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Women’s Deception and Delusion in Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now

an essay

By Alyssa Anderson Published 3 years ago 20 min read
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Women’s Deception and Delusion in Daphne du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now
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The works of Daphne du Maurier capture more than the mind of the reader; they cast a spell on the very soul of those who read just one of her entrancing stories. She is able to carefully omit information to create mind-blowing conclusions that are so skillfully harmonized. Her novels and stories were written over several decades when women were not expected to be at the forefront of a story, yet her collection of short stories profoundly tend to focus on a female lead. Du Maurier’s short stories “Indiscretion”, “Kiss Me Again, Stranger”, “La Sainte-Vierge”, “Spilt Second”, and “The Blue Lenses”, though different in context, share a common theme. From cheating to murder, ghastly encounters to the in-between, and all forms of hallucinations alike, deception and delusion dominate du Maurier’s works collected in her book Don’t Look Now.

When these short stories were written, during the 1950’s and 1980’s, the status of women in America was perplexing. “The 1950s is often viewed as a period of conformity, when both men and women observed strict gender roles and complied with society’s expectations” (Getchell). The Cold War, in a large way, added to this strict separation of gender roles. “A woman played a crucial role in waging the Cold War, by keeping the family unit strong and intact. She could do this best, it was thought, by remaining at home to take care of her husband and children, and refusing to pursue a career” (Getchell). What also added to this stigma was the gender roles being presented by the media: “The norms of consumer culture and domesticity were disseminated via new and popular forms of entertainment – not just the television, which became a fixture in middle-class American households during the 1950s, but also women’s magazines, popular psychology, and cinema. Shows promoting the values of domesticity, like Leave it to Beaver and Father Knows Best, became especially popular. These shows portrayed the primary roles of women as wives and mothers” (Getchell). The roles of women changed back and forth for decades after and ''The family-oriented 1950's were perhaps the last decade in which women's behavior and social norms were in agreement'' (Ap.).

From this point through the 1980s it seems as though gender roles were always on the verge of advancement but could never quite get fully there. Complicating things further during this time was increasing divorce rates causing more women to stay home, raising the children and supporting themselves since very seldom did a father win a custody battle prior to the twenty-first century. “The result is what many women term a ''balancing act'' in which they must juggle family and work responsibilities. Handling these competing demands often forces women into such traditional jobs as teaching or nursing or forces them to work only part time” (Ap.). Able to only work a part time job, typically a job that men deemed to be mediocre and gender specific at the time, women were unfortunately considered to be second class citizens. Du Maurier, however, fought this stigma throughout most of her works having women dominate the storylines and leave readers astonished and amazed by them. From robbing a man of his possessions and his trust, to finally seeing a husband for who he really is, du Maurier uses these women find a way under the skin of the reader and into their minds.

“Indiscretion” is a story that encompasses a taboo issue involving women during the du Maurier era explained by its own title. “I wonder how many people’s lives are ruined by a moment’s indiscretion?” (Maurier 255). Not often is this a question raised by a man being deceived by a young, innocent looking woman. However, in the case of “Indiscretion”, there is nothing innocent about this girl.

“I woke the next morning and she had gone, of course. She had my pocket-book with all my worldly goods” he says to his boss (262). “Then you mean to say she was deceiving you the whole time? There wasn’t a word of truth in her story?” and of course, there was not (262-3). He specifically mentions to his boss that he has never been back to Wardour Street where he was scammed by this woman nor will he ever return. The boss, after explaining a similar way to which he discovered his very soon to be bride, insists on the two meeting before they depart. She comes into view and the entire story comes to a screeching halt. “Then she laughed affectionately, and, putting her arms round his neck, she flung into the air her silly little gesture of bravado, mistress of the situation, but speaking without forethought, reckless a shade too soon” (264). When asked had the two met before, due to the indescribable look on the young mans’ face, she replies, “But, of course, I know your face. Didn’t we run up against each other once in Wardour Street?” (264). The arrogance and mischievousness of this woman is baffling, yet du Maurier planned exactly that. This deceitful female character is meant to draw attention to the fact that men loot and lie quite often and though it is frowned upon, it is not shocking. When a woman deceives, however, it cannot be because women are innocent and angelic and would never do such a thing. Du Maurier lets readers know, on more than one occasion, that women can be just as impish as men.

