Jamaica Inn is a classically Gothic novel with a very strong sense of setting. There are some strong and enormously conflicted characters such as the violent alcoholic Joss Merlyn and his much abused wife Aunt Patience. The heroine falls for Byronic bad boy Jem Merlyn which leads to an interesting ending.
The characters
An unusual feature of the book is that there are two principal antagonists: Joss Merlyn and Francis Davey. These two are almost opposites of one another: black and white. Our introduction to Joss is: “He was a great husk of a man, nearly seven feet high, with a creased black brow and a skin the colour of a gypsy. His thick dark hair fell over his eyes in a fringe and hung about his ears. He looked as if he had the strength of a horse, with immense powerful shoulders, long arms that reached almost to his knees, and large fists like hams. His frame was so big that in a sense his head was dwarfed, and sunk between his shoulders, giving that half-stooping impression of a giant gorilla, with his black eyebrows and his mat of hair.” (Ch 20): in other words, Joss is a classic neanderthal, huge and ape-like, and his principal colour is black. Francis Davey is, on the other hand, an albino: “Mary looked up at the pale eyes in the colourless face, the halo of cropped white hair” (Ch 7). Joss is, of course, from the lower classes and Francis Davey is a Vicar, a professional man, who is from the educated classes (although he serves the poor). It is as if Du Maurier has created twin villains, each one the mirror image of the other. The twins even have their own sections of the book: Joss is the villain at the start (whilst Davey is seen by the narrator as a good guy) and then Davey takes over as the villain after Joss is killed.Joss Merlyn
Joss is, in the words of Sarah Dubant, "near to caricature ... His brooding figure, craggy looks and wild temper are in their own way all attributes of the romantic hero inverted into violence and self-loathing – a Mr Rochester without a Jane to redeem him" (though I felt him closer to Heathcliff). At first Joss seems to be a stereotype but Du Maurier works to make him three-dimensional. One of our U3A members said that she found one of the most sinister moments in the book to be when Joss cuts and butters a slice of bread for Mary: “He proceeded to cut carefully a thin slice from the loaf, which he quartered in pieces and buttered for her, the whole business very delicately done and in striking contrast to his manner in serving himself – so much so that to Mary there was something almost horrifying in the change from rough brutality to fastidious care. It was as though there was some latent power in his fingers which turned them from bludgeons into deft and cunning servants. Had he cut her a chunk of bread and hurled it at her she would not have minded so much" (Ch 2).
This dual personality is typical of Joss. For example, he is sexually threatening (there is always a subtext of sex with Joss) but he reassures Mary: "I’ve better things to do than to play cat’s-cradle with me own niece." (C 2) On the other hand, when he is under the influence of alcohol, he threatens her with violence: “I’m master in this house, and I’ll have you know it. You’ll do as you’re told, and help in the house and serve my customers, and I’ll not lay a finger on you. But, by God, if you open your mouth and squark, I’ll break you until you eat out of my hand the same as your aunt yonder.”
Mary recognises that there are two versions of Joss:
"There was still something fine about his great dark eyes, in spite of the lines and pouches and the red blood-flecks." (C 2)
"Though there should be a world of difference between the smile of a man and the bared fangs of a wolf, with Joss Merlyn they were one and the same." (C 2)
The ‘two sides of the coin’ is seen in his attitude to alcohol: on the one hand he sees it will be his downfall but on the other it makes him feel powerful: “There’s been one weakness in my life, and I’ll tell you what it is ... ‘It’s drink. It’s a curse, and I know it. I can’t stop myself. One day it’ll be the end of me, and a good job too. There’s days go by and I don’t touch more than a drop, same as I’ve done tonight. And then I’ll feel the thirst come on me and I’ll soak. Soak for hours. It’s power, and glory, and women, and the Kingdom of God, all rolled into one. I feel a king then, Mary. I feel I’ve got the strings of the world between my two fingers.”
