What Was I Thinking? (28 December)

 

Torpedo the Ark: images from posts published on 

28 December (2013-2021)

 

Sometimes, it's interesting to look back and see what one was thinking on the same date in years gone by - and sometimes it's simply embarrassing ...

 

Our God is Woman: Our Mission is Protest! 

On this date in 2013, for example, I was keen to express my support for a twenty-year old philosophy student and Femen activist, Josephine Witt, who staged a one-woman protest at St. Peter's Cathedral in Cologne, briefly disrupting a televised Christmas mass by getting her tits out and declaring herself to be God, before half-a-dozen horrified clerics wearing an assortment of robes pulled her from the altar, bundled her out of the building, and handed her over to the secular forces of law and order. 

 

I'm not sure I would now be quite so sympathetic to such an action. 

 

 

In Praise of an Unnatural Death 

 

Skip forward three years and on this date in 2016 I was keen to challenge the judgement of God by refusing to accept what medical professionals describe as death by natural causes; i.e., the all-too-predictable kind of death that results from illness, old age, or an internal malfunction of the body and its organs. 

 

As a philosopher, I argued, one should always desire and seek out the opposite of this; i.e., the joy of an unnatural death, be it by accident, misadventure, homicide, suicide, or that mysterious non-category that is undetermined and which, for those enigmatic individuals who pride themselves on their ambiguity, must surely be the way to go.

 

I then confessed my own preference to be executed, like William Palmer, the notorious nineteenth-century murderer known as the Prince of Poisoners, who is said to have climbed the gallows and placed a foot tentatively on the trapdoor before enquiring of the hangman: Is it safe? 

 

I would like, in other words, to go to my death with the cool courage and stoicism of the dandy and a ready quip on my lips that might cause even my executioner to smile (and serve also to annoy the po-faced authorities who demand seriousness and expect contrition in such circumstances).

 

 

To See More Clearly Than Ever Before 

 

In December 2018, meanwhile, I was entering my Daphne Du Maurier phase - a phase that never really passed and became a long-lasting love for the author and her astonishing body of work. On the 28th of this month I wrote a series of notes on one of her near-perfect short stories - suggested to me by the poet Simon Solomon - 'The Blue Lenses' (1959).

 

The premise of the post and story was the same: what if everyone were to suddenly lose their human features and be seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality - would we still find this gently amusing? I suspect not: in all likelihood, initial astonishment would quickly give way to horror. 

 

However we choose to describe it, du Maurier's tale is not simply an imaginative fantasy and she, like D. H. Lawrence, is "another of the writers who leave us troubled and filled with admiration" precisely because she was able to tie her work to "real and unheard of becomings". Hers is a genuinely black art, as Deleuze and Guattari would say.   

 

Judenstern

 

Making particular reference to the case of Serge Gainsbourg, back on 28 December, 2019 I was concerned with the history of the badge that Jews were often obliged to wear for purposes of public identification (i.e., in order to clearly mark them as religious and ethnic outsiders). 

 

Although we tend to think of this practice in the context of Hitler's Germany, the Nazis were actually drawing upon an extensive (anti-Semitic) history when they revived the practice of forcing Jews to wear a distinctive sign upon their clothing, including, most famously, the yellow Star of David with the word Jude inscribed in letters meant to resemble Hebrew script.  

 

Gainsbourg was required to wear such as a young boy in wartime Paris; an experience he made bearable by pretending that it was a sherrif's badge, or a prize that he'd been awarded, and which he eventually wrote a song about: click here. 

 

 

Piquerism and Notes on Knife Play

 

On 28 December of the following year, 2020, I expressed my fascination with piquerism; i.e., the practice of penetrating the skin of another person with sharp objects, including pins, razors, and knives - something that I traced back to young childhood and the time I placed a drawing pin on a fat girl's chair in order to see if she would explode like a balloon with a loud bang.

 

Following this, I then explored episodes of knife play in the work of D. H. Lawrence, of which there are several, including the notorious scene in chapter XXIII of The Plumed Serpent (1926) in which Cipriano publicly executes a group of stripped and blindfolded prisoners with a bright, thin dagger, plunging the latter into their chests with swift, heavy stabs. 

 

I think even at the time I was uncomfortable with this and not able to dismiss it with the same ease as Kate Leslie who, if shocked and appalled at first by the killings, eventually concludes that her new husband's penchant for a little ritualised murder is fine if carried out in good conscience.

 

 

Jane Ciracylides: the Girl with Insect Eyes

 

If over the Xmas period in 2018 I was reading Daphne du Maurier, in 2021 I was enjoying the work of J. G. Ballard, including a short story entitled 'Prima Belladonna' which was included in the collection Vermilion Sands (1971) - a collection which celebrates the neglected virtues of the lurid and bizarre within a surreal sci-fi setting described by Ballard as the visionary present or inner space; the former referring to the future already contained within the present and the latter referring to the place where unconscious dreams, fears, and fantasies meet external reality. 

 

The alien female figure of Jane Ciracylides, with her rich patina-golden skin and insects for eyes, has continued to fascinate me to this day. Who knows, perhaps I'll get to play i-Go with her one day (even if she always cheats).  

 

It's Creepy and It's Kooky, Mysterious and Spooky: Notes on Mark Fisher's The Weird and the Eerie (Part 2)

Mark Fisher (1968-2017) author of 

The Weird and the Eerie (2016)

 

 

I. 

Fisher's opening discussion of the eerie is perhaps my favourite section of his book and deserves to be quoted at some length:

"As with the weird, the eerie is worth reckoning with in its own right as a particular kind of aesthetic experience. Although this experience is certainly triggered by particular cultural forms, it does not originate in them. You could say rather that certain tales, certain novels, certain films, evoke the feeling of the eerie, but this sensation is not a literary or filmic invention. As with the weird, we can and often do encounter the sensation of the eerie [...] without the need for specific forms of cultural meditation. For instance, there is no doubt that the sensation of the eerie clings to certain kinds of physical spaces and landscapes." [a] 

 

But the feeling of the eerie is very different from that of the weird: "The simplest way to get this difference is by thinking about the [...] opposition [...] between presence and absence." [61]

 

The weird is the presence of that which does not belong; "the eerie, by contrast, is constituted by a failure of absence or by a failure of presence" [61]. That's a nice definition. It means that the sensation of the eerir occurs "either when there is something present where there should be nothing, or there is nothing present when there should be something" [61]. 

