Daphne du Maurier's personal papers speak of her sense of the duality in her own nature, her sense of herself as existing in more than one identity. This sense of the divisions in her own nature, as well as the nature of those alternate or suppressed selves, was necessarily something she shared with few people. Not surprisingly, secret selves and doubles throughout du Maurier's work. It's explicit in du Maurier novels including Rebecca, The Scapegoat, The House on the Strand, My Cousin Rachel and Frenchman's Creek, but it shimmers to some degree in all of her other texts as well.
The background of this piece uses digitally altered stock photographs representing Rebecca's two contrasting motifs and their symbolic colors: the blood-red rhododendrons that represent sexuality and the shifting blue-greens of the sea, which promises both purification and danger. The quotation too is from Rebecca; the second Mrs. De Winter thinks these words about her predecessor, but as I re-read them recently it struck me that they could equally well speak to the ways that du Maurier, and even all of us, think of our alternate and possible selves.
The photograph of the author was taken by Bassano Ltd., the photography studio originally founded by Alexander Bassano, in 1930, when she was about twenty-three. All of the images in this series held by the UK's National Portrait Gallery (I have used this one under their non-commercial Creative Commons contract) are striking. I appreciated this one in particular for its unreadable expression and the way du Maurier seems to be looking over her shoulder at someone or something. When our selves include identities that are secret, wariness—the habit of scanning the world for risk, of checking others' reactions—is perhaps inevitable.
 |
| Daphne du Maurier ©Suzanne Fox 2020 May not be downloaded or reproduced without permission Sources: stock and personal photographs plus Author portrait by Bassano Ltd. from the National Portrait Gallery |