Justine Picardie is the author of five books. Her most recent is Coco Chanel: The Legend and the Life (published in paperback this year by HarperCollins), but the reason we've asked her along to do a webchat is that she is also the author of Daphne (published by Bloomsbury).
Daphne is a novel that describes Du Maurier's real-life problems relating to her husband Tommy Browning's drinking, womanising and consequent mental collapses, and also her struggle to produce a biography that would forever change the popular conception of the luckless Branwell Bronte. Writing in The Observer, Heather Thompson said: "Picardie turns fact into absorbing fiction with enough gloom, passion and perceptiveness to make Du Maurier proud." Which sounds just right for us ...
Justine also tells me that she has all sorts of choice information to share about Du Maurier's own visits to Venice, the real life inspiration for the novella's psychic sisters and her own experiences of writing and researching while staying on the Menabilly estate where Du Maurier once lived. So make sure to ask her about that too!
npaxtonwilson asked:
During our discussion of Don't Look Back a few of us noted that there seemed to be something lacking in this particular novella. For me, it was the sense that it did not present the "uncanny" element to the degree that it needed to in order for me to be left feeling uneasy after I finished. Could you comment on that and also talk about how, in your estimation, this story compares to DuMaurier's other work?
Justine Picardie replied:
Hello to everyone in the reading group. OK, let's start with npaxtonwilson:'uncanny' is a very good word to introduce into the discussion. I find Don't Look Now very uncanny -- it leaves me feeling profoundly uneasy -- but one of the interesting things about Du Maurier's writing is how different readers respond. You don't find it uncanny, which might suggest, amongst other things, that the eeriness of her reference points simply don't work as archetypes for you.
As for the comparison with other of her works: I think it's worth comparing with her other short stories -- The Birds, for example, or any of those in 'The Breaking Point' collection, which were written at the same time as her own breaking point -- a breakdown in her marriage in the late 50s, when her husband was having an affair, and when both she and her husband suffered intense mental anguish as a result.
Jericho999 asked:
You must be quite passionate about Du Maurier to want to write a novel about her. Can you say something about what draws you to her so much? Is it her writing, or her life?
It would be interesting to hear how highly you rate her writing too, given the recent discussion on whether she's *middle brow*. For me, I regard her as a faulty writer, but someone who cuts a fine dash with an adventure, and is very emotionally alluring.
Justine Picardie replied:
Again, another good question. I've always been drawn to her writing -- ever since I read 'Rebecca' and 'My Cousin Rachel' as a child, on holiday in Cornwall. I didn't know anything about her life then, but then I did become more and more intrigued by the way her life is interwoven with her writing. Much of her apparent memoir or non-fiction is written in a fictional form -- for example her book about her father, 'Gerald', where she introduces herself as in the third person, as 'Daphne'. And conversely, her fiction contains elements of autobiography: her jealously of her husband's former fiancee, for example, which surfaces in Rebecca.
You can see this in Don't Look Now -- Du Maurier herself went to Venice on a number of occasions (and on one of these, she caught a glimpse of the red-cloaked figure who is central to the short story), but she also used 'Venetian' or 'Venice' as a code for her own feelings of attraction to other women. So Venice is an semi-imaginary landscape, as well as a real one, in the world of Du Maurier -- a place where dangerous encounters take place, where there are hidden secrets and doublings and hauntings...