Joss is given a back story which he tells Mary (he is given to somewhat self-pitying monologues when drunk; he is a typical maudlin drunk). His father was hanged for killing another man in a fight, his grandfather was transported for thieving, his elder brother was found drowned in a Marsh.
He also blabs secrets when he is drunk. It is during another binge that he tells Mary that he is the leader of a gang of wreckers and has killed multiple times, including women and children, rather than saving them from drowning.
It is suggested in the Introduction to the Virago edition that Joss is based in part on the author’s father, an actor who was a sometimes violent alcoholic, and in part upon her husband who suffered ‘shell-shock’ (PTSD) cause by his times in the trenches during the First World War and had nightmarish dreams.
"There was still something fine about his great dark eyes, in spite of the lines and pouches and the red blood-flecks." (C 2)
"Though there should be a world of difference between the smile of a man and the bared fangs of a wolf, with Joss Merlyn they were one and the same." (C 2)
Aunt Patience
Aunt Patience is, in many ways, a foreshadowing of Mary. She made her choice to marry a bad boy (Joss, the landlord of the Inn) and has now become a weak and terrified woman, shaped by mental cruelty and physical abuse. There is conflict within her between the would-be loving wife and the would-be conscientious aunt: she tries to warn Mary and even, in tiny ways, to help her, but at the end she is loyal to Joss.
Mary’s mother tells Mary: “You’ll like your Aunt Patience; she was always a great one for games and laughing, with a heart as large as life." But Mary’s first encounter is described thus: "Her eyes were large and staring, as though they asked perpetually a question, and she had a little nervous trick of working her mouth, now pursing the lips and now relaxing them." (C 2)
Mary. the protagonist
Mary, the narrator/ protagonist, is a courageously stubborn goody-goody who can be surprisingly naive. For much of the plot she is at the mercy of circumstances.
Her essential conflict is between the safety of her ordered upbringing and the danger of passionate love, with all its opportunities and threats. This conflict drives much of the story. It is, of course, foreshadowed by the choices that her uncle and aunt made, particularly her aunt, so the disadvantages of choosing bad boy Jem are obvious.
Jem Merlyn, romantic hero, Byronic figure, the bad boy that the good girls love
Jem is the romantic hero with a Byronic twist, the bad boy that the good girl falls in love with. "He lacked tenderness; he was rude; and he had more than a streak of cruelty in him; he was a thief and a liar. He stood for everything she feared and hated and despised; but she knew she could love him." (C 9)
The key scene is when Jem takes Mary to Launceston for a picnic and to sell a stolen horse at the market. The picnic involves a hugely symbolic moment: "You can eat the apple, if you’re feeling religious. There’s an apple comes in the Bible, I know that much." (C 9) This is the moment when Mary as Eve (I suspect that the choice of the name ‘Mary’ reflects the idea that in Christianity Mary is a sort of second Eve) falls ... and the tempter is the man, Jem as Adam. With Jem, Mary is portrayed as fundamentally morally flawed: she takes pleasure in Jem’s cleverness as he sells the stolen horse back to its original owners (a horse that she is later offered as a gift for herself!)
Mary is also weak. She knows the parallels between the way Aunt Patience married Joss for love (and it destroyed her) and how marrying Jem is likely to destroy Mary: “He was too like his brother. His eyes, and his mouth, and his smile. That was the danger of it. She could see her uncle in his walk, in the turn of his head; and she knew why Aunt Patience had made a fool of herself ten years ago. It would be easy enough to fall in love with Jem Merlyn." She even tells Jem that she likes his hands because “they are like your brother’s”; but the hands of Joss are the hands she has seen delicately cutting bread and the hands that Mary has imagined killed innocent women and children in the service of the wreckers. Nevertheless (and this is reprise of the ‘two sides of the coin’ theme, she can’t resist Jem: “whether it was his hands or his skin or his smile she did not know, but something inside her responded to him, and the very thought of him was an irritant and a stimulant at the same time." (C 9).
