Its basis in realism misleads the trusting reader who finds the familiar relationships, people, places, trajectories of time and fixities of space insidiously dislodged, leaving them disorientated and unsettled.
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Its key feature is that it destabilises the ordinary, the unquestioned, the securities of familiar behaviour, context and action while simultaneously disturbing our inner narratives used to overcome adversity, such as romance, order and strength. I have found in no other writer’s work the same tough-minded anatomy of family life combined with so eerie a patina of domestic strangeness.” 3ģDu Maurier’s Gothic horror is fundamental and springs from the ostensibly everyday which it undermines at the same time. Seeing her as a “haunted heiress”, Nina Auerbach alerts readers to Du Maurier’s mix of the realistic and the disturbing with a particular focus on the insecurities and dangers of couples and family life: “Her realism was, and is, compelling to me because it is inseparable from her alienated magic. Yet, commenting on Du Maurier’s fidelity to history and “normal” life, Light sees her work always returning order, like a safe return journey: “Du Maurier’s writing may take a modern psychological view of human life as adrift on a sea of memories, but she always leaves the reader on terra firma.” 2 Rather, I find her work leaves readers with a lingering sense of unease, in which terra firma is as untrustworthy a construct as domestic harmony. 3 Nina Auerbach, Daphne Du Maurier: Haunted Heiress, Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000, 13.ĢAlison Light’s work on Du Maurier brought her into view as more than a popular novelist, instead engaged with contemporary problems, historical moments and class.2 Alison Light, Forever England: Literature, Femininity and Conservatism between the Wars, London: Ro (.).Alors que l’instabilité et l’inconnu perturbent les certitudes complaisantes de ces récits, du Maurier déconstruit le gothique romanesque de la fiction populaire, le remplaçant par l’horreur gothique. Les angoisses liées au quotidien se transforment en réalités destructrices alors que les êtres chers, les lieux et les animaux, familiers ou idéalisés, ne s’avèrent ni fiables ni dignes de confiance – et, de fait, ne l’ont jamais été. Dans Rebecca, « Ganymede », « East Wind » et « The Birds », du Maurier sape les certitudes, bouleverse les récits personnels trompeurs, inverse le familier et l’inconnu dans des lieux et des espaces liminaux – qu’il s’agisse d’une imposante demeure, d’un littoral exposé aux éléments ou d’une version touristique de Venise –, illustrant ainsi la théorie freudienne de l’inquiétante étrangeté et le questionnement existentialiste de la réalité. Ce faisant, l’écrivaine met à mal les certitudes complaisantes qui sous-tendent notre vision familière du monde et les récits par lesquels nous appréhendons notre vie dans ses rapports à la famille, la sécurité, l’identité ou à l’ordre du monde. L’horreur gothique de Daphne du Maurier déstabilise l’ordinaire et le quotidien familier pour montrer que les lieux et les rapports humains qui semblaient si sûrs sont en fait peu fiables, voire dangereux. As instability and the unknowable disturb complacencies and certainties in these narratives, Du Maurier overwrites the Gothic romance of popular fiction, replacing it with Gothic horror. Everyday anxieties flower into destructive realities as loved ones, idealised or homely places and creatures are no longer trustworthy and dependable, and indeed, it is revealed, they never were. In Rebecca, “Ganymede”, “East Wind” and “The Birds”, she builds on Freud’s theory of the uncanny and the questioning of constructed reality offered by existentialism to undermine securities, upset self-deceptive internal narratives, inverting the familiar and unfamiliar in liminal places and spaces whether a grand house, exposed coast or a touristic version of Venice.
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Simultaneously, she disturbs the complacencies of familiar worldviews and the narratives with which we direct and understand our lives, including those of family, security, identity, order and romance. Daphne Du Maurier’s Gothic horror destabilises the ordinary, the familiar everyday, revealing seemingly safe relationship and places to be undependable, even dangerous.