 

The only way to dispell this sensation is with knowledge; for the eerie concerns the unknown (although that doesn't mean that all mysteries generate the eerie).

 

Finally, Fisher returns to a point made in the introduction to his book. Behind all the manifestations of the eerie lies the question of agency: 

 

 "In the case of the failure of absence, the question concerns the existence of agency as such. [...] In the case of the failure of presence, the question concerns the particular nature of the agent at work." [63]

 

The key point is: "Since the eerie turns crucially on the problem of agency, it is about the [often invisible and/or unconscious] forces that govern our lives and the world." [64]

 

 

II. 

 

It makes me happy that Fisher discusses the work of Daphne du Maurier, as I'm a devotee of her work. 

 

(On the other hand, it makes me feel ashamed of my ignorance when he discusses the work of Christopher Priest about whom I know nothing at all.)  

 

'The Birds' (1952) is a tale I wrote about on Torpedo the Ark back in Feb 2019: click here. 

 

Funny enough, I don't remember describing it as eerie - I think I stressed its malevolence, ambiguity, and inhuman brilliance - but that's not to say Fisher isn't right to use this term. Maybe the fact that the birds seem to possess an unnatural degree of agency is eerie.       

 

Fisher also discusses 'Don't Look Now' (1971), another tale I have twice referred to on this blog: click here and here. Whilst on neither occasion did I use the word eerie, again, I understand why Fisher does; because there is definitely something eerie about fate as a form of obscured agency [b].    

 

And as for the unconscious - if it exists - of course it's eerie, full as it is of absences, gaps, and other negativities. 

 

 

III.

 

Mightn't it be that there's a subjective element in what constitutes an eerie landscape? That eeriness, like beauty or any other aesthetic phenomena, is in the eye of the beholder? 

 

Probably. 

 

Though that's not to deny that a landscape - as an object in its own right - will often demand "to be engaged with on its own terms" [76] and if it happens to be "desolate, atmospheric, solitary" [77] well then it's eerie, no matter who happens to perceive it.

 

Insensitivity to the mood of an environment - be it moorland or an inner city wasteland - is a failure of the individual and can be a dangerous failing too. For we underestimate the powerful agency of a terrain at our own peril. 

 

We might, after Lawrence, call this mood-cum-agency the spirit of place and think in terms of "different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity" [c]. This sounds a bit like pseudo-science, but the spirit of place is, insists Lawrence, a great reality, however we choose to describe it.

 

Of course, the spirit of place needn't always be malevolent and openness to it might lead one into an ecstatic encounter with otherness that is "pulsing beyond the confines of the mundane" [81] and is "achingly alluring even as it is disconcertingly alien" [81] [d]. 

 

In other words, sometimes wandering outside the gate brings joy and can help restore a sense of primordial wonder (which is precisely why Nietzsche encourages philosophers to do their thinking in unexplored realms of knowledge).   

 

 

IV.  

 

As someone who has been researching in the field of thanatology for the best part of two decades, a section entitled 'Eerie Thanatos' is bound to attract my interest ...

 

By this term, Fisher refers to "a transpersonal (and transtemporal) death drive, in which the 'psychological' emerges as the product of forces from the outside" [82]. The theme is beautifully explored, says Fisher, in the work of Nigel Kneale, an author best known for writing Quatermass and the Pit [e].

 

For Kneale - as presumably for Fisher (and for me) - "the material world in which we live is more profoundly alien and strange" [83] than most people care to imagine. And rather than "insisting upon the pre-eminence of the human subject who is alleged to be the privileged bearer of reason, Kneale shows that an enquiry into the nature of what the world is like is also inevitably an unraveling of what human beings had taken themselves to be" [83]. 

 

To quote from Fisher at length once more if I may:

 

"At the heart of Kneale's work is the question of agency and intent. According to some philosophers, it is the capacity for intentionality which definitively separates human beings from the natural world. Intentionality includes intent as we ordinarily understand it, but really refers to the capacity to feel a cerain way about things. Rivers may possess agency - they affect changes - but the do not care about what they do; they do not have any sort of attitude towards the world. Kneale's most famous creation, the scientist Bernard Quatermass, could be said to belong to a trajectory of Radical Enlightenment thinking which is troubled  by this distinction. Radical Enlightenment thinkers such as Spinoza, Darwin, and Freud continually pose the question: to what extent can the concept of intentionality be applied to human beings, never mind to the natural world? The question is posed in part because of the thoroughgoing naturalisation that Radical Enlightenment thought had insisted upon: if human beings fully belong to the so-called natural world, then on what grounds can a special case be made for them? The conclusions that Radical Enlightenment thinking draws are the exact opposite of the claims for which so-called new materialists such as Jane Bennett [f] have argued. New materialists such as Bennett accept that the distinction between human beings and the natural world is no longer tenable, but they construe this to mean that many of the features previously ascribed only to human beings are actually distributed throughout nature. Radical Enlightenment goes in the opposite direction, by questioning whether there is any such thing as intentionality at all; and if there is, could human beings be said to possess it?" [83-84] 

 

That's the direction I head in too: a direction that leads to the Nietzschean conclusion that life is only a very rare and unusual way of being dead. A conclusion which Freud, following Nietzsche, also (reluctantly) arrived at in his work on Thanatos and the death drive:

 

"By striking contrast with the new materialist idea of 'vibrant matter', which suggests that all matter is to some extent alive, the conjecture implied Freud's positioning of Thanatos is that nothing is alive: life is a region of death. [...] What is called organic life is actually a kind of folding of the inorganic." [84]

 

But ...

 

"But the inorganic is not the passive, inert counterpart to an allegedly self-propelling life; on the contrary, it possesses its own agency. There is a death drive, which in its most radical formulation is not a drive towards death, but a drive of death." [84-85] 

 

Thus ...