Du Maurier’s female leads have been known to take things a leap forward from trickery. Another tale told from a male perspective, “Kiss Me Again, Stranger”, presents a woman who seeks revenge on those she feels responsible for a terrible event in her life. She deceives these unsuspecting men but one she feels is one of the good ones and deserves to live. There are many clues throughout the story that this woman is a dark and devilish vigilante. This begins when she says the movie’s “knifing is amateur” and that she is not paid to advertise the picture but rather to “look like this and lure you inside” (177). Then, when she leaves work, she “walked straight up the street, and she didn’t look to the left or the right of her” which is typically odd behavior for a woman walking alone at night (180). When they are on the bus she asks him to wake her when they pass a cemetery but when he fails to do so she says “Oh, there’ll be others. I’m not particular” (184-3). This makes him think though he does not trust his instincts about how oddly she is behaving. She tells him that she likes him best when he is silent and stares “at the Air Force chap, sort of thoughtful-like, as though she might have seen him before” (186). As if this behavior was not enough for him to leave this girl and go home, she takes him into a cemetery to lie down on the tombstones. She says that she never stops anywhere long, another red flag, and tells him that the RAF destroyed her home because they are all killers. It is not until the next day that he discovers the truth about this woman, though, and why she was acting the way she was with him.

At work he is told that another body was discovered, to which he had no knowledge about. “Sliced up the belly, poor sod. Don’t you ever read the papers? It’s the third one in three weeks, done identical, all Air Force fellows, and each time they’ve found ‘em near a graveyard or a cemetery” (201). This happened, the papers say, right after he leaves “his girl” around 2 a.m., yet he refuses to think anything of it. But then he is forced to see the truth about her. “They’d got her. About three o’clock in the afternoon. I didn’t read the writing, nor the name nor anything. I sat down on my bed and took up the paper, and there was my girl staring up at me from the front paper” (202). Another ending du Maurier skillfully created baffling everyone for something unheard of about females of this time. Women were not considered to be deceitful or intelligent enough to trap and murder men, yet this character does so in a way that readers are left stunned and mystified.

Sometimes, however, du Maurier wants readers to see the other side of the female mind. How women were forced to subdue their intuitions about men rather than lashing out. In her story “La Sainte-Vierge”, Marie does just that. She is a young woman who is madly in love with her husband, though she has a terrible feeling that something is not right with him. She is a proper woman, raised to never show fear or sadness. “When Breton women sorrow they show no grief upon their faces, they would rather die than let their tears be seen; thus Marie bore no outward trace of the pain that was in her heart” (246). Her husband, Jean, is ashamed of her, thinking she is not cut out to be a fisherman’s wife though “she was a woman who would love but once, and give everything” and therefore she never even considered the possibility of leaving him (246). She believes something bad is going to happen on his nearing voyage and as she whispers his name she hears the church bells and decides that she will go to speak with the Sainte-Vierge that evening and tell her about her worries. That afternoon she sees her husband speaking with some men and as she approaches he says, “Shut your mouths. Here comes the child” (248). After being quite rude to her, she offers to come with him to ready for the voyage yet he refuses her company saying she will only be in the way. At a complete loss for what to do, she goes to the church and kneels in front of “the divine mother of the fisherman” (251). “I put all my trust in you and I know that you will watch over him when he is at sea” (252). As she begs for a sign that everything will be okay, “the low window beside the alter was filled with the pale light of the moon, and just outside she saw the vision” (253). She sees Jean on his knees in the grass, smiling, with the shadowy figure of a woman standing before him. Then it became too dark for her to see what happened next but she was no longer afraid and “she felt she would never be afraid again” (253). Marie leaves the church and heads home feeling elated, but that feeling is false and her suspicions of her husband were correct all along. “La Sainte-Vierge” concludes with the heartbreaking reveal that Jean was with Jacques the fisherman’s sister all along.