Francis Davey, the albino priest
I found the portrait of Francis Davey unconvincing. He was too obviously the sinister hidden force behind the smugglers, too obviously the reflected image of Joss. Perhaps he was more convincing when the book was written when Church of England vicars were pillars of the establishment and a wicked one must have been shocking but there is a long tradition in Gothic literature of wicked priests (from The Monk by Matthew Lewis, one of the founding stories of the genre) and Davey’s albinism was also a huge clue (a significant 'deficiency' in melanin has been used by many authors as a shorthand for moral deficiency, for example in The Da Vinci Code, (though not nearly so many as use an 'excess' of melanin). And while Joss is the villain who gets drunk and blabs all the secrets, Davey is the villain whose ultimate wickedness and ruthlessness (after he has filled in cold blood both Joss and Aunt Patience) is no match for the innocence and purity of the heroine so that, instead of slaughtering her on the spot as he should have done, he encumbers himself with her on his flight.
The obviousness (to the reader) of Davey’s wickedness makes Mary look gullible to the point of stupidity. “She could trust him; that at least was certain." (C 7)
Dialogue
There are times when the dialogue is stilted and unreal. Here is the protagonist at the peak of her distress: "Why I have been living there does not matter now, and the story would take too long in the telling. I fear and detest him more than you or anyone in the country, and with reason. I came here to warn Mr Bassat that the landlord intended to leave the inn tonight, and so escape justice. I have definite proof of his guilt, which I did not believe Mr Bassat to possess. You tell me that he has already gone, and perhaps even now is at Jamaica Inn. Therefore I have wasted my time in coming here." (C 14) She is far too self-composed; she speaks in well-formed sentences! The 'therefore' at the end is ludicrous.The Genre
"Jamaica Inn opens with echoes of Dracula: a carriage rattling through a desolate landscape and wild weather to a place where even the locals won't go ... We are in the territory of the gothic novel ... there’s no doubt that many of the ingredients of Jamaica Inn – wild men, wild land, dark secrets and violent ends – are close to gothic cliché".” (Sarah Dunant, in the Introduction to the Virago Modern Classics edition)
Is it a 'feminist' novel? Mary is a female hero and she has significant strengths but she is also (essentially so for a hero) muddled and misguided (although heroes must necessarily be, at least in the first 90% of a book, so that the story can progress). But, in the end, she needs to be rescued by men. Furthermore, there are a number of occasions on which Du Maurier reflects on the different character of womanhood and some of it can be linked to the time when Du Maurier was alive; at this time I imagine her thoughts were quite challenging, especially the classically romantic notion that the woman should be helplessly attracted to the bad boy. Nowadays, however, a number of her remarks might be seen as pandering to stereotypical notions of femininity of the day:
"Why were women such fools, so short-sighted and unwise? wondered Mary; and she scrubbed the last stone flag of the hall with venom, as though by her very action she might cleanse the world and blot out the indiscretions of her kind." (C 5)
"Senseless or conscious, women are pretty much the same when you come down to it" (C 5)
"Here she was, with tears ready to the surface and an aching head, being hurried from the scene of action with smooth words and gestures, a nuisance and a factor of delay, like every woman and every child after a tragedy." (C 16)
"Why were women such fools, so short-sighted and unwise? wondered Mary; and she scrubbed the last stone flag of the hall with venom, as though by her very action she might cleanse the world and blot out the indiscretions of her kind." (C 5)
"Senseless or conscious, women are pretty much the same when you come down to it" (C 5)
"Here she was, with tears ready to the surface and an aching head, being hurried from the scene of action with smooth words and gestures, a nuisance and a factor of delay, like every woman and every child after a tragedy." (C 16)
The Plot
Although the book opens with Mary in a coach, travelling across Bodmin Moor to Jamaica Inn, which provides a compelling hook, considered in the chronology of the novel the beginning is the death of Mary’s mother. Until then Mary has been a farm girl, living a domesticated life, governed by the turning of the seasons and the everyday patterns of birth, growth, reproduction and death. This rural idyll, this Garden of Eden existence, comes to an end when she travels to Jamaica Inn. Bodmin Moor is the otherworld, the land of heroes and adventures. This is typical of the ‘Voyage and Return’ type of novel as described by Christopher Booker in ‘Seven Basic Plots’. But in the classic version of this story, Mary should return to her ‘real’ world, changed, having learnt important truths. The genius of the ending of Jamaica Inn is that Mary chooses to stay in the otherworld, despite the prophetic foreshadowing of the life of Aunt Patience married to Joss Merlyn.
