Quotes from The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier It’s a fascinating premise and that the author succeeds at presenting in a most satisfying way. Ultimately, it’s a story of two opposites who are similar. Time and again he finds himself in a position in which he can’t act, either from ignorance nor from temperament, as Jean would have. Carefully, John listens and digests remarks, cautious not to denounce the absent Jean and so reveal himself to this accepting family. Her characters are linked by dependency, hostilely, old hatreds, and money. He began to try to live the role.ĭu Maurier’s skill creates as much suspense in The Scapegoat as it did in Rebecca. There was no evidence that John was other than the count. Evidently, Jean was unwilling to go home. The next morning, John woke in a hotel room, the valise of Count De Gué nearby, a solicitous chauffeur waiting to take “his master” home despite protestations. His alter ego, Jean de Gué, was a count with a castle he didn’t care for, a marriage he called a trap, “too many possessions - human ones.” The ate and drank together, the wily Frenchman feeling out his double.

This lack of useful affection concerned him. He was a casual lecturer on the French historic and literary past, without family or ties. John then was mulling the idea of seeking a brief retreat in a monastery to learn how he should go on living. “It was no chance resemblance - no superficial likeness - it was as though one man stood there.” An Englishman, John, is slightly jostled, looks up, and finds himself “with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined … looking at myself.” The two men, equally startled, walk over to look into a mirror together.

The Scapegoat is the tale of one man who was trapped into impersonating another, living as husband of a saddened wife, father of a fanciful child, manager of a glass-making concern, and son of an aging, dope-addled mother.Īll of the action takes place within one week, yet so much is learned of the past that the book seems to span a generation.

A 1957 review of The Scapegoat by Daphne Du Maurierįrom the original review in the Akron Beacon Journal, February 17, 1957: It couldn’t actually happen in real life (or could it?) but Daphne du Maurier’s skill makes The Scapegoat a plausible perplexity.

The scapegoat du maurier