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Today I’ll be talking about Daphne du Maurier’s novel The Scapegoat. I read this novel in early 2016 at a time when I was fascinated by stories reflecting on the idea of the double, stolen identities and the many aspects of one’s self. Of course, Daphne du Maurier isn’t the first to address these themes. Authors like James Hogg, Edgar Allan Poe, Théophile Gautier, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Anthony Hope, Virginia Wolfe, and Josephine Tey have all dissected in their own way the question of multiple identities. But Daphne du Maurier is one of the first authors to employ the themes of the doppelganger and the realization of self by adopting a modern take on them.

So without further ado, let’s dive in.

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In one of her letters to Oriel Malet, Daphne du Maurier wrote about The Scapegoat that she has tried to: “say too many things at once. How close hunger is to greed, how difficult to tell the difference, how hard not to be confused, how close one’s better nature to one’s worst, and finally, how the self must be stripped of everything, and give up everything, before it can understand love.” (Malet, Oriel. Daphne du Maurier: Letters from Menabilly Portrait of Friendship, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1993).

And she is right when she says that there are too many things that she addresses in The Scapegoat that is why today’s episode I will do my best to analyse the ideas of the double and the self that are at the core of du Maurier’s novel through the prism that Jean and John represent (but mostly John) so that we may be able to discover who is truly the scapegoat in the story.

Bibliography:

Auerbach, N. Daphne du Maurier: Haunted Heiress, University of Pennsylvania, 2002.
Bakerman, Janet S. And Then There Were Nine – More Women of Mystery, Popular Press, 1985.
Day, W. In the Circle of fear and Desires: A Study of Gothic Fiction, University of Illinois Press, 1987.
Du Maurier, D. The Scapegoat, Virago Modern Classics Book, 2012.
Freud, S. The Uncanny, 1919.
Horner, A. & Zisnik, S. Daphne du Maurier: Writing, Identity & the Gothic Imagination, United Kingdom, Palgrave MacMillan, 1998.
Kristeva, J. Strangers to Ourselves, Paris, Fayard, 1988.
Malet, O. Daphne du Maurier: Letters from Menabilly Portrait of Friendship, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1993.

Ever since its publication in 1897, the novel has been adapted multiple times in songs, plays, and on TV as well as in cinema making Dracula ‘the most portrayed literary character in films’. And even though Bram Stoker did not invent the concept of vampires in fiction, the first vampire character to appear in print was Coleridge’s poem Christabel published in 1816, Stoker undoubtedly contributed in making the blood-sucker creatures popular so much so that Dracula eclipsed Stoker’s other works.

These various adaptations, as well as academic essays, have led to the analysis of different themes present in Bram Stoker’s Dracula such as colonisation, anti-capitalism, and xenophobia but also homosexuality, sexual conventions, and feminism or even anti-feminism and so on.

And today, in this episode, I will discuss Lucy and Mina and how they are condemned to become Dracula’s victims by the men in their lives.

Bibliography:

Boyd, Kathryn. Making Sense of Mina: Stoker’s Vampirization of the Victorian Woman in Dracula, Trinity University, 2014.

Stoker, Bram. Dracula, London, Penguin Classics, 2003

One of the world's most popular novels, Jane Austen's Pride  & Prejudice has delighted readers since its publication with the story of the witty Elizabeth Bennet and her relationship with the aristocrat Fitzwilliam Darcy. Similar to Austen's other works, Pride & Prejudice is a humorous and yet serious portrayal of the social atmosphere of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century England, and it is principally concerned with courtship rituals of the English gentry. The novel is much more than a comic romance, however; through Austen's subtle and ironic style, it addresses economic, political, feminist, sociological, and philosophical themes, inspiring a great deal of diverse critical commentary on the meaning of the work. So we can ask ourselves: how does Elizabeth Bennet stand up to patriarchy? 



Bibliography: 

Auerbach, Nina. Communities of Women. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1978, p.38-55.

Austen, Jane. Emma. Chapter 47. New York: Dover Publications, 2000.

Austen, Jane. Northanger Abbey. Chapter XXIV. London: Penguin Classics, 2003, p.216.

Austen, Jane. Pride and Prejudice. Chapter I. New York: Dover Publications, Dover Thrift Editions, 1995. 

Brontë, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Chapter 38. London: Penguin Popular Classics, 1994.

Copeland, Edward. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen. Chapter 4: Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice by Rachel M. Brownstein. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. 

Elwin, Malcom. Lord Byron’s Wife. From Annabella Milbanke to her mother, Judith Noel, the Hon. Lady Milbanke, 1st May 1813. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1963, p. 159.

Fraiman, Susan. “The Humiliation of Elizabeth Bennet” excerpted in the Norton Critical Second Edition of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. New York: Norton, 1993.

Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. The Madwoman in the Attic. Chapter 4. United States: Yale University Press, Yale Nota Bene, 2000.

Howells, William Dean. Jane Austen’s Elizabeth Bennet in Heroines of Fiction. Volume One. New York: Harper, 1901.

Jane Austen’s Letters. Edited by Deidre Le Faye. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. p.201-202.

Morrison, Robert. Pride and Prejudice, a Sourcebook. Edited by Robert Morrison. New York: Routledge, 2005.

Mudrick, Marvin. Irony as Discrimination: Pride and Prejudice, in Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1952.

Newton, Judith Lowder. Women, Power and Subversion: Social Strategies in British Fiction 1778-1860. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981.

Ramsbottom, John D. A Companion to Eighteenth Century Britain. Chapter Sixteen: Women and the Family. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, edited by H.T. Dickinson, 2002.

Ramadier, Bernard-Jean. Pride and Prejudice: le Roman de Jane Austen et le film de Joe Wright. Mesure et Equilibre dans Pride and Prejudice. Paris : CAPES/ Agrégation Anglais, Ellipses, 2006, p.115.

Tanner, Tony. Jane Austen. Chapter 4: Knowledge and Opinion: Pride and Prejudice, London: MacMillan, 1987.

The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton. ed. Mrs. G.H. Bell. London: MacMillan, 1930, p. 351.

Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. London: Penguin Classics, revised edition, 2004.