The pacing
The pacing of the plot conforms to the four part model with one of the major characters, the romantic interest, introduced almost exactly at the 25% mark, and the sinister albino priest half way through the second quarter. Following the protagonist's near-seduction at 50%, the albino turns up perfectly on time. The third quarter contains the peak of the villainy and ends with the protagonist taking decisive action; the final quarter deals with the consequences of this move.
Looking out of the window
In Seven Types of Ambiguity (p 19), William Empson states: “A dramatic situation is always heightened by breaking off the dialogue to look out of the window." This is what Shakespeare does in Macbeth when he puts the only comic scene (the porter at Hell’s gate) immediately after the murder of Duncan. And when Mary discovers the murdered bodies of Joss and Aunt Patience, du Maurier repeatedly slows down the action with description:
"There was no other sound except the husky wheezing of the clock in the hall and the sudden whirring note preparatory to the strike. It rang the hour – three o’clock – and then ticked on, choking and gasping like a dying man who cannot catch his breath." (C 4)
"Her eyes dwelt upon little immaterial things: the fragments of glass from the smashed clock-face that were bloodstained too, and the discoloured patch of wall where the clock had stood." (C 15)
"A spider settled on her uncle’s hand; and it seemed strange to her that the hand stayed motionless and did not seek to rid itself of the spider. Her uncle would have shaken it free. Then it crawled from his hand and ran up his arm, working its way beyond the shoulder. When it came to the wound it hesitated, and then made a circuit, returning to it again in curiosity, and there was a lack of fear in its rapidity that was somehow horrible and desecrating to death. The spider knew that the landlord could not harm him. Mary knew this too, but she had not lost her fear, like the spider." (C 15)
"There was no other sound except the husky wheezing of the clock in the hall and the sudden whirring note preparatory to the strike. It rang the hour – three o’clock – and then ticked on, choking and gasping like a dying man who cannot catch his breath." (C 4)
"Her eyes dwelt upon little immaterial things: the fragments of glass from the smashed clock-face that were bloodstained too, and the discoloured patch of wall where the clock had stood." (C 15)
"A spider settled on her uncle’s hand; and it seemed strange to her that the hand stayed motionless and did not seek to rid itself of the spider. Her uncle would have shaken it free. Then it crawled from his hand and ran up his arm, working its way beyond the shoulder. When it came to the wound it hesitated, and then made a circuit, returning to it again in curiosity, and there was a lack of fear in its rapidity that was somehow horrible and desecrating to death. The spider knew that the landlord could not harm him. Mary knew this too, but she had not lost her fear, like the spider." (C 15)
The Hero’s Journey
In Chapter One, as Mary is being carried to Jamaica Inn, both the coachman and a woman at a coaching inn in Bodmin (the threshold of civilization) try to dissuade her; this is a classic trope. That Mary doesn’t, in the end, return to the safe world is a flouting of the Voyage and Return convention.
The setting
My U3A group agreed that Du Maurier excels at describing the setting of the book. One of them pointed out that the story is anchored in ‘geographical reality’; all of the locations is authentic. This gives what might otherwise be a far-fetched Gothic story verisimilitude.
But the physical landscape is considerably more than just a backdrop. It is a metaphor for the psychological landscape. Having come from a placid farming life, where animals are domesticated and even time is organised into a seasonal calendar, Mary (a passive onlooker of the world) enters a realm of bleak, wild and desolate scenery and wild weather to match the feral behaviour of the law-breaking, violent and dangerous men. This is a hugely romantic, Byronic notion: that wilderness and danger can be attractive and Mary falls in love with the land and the people.