 

"The inorganic is the impersonal pilot of everything, including that which seems to be personal and organic. Seen from the perspective of Thanatos, we ourselves become an exemplary case of the eerie: there is an agency at work in us (the unconscious, the death drive), but it is not where or what we expected it to be." [85] 

 

This argument - which I believe to be correct - is surely the most important in Fisher's book. I'm less convinced, however, by his (somewhat hopeful) suggestion that science - as an equally impersonal process - offers us a way beyond. To paraphrase Quatermass himself: Maybe death is as good as it gets. Perhaps it's a cosmic law.  

 

 

V.

 

Fisher provides an excellent reading of Margaret Atwood's novel Surfacing (1972) as a book which, in some respects, "belongs to the same moment as such texts as Luce Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman, and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari's Anti-Oedipus" [101]. 

 

That is to say, works which "attempt to rise to the challenge of treating discontent, abjection and psychopathology as traces of an as yet unimaginable outside rather than as symptoms of maladjustment" [101]. 

 

Having said that, Fisher thinks that the novel's unnamed narrator at the point of schiophrenic break-rapture is actually more in tune with Ben Woodard's dark vitalism [g], which is an interesting idea, but not one I wish to discuss here, as frankly, I can't quite see how the latter relates to the eerie. This might be shortsightedness, or a sign of my own intellectual limitations; or it could be that Fisher is now hallucinating visions of the eerie and seeing it in places where it really doesn't exist. 

 

So far, I've enjoyed and been impressed by the manner in which Fisher has taken a rather hackneyed idea - the eerie - and given it an original twist as well as a strong degree of conceptual rigour. But I think he should have wrapped things up with the notion of eerie thanatos, having already offered us his central insight; i.e., that the eerie is ultimately the trace of an inhuman (and inorganic) drive. 

For the first time, after a hundred odd pages, I'm starting to get just a wee bit bored and to feel that Fisher is now simply namechecking a few more of his favourite things à la Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music (1965) and flexing his muscles like an intellectual version of Tony Holland [h].

 

Having said that, I don't like to abandon a book before the end once I've begun to read it. And so, let's continue, fast-forwarding past Jonathan Glazer's 2013 film Under the Skin [i] and arriving at the final couple of chapters, 'Alien Traces' and ''The Eeriness Remains' ...

VI.

 

Any consideration of outer space, says Fisher in the first of these chapters, "quickly engenders a sense of the eerie" [110]: is there anybody (anything) out there? Again, I suppose that's true - so obviously true, in fact, that it could have fallen from the mouth of Sybil Fawlty [j].  

 

Fisher also claims that Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) is a "major contribution to the cinema of the eerie" [112]. 

 

But it's also one of the most boring films I have ever had to sit through and I'm not sure I'd agree with this judgement; I mean, I can see that of Kubrick's The Shining (1980) - and enjoyed Fisher's analysis of the latter - but 2001 ... I'm unconvinced.  

 

Let's just say that when it comes to eeriness, ghostly twins always trump aliens ... and if anyone thinks I'm going to discuss the "possibility of an eerie love" [121], well, they've got another think coming; I'm afraid that I do find this suggestion sentimental "as well as emotionally and conceptually excessive" [121]. 

 

VII.

 

I mentioned in section III of this post how the eerie needn't always be malevolent and openness to it might lead one into an ecstatic encounter with otherness; that wandering outside the gate may even bring joy and help restore a sense of primordial wonder.

 

Well, Fisher clearly agrees with this and that is why he closes his study with a discussion of Joan Lindsay's brilliant novel Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967):   

 

"Not only because Picnic at Hanging Rock is practically a textbook example of an eerie novel - it includes disappearances, amnesia, a geological anomaly, an intensely atmspheric terrain - but also because Lindsay's rendition of the eerie has a positivity, a languorous and delirious allure, that is absent or suppressed in so many other eerie texts." [122]

 

Whereas the outside is usually seen as dangerous and deadly, Picnic at Hanging Rock invokes an outside which involves "a passage beyond the petty repressions and mean confines of common experience into a heightened atmosphere of oneiric lucidity" [122]. 

 

Fisher concludes: "The novel seems to justify the idea that a sense of the eerie is created and sustained simply by withholding information." [126][k]  

 

I could elucidate, but the above note seems to encourage one to recognise that sometimes it's best to say no more ...   

 

 

Notes

 

[a] Mark Fisher, The Weird and the Eerie, (Repeater Books, 2016), p. 61. Future page references to this work will be given in the main text.   

[b] Etymologically speaking, it's weird - rather than eerie - that suggests fate; the Old English term wyrd meant having the power to shape the latter and thus control one's destiny. Readers will probably recall that the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth, often known as the Weird Sisters, have this ability.     

 

[c] D. H. Lawrence, 'The Spirit of Place', Studies in Classic America Literature (Final Version, 1923), ed. Ezra Greenspan, Lindeth Vasey and John Worthen, (Cambride University Press, 2003), p. 17.  

 

[d] Edward Hunter and Simon Solomon seem to understand this in their short film Room (2010) set on the North Yorkshire Moors. Unfortunately, I can provide no further details of this work or give any links at this time.   

 

[e] Quatermass and the Pit is an influential British science-fiction serial transmitted live by BBC Television in December 1958 and January 1959. A Hammer Films adaptation was released with the same title in 1967, directed by Roy Ward Baker and scripted by Kneale.

      Fisher also discusses the fantasy novel Red Shift (Collins, 1973) by Alan Garner in his chapter on eerie thanatos in relation to the question of human free will, but this is another book and author about which and about whom I again know nothing and so prefer to pass over in silence here (with no disrespect to Garner).       

 

[f] I discussed Jane Bennett's Vibrant Matter (Duke University Press, 2010) in a post published on 10 April 2015, in which I express my dislike of her material vitalism: click here. 

 

[g] See Woodard's Slime Dynamics: Generation, Mutation and the Creep of Life (Zero Boks, 2012). 

 

[h] Tony Holland is a British bodybuilder known for his musical muscle man act. He achieved national fame in the UK after appearing on Opportunity Knocks in 1964 - which, unbelievably, he won six times. 

      Click here to watch him perform (joined by Kenny Lynch) to what became his cha-cha theme tune; 'Wheels', originally recorded (and released as a single which reached number 8 in the UK charts) by the String-A-Longs in 1960. As a very young child, I always found it weirdly disturbing when Holland came on TV and hearing this tune today still makes my skin crawl.     

 

[i] I intend to (i) watch this film and (ii) write a future post on it - and that's why I don't discuss it here. 

