Archive | October 2019

My Cousin Rachel: Rebecca Redoux?

Oct12

Ever since reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, I’ve been captivated by her writing style, especially her otherworldly descriptions, and plan to read as many of her works as I can. My Cousin Rachel appealed to me as the plot seemed similar to Rebecca in some ways–albeit being in a different era–and also because of the title. It’s always curious to read stories in which there are characters with the same name as one’s self.

My Cousin Rachel is narrated by a young man this time, one Philip Ashley, who has been raised by his older cousin to spurn romance and the world of women in general. Philip is only twenty-four, but is already confident that women can offer nothing in life for him, at least romantically. His estate is all men and they don’t worry so much about the niceties of society and it suits them just fine. Set somewhere in the late 1800s, it is likely that both the older and younger Ashleys can live this way because they are very rich men. As we come to see, woe to the rich men who know the ways of women very little.

Philip’s cousin Ambrose is in his forties and due to ill health, must go abroad to Italy for a time. Through letters and secondhand information, young Philip finds that his cousin has amazingly fallen in love and gotten married. Only a year later, he even more astonishingly finds that his uncle is on his death bed. Philip travels to Italy, but doesn’t make it in time, even missing out on seeing Ambrose’s widow. We get a foreshadowing of things to come as Philip gets hints in pieces of letters from Ambrose that the couple relationship was not happy in its latter days. After some time, Philip receives news that the widow, his “cousin Rachel,” will be coming to the estate to stay for a time. At this point, Philip is against her, thinking she drove Ambrose to an early grave and also that she’s upset Ambrose did not leave anything for her in his will. But as I said before, Philip knows little of the ways of women, especially beautiful women, and Rachel is beautiful and able to use it to her advantage.

To say that Philip is young, naive, and stupid is not exaggerating. He is an even more infuriating narrator than the nameless girl in Rebecca. It takes him far too long to realize he has a thing for Rachel and is amazed that everyone in town thinks of her as extraordinarily good looking. Ambrose did him no favors by leaving him so vulnerable, but it is perhaps only women that are truly skeptical of the beauty of their own sex. We are more aware of how it’s used to manipulate than sometimes men are. Philip does one stupid thing after another, and as readers we are left to wonder if Rachel even has to manipulate him at all. He completely loses his senses and seems to care nothing for the future security of the estate he has inherited, including no thought for all of the workers and servants should all the money be drained.

The signs are all there that Rachel has a spending problem, indeed a problem with constantly living to excess. She would be fast friends with The Talented Mr. Ripley in that regard, though it is left in doubt as to whether she understands this is a fault and that she has it. Du Maurier leaves an open ending: Suspicion is deeply cast upon Rachel, but it is also insinuated that she is merely misunderstood and that she herself really doesn’t understand certain kinds of men. You can’t have a one-night stand with a man who has fallen in love with you and lives in a world where people in love get married and settle down. Rachel fails to understand the sharp anger her actions provoke.

As to the question whether Rachel has good intentions or bad, I found it increasingly impossible to care in the light of young Philip’s stupidity. He seems to throw everything Ambrose taught him out the window, and I was left wondering if he cared about his cousin at all. I suppose some men have no defenses against great beauty, and as a woman, that’s rather unsettling to think about. If we are beautiful, will they really give us everything we ask for, let us do anything to anyone at anytime? When Philip finally comes to understand that he is out of control with Rachel, he makes a devastating choice. That he is sorry later makes no difference to her, and we readers are left wondering if she is a figurative angel or devil. Like Philip, we are given no definite answer or assurance.

Although Rebecca is a masterpiece compared to this, My Cousin Rachel would make for quite a drinking game: Take a drink every time Philip refers to “my cousin Rachel.” It gets so egregious that I almost stopped reading the book a couple of times. The atmosphere of the story isn’t as gothic or spooky as its predecessor, and because of the previous work, we kind of know how it will end. The biggest thing I got out of the story was how absolutely ridiculous young and rich men can be. At the end, my sympathy was far more with Philip’s guardian and his daughter than with either Philip or Ambrose. Pride goeth before a fall, and this is definitely a moral tale on two men being far, far too proud of their bachelor status, too proud to understand how weak and vulnerable they made themselves, and most importantly, too proud to understand that the fault here was perhaps not with Rachel, not with her at all. But I’m a little biased. We Rachels have to stick up for each other, after all.

