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By chance, John and Jean — one English, the other French — meet in a provincial railway station. Their resemblance to each other is uncanny, and they spend the next few hours talking and drinking - until at last John falls into a drunken stupor. It's to be his last carefree moment, for when he wakes, Jean has stolen his identity and disappeared. So the Englishman steps into the Frenchman's shoes, and faces a variety of perplexing roles - as owner of a chateau, director of a failing business, head of a fractious family, and master of nothing. Gripping and complex, The Scapegoat is a masterful exploration of doubling and identity, and of the dark side of the self. "A dazzlingly clever and immensely entertaining novel."- New York Times… (more)
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Soon John finds himself enmeshed in a complicated web of lies and intrigues, with a grand house full of women, most of whom seems angry at him, though one of them seems more inclined to be friendly, and then there is a great big beastly woman upstairs he is astounded to find looks like himself but in drag with a huge amount of weight added on; Jean's mother, which he can't help but call 'maman' and feel real affection for. Nobody takes him seriously when he tells them outright he is not Jean, but an Englishman called John, and that the real Jean has made off with his clothes and his car; they all dismiss his story as yet another one of Jean's pranks, or a consequence of too much drink. Instead a man angrily demands from him how the trip to Paris went and whether he's gotten the papers signed. Over the course of a week, John slowly untangles the mystery, starting with figuring out who the various individuals are, what Jean was meant to do in Paris, why everyone is angry with him, and then taking a liking to the man's various family members and employees, trying to improve everyone's life.
There is a certain amount of suspension of disbelief needed here to enjoy this novel as fully as I did. After all, how is it possible that the man's own family, his own mother and daughter not recognize the switch? Can his accent be truly so faultless? Can't they 'see' these are two completely different personalities? But this character-driven story about identity and how one man views another through the eyes of others and then tries to improve him according to his own set of very different values proved to be a fascinating journey for me. Highly recommended.
The premise is a bit far-fetched, but du Maurier makes it work because essentially this is a psychological novel. de Gue disappears from the scene as the narrator takes over his life, returning to the chateau where his doppelganger is a minor count and lives with his neglected wife, spoiled daughter, morphine-addicted and dominating mother, a brother and sister who seem to hate de Gue, and a sister-in-law he's been having an affair with him. This novel is not so much about improbable doubles as about who we really are and whether it is possible to take off and put on lives, to change ourselves into who we think we should be. As usual, du Maurier's writing is so good that the story becomes very gripping, and even though there isn't a lot of action, I kept wanting to know what would happen to John and the people he so quickly becomes entangled with. The house itself is also a character in the novel and, like the countess, dominates this family, as does their family history, their home village, and the specter of the recent war and occupation. The ending is somewhat unsatisfying, as it
Theme notes: Clearly, doubles/twins/doppelgangers are a primary theme, and this is an interest of mine. Du Maurier plays with this a lot, emphasizing shadows and reflections, teasing the reader with what is real and what is merely a character's perspective. Every character in the novel, not just the narrator, has a doubled self, depending on who perceives them. Other dominant themes include the weight of the past and escaping it, new starts and resurrections, wiping the slate clean. Could be worth a reread someday.
On the surface it is an interesting tale of two identical men meeting and who swap identities, albeit unintentionally on the part of one of the men. The novel follows the experiences of the unwilling participant in this exchange as he discovers that he is trapped in the other man’s identity with no proof that he is someone else.
In the first chapter of the book this man, an English lecturer in French History who has impeccable French, had been pondering how much of a failure he has been and how he wishes to seek advice in a secluded monastery. He has been feeling that while he loves France and has studied France in detail, he is still an outsider. The exchange changes that, but lumbers him with all the problems faced by his doppelganger.
The obvious flaw in the novel is the idea of someone being taken for another person so completely that the other person’s family never suspects that he is someone else. Also suspect is the idea of an English man being taken as French in France.
I do not, however, consider this pertinent to the story. We can suspend disbelieve and enjoy the story on face value, and it certainly brings some interesting characters into play and presents wonderfully complex relationships.
On another level on could consider the novel as a meditation on an individual taking stock of his/her life and looking at it from another person’s viewpoint. The story shows one of the identical characters fixing many of the family problems of the other in the brief time he is with that family. He also comes to love these people, even though they are flawed and, let’s be honest, downright obnoxious in some cases.