      I don't know why I haven't already seen this film; I'm beginning to think I sometimes have blackouts like Rip Van Winkle and when I wake up the world has moved on and certain cultural productions have simply passed me by. The fact that I have been denied an opportunity of seeing Scarlett Johnasson on screen playing an alien young woman stalking human males really irritates.

 

[j] I'm referring here to a famous exchange between Basil and Sybil in the final episode of Fawlty Towers [S2/E6] entitled 'Basil the Rat' (dir. Bob Spiers, written by John Cleese and Connie Booth, 1979): click here. 

 

[k] As Fisher reminds us: 

      "In the case of Picnic at Hanging Rock, this literally happened: the form in which the novel was published was the result of an act of excision. In her original manuscript, Lindsay provided a solution of sorts to the enigma [at the heart of the novel], in a concluding chapter that her publishers [wisely] encouraged her to remove [...] This 'Chapter Eighteen' was published separately, as The Secret of Hanging Rock [1987]." [126] 

 

 

To read the first part of this post - on Fisher's notion of the weird - click here.  

 

  

Help! I'm Turning into a Tapeworm (Don't Tell Me Not to Worry)

Teresa Zgoda: Taenia solium (tapeworm) everted scolex

Nikon Small World Photomicrography Competition (2017)

 

 

I. 

 

The above image by Teresa Zgoda, revealing the anterior end of a pork tapeworm, is truly the stuff of nightmares. No wonder then that after coming across it, a friend of mine experienced a metamorphic dream in which he had the head and short neck of the creature atop his still human body. 

 

As he described what had happened to him in his dream, it became clear that there was no point my telling him not to worry, as, clearly, he was profoundly disturbed by this - and perhaps rightly so; for if transforming into a macroparasite isn't troubling, then what is?

 

Besides, don't worry is such a crass response; insensitive and inadequate; dismissive and minimising. When people are upset, they want to be able to express their worries and fears and they want, perhaps, to be offered some explanation for why they are feeling as they do. 

 

They certainly don't want to hear the words don't worry, never mind, or calm down. Nor do they want to be told to get over it, as if their emotional distress were something trivial and slightly embarrassing (something they either have to justify or apologise for).          

 

 

II. 

 

Having said that, what do you say to a man who is worried about becoming-tapeworm? Who has seen himself (in his dreams) with that terrifying attachment organ, the scolex, where his head should be and fears his body is becoming whiter and flatter and more ribbon-like by the day?     

 

I'm not a psychiatrist, or dream therapist, and I'm afraid my only experience in these matters is as a reader of fiction ... 

 

One thinks of Gregor Samsa, for example, who famously wakes up one morning to find himself inexplicably transformed into a large insect (commonly depicted as a cockroach). Initially assuming this to be a temporary change and that he will soon be back to normal, Gregor is, at first, philosophical about what has happened to him. Unfortunately, however, he doesn't recover his human form and things end tragically for him [1]. 

 

One also thinks of Marda West, in Daphne du Maurier's extraordinary short story 'The Blue Lenses' (1959), in which everyone appears to suddenly lose their human features and is seen with the head of the creature that best expresses their inhuman qualities; not so much their true nature, as what might be termed their molecular animality. Again, this might sound amusing at first, but any comic aspects quickly give way to horror [2].      

 

I would advise my friend, therefore, to take his dream seriously. But I would also remind him that our humanity is nothing originary and autonomous; in fact, there are no free-living organisms - we are all parasites living off the lives of others ...

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm referring, of course, to Franz Kafka's novella, Die Verwandlung (1915). There are many English editions of this text available, but I would recommend the translation by Susan Bernofsky, that comes with an introduction by David Cronenberg; The Metamorphosis (W. W. Norton and Co., 2014).

      For my analysis of the case of Gregor Samsa, see the first of my becoming-insect posts: click here.

 

[2] See Daphne du Maurier, 'The Blue Lenses', in The Breaking Point, (Virago Press, 2009), pp. 44-82. For my reading of this tale, click here. 

 

 

This post is for my friend Síomón Solomon.

 

  

Never Trust a Dwarf Dressed in Red

Adelina Poerio as the anonymous dwarf in Don't Look Now (1973) 

and Jean-Yves Tual as Lucien in Le nain rouge (1998)

 

 

I. 

 

One of the most terrifying figures in cinematic history is the homocidal dwarf played by Adelina Poerio in Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now (1973); a brilliant film adaptation of a short story by Daphne du Maurier published two years earlier.

In the tale, du Maurier describes the final scene when the doomed protagonist, John, finally confronts his fate:

"The child struggled to her feet and stood before him, the pixie-hood falling from her head on to the floor. He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear. It was not a child at all but a thick-set woman dwarf, about three feet high, with a great square adult head too big for her body, grey locks hanging shoulder-length, and she wasn't sobbing any more, she was grinning at him, nodding her head up and down.

      [...] The creature fumbled in her sleeve, drawing a knife, and she threw it at him with hideous strength, piercing his throat, he stumbled and fell, the sticky mess covering his protecting hands." [a] 

 

II. 

 

Lucien Gagnero, the small-bodied protagonist of Michel Tournier's short story Le nain rouge (1978) [b], also has a penchant for wearing red and committing vile deeds, including murder, and it's his tale I'd like to share with you here ...

  

Despite being a successful divorce lawyer who "applied himself with avenging ardour to the task of destroying the marriages of other people" [61], Lucien didn't find it easy being of reduced stature; it was something he had resentfully resigned himself to:

 

"When [he] reached the age of twenty-five he had to give up, with a broken heart, all hope of ever becoming any taller than the four feet one he had already reached eight years before. All he could do now was resort to special shoes whose platform soles gave him the extra four inches that elevated him from dwarf status to that of small man. As the years went by, his vanishing adolescence and youth left him exposed as a stunted adult who inspired mockery and scorn in the worst moments, pity in the less bad ones, but never respect or fear [...]" [61]

 

When a wealthy former opera singer named Edith Watson comes to see him to discuss dissolving her marriage to Bob, a young, good-looking lifeguard from Nice, Lucien is keen to take the case; scenting as he does "secrets and humiliations that more than interested him" [61]. 