Recycling Theft: The Moonstone

Oct7

It was not surprising to find that Wilkie Collins was a friend of Charles Dickens. Both writers have hefty works, probably because they tended to get paid by the word, but in Collins’ case because he…likes…to…drag…things…….o…u……t. (Spoilers)

I wanted to like The Moonstone, I really did. It started well, telling the history of a cursed jewel, and setting up what I hoped would be a locked room mystery in the vein of Agatha Christie, but it was not to be. The tale starts with a butler named Betteredge, who uses Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (it rhymes!) as a bible. His retelling of the events surrounding the disappearance of the diamond from a birthday party at an English country estate are rather amusing, especially his funny opinions on women. Once we get to the day that the diamond is found missing, it seems we are headed in the direction of the not-yet-created Sherlock Holmes as they eventually bring in a celebrated police detective. Like Holmes, Sergeant Cuff is odd and unfathomable to those around him. He doesn’t get along with his fellow policeman and poo-poos their efforts because he is smarter, he is Sherlock—I mean Cuff. But Cuff is way too obsessed with growing roses and isn’t nearly as forthright as Sherlock, so he ultimately doesn’t solve the mystery, at least at that time.

This is what’s both frustrating and fascinating about the story: The mystery always seems on the edge of being solved, but then we take another turn, and throughout it all we only really have the narratives of persons who are bystanders to the main action. There’s shivering sands, women in obsessive love, mind-boggling religious maniacs, and elaborate painted doors, all of which should form an almost gothic atmosphere, but I didn’t think the atmosphere ever really appeared. It was hard to connect with the main romantic couple as we only get a third person view of them, at least until the last fourth of the tale. One of the big reveals actually got a, “huh?” from me. I am not sure if it would have been a surprise at the time Collins’ wrote it, but I had forgotten that back in the 1800s both sexes often wore nightgowns to bed. Collins did focus on the idea that the nightgown must be a female’s so it must have been intentional misdirection, but I just felt a moment of culture shock as the tale carried on.

One great thing about the story is that Collins is not afraid to write himself into a corner. I knew he was clever after reading The Woman in White, but The Moonstone is pretty much the creation of a new genre, the detective story. Only this one didn’t have as much of an actual detective to follow as I would like. It’s a curious mystery, and I can see why mystery buffs would like it. For me, the story was just too long and severely lacked action considering its length. The narrative of Miss Clack was really funny at first, but I got tired of her really quickly, as I imagine most people who encounter her would, and I longed to go back to Betteredge.

Throughout the story, the Indians, bent on getting their diamond back, popped up from time to time, and as the narratives wore on and on, I found myself rooting for them to get the Moonstone and take it back to India where it belonged. Because then the story would be over and we would know who the thieves were…er, the re-thieves. It was a bit difficult to care about this English family keeping such a diamond when the book opens by telling us how their relative outright stole it from a palace or temple in India. Stole it even knowing the jewel was cursed. I was glad the rock got to its rightful owners in the end, and that the Miss Rachel who inherited it didn’t care two bits, for she got her love at last. Happiness for all, or at least most everyone, is a good ending for any story, but I prefer Collins’ The Woman in White as being more of a spooky story, especially as it has the benefit of a clear villain. I do want to check out the BBC miniseries on The Moonstone, though, as I can imagine the difficulty of adapting this to the screen and want to see what they came up with.

In conclusion, The Moonstone was overly long and really about rightful owners stealing the diamond back–a recycled theft if you will. At times it held my attention well, but mostly it was infuriating, and I don’t think there is any way I could have guessed how the bits of the mystery would play out. Still, the story was the first or one of the first of its kind, and that in itself makes it worth reading.