Marie was groomed to bare all emotional torment from the man to which she becomes wed from a young age. She is not unintelligent nor is she blind to the indiscretions of her husband. She is forced to be the “perfect wife” and repress the pain and sadness her husband puts her through. Marie represents countless women during the du Maurier era that had to endure this type of marriage and empty existence living under a man’s rule. It was men who decided long ago that women could not be strong without needing help, could not be emotional when facing hardships, and could not be explaining the unexplainable without being crazy. Delusion is a major theme in many of du Mauier’s stories as a result of the way men viewed women’s thoughts and feelings during these times. Mrs. Ellis, of “Split Second” is an unadulterated representation of this crucial issue.

“All things pass, pleasure and pain, and happiness and suffering, I suppose my friends would say my life is a dull one, rather uneventful, but I am grateful for it, and contented, and although sometimes I feel I did not do my utmost for poor Wilfred at least I believe I have succeeded in making a happy home for Susan” (126). It is clear how much Mrs. Ellis loves her daughter and her late husband and when she gets a bad feeling that something has happened to Susan she calls the boarding school straight away. She cannot shake the bad feeling even after being told that her daughter is fine and decides that fresh air may help ease her mind. “Mrs. Ellis hesitated. Was it really a walk she needed? Or was this vague feeling of distress a sign that she was over-tired, that she had better rest?” (128). She settles on a walk and as she does, she thinks about buying a bike for Susan for her birthday and has a vision of herself at the shop choosing the perfect one for her. Then, in perfect du Mauier style, the story takes a drastic turn.

“She saw the laundry van swinging down towards her, much too fast. She saw it swerve, heard the screech of its brakes. She saw the look of surprise on the face of the laundry boy” (130). Without hesitation, Mrs. Ellis says she will have to speak to the driver because “one of these days there will be an accident” and perhaps even Susan, on her new bicycle, may be injured (130). Things spiral for poor Mrs. Ellis after her “near miss” by the laundry van. First, she cannot get into her house, her key sticks in the lock and a man, whom she believes Grace invited inside, has no idea who she, or Grace, is. She is profoundly confused by these people in her home and after the police arrive she is whisked down to the station for questioning. She is informed that the house she claims to be her own is occupied by various tenants who have lived there for some time and her disorientation worsens. “Mrs. Draycott is not living at Charlton Court, Mrs. Ellis, for the simple reason that Charlton Court no longer exists. It was destroyed by a fire bomb” which she believes must have happened during the night and therefore is terribly worried about her friend. Mrs. Ellis’s mind could not take anymore and she deems the entire situation to be a hoax. “Then she stopped, because she realized they were lying to her; everything was lies; they were not policemen; they had seized the building; they were spies” (157). The officers are talking about everything in past tense, the names of people and places she mentioned are all from the past but she does not care to listen to what they are saying. They get in touch with Susan and on the phone she tells a little boy named Keith to keep quiet. This is the epic turning point every du Maurier reader waits in utter suspense for.