 

One day, Lucien goes to visit his new client in her luxurious apartment. He is rather taken aback to find her on the terrace lying "practically naked on a chaise longue, surrounded by refreshments" [62]. The radiance of her big, golden body, "with its violent odour of woman and suntan lotion, intoxicated Lucien" and it was not merely the stifling heat of the day that made him sweat profusely. 

 

Needing to urinate, Lucien asks to use the bathroom: all black marble, spotlights, and mirrors, with a sunken tub and a shower which sprayed water from all angles (not only from above, but from behind and below as well). For some reason, this shower fascinates Lucien and he cannot resist removing his clothes and trying it, making liberal use of the toiletries at hand: "He was enjoying himself. For the first time he saw his body as something other than a shameful, repulsive object." [63] 

 

When Lucien leaves the shower, however, he sees himself reflected in the labyrinth of mirrors. Although he discerns an impressive nobility in his facial features, he can't find much to admire in his disproportionately long neck, round torso, and short, bandy legs. Even his enormous penis, which hangs down to his knees, seems more comical than anything else.   

 

It's at this point that something miraculous happens: rather than putting on his own clothes, Lucien notices a huge crimson bathrobe hanging from a chrome peg:

 

"He took it down, draped it around him until he was completely hidden within its folds [...] He wondered whether he would put his shoes on. This was a crucial question, for if he relinquished the four inches of his platform soles he would be confessing, and even proclaiming, to Edith Watson that he was a dwarf and not merely a small man. The discovery of an elegant pair of Turkish slippers under a stool decided him. When he made his entrance on to the terrace, the long train formed by the outsize bathrobe gave him an imperial air.

      [...] The notary's clerk had disappeared and given place to a comical, disquieting creature of overwhelming, bewitching ugliness - to a fabulous monster, whose comic aspect added a negative, acid, destructive component." [63]       

 

By affirming his achondroplasia, Lucien has become who he is. Just like the hunchback understands that in his deformity lies his very essence, so Lucien has had to realise that his grandeur lies within his dwarfism and is not reliant upon a pair of built-up shoes. Such a revelation is transformative and has instant results; for not only does Lucien become who he is, he also finds love. Edith was "enchanted to discover that such a small, misshapen body should be so fantastically equipped, and so delightfully efficacious" [64]. 

 

The narrator continues:

 

"This was the beginning of a liaison whose passion was entirely physical and to which Lucien's infirmity added a slightly shameful, sophisticated piquancy, for her, and a pathetic tension mixed with anguish for him. [...]

      From then on, Lucien led a double life. Outwardly he was still a small man, dressed in dark clothes and built-up shoes [...] but at certain irregular, capricious hours [...] he [...] metamorphosed into an imperial dwarf, wilful, swaggering, desirous and desired [...]" [64]

He fucks Edith, subjecting the large-bodied blonde to the law of pleasure and sending her into ecstasies that always culminated in obscene abuse for her human plaything and living dildo. Lucien didn't care what she thought of him, only he was terrified of losing her ... And when he discovers she has secretly reconciled with Bob he was "overwhelmed with murderous hatred" [65].

 

And so he kills her. Hiding in her splendid bathroom, he leaps on Edith when she enters and strangles her: "While she was in her death throes Lucien possessed her for the last time." [66] Then he sets about framing poor Bob, the young colossus with a sweet, naive face, for the rape and murder. 

 

At first Lucien returns to his old life, taking up his disguise as a little person whom people mocked or pitied. But the memory of the superhuman monster that he now knew himself to be haunted him day and night:

 

"Because he had finally had the courage of his own monstrosity, he had seduced a woman [...] killed her, and his rival, the husband [...] was everywhere being hunted by the police! His life was a masterpiece, and there were moments when he was overwhelmed with breathtaking joy at the thought that he only had to take his shoes off to become immediately what he really was, a man apart, superior to the gigantic riffraff, an irresistible seducer and infallible killer! All the misery of the past years was due to his having refused the fearsome choice that was his destiny. In cowardly fashion he had shrunk from crossing the Rubicon into dwarfism [...] But he had finally dared to take the step. The slight quantitative difference that he had accepted in deciding to reject his platform shoes [...] had brought about a radical qualitative metamorphosis. The horrible quality of dwarfism had infiltrated him and turned him into a fabulous monster. In the greyness of the lawyer's office where he spent his days he was haunted by dreams of despotism [...] and on several occasions the typists were surprised to hear him let out a roar." [66-7] 

 

 

III.

  

I think if I'd been the author of this tale I would have ended it here. Readers should note, however, that Tournier continues the story of Lucien Gagnero, taking it in a surprising direction ... 

 

First, Lucien becomes notorious in the bars and nightclubs of Paris that he parades around, whilst wearing a dark red leotard that shows off his muscles and genitals. Men soon learned to fear him and women "submitted to the obscure fascination" [68] that he exerted. Lucien then finds fame as a circus performer; his giant hand act proving to be a sensation. 

 

"But Lucien was still not completely satisfied by his fame" [69]: he wants - and takes - further cruel revenge upon Bob, who, still on the run for a crime he didn't commit, comes to him for help one day when the circus pitched its tents in Nice. 

 

Incorporating Bob into his act, Lucien publicly humiliates him over and over again, whilst, in private, he makes him into his bitch: "it happened one night, then every night, that he climbed into the side-berth in which his former rival slept, and possessed him like a female" [72]. 

 

Lucien's real love, however, is neither for rich women nor beautiful young men: it is, rather for those of his own size; i.e. children under the age of twelve. For he had noticed that whilst the adulation of the adults in the audience did nothing to soften the "ball of hatred that weighed hard and heavy in his breast" [72], the innocent love and laughter of children "cleansed him of his bitterness" [74] at last. 

 

I suppose we might call this the redeeming power of paedophilia ...

Notes

 

[a] Daphne du Maurier, 'Don't Look Now', in Don't Look Now and Other Stories, (Penguin Books, 2006), p. 55.  

[b] Michel Tournier, 'The Red Dwarf', in The Fetishist, trans. Barbara Wright, (Minerva, 1992). All page numbers following in the post refer to this edition.

 

For a follow up post to this one - on achondroplasiaphobia - please click here.

