Jamaica Inn

Written by Daphne Du Maurier in 1936 and then made into a film by Alfred Hitchcock three years later, Jamaica Inn stands as one of the most perverse and confronting gothic texts around in my opinion. A little slow to start and I will admit that it does take some time to get into the swing of it because we are focalising through one character and sometimes her adventures aren’t as exciting as we’d prefer, nonetheless Du Maurier’s story of crime, corruption, and an infamous inn proves to be a thrilling read. 

After the her mother’s death, Mary Yellan is bound by a promise to leave the farm of her childhood and go and live with her Aunt Patience at Jamaica Inn. When she arrives, she is dispirited to see that her aunt is not the flirtatious lady she remembers from childhood, but a downtrodden woman, broken by her vicious and brutal husband Joss Merlyn. Mary quickly discovers that the inn is a front for a lawless gang of terrible men and criminals and she soon finds herself dragged against her will into their world of smuggling, destruction, and murder. 

Written in the third person omniscient register with the central focalisation taking place through Mary our heroine, this book is a solid example of just how much stuff you can cram into a mere three hundred pages. A lot, a lot, a lot happens in this book and whilst for the most part it is written in a very subtle way, aside from the confronting scenes of violence and brutality, it is still wholly compelling and interest is piqued to keep reading at the end of each chapter. 

Jamaica Inn is also a great example of feminist writing as it is quite in keeping with traditional gothic, a genre that was considered as popular trash and what women read, therefore not high art, but Du Maurier takes those traditional gothic tropes and turns them about in terms of gender politics and everything -even the exercising of masculine power- is described in terms of the response of the women. Brutality is only considered brutal because Mary Yellan considers it brutal and this play with focalisation is really good because it blinds us to what is to come, though admittedly we are given some clues that Mary may or may not miss throughout her tale. 

As I mentioned, it’s written in a very simple way: Du Maurier uses frank language and blunt descriptions which create very powerful images in the mind as well as makes the book deceptively simple to read. I say ‘deceptive’ because when you deconstruct it a little bit, there is actually a lot of complexity going on within the layers of the pages and there is so much crammed in in terms of plot, character arc, narrative arc, gender politics, political agenda, etc. On the surface, this is a gothic story about a young woman who is forced into the world of crime and murder and grapples with her ethics and morals of what she should do, but on a deeper level it’s a story about the corruption of men, the corruption of an entire economy, and a comment on the institution of marriage. 

Filled with action, adventure, drama, murder, violence, mystery, suspense, and romance, Jamaica Inn is a book that I found very hard to put down for any great length of time. Admittedly I had to read it for uni so that may have contributed to my avid consumption of it, but I honestly found the story captivating and enjoyable, a real page-turner.