The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

Product Information

Off to join my group and read what others are saying! A book so much richer than many of the newer fiction books I often read. Just sayin! Horner, Avril, and Sue Zlosnik. Daphne Du Maurier: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination. New York: St. Martin's, 1998. Print.

The story takes place over one very intense week, in which everything changes. The details are wonderful—daily life, the house and food, and the characters of Jean’s family, all of whom have secrets. This is a book about getting what you want and coping with it, about identity, about belonging. John is a colorless man forced to take on color and animation—a man forced into life. The Scapegoat is a 1957 novel by Daphne du Maurier. In a bar in France, a lonely English academic on holiday meets his double, a French aristocrat who gets him drunk, swaps identities and disappears, leaving the Englishman to sort out the Frenchman's extensive financial and family problems. As with many of Daphne du Maurier's novels, there are so many elements of mystery that it is sometimes rather like reading a detective story. She often drops hints to the reader; clues carefully planted so that the reader is able to puzzle out the various roles and relationships before the viewpoint character John does. We suspect Renée's behaviour, for example, before John seems to have an inkling of why she seems so overly flirtatious and petulant. And we know who the woman Béla in the neighbouring village of Villars must be.

Need Help?

Real-life dogs are another device. There are heart-stopping moments where the readers wonder whether the dog will recognise the supplanted character of John, in the place of César's master, the Count. In "Rebecca", the dog is suspicious for a long time of the new wife. In both cases the apprehension devolves on the viewpoint character. When César, the dog, finally accepts John, the author says, One thing I noticed and found surprising is that the book is less gothic than the other novels of hers that I've read ( Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel). There are fewer of the traditional gothic tropes on display (the house as a main character, ghosts or dead who preoccupy the minds of the characters, letters received from people long dead, animals who meet bad ends, dark eroticism). I'd say this book is more of a mystery, if I had to classify it. By chance, John and Jean--one English, the other French--meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared. So the Englishman steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing. At one point halfway through the novel, John feels that he is trapped in a corner. He feels impotent, and that whatever he does will not work; he is sinking further and further into a morass of his own making. The author describes the scene outside the house,

Yet another Daphne du Maurier book that I struggled... to put down! French language academic John is astonished to bump into his exact doppelganger at a provincial French train station. Two men....one English, "John"...( the narrator), the other French, "Jean de Gue", meet by chance one evening. It's like looking into a mirror: they look almost identical- other than the color of their eyes. She imagined herself suddenly transported into their midst, listening to their conversation, perhaps even becoming one of them," The secret of life is to recognize the fact early on, and become reconciled. Then it no longer matters".I was like John as a kid - a reader; a dreamer; an underachiever. What was I worth to the world at large? I walked on through darkness, undergrowth and moss, and now I had no present and no past, the self who stumbled had no heart and mind..." There is a film version of The Scapegoat directed by Robert Hamer and Gore Vidal created adaptation (1959). If you have ever read any of Daphne du Maurier’s novels, you will immediately recognize what I mean when I say the narrator here is another of her identity-free individuals. Like the new Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca or the tour guide brother in Flight of the Falcon, this narrator is a person without any sense of importance, sense of self or sense of his own value. He is so unloved and disconnected that he can assume another man’s life and involve himself immediately in the other man’s world to the point of burying himself inside the other man’s skin.

All of the action takes place within one week, yet so much is learned of the past that the book seems to span a generation.

My Book Notes

Probably some time around half way through the book I realised that I’d put aside all my concerns regarding the realism of the story in favour of just enjoying the tale. From this point on it was easy – and hugely enjoyable. As I approached the end I started to worry whether du Maurier would land a bail out happy ending on her readers, even though I couldn’t really work out what this would look like. I needn’t have worried, the story was tied up brilliantly and in a way I couldn’t have foreseen.

It is my story, and it is Moper's [Tommy her husband] also. We are both doubles. So it is with everyone. Every one of us has his, or her, dark side. Which is to overcome the other? This is the purpose of the book. And it ends, as you know, with the problem unsolved, except that the suggestion there, when I finished it, was that the two sides of that man's nature had to fuse together to give birth to a third..."And if you could step into one of these men's lives - by trading places --as a stranger/ actor taking over the role.... how do you think you might make a difference? And how might you do harm? In THIS story...we get the opportunity to watch how the entire scenario - this crazy game - so to speak - affects each person.