DanHolloway asked:
What is it with Du Maurier and water? I know it sounds like the kind of 80s feminist literary theory they're always spouting in Possession, but Du Maurier seems obsessed by water and liminality - off the top of my head it's in Rebecca, Don't Look Now, My Cousin Rachel, The Birds, Jamaica Inn - water is the place that both hides and reflects our darkest fears, those truths about ourselves we dare not face but find reflected there. She's so good on the subconscious anyway (further question - do you think this is why Hitchcock was drawn to her work so?), but that fear seems to be located particualrly in water
Justine Picardie replied:
Du Maurier and water -- yes, absolutely, a central preoccupation of hers. I use it in my book, because it's such a powerful association. At the risk of sounding reductive -- for which I apologise, because it's impossible to reduce Du Maurier to a few sentences -- but I might have something to do with her uneasy relationship with her father, which I explored in 'Daphne'. His feelings towards his daughters -- Daphne in particular -- may have veered into transgressive territory... if not incest in the physical sense, then incestuous in his jealousy and desire. Her novel 'Julius' has a very disturbing climax, where the incestuous father drowns his daughter in the water -- to prevent her from marrying another man. The novel explores incest in a manner that is entirely unexpected for that period. It's one of the reasons that I reject the notion that Du Maurier was 'middlebrow' -- she's far too dark, far too subversive for that...Anyway, the watery background seems to me to be absolutely central to Don't Look Now... what emerges out of the dark water, and what returns to its depths...
Goodyorkshirelass asked:
A very mundane question from me I'm afraid Justine, but when you saw Menabilly could you understand why Daphne du Maurier drew such inspiration from it?
Also, I feel that in some respects she has been wrongly categorized as a romantic novelist. Though it's many a long year since I read them I'm thinking in particular of The Progress of Julius, and The Parasites.
Justine Picardie replied:
So many good questions, so little time. Menabilly is one of the most mysterious, evocative places I have ever been. Its woods are beautiful, but also faintly menacing; when you walk there, you have the sense of being entirely alone, but also there are the sounds of things you can't see -- the cry of animals, of birds, of the wind, of the sea beyond the trees.
The house itself is equally beautiful, and gothic -- not in the strict architectural sense -- but it has a gothic quality. It is absolutely hidden -- from the sea, from the road, from everything and everyone. Anyone who has walked along the coastline from Fowey to Readymoney Cove and onwards to the beach below Menabilly, will know what I mean -- whichever way you approach it, the house remains absolutely unseen, even in midwinter, when the trees are leafless.
That seems to me to be part of its central appeal to Du Maurier -- she called it the House of Secrets, from the very first time she saw it. And in fact, it took her several attempts to discover Menabilly, when it was still an uninhabited ruin, and she had been told about it by locals in Fowey, where her father had bought a house by the river.
samjordison asked:
I've been reading a bit of your fashion writing, Justine, and am wondering on your thoughts about Du Maurier and style... I particularly remember that one of the narrator's worries about Rebecca was that she was better dressed...
Justine Picardie replied:
I definitely felt an element of synchronicity when I was writing and researching Daphne -- and indeed, my most recent book about Chanel. It turned out that Rebecca was one of Chanel's favourite books -- the other being 'Wuthering Heights' (which was one of Du Maurier's favourites -- hence the fact that a line from Emily Bronte provides the title to Du Maurier's first novel, The Loving Spirit). While I was writing Daphne, I went through my own kind of breaking point -- the cracks that were the undoing of my marriage. I was thinking about that recently -- I returned to Menabilly after Daphne had been published, and found a different footpath into the woods, which I hadn't known existed until then. But it was at that point -- a summer, four years ago, that my marriage was ending -- even though I couldn't see this at the time. I was blind to it, I suppose. And when I think about Don't Look Now -- which features the blind psychic -- that seems faintly uncanny -- because I stayed in the cottage in the Menabilly woods where the original inspiration for that fictional character lived, when Du Maurier wrote the story. In reality, the women that Du Maurier knew weren't sisters -- they were companions -- but they held seances in the cottage. I was totally wrapped up in the world of Du Maurier, but in retrospect, blind to the future of my own marriage...
I hope that doesn't sound too mad, in writing here... but perhaps it's relevant to other readers, who feel that Du Maurier touches something deep within their own subconscious?
UnpublishedWriter asked:
Given the variety of subject matter in your books, is there a dominant theme or question which links them - and is this what drives you to write?
Justine Picardie replied:
Is there a dominant theme or question in my books? The relationship between the living and the dead, perhaps...
As for the Bronte research: I think it seems likely that both Branwell and Emily had written a great deal more than was published.
Dhara asked:
When looking into the life of Daphne du Maurier, what was the most surprising thing you discovered?
Justine Picardie replied:
So many different surprises (all of which appear in 'Daphne', which is entirely based on archival research -- letters, diaries, etc). But in general, it was the unexpected consistency of how she threaded the real with the unreal -- both of which are woven into an entirely convincing fictional landscape.
Pancake16 asked:
Justine, I was wondering if you have found any other kinds of literary theory, that don't involve her personal life, helpful when interpreting her work?
Justine Picardie replied:
I studied Literature at Cambridge, and it took me quite a long time to rid myself of the harsh critic in my own head -- the disapproving voice that said Du Maurier wasn't a proper 'literary' writer -- which had been part of my education there, in that she wasn't part of the Great Tradition, nor of Modernism. So I tried to put literary theory to one side when I was writing 'Daphne' -- but it is itself a novel about literary failure, amongst other things...
Does every book need to be "great literature" or is there a place for books which are simply entertaining?
Justine Picardie replied:
Yes -- entertaining is good. But I think Du Maurier is more than simply entertaining.
RedNellie asked:
There's a been a bit of discussion during this book group that du Maurier is a good read, but not great literature. How much of that opinion, do you think, stems from the fact that she's a female writer? I often wander if what women write about and how they write doesn't appeal to mainstream masculine critical thinking and therefore gets palmed off as romance or 'middlebrow' literature.
Justine Picardie replied:
I sometimes wonder about this; if Du Maurier had been a man, would she have been been afforded more 'serious' literary credentials? I think it's likely... certainly, she might have been classed in the same category as Graham Greene or Evelyn Waugh -- both of them commercial, in the same way as Du Maurier, but also deemed worthy of critical acclaim.When I went to Cambridge -- which was a very long time ago, so things have doubtless changed -- she was treated with utter contempt by the literary establishment.
broger asked:
Mann's novella Death in Venice: could it have been the basis for choosing this particular code, given that it narrates a homoerotic attraction in a city setting that is physically and morally decadent?
Justine Picardie replied:
Death in Venice might have been part of the basis for choosing this code, but I don't think it's the only one. Venice has been associated with decadence and mystery for centuries -- the Masked Balls, the Carnivale, the murderous rulers and clergy. Think of Henry James' writing in Venice... and Byron et al...
"very emotionally alluring." I would love to hear Justine's response to this because it not something I have really considered, but is nonetheless a fascinating observation...
Justine replied:
Definitely, it's an interesting observation. I'm reminded about Paul Morand's description of Chanel -- 'L'Allure de Chanel' -- in French, the word 'allure', as well as having the sense that it has in English of attraction, charm and enticement, also denotes pace and speed of movement.
This is what Morand wrote about writing about Chanel, 30 years after he had first made notes on their conversations...'Nothing was written by me; it was all by a ghost, but a ghost who, from beyond the grave, kept up a frantic gallop, her normal pace. Allure, in every sense of the word: the physical and mental rhythms, like the three speeds of a horse that riders refer to; and also, as in hunting, the pace of a stage, to indicate its trail, its course among the leafy boughs and the broken branches; Chanel passed this way, Chanel was there; thirty years is a great forest.'
SavidgeReader asked:
Justine, I wondered if you think that the success of Rebecca was in anyway negative or detrimental to Daphne. Because everyone compared all her works to it sales wise and also then labelled her a 'romance novelist' (Rebecca is so much more than that) and almost underrated her for it. What are your thoughts? Will she ever have a huge resurgence and will he become a classic writer in the future do you think?
Justine replied:
I think our conversation here today proves that she has transcended that rather contemptuous labelling of her as a romantic novelist -- and hurrah for that.
Thanks to everyone who joined us here... these are the threads that bind us... Here's to more reading, and more conversations. Do feel free to continue the conversation on my blog: http://justine-picardie.blogspot.com/
samjordison asked:
Who were the people that inspired the sisters in Don't Look Now - and how do you know? Did Du Maurier write about them?
Justine replied:
PS: couldn't let this question go unanswered: Du Maurier did refer to them in ...
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