I do not think a male writer would get away without criticism today if he created a character like Bela, Jean de Gué’s mistress. She is undemanding, wise and totally available to the Comte. I can see how Du Maurier needed her as a mechanism for the main character to receive some advice from a source that was not at the centre of the family. She provides comparisons between the main character and Monsieur Le Compte whose place he is in.
In addition to a great story, Du Maurier has provided a few great quotes from the mouths of her characters. Below I present some of the ones I underlined as I read.
”…when war comes to one’s own doorstep, it isn’t tragic and impersonal any longer. It is just an excuse to vomit private hatred.”
“There’s nothing wrong,” I said. “It’s just that, as an individual, I’ve failed in life.”
“So have we all,” he said, “you, I, all the people here in the station buffet. We are every one of us failures. The secret of life is to recognize the fact early on, and become reconciled. Then it no longer matters.”
He smiled at me, still nodding. “Come now,” he said, “it’s not as bad as that. Sometimes it’s a sort of indulgence to think the worst of ourselves. We say, “Now I have reached the bottom of the pit, now I can fall no further,” and it is almost a pleasure to wallow in the darkness. The trouble is, it’s not true. There is no end to the evil in ourselves, just as there is no end to the good. It’s a matter of choice. We struggle to climb, or we struggle to fall. The thing is to discover which way we’re going.”
Extended review:
What is there that fascinates us about the idea of meeting up with our double? Whatever the reason, any number of authors seem to have found the theme irresistible: an unknown actual or virtual twin, a mirror image, a
"William Wilson" (1839) - Poe
The Double (1846) - Dostoevsky
The Prince and the Pauper (1881) - Twain
The Prisoner of Zenda (1894) - Hope
The Secret Sharer (1909) - Conrad
Despair (1936) - Nabokov
The Likeness (2008) - French
I was expecting nothing new when I picked up Daphne du Maurier's 1957 entry in this crowded field. In a familiar enough beginning, circumstances bring the identical pair face to face and then cause one to take the place of the other, sustaining the charade through many tense moments while attempting to master the details and relationships of the absent one's life.
But The Scapegoat isn't a simple story of adventure and suspense hinging on mistaken identity, fortuitous maneuvering, and political intrigue. Nor is it, as in the Doppelgänger tales, an exposure of the dark and sometimes twisted secrets of the soul. Rather, I see this story as a fable of atonement and redemption. The title supplies the key: the Biblical scapegoat was literally a goat upon which were cast the sins of the community and which was then driven out into the wilderness as a sacrifice for all. Many mythic and religious traditions contain some version of this idea, the most obvious in Western culture being Jesus, called the Lamb of God.
In du Maurier's novel, John the Englishman is not forced to step into the life of the Frenchman Jean, who has absconded with all his personal effects and left him to fend for himself. He makes a conscious choice to attempt and then persist in the impersonation. In the process he discovers the many injuries done by his narcissistic counterpart to those around him, including some deep wrongs long past whose effects poison the present. The story of how John, in the role of Jean, deals with his double's culpability while clinging to his sense of himself as a separate being is a story of the growth of self-awareness, love, responsibility, and the search for meaning in life.
A recurring motif is that of windows: looking in, looking out, leaning out, curtains open, curtains drawn, shunning, revealing, enlightening, admitting, excluding. It would not strain interpretation to say that the author uses them symbolically, yet unobtrusively, to underscore how the focal character views, understands, and eventually opens the closed life that is given to him. We are a voyeur of him as voyeur, and when he becomes a participant, we follow and learn.
Right up until the suspenseful final pages, I had no idea how this story would end. And yet the conclusion has a satisfying rightness, a symmetry that echoes the symmetry of the beginning. If some questions are left unanswered, those are nothing other than our own answers to our own mystery: given what we know, what do we do now?
My reactions
Du Maurier writes wonderfully complex psychological suspense, and this is a stellar example of her skill. Told almost entirely from John’s point of view we see him go from a depressed professor, to a befuddled (and very hung over) victim of a cruel “practical joke,” to a concerned outsider doing his best to keep things going, and finally to a man who had found new reserves of inner strength.
