I’ve loved Daphne du Maurier ever since I read and reviewed her most famous novel, Rebecca, during the first year of this blog. Since then, I’ve read a few of her other works, including Jamaica Inn and the short story “The Birds.” But none of her other works have had as powerful an impact as I felt while reading Rebecca. Nothing, that is, until I saw the 2017 film adaptation of My Cousin Rachel starring Rachel Weisz and Sam Claflin. Ever since seeing it in theaters, I’ve been meaning to go back and read du Maurier’s novel of the same name. I finally had the opportunity, thanks to starting a new book club focused on books that have been famously adapted. And now having read it, I can say that My Cousin Rachel is joining Rebecca as one of my favorite Gothic novels of the twentieth century.
At the beginning of My Cousin Rachel, Philip Ashley is a young orphan being raised by his older cousin Ambrose at their large country estate in Cornwall. Somewhat shy and mistrustful of the other sex, Ambrose has turned the estate into a sort of world without women, exclusively employing male servants and only occasionally socializing with the families of their neighbors. Philip is surprised, then, to receive a letter announcing that Ambrose has married their distant cousin Rachel while wintering in Italy for his health. After a while, however, the tone of Ambrose’s letters begins to change until finally an urgent message hinting at his impending death and Rachel’s possible hand in it spurs Philip to action. He races to Italy, only to discover that Ambrose had died weeks earlier after a sudden illness and Rachel was nowhere to be found. Philip returns to Cornwall convinced of Rachel’s guilt, but when she comes to visit, she is nothing like he imagined. Rachel is kind, thoughtful, and deeply interested in the estate, easily falling into the role of mistress of the house as she works on Ambrose’s beloved gardens, pays social calls to the neighboring families, and builds relationships with the estate’s tenants. She is widely admired for her tact, charm, and knowledge of herbs—which she displays by prescribing teas and other remedies for all sorts of ailments. Philip falls head over heels for Rachel and begins to shower her with money and jewelry from the estate. Heedless of warnings about her rumored extravagance and fickle loyalty, Philip is determined to rectify the financial injustice done to Rachel as a widow by turning ownership of the estate over to her as soon as he turns twenty-five and fully inherits it himself. But once he does so, Philip is struck by doubts and suspicions of his own. Was Ambrose really addled by illness when he wrote that letter or did Rachel poison him?
My Cousin Rachel plays frequently with the common Gothic character trope of mirrors or doubles. Closely related to the concept of doppelgängers, Gothic doubles may or may not bear a close physical resemblance to each other, but their lives always parallel each other in some way and their fates may be deeply intertwined. Nearly identical apart from the differences of age, Ambrose and Philip both fall in love with the same woman and nearly come to the same end. Their doubled relationship is underscored by this line early in the novel in which Philip reflects on his similarities to the now-deceased Ambrose: “I wondered … whether his spirit left his body and came home here to mine, taking possession, so that he lived again in me, repeating his own mistakes, caught the disease once more and perished twice.” Rachel, too, has a parallel character in the text, although on the outside they are far less similar. Philip often connects Rachel in his mind with a young beggar woman he encountered when first arriving in Italy. The comparison is more apt than Philip consciously realizes. Though Rachel is not out on the streets with young mouths to feed begging travelers for a few coins, she is still a woman without means of her own who must rely on the generosity of men with financial power over her. Looking at the beggar woman as a mirror to Rachel reveals a truth about Rachel’s situation that Philip is too naïve to grapple with.
The most notable aspect of this novel is its ambiguous ending. The book never definitively answers the question of whether Rachel is guilty of murder or not. This doubt is exacerbated by the fact that Philip is a deeply unreliable narrator. His emotions and his naïveté heavily influence his perceptions. Early on, when Philip has only heard of Rachel through letters and is jealous of how much of Ambrose’s attention she absorbs, he is quick to think the worst of her and to interpret every little thing as evidence of her guilt. Once he falls in love with her, Philip willfully ignores any evidence of concerning behavior and makes up excuses for all of Rachel’s actions. Then he flips again after Rachel’s rejection shatters his fantasy of their life together. The reader is brought along on this rollercoaster narration but will clearly pick up on a sense of self-delusion. Ambrose and Philip are also heavily swayed by anti-Italian prejudice in their perceptions of Rachel’s friend Rainaldi and to some extent Rachel herself. Ultimately, each reader must come to their own conclusion about Rachel’s guilt or innocence.
If you’ve already read some of du Maurier’s better-known works, I definitely recommend checking out My Cousin Rachel next! It’s a thought-provoking, accessible text that is readily available in a variety of formats. I recommend the edition published by Little, Brown, which comes with an excellent foreword by Sally Beauman and can be purchased as an ebook or audiobook here. You can also buy a print copy of My Cousin Rachel from this Bookshop.org affiliate link and support The Gothic Library in the process. If you’ve read it, let me know whether you think Rachel is innocent or guilty in the comments!