Halloween

Last time, we talked about several different ways to look at the supernatural features of Daphne Du Maurier’s short story, Don’t Look Now. In part to recover from the death of their young daughter, a British couple are vacationing in Venice where they encounter a mysterious pair of sisters who tell them their daughter is present and concerned that something bad will happen to them. Their son, at a boarding school in England, falls ill, and the boy’s mother, Laura, returns to care for him. The father/husband, John, believes he sees Laura returning to Venice at the same time he knows she is on a plane headed north. John tries to make sense of this and blames the sisters for influencing Laura to return. Eventually, he runs afoul of a maniacal killer. At the end, he dies, realizing—in his mind—that seeing Laura coming back to Venice was a vision of her in the future, returning for his funeral.

‘Kay.

One way to appreciate the story is to embrace the supernatural elements as true. Whether or not one believes in ghosts and visions, one can read the story with an acceptance of the idea that—in this story, at least—they are true. Perhaps this would be an appropriate strategy to adopt on a first reading.

Another way is to read with an eye as to how the author constructs the story and its “spooky” elements. Is it truly a tale of Gothic horror or is it actually something more ambiguous?

You knew which one I was going to pick—#2, please!

Do you have to believe in the supernatural in order to appreciate this story? No, best B, you don’t. In fact, it’s not necessary to believe in ghosts in order to be scared (so said a wise person commenting on Henry James’ The Turn of the Screw, another famous ghost story).

Boo!

A fair question concerns the author’s intent: is Ms. Du Maurier writing a story that treats the supernatural as real? Does she want to scare us? Maybe, but I think a careful reading reveals something more complex. Let’s dig in.

The first spooky thing that occurs in the story is when Laura tells her husband what one of the sisters has told her: “You see, she isn’t dead, she’s still with us. That’s why they kept staring at us, those two sisters. They could see Christine.”

She continues, recounting more of what the woman told her: “Don’t be unhappy any more. My sister has seen your little girl. She was sitting between you and your husband, laughing…Oh, John, don’t look like that. I swear I’m not making it up, this is what she told me, it’s all true.”

‘Kay. Interesting, but what is the context for these passages? John and Laura are having lunch and note the sisters. Immediately, they jokingly tell each other that the sisters are transvestites who have criminal designs. (remember this was written in 1970). The couple mocks the sisters and contextualizes them for the reader as unreliable and possibly bad. They are “trying to hypnotize” John. “They’re not old girls at all…They’re male twins in drag…They’re criminals doing the sights of Europe, changing sex at each stop…Jewel thieves or murderers?” But Laura presents a different interpretation: “’The things is,’ she said after a moment. ‘We’ve got them all wrong. They’re neither murderers nor thieves. They’re a couple of pathetic old schoolmistresses on holiday, who’ve saved up all their lives to visit Venice…They’re called Tilly and Tiny.” John is delighted that his wife, who has been so grief-stricken by their daughter’s death, seems light and having fun. In this vein, Laura resolves to follow one of the sisters into the bathroom to see if they switch into male clothing, and that is where the sister tells her that her blind psychic sister has seen dead Christine.  

So.

This shocking message to Laura occurs within a context where the sisters are ridiculed and generally presented as unreliable. This makes what the sister says highly ambiguous—should the reader accept this ghost-sighting as “real” or the ravings of an unreliable person? Laura, who mediates the reader’s experience, believes the story. Of course, Laura herself has been presented as unreliable. She is described as depressed, as not herself in the wake of Christine’s death. She says Christine is alive, when it’s clear she is dead. John, who has the authority of narrator, does not believe the story. He thinks the sisters are trying to trick Laura.   

The story is very ambiguous. It can easily be read as a story of an attempted con-job, as easily as it can be read as a ghost-story. If we the readers read a blurb or synopsis, it might describe a ghost story. But this is misleading. Of course, the beautiful and frightening irony is that something scary and awful really does happen.

More on this next time.

Till then.

#Don'tLookNow #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray