that he wanted to leave England for good and at the earliest possible opportunity, transferring all his life to America, a country in which he could "feel the new unknown". 

** See what Lawrence writes in 'Herman Melville's Typee and Omoo' (Final Version, 1923), in Studies in Classic American Literature, pp. 126-28. And see also his remarks in 'Indians and an Englishman', in Mornings and Mexico and Other Essays, pp. 119-20. The essential point is that whilst Lawrence advocates Americans picking up where the native peoples left off, he also wants those who accept this challenge to perfect the old way of being as a new body of truth in the future; not make a vain and naive attempt to simply return to the past: I can't cluster at the drum any more. 

*** Reading Eastwood's movies - particularly the Dollars Trilogy - in terms of a postmoral existentialism, is not an original move on my part; several scholars have produced interesting work in this area. See for example the collection of essays ed. Richard T. McClelland and Brian B. Clayton, The Philosophy of Clint Eastwood, (University Press of Kentucky, 2014).

 
Bibliography

D. H. Lawrence, Studies in Classic American Literature, ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). All page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

D. H. Lawrence, Mornings in Mexico and Other Essays, ed. Virginia Crosswhite Hyde, (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
 
D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. II (1913-16), ed. George J. Zytaruk and James T. Boulton, (Cambridge University Press, 1981), letter 1028, to Harriet Monroe, 26 October, 1915.

D. H. Lawrence, The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, Vol. III (1916-21), ed. James T. Boulton and Andrew Robertson, (Cambridge University Press, 1984), letter 1306, to Catherine Carswell, 7 November, 1916.

Nietzsche, 'On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life', Untimely Meditations, ed. Daniel Breazeale, trans. R. J. Hollingdale, (Cambridge University Press, 1997). 


Many thanks to James Walker of The Digital Pilgrimage for use of the Lawrence as cowboy image.

The Handmaid's Tale

Cover to first hardback edition
(McCelland and Stewart, 1985)

I read The Handmaid's Tale full of high hopes and great expectations, aware of the critical status of this novel and sympathetic to any literary attempt to warn against authoritarian states - particularly ones underpinned by religious fundamentalism. But, I have to say, I found it disappointing.

Atwood rather cleverly combines some of the queer gothic elements of The Scarlet Letter with those twentieth century classics of dystopian fiction Brave New World and 1984. But whereas the latter, for example, challenges us to imagine a future in which a boot stamps on a human face forever, The Handmaid's Tale asks us to believe in a time when power nakedly manifests itself over an illicit game of Scrabble.

This might be making a point about the often banal and domestic character of evil, but, I must confess, I found it ludicrous. And, unfortunately, there were other things which served only to undermine the seriousness and the horror of the story. One should wince at the publicly displayed bodies of executed prisoners, but not at the clunkiness of dialogue exchanged between characters - even when spoken in the Latin that both Luke and the Commander for some peculiar reason had a penchant for.

I also think we could have done without the puns and without Nick, the chauffeur-lover, playing an almost Lawrentian role in the book. As for the 'Historical Notes' which Atwood attaches as an afterword, these too only serve to weaken the power of the novel which ends with an otherwise very memorable and moving last line: "And so I step, into the darkness within; or else the light."

Again, Atwood might be trying to make a (feminist) point about the manner in which an authentic female voice speaking its own experiences and memories is eventually transcribed, edited, and absorbed into an academic world (i.e. a system of power and privilege) still controlled by pricks such as Professor Pieixoto. But I agree entirely with Joyce Carol Oates who comments on the deflating effect of this heavily ironic coda:

"The appendix makes of the novel an astute, provocative social commentary, where its absence would have made the novel an abiding work of art ending with Offred's hopeful voice ..."     

Sometimes, as a writer, you just gotta know when to shut-up. And, ultimately, literature's not about scoring easy points or making lame jokes.  


Note: Joyce Carol Oates was writing in a piece entitled 'Margaret Atwood's Tale', in The New York Review of Books (Nov 2, 2006). Those interested in reading her article in full should click here.