In many ways the book is one long pathetic fallacy. It starts by describing the weather: “a cold grey day ... a backing wind ... a granite sky ...a mizzling rain [though very soon “driving rain”] ... clammy cold” (Ch 1) This is swiftly contrasted with “the shining waters of Helford” at the start of Mary’s journey, “the green hills and the sloping valleys, the white cluster of cottages at the water’s edge. It was a gentle rain that fell at Helford, a rain that pattered in the many trees and lost itself in the lush grass" and “sank into the grateful soil which gave back flowers in payment.” This is, in the very next paragraph, contrasted with the moor “a country of stones, black heather, and stunted broom”. [Blackness is recurring a motif.] But farming life, even in idyllic Helford, is hard and Mary’s mother’s dying words are to instruct her to go to Aunt Patience because “A girl can’t live alone, Mary, without she goes queer in the head, or comes to evil. It’s either one or the other." (C 1)
Even when the landscape can seem innocent and even pretty, the ground can be treacherous. The brother of Joss and Jem was drowned in a bog and the metaphor of the marsh corresponds to the character of the Vicar: he takes Mary in and when she is helpless he threatens to kill her.
The landscape affects its inhabitants. Mary’s first view of Bodmin Moor makes her reflect “No human being could live in this wasted country, thought Mary, and remain like other people; the very children would be born twisted" (C 1) The extended pathetic fallacy of the book means that the character of Joss is a reflection of his setting. And the landscape and the people swap places, at least in Mary’s imagination. In the final, desperate chase with Frances Davey, Mary “could see the stones turning to men beside her. Their faces were inhuman, older than time, carved and rugged like the granite; and they spoke in a tongue she could not understand, and their hands and feet were curved like the claws of a bird." (C 17)
Other setting-oriented quotes:
"Here on the summit the wind fretted and wept, whispering of fear, sobbing old memories of bloodshed and despair" (C 17)
"The sun had already disappeared behind the furthest hill ... before many hours had passed the grey malevolence of a November dusk would have fallen." (C 4)
"Colour came in patches; sometimes the hills were purple, ink-stained, and mottled, and then a feeble ray of sun would come from a wisp of cloud, and one hill would be golden-brown while his neighbour still languished in the dark." (C 3)
"The mist parted and dissolved. It rose from the ground in a twisting column of smoke" (C 17)
"The texture of the ground was crisp, and the short grass crunched beneath the foot like shingle." (C 18)
"Here on the summit the wind fretted and wept, whispering of fear, sobbing old memories of bloodshed and despair" (C 17)
"The sun had already disappeared behind the furthest hill ... before many hours had passed the grey malevolence of a November dusk would have fallen." (C 4)
"Colour came in patches; sometimes the hills were purple, ink-stained, and mottled, and then a feeble ray of sun would come from a wisp of cloud, and one hill would be golden-brown while his neighbour still languished in the dark." (C 3)
"The mist parted and dissolved. It rose from the ground in a twisting column of smoke" (C 17)
"The texture of the ground was crisp, and the short grass crunched beneath the foot like shingle." (C 18)
Other Selected Quotes
"Never before had she known there was malevolence in solitude." (C 1)
"She spoke much as a child does who tells herself a story and has a talent for invention." (C 2)
"There are nights when every cottage on the moors is dark and silent, and the only lights for miles are the blazing windows of Jamaica Inn." (C 2)
"betraying by the very secrecy of their movements their desire to remain unseen." (C 4)
"You’ve got a clever little monkey face, and a ferreting monkey mind, and you’re not easily scared. But I tell you this, Mary Yellan; I’ll break that mind of yours if you let it go astray, and I’ll break your body too." (C 4)
"I heard another man say that once, and five minutes later he was treading the air. On the end of a rope it was, my friend, and his big toe missed the floor by half an inch. I asked him if he liked to be so near the ground, but he didn’t answer. The rope forced the tongue out of his mouth, and he bit it clean in half. They said afterwards he had taken seven and three-quarter minutes to die." (C 4)