A Brief Note on The Scapegoat (1957) by Daphne du Maurier

Virago (2004)

I'm sorry to say, but Daphne du Maurier's eleventh novel, The Scapegoat (1957), isn't one I'll be adding to my list of favourite books (not even my list of favourite books by her).

For whilst Lisa Appignanesi writes in her Introduction to the work that it has "terse economy of style [and] great literary sophistication" [v], I'm afraid I found it rather tedious at times and - despite the great promise of its premise to do with the performance of identity and the struggle to consciously maintain a lie - philosophically disappointing.

Just to be clear: I loved the first couple of chapters: I loved the final three chapters. It was the twenty-odd chapters in between that I had problems with ...

And one of the main problems was the feeble and depressing protagonist-narrator; a character in stark contrast to his fascinating French double.* One wishes the novel had been more about the latter and less about the former's attempt to live (and redeem) Jean's de Gué's life.

In addition, the other characters in the book - particularly the family members - are also extremely unsympathetic. The English imposter might learn to love them, but I'm afraid Monsieur le Comte is right:

(i) His mother, an obese morphine addict, is the most egotistical, the most rapacious, and the most monstrous of old women ...

(ii) His younger brother, Paul, is a painfully inferior and provincial oaf with a "thoroughly disagreeable personality" [355]...

(iii) His sister-in-law (and lover), Renée, might have an enchanting body, but possesses "a mind like an empty box" [355] ...

(iv) His sister, Blanche, is "so twisted with repressed sex and frustrated passion" [355] that she has become fanatically pious as well as resentful ...

(v) And, finally, his daughter, Marie-Noel, is an affected and manipulative little brat who puts on an act of sweetness and innocence, whilst really just wanting to be the centre of attention.         

Of course, there's Béla, who seems a good sort (cooks like an angel; fucks like a beast) and she performs an interesting role in the novel. As understanding and compassionate as she is, however, I suspect that even she was glad to see the back of a self-harming substitute with suicidal fantasies, and keenly awaited the return of the man who had been her lover for three years.

He may lack tendresse, but at least Jean de Gué knows who he is, what he wants, and how to whistle for his dog.    

Notes

*I'm assuming that there are two actual characters - English John and Jean de Gué - and not two distinct personalities belonging to the same schizophrenic subject, although, in many ways, this would be more believable and more interesting and I rather wish du Maurier had openly explored what is now referrred to as dissociative identity disorder. She might even have given us a dramatic Fight Club moment when it's revealed that the Narrator is Tyler Durden and that it takes a Marla Singer - or, in this case, a Béla - to enable John to know the true from the false and realise that he's Dr Jekyll and Mr Jackass, i.e., somebody with deep seated problems for which he should seek professional help. See Fight Club (1999), dir. David Fincher, starring Brad Pitt, Edward Norton, and Helena Bonham Carter, based on the 1996 novel of the same title by Chuck Palahniuk.   

Daphne du Maurier, The Scapegoat, with an Introduction by Lisa Appignanesi, (Virago Press, 2004). The page numbers given in the post refer to this edition. 

For another post on The Scapegoat, click here. 

Bonus: to watch the trailer for the 1959 film adaptation dir. Robert Hamer, starring Alec Guiness, click here. 

Never Give a Doppelgänger the Keys to Your Car ...

Roger Moore in The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970)

There is always a part of ourselves by which we are haunted; 

an avenging apparition which stands between us and our own lives, 

thwarting our attempt to remain whole.

I.

What is it with doppelgängers [i] and their urge to drive recklessly? I ask this having just read the opening chapters of Daphne du Maurier's 1957 novel The Scapegoat [ii] ...

In the book, a dull (and depressed) historian with no real connections to the present, dreams of belonging and acting directly in the world and of establishing human relations; he's sick of living in the past and of merely recording events; tired of being alone. He wants another, more meaningful life; a life shared and experienced with friends and family.

Then, by chance, he comes face to face with his double in a busy station buffet:

"Someone jolted my elbow as I drank and said, 'je vous demande pardon,' and as I moved to give him space he turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realized, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well.
      I was looking at myself." [9]

The narrator continues:

"We did not speak: we went on staring at one another. I had heard of these things happening [...] and the idea is amusing, or perhaps fraught with tragedy [...]
      This was not funny: nor was it tragic. The resemblance made me slightly sick, reminding me of moments when, passing a shop window, I had suddenly seen my own reflection, and the man in the mirror had been a grotesque caricature of what, conceitedly, I had believed myself to be. Such incidents left me chastened, sore, with ego deflated, but they never gave me a chill down the spine, as this encounter did, nor the desire to turn and run." [10]

The man doesn't run, however. Rather, he accepts the double's invitation to have a drink and tells him of his life in London. And he allows him to drive his car, that he had left parked outside a nearby cathedral.

"He settled himself with assurance behind the wheel and I climbed in besdide him. As he turned the car away from the cathedral [...] he continued to enthuse in schoolboy fashion, murmuring, 'Magnificent, excellent!' under his breath, obviously enjoying every moment of what soon turned out to be, from my own rather cautious standard, a hair-raising ride. When he had jumped one set of lights, and sent an old man leaping for his life, and forced a large Buick driven by an infuriated American into the side of the street, he proceeded to circle the town in order, so he explained, to try the car's pace. 'You know,' he said, 'it amuses me enormously to use other people's possessions. It is one of life's greatest pleasures.' I closed my eyes as we took a corner like a bob-sleigh." [16]

This is doubtless intended to be humorous, but, strangely, it reminded me of a far more sinister scene involving a dull man, his car, and a reckless driving doppelgänger ...  


II.

What I have in mind is the opening scene of spooky psychological thriller, The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), in which Roger Moore puts in a superb performance as staid business executive Harold Pelham [iii] ...

When driving home from work one day, Pelham appears to suffer - quite literally - a splitting of his personality and begins to drive recklessly and at speed, as if no longer himself and no longer behind the wheel of his Rover saloon, but seated, rather, in a silver sports car (a Lamborghini Islero, to be precise).

Following the inevitable crash, Pelham is shown on the operating table where he experiences clinical death. Fortunately, the surgical team manage to restore his vital functions. However, they notice that, for a moment, there appear to be two heartbeats on the monitor - his alter-ego or shadow self having become fully manifest.

