The Scapegoat (Virago Modern Classics)

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The basic plot is that a Frenchman in his early 40s runs into another man, an Englishman in his early 40s, who is a body double of him (doppelgänger). By clever means and not to his liking the Englishman finds himself forced to impersonate the Frenchman and inherits the Frenchman’s life and family…a brother and a sister and a mother and they’re all messed up to varying degrees, and a wife, and she is unhappy because her husband has been essentially ignoring her and only married her for a potential buttload of money if she produces a son for him (complicated legal arrangement regarding her dowry). Oh and that’s just the beginning…he inherits a precocious 11-year old daughter, a sister-in-law (who he is having an affair with), a valet, a mistress, a glass factory that is floundering… And given this is a du Maurier novel there have been sinister things happening well into the past…that this Englishman now fake Frenchman is going to have to deal with. Perhaps vaguely reminiscent of ‘Heaven Can Wait’, a film from the late 1970s starring Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (and a gaggle of other good actors)…although that was a comedy/love story when push comes to shove. Not a whole lot to laugh at in this novel. In fact nothing really.

Daphne Du Maurier created this story for a reason. It is clear from her other novels that she always embedded autobiographical elements into the plots. In this case, or rather, my interpretation of it, is that she created a what if scenario of her own heritage. For instance, what if her ancestors did not land up in England but r My sense of power was unbounded... I felt my bluff to be superb, and it must have worked... My self-confidence mounting every moment... I recalled my success the night before... little scraps of family history fell on my ear... what I gleaned would have to be sorted and sifted at leisure." What would you do if you came face to face with yourself? That's what happens to John, an Englishman on holiday in France, when he meets his exact double - a Frenchman called Jean de Gue. John agrees to go for a drink with Jean but falls into a drunken stupor and wakes up in a hotel room to find that Jean has disappeared, taking John's clothes and identity documents with him! I drove to the network of roads at the top of the town, turned left, and took the road to Bellême and Mortagne' (p.368). Define as 'a person who is blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others, especially for reasons of expediency.'

More about The Scapegoat

Scapegoat has an intriguing history as a word. Originally, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, the High Priest confessed the sins of the people on the Day of Atonement over the head of a live goat which was then allowed to escape, taking the sins with it. From this religious tradition developed the meaning of a person, group or thing who takes the blame for the mistakes or crimes of others.

This is a disturbing tale, and it comes as no surprise to learn how emotionally drained and disturbed the author was on its completion. Events in Daphne du Maurier's own life were mirrored within the novel, and the author became increasingly jittery and confused as to which had actually happened first. When she wrote about the character Françoise needing a blood transfusion, in real life shortly afterwards, her daughter Tessa gave birth to a son who needed two blood transfusions. Her biographer Judith Cook says, of the odd coincidences and connections, I was like John as a kid - a reader; a dreamer; an underachiever. What was I worth to the world at large? This isn’t a book I recommend to all my friends but if you’ve enjoyed Rebecca or Jamaica Inn or just good old fashioned classic novels then this might well be a good choice for you. Feeling that the police will think him mad, feeling in truth somewhat mad, he allows himself to be taken to a rundown chateau in the country, where he is not suspected by anyone in the family. In this post WWII setting, the three generations live in genteel poverty amid bitterness and a failing glass factory.Immediately beside me was a gargoyle's head, ears flattened, slits for eyes, the jutting lips forming a spout for rain. The leaded guttering was choked with leaves, and when rain came the whole would turn to mud and pour from the gargoyle's mouth in a turbid stream... seeping down the walls, swirling in the runways, choking and gurgling above the gargoyle head, driving sideways like arrows to the windows, stinging the panes... there would be no other sound for hour after hour... but the falling rain, and the flood of leaves and rubble through the gargoyle's mouth."

One had no right to play about with people’s lives. One should not interfere with their emotions. A word, a look, a smile, a frown, did something to another human being, waking response or aversion, and a web was woven which had no beginning and no end, spreading outward and inward too, merging, entangling, so that the struggle of one depended upon the struggle of the other.”This classic gem is a piece of riveting. edge-of-your-seat suspense in the best tradition of the Queen of Cliffhangers. The film makes no mention of the earlier murder of Maurice Duval. The incident in which John deliberately burns his hand to avoid taking part in the shoot does not occur in the film, nor does his wife's fall from the bedroom window or her subsequent death. In the film, Spence surreptitiously enters the house during the shoot and manipulates Frances into taking an overdose of morphine. Standing arrives in time to save her. The premise is, of course, completely absurd. Is it really possible that any two unrelated strangers could look so much alike that not even a mistress, wife, or mother could spot the difference? Well, no. But the feeling here is not of absurdity, but rather whimsy. The story maintains a pose of realism even as it verges into the fantastic.

filled with an intense desire to get away from that dingy, shabby hotel and never set eyes on it again, and as my anger rose and self-disgust took possession of me..." I knew that everything I had said or done had implicated me further, driven me deeper, bound me more closely still to that man whose body was not my body, whose mind was not my mind, whose thoughts and actions were a world apart, and yet whose inner substance was part of my nature, part of my secret self."Even if I held their flagging interest for a brief half hour, I should know, when I had finished, that nothing I had said to them was of any value, that I had only given them images of history brightly coloured – wax-work models, puppet figures strutting through a charade. The real meaning of history would have escaped me, because I had never been close enough to people.