""He preached the same sermon always on Christmas Day, and his parishioners could have prompted him anywhere." (C 7)
"Men and women were like the animals on the farm at Helford, she supposed; there was a common law of attraction for all living things, some similarity of skin or touch, and they would go to one another. This was no choice made with the mind. Animals did not reason, neither did the birds in the air." (C 9)
"If loving a man meant this pain and anguish and sickness, she wanted none of it. It did away with sanity and composure, and made havoc of courage." (C 9)
"I don’t want to love like a woman or feel like a woman, Mr Davey; there’s pain that way, and suffering, and misery that can last a lifetime." (C 10)
"‘You are very young, Mary Yellan,’ he said softly; ‘you are nothing but a chicken with the broken shell still around you.'" (C 10)
"Like all men who have been badly scared, he threw the blame of his own panic upon the shoulders of another, and now blustered to reassure himself." (C 12)
"She dreaded panic, above all things; the scream that forced itself to the lips, the wild stumble of groping feet and hands that beat the air for passage." (C 15)
"Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it." (C 16)
"‘You should have heard me preach,’ he said softly. ‘They sat there in the stalls like sheep, even as I drew them, with their mouths agape and their souls asleep.'" (C 17)
Du Maurier's grandad wrote Trilby, a phenomenally successful book of the time, after which the hat was named, which introduced the character of Svengali.
"Never before had she known there was malevolence in solitude." (C 1)
"She spoke much as a child does who tells herself a story and has a talent for invention." (C 2)
"There are nights when every cottage on the moors is dark and silent, and the only lights for miles are the blazing windows of Jamaica Inn." (C 2)
"betraying by the very secrecy of their movements their desire to remain unseen." (C 4)
"You’ve got a clever little monkey face, and a ferreting monkey mind, and you’re not easily scared. But I tell you this, Mary Yellan; I’ll break that mind of yours if you let it go astray, and I’ll break your body too." (C 4)
"I heard another man say that once, and five minutes later he was treading the air. On the end of a rope it was, my friend, and his big toe missed the floor by half an inch. I asked him if he liked to be so near the ground, but he didn’t answer. The rope forced the tongue out of his mouth, and he bit it clean in half. They said afterwards he had taken seven and three-quarter minutes to die." (C 4)
""He preached the same sermon always on Christmas Day, and his parishioners could have prompted him anywhere." (C 7)
"Men and women were like the animals on the farm at Helford, she supposed; there was a common law of attraction for all living things, some similarity of skin or touch, and they would go to one another. This was no choice made with the mind. Animals did not reason, neither did the birds in the air." (C 9)
"If loving a man meant this pain and anguish and sickness, she wanted none of it. It did away with sanity and composure, and made havoc of courage." (C 9)
"I don’t want to love like a woman or feel like a woman, Mr Davey; there’s pain that way, and suffering, and misery that can last a lifetime." (C 10)
"‘You are very young, Mary Yellan,’ he said softly; ‘you are nothing but a chicken with the broken shell still around you.'" (C 10)
"Like all men who have been badly scared, he threw the blame of his own panic upon the shoulders of another, and now blustered to reassure himself." (C 12)
"She dreaded panic, above all things; the scream that forced itself to the lips, the wild stumble of groping feet and hands that beat the air for passage." (C 15)
"Jem was safe from her, and he would ride away with a song on his lips and a laugh at her expense, forgetful of her, and of his brother, and of God; while she dragged through the years, sullen and bitter, the stain of silence marking her, coming in the end to ridicule as a soured spinster who had been kissed once in her life and could not forget it." (C 16)
"‘You should have heard me preach,’ he said softly. ‘They sat there in the stalls like sheep, even as I drew them, with their mouths agape and their souls asleep.'" (C 17)
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