This figure of both identity and non-identity challenges both epistemological certainties and ontological securities. Further, he is intent on making the original Pelham's existence his own (with a little added spice and an attractive mistress played by Olga Georges-Picot). Ultimately, as there is only room in the world for one Harold Pelham, things are destined to turn out badly for at least one of the two men.

I suspect that will be the case also for either John or Jean de Gué (having only read the first fifty-five pages of The Scapegoat, I don't know this for sure). The moral has to be this: Never give a doppelgänger the keys to your car ... because they'll drive off with your life! [iv]

Notes

[i] From earliest times, human beings have felt themselves to be accompanied by a double; be it a spirit, a shadow, a reflection, or what in more recent times the Germans termed a doppelgänger - a sinister figure which became a familiar trope in Gothic and Romantic literature, as well as in the modern thriller. For Freud, the doppelgänger constituted the definitive manifestation of the unheimlich (i.e., the strangely familiar realm that in English is known as the uncanny).

[ii] Daphne du Maurier, The Scapegoat, (Virago Press, 2004). Page numbers given in the text refer to this edition.

[iii] To watch the trailer to The Man Who Haunted Himself, (written and dir. Basil Dearden, 1970): click here. The film was an adaptation of Anthony Armstrong's, The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham, which appeared first as a short story in 1940, before being developed and published as a novel in 1957.
 
[iv] Jean Baudrillard, who was a big fan of demonic doubles and evil twins, also insists that an individual cannot survive an encounter with their doppelgänger. But, interestingly, he also argues that neither can the latter survive in the age of the clone.  
 

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. 

Francis Davey: the Vicar of Altarnun

James Duke as Francis Davey 

(Salisbury Playhouse 2004)

I.

Albinism or, as it is sometimes known, achromia, is a rare congenital disorder characterised by the complete or partial absence of melanin in the skin, hair, and eyes. It is believed to affect approximately 1-in-20,000 people, mostly in Africa where it is often still regarded with superstitious fear resulting in persecution and acts of atrocity.

Having said that, the portrayal of people with albinism in Western culture is also largely negative and there are legitimate concerns that this engenders or, at the very least, reinforces, prejudice and discrimination.

It was, therefore, a little dispapointing to discover Daphne du Maurier exploiting the evil albino plot device in her celebrated novel Jamaica Inn (1936), although it would be unfair to expect a woman born in 1907 to share 21st-century concerns surrounding this issue.

And besides, even if Francis Davey, vicar of Altarnun and criminal mastermind, is something of a fictional stereotype, he remains a truly fascinating figure ...


II.

I think the first thing to note is the manner in which Davey's albinism is used to distinguish him not from the heroes of the book - for in truth, there are none - but from the darkness of his cohorts in evil and, indeed, the elemental darkness of the Cornish landscape itself. The whiteness of his skin and hair makes him stand out, but is not, of course, a sign of innocence; it is, rather, a sign of his unnaturalness.

Thus, while Joss Merlyn may be a monster, he remains all too human. Davey, on the other hand, is a freak who has something inhuman about him. Du Maurier, a mistress of the uncanny, is always good at blurring the line between brutal realism and queer gothic fantasy and with Davey she gives us a character about whom nothing is certain: he might be just a man after all; or he might be a fallen angel or demon. He certainly presents himself as both outcast and anti-Christ and it's his dark paganism rather than white hair and skin, that ultimately capture our interest.       


III.

Although his concealed presence has previously been sensed in an empty guest room at Jamaica Inn, it's not until she is lost on the moors that Mary Yellan finally encounters Davey in the flesh - and even then he is a ghostly figure "lacking reality in the dim light" [94]. Softly-spoken, his voice nevertheless contained a calm, persuasive authority and Mary can tell he is a man of good breeding. But then she notices his blind-looking hypnotic eyes for the first time:

"They were strange eyes, transparent like glass, and so pale in colour that they seemed near to white [...] They fastened upon her, and searched her, as though her very thoughts could not be hidden, and Mary felt herself relax before him, and give way; and she did not mind." [95]   

His house - to which he escorts her - is strangely peaceful and enchanting, but at the same time it is also unreal: 

"This was a different world from Jamaica Inn. There the silence was oppressive and heavy with malice; the disused rooms stank of neglect. Here it was different. The room in which she was sitting had the quiet impersonality of a drawing-room visited by night. The furniture, the table in the centre, the pictures on the walls, were without that look of solid familiarity belonging to the day." [97]

After speaking of her life at Jamaica Inn, Mary is driven home by Davey and she is shocked to discover a reckless quality to his character:

"He made no effort to rein in his horse, and, glancing up at him, Mary saw that he was smiling. 'Go on,' he said, 'go on; you can go faster than this'; and his voice was low and excited, as though he were talking to himself. The effect was unnatural, a little startling, and Mary was aware of a feeling of discomfiture, as though he had betaken himself to another world and had forgotten her existence." [104-05]

He was certainly not like any parson she had met before and she "wondered why he had not used the conventional phrases of comfort, said something about the blessing of prayer, the peace of God, and life everlasting" [166]. The answer, as we discover, is because Francis Davey is a devil in disguise; his face itself is nothing but an expressionless white mask that doesn't even betray his age.   

Until the very end, however, Mary continues to trust him - even after looking at his uncanny paintings with their alien atmosphere and discovering a sketch in his desk that depicted his congregation assembled in the pews and himself in the pulpit:

"At first Mary saw nothing unusual in the sketch; it was a subject natural enough for a vicar to choose who had skill with his pen; but when she looked closer she realised what he had done.
      This was not a drawing at all, but a caricature, grotesque as it was horrible. The people of the congregation were bonneted and shawled, and in their best clothes as for Sunday, but he had drawn sheep's heads upon their shoulders instead of human faces. The animal jaws gaped foolishly at the preacher, with silly vacant solemnity, and their hoofs were folded in prayer. [...] The preacher, with his black gown and halo of hair, was Francis Davey; but he had given himself a wolf's face, and the wolf was laughing at the flock beneath him." [261-62]

This picture - regarded by Mary Yellan as blasphemous and terrible - provides good reason to rather admire Davey; he may be a murderer, but at least he has a sense of humour and artistic talent and these things compensate for a good deal. In fact, push comes to shove, I might prefer the company of Davey to that of Jem Merlyn. The latter may have a certain rogueish charm and knicker-invading smile, but he has many depressing limitations.

In other words, if I'd been Mary Yellan, I just might have taken my chances with the vicar rather than thrown in my lot with a horse thief who promises only hard times and homelessness; "'with the sky for a roof and the earth for a bed'" [299].

For Davey not only offers an experience of the wider world - "'You shall see Spain, Mary, and Africa, and learn something of the sun; you shall feel desert sand under your feet ...'" [282] - but access to another world altogether; a primeval world of pagan splendour, when men were not so humble "and the old gods walked the hills" [274].     

Both men, by their own admission, spoke a strangely different language to poor Mary Yellan; the latter's romantic nomadism in contrast also to the former's pagan esotericism. I have, in my time, been a sucker for both, so I understand the appeal of each; the open road versus the road to hell paved with purple flowers.

It's not an easy choice, but, in this instance, Davey's offer of a queer alliance is arguably the more interesting. Jem offers Mary the chance to live like a gypsy; Davey promises that he'll teach her how to live "as men and women have not lived for four thousand years or more" [278]. Mad neo-pagan fantasy ...? Perhaps. But still his words "found echo in her mind" [280].   

Ultimately, however, Mary doesn't have have to make the choice: Davey, who has abducted her and taken her onto the moors, is shot and killed by Jem Merlyn and it's his wagon she hops on board in the end (whilst recently buried Aunt Patience turns in her freshly dug grave) ...

See: Daphne du Maurier, Jamaica Inn, (Virago Press, 2003). All page numbers given in the above text refer to this edition of the novel.

Make Way For Pengallan!

What are you all waiting for? A spectacle? You shall have it! 

And tell your children how the great age ended. Make way for Pengallan!

I.

It can never be stressed enough: a novel is one thing and a film is something else; even the most faithful of screen adaptations is a radically different work of art and can only be analysed in and on its own terms. Thus, whilst it can be amusing to compare and contrast the book with the movie - or the movie with the book - it's a largely pointless exercise.

I was reminded of this whilst recently watching Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn (1939), his version of Daphne du Maurier's novel published three years earlier, based on a screen play by Sidney Gilliat and Joan Harrison.    

Many critics dislike this film; Michael Medved lists it in his fifty worse movies of all time, which, I think, is ridiculous. Having said that, Hitchcock himself was far from happy with the work and du Maurier was also less than pleased with the adaptation. [1]

Personally, however, I think Jamaica Inn has much to recommend it and contains some memorable scenes, all of which involve Charles Laughton as the astonishing figure of Sir Humphrey Pengallan, the amoral (and possibly insane) mastermind behind a gang of murderous shipwreckers working the Cornish coast who uses the proceeds from the sale of the stolen goods to fund his lavish and decadent lifestyle.


II.

When asked to make a toast to the ideal of Beauty by a guest at his dinner table, Pengallan instructs his butler, Chadwick, to bring him his favourite porcelaine figurine, so that he may be inspired. When challenged by the same guest  - "But Sir Humphrey, it is not alive" - he replies that it's more alive than half the people round his table and fondles it with fetishistic fascination, like a genuine agalmatophile. 

Pushed to provide an example of living beauty, Pengallan decides to introduce his beloved Nancy: "The most beautiful creature west of Exeter." This turns out to be a fine-looking horse, rather than the young woman anticipated, much to the bemused astonishment of his guests. One thinks of Caligula and his horse Incitatus ...  

Pengallan, is, however, also partial to young women. No surprise then when he takes an immediate shine to Mary Yellan, played by the lovely nineteen-year-old Irish actress Maureen O'Hara. When Mary arrives unexpected and uninvited at his house, he half removes her coat in order to admire her exquisite shape, as if she too were a prized object or animal. Keen to display his literary leanings, Pengallan then quotes to her from Byron:

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes [2]

Unimpressed, Mary amusingly responds: "Thank you, sir, but I didn't come for poetry, but for a horse."

My favourite scene between Mary and Penhallan happens towards the end of the film, however, when the latter kidnaps the former, ties and gags her, and tells her that he plans to make her his own now that she has no one else in the world. He drives her, still tied up and covered by a heavy cloak, to the harbour, where they board a ship bound for France. It's what's known in BDSM circles as a Sweet Gwendoline scene. [3]  

But my favourite scene of all comes at the climax of the movie and involves Pengallan jumping to his death from atop a ship's mast rather than surrender to the authorities. Addressing the crowd below, he says: "What are you all waiting for? A Spectacle? You shall have it! And tell your children how the great age ended. Make way for Pengallan!"

If and when I jump to my own death - which, as a philosopher, would be my preferred method of suicide (thereby continuing a noble tradition which can be traced from Empodocoles to Gilles Deleuze) - these are the lines I shall recite.   

Notes

[1] Although when interviewed Hitchcock referred to Charles Laughton as a charming man, one doubts he was happy with the latter's meddling with the film's script, casting, and direction, which, as a co-producer as well as the lead actor, Laughton doubtless felt he had every right to do, insisting, for example, that his own character be accorded greater screen time and that O'Hara be given the role of Mary. Laughton's method of acting - described in some quarters as ham and in others as camp - was also a problem for Hitchcock, though, again, I love his portrayal of Pengallan as a dandy libertine mincing around to the beat of a German waltz. 

As for du Maurier, she was so disappointed by the adaptation that she briefly considered withholding the film rights to Rebecca which, as film fans will know, Hitchcock directed the following year, 1940, to great critical acclaim (and du Maurier's complete satisfaction).  

[2] Byron, 'She Walks in Beauty' (1814). Readers who wish to read this short lyrical verse in full can click here to access it on the Poetry Foundation website.

[3] Sweet Gwendoline is the chief damsel in distress in the works of bondage artist John Willie, who first appeared in Robert Harrison's girlie magazine Wink from June 1947 to February 1950, and who invariably finds herself tied up and in need of rescue. I am aware, of course, that in this era of #MeToo such scenes of sexual sadism involving violence against women are no longer viewed in the same way. 

Readers who are interested in watching Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn can do so on YouTube by clicking here. The scenes I mention above are are at 9.30-14.50, 1:26-1:28, and 1:37-1:38.