She is taken to meet her daughter, her grown daughter and her five year old son Keith, though she does not know that she is getting to meet the grandson and adult daughter she would have never had the chance to see. “What a remarkable coincidence because my name is Ellis, and my daughter is called Susan, and an even stranger coincidence is that you are so much like a sister of my late husband’s” (170-1). Mrs. Ellis has no idea that she is, in fact, with her daughter. Susan tells her, “I can’t help being grateful to old Slaty. She’s a funny old stick, but a heart of gold, and she did her best for me, I’ll say that, and kept me in the holidays after my mother was killed in a street accident” (171). Then the proof of her jump in time is confirmed by a calendar in Susan’s home. “She took a last glance around the room, and she saw with a shrug of her shoulder that even Mrs. Drew’s calendar had a printing error. It said 1952 instead of 1932. How careless…” (173). Mrs. Ellis leaves the house and walking down the road she wishes she could go back in time to before she took that walk. She wishes she could see her home and her daughter again, not realizing she had just been with her daughter and grandson. She remembers the bicycle she was thinking about buying for Susan right before everything changed. “The memory of the bicycle made her forget her troubles, her fatigue. As soon as all the muddle and confusion were over, she would buy a red bicycle for Susan. Why, though, for the second time, that screech of breaks when she crossed the road, and the vacant face of the laundry boy looking down at her?” (174).

“Split Second” allows for a rewrite of a different outcome for Mrs. Ellis “and, in a split second, visit a future where is she is not recognized but is able to meet her daughter and grandson” (Whisker). Du Maurier creates the impossible by somehow making it completely understandable and relatable for readers. “Du Maurier uses the art or science of time-travel fiction to revisit, replay, haunt, and: allow us to go back and somehow start our journey before the moment we inhabit, capturing a vision of the past, present, and future as circular, cyclical, simultaneously parallel rather than a linear experience, one in which ‘all time is eternally present’” (Whisker). Time travel scenarios, whether in television, movies, or novels, were becoming popular during this time however, women experiencing this phenomenon had not been popularized quite yet. Du Maurier’s female perspective on a “conventional time travel story illustrating the attractions of avoiding certain versions of the present and future, the dangers of believing in them, and the inevitability of closure” leaves readers in awe of her ability to close the gender gap in unconventional ways (Whisker).

“The Blue Lenses” is a story that is able to tie together the themes of deception and delusion incorporated in the stories spoken of thus far. Marda West is told that after her eye surgery she will “see more clearly than ever before” (203). She had been weary of the operation up until the very day though it seems to all be okay at first. “All was in focus now. Flowers, the wash-basin, the glass with the thermometer in it, her dressing-gown. Wonder and relief were so great that they excluded thought” (211). The blue lenses make seeing color difficult for Mrs. West though she says, “There was time enough for colour. The blue symmetry of vision itself was all-important. To see, to feel, to blend the two together. It was indeed rebirth, the discovery of a world long lost to her” (211). Then, yet again, du Maurier finds a way to unhinge the readers mind and bend the rules of fiction.

The first time Mrs. West sees a person after her surgery, she does not actually see a person. Nurse Brand enters the room, “Yet, incongruous, absurd, the head with the uniformed cap was not a woman’s head at all. The thing bearing down upon her was a cow…a cow on a woman’s body” (211). She cannot believe what she is seeing, and after several more nurses and doctors appear to be animalistic, she desires to see herself for the first time. She is utterly relieved to see that it is her own face that “stared back at her from the looking-glass. The dark lenses concealed the eyes, but the face was at least that of her own” (218).

She calls Jim, her husband, and tries to explain to him what is going on but he does not understand her and tells her if she is having an issue with the lenses to talk to the nurses. Though, of course, what can she possibly say to the nurses to have them understand what she is experiencing? She wonders why it that only the people had changed and not the objects around her: “What is so wrong with people?” (223). Then, flowers arrive from Jim with a mysterious card that reads “Cheer up. We’re not as bad as we seem” (223). However, in a du Maurier story, things can most definitely be as bad as they seem.

“Nurse Ansel’s voice emerging from the head seemed all the more grotesque and horrible, and the very fact that as she spoke the dating tongue spoke too paralysed action” for she hosts the head of a snake and the meaning behind that is simply daunting (224). Then, Mrs. West discovers that “Jim had a vulture’s head. She could not mistake it. The brooding eye, the blood-tipped beak, the flabby folds of flesh” (229). She does not understand how her seemingly perfect husband could embody such a retched creature. Then, she remembers that the idea for Nurse Ansel to come home with them came from the nurse and not from herself. “The suggestion had come after Jim had spent the evening laughing and joking” with Nurse Ansel and things take a drastic turn for Mrs. West (230). “The two communicated in silence, sympathy between them. That, she realized now, was the most frightening thing of all. Animals, birds, and reptiles had no need to speak. They moved, they looked, they knew what they were about” (230). It seems now, that Mrs. West has an idea of what is going on between her nurse and her husband but when Jim says that the lawyers “suggest I should become a co-director of the fund”, readers hope she will finally put an end to their time together (231). “She was trying to think if there was anyone left whom she could trust” (232). Mrs. West is finally admitting that not even her husband can be trusted though, at this point, she is more afraid that when she is fitted with the final set of lenses that they will show people as entire animals, not just their heads, for she believes that “The blue lenses only showed the heads” (233). The house physician that she had always liked had the head of an Aberdeen, coincidentally the same breed of dog that she owned as a child. He says “You’ll actually see more clearly in every way. One patient told me that it was as though she had been wearing spectacles all her life, and then, because of the operation, she realized she saw all her friends and her family as they really were” (235).

“Marda West could see people as they really were. And those whom she had loved and trusted most were in truth a vulture and a snake…” (235). When the surgeon changes her lenses he informs her that the lenses he put in were pressing on a nerve which he insists made her unwell. Everyone is normal again, human heads on human bodies and Mrs. West is elated. She wonders, “How could she have seen Nurse Ansel as a snake! The hazel eyes, the clear olive skin, the dark hair trim under the frilled cap. And that smile, that slow, understanding smile” (241). True du Maurier fans know that this cannot be the end for there is that incredible final twist yet to come. “Marda West took up the mirror and looked into it once more. No, she had not been mistaken, the eyes that stared back at her were doe’s eyes, wary before sacrifice, and the timid deer’s head was meek, already bowed” (244). Mrs. West is being misled by her husband and Nurse Ansel and she cannot see what is happening right in front of her, similar to that of a deer, frozen from fear in the headlights.

Du Maurier’s ability to incorporate fraud and fear while pointedly creating a platform for female characters to be seen and heard is ingenious. Her works remain popular due to how cofounding the twists and turns of each story prove to be more capturing than the next. All of her stories having unified subjects never become dull or boring nor do the themes of deception and delusion ever relinquish relatability. Du Maurier’s inclusion of gender roles, though not at the forefront of her tales, is always concealed within her works and the importance of that will not soon be forgotten. From cheating to murder, ghastly encounters to the in-between, and all forms of hallucinations alike, du Maurier’s Don’t Look Now is a collection of works with inclusivity for all.

Works Cited

Ap. “WOMEN'S ROLES VS. SOCIAL NORMS.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Dec. 1986, www.nytimes.com/1986/12/30/style/women-s-roles-vs-social-norms.html.

Getchell, Michelle. “Women in the 1950s (Article) | 1950s America.” Khan Academy, Khan Academy, www.khanacademy.org/humanities/us-history/postwarera/1950s-america/a/women-in-the-1950s.

Maurier, Daphne Du, and Patrick McGrath. Don't Look Now: Stories. The New York Review of Books, 2008.

Wisker, Gina. “Starting Your Journey in the Past, Speculating on Time and Place: Daphne Du Maurier's ‘The House on the Strand’, ‘Split Second," and the Engaged Fiction of Time Travel.” Journal of the Fantastic in the Arts, vol. 24, no. 3 (89), 2013, pp. 467–482. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/24352971.

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About the Creator

Alyssa Anderson

Hello readers, writers, and lovers of literature. I am a recent college graduate with a Bachelors in English Literature looking to get some of my work out there and receive honest and helpful feedback. Happy reading!

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