The way in which John muddles along as “Jean de Gue” reveals much about his doppelganger. For no matter how badly he behaves, what horribly embarrassing mistakes he makes, how much he hurts (however unintentionally) Jean’s wife, sister-in-law, brother, sister, mother, employees, everyone forgives him because Jean has so charmed them in the past that they overlook his “bad-boy” behavior. But John, not knowing when or if Jean will return, tries to make the best of things. Touched by the loyalty of workers in the family’s glass foundry, he agrees to a contract that will bring financial ruin to the Comte de Gue. Trying to find a way to make amends, John discovers the realities of the family finances. Jean’s wife has a significant trust fund but a modest annual allowance – unless she bears a son or dies before her husband. Francoise is about seven-months pregnant and having a difficult time of it, so John tries his best to be solicitous hoping to hang on until the long-awaited son is born, but this is clearly a troubled marriage.
That’s not the only difficulty in the household. The dowager countess is a bed-ridden old woman with a somewhat sinister handmaid, Charlotte. Sister Blanche has not spoken to her brother in fifteen years, and is a repressed and bitter woman who spends much time praying at the altar in her room. Brother Paul is an ineffective businessman, saddled with doing his best to manage a business his older brother completely neglects. Paul’s wife Renee is a bored housewife whose sexual yearning for Jean is evident to everyone. Ten-year-old Marie-Noel is a spoiled child who dotes on her father, is jealous of the not-yet-born baby brother, ignores her mother and spies on the household (which at least provides John with information, because the little girl loves to tell her father all the secrets she uncovers).
The plot is full of twists and turns which kept me interested and intrigued from beginning to end. I had seen a British movie on PBS Masterpiece, but it differs significantly from the book, so my expectations of where the plot was going were quickly proven wrong. Then, just as I thought I had figured out what would happen, du Maurier changed direction on me again. There is no neat solution to the mess Jean de Gue has made of his life, despite how John tries to set things right. The book ends with many questions left for the future.
It’s that quality time that really hooked me. At first I found John, Jean and Jean’s family to be remote and difficult to connect with; everyone seemed deliberately odd and cartoonish . Then, through John’s careful management of his bizarre situation, I began to connect with them and see how they’d been used and abused by Jean. Eventually you start to root for John and how he tries to set right all the damage his wayward double has created. All the while knowing it can’t last. You hope though and that’s what sets this novel and du Maurier’s talent apart from others.
The way the unknowns are revealed is masterful; you feel as lost and at sea as John must feel, stepping into the role of pater familias. A few of them were relatively easy to guess, particularly the gulf of silence between Jean and Blanche. After a few mentions of Mr. Duval it was pretty clear what happened and Jean’s rationalization of it made it all the more heinous. In the end, Jean went from a mere selfish cad to a violent psycho and I wonder if his family will survive his return. I have to keep in mind what Bela said to John at his leave-taking, that now John has acted so well and nobly that from now on Jean’s family would look for John’s character inside Jean’s, not the other way around. Going forward Jean will have to try to live up to John’s precedent and the family will have to stand up to him if he doesn’t.
A word of warning for the hyper-literal – yes, it’s a stretch. There’s probably no way two complete strangers can exchange lives even for a few hours never mind a few days. Yes, people would be suspicious and many, many things would give each person away. That’s not really the point of this novel. It’s the vehicle only. The point is to see what good can happen to John (and maybe even to Jean in the end) and how he can save himself.
During the set up, we come to understand that John is nearly crushed under the weight of ennui and dissatisfaction with his life. He considers himself to be a failure. He wishes he could set free that part of his personality that he’s never allowed flight. The one who takes chances and wants real people in his life, not just historical figures and the occasional student to tutor. In his hopelessness, John is planning to visit a monastery in a last ditch effort to find a solution. Little does he know his cure doesn’t lie in that direction. Instead he is driven headlong into someone else’s life where he can have the freedom to shake off the crippling insecurity and act like the man he wants to be. In the process he changes Jean’s family’s lives, too and that’s what brings a sense of hope to an ending that could have been bleak.
I’m not sure this book is still in print. I bought a used copy online and still paid something like $15 with shipping for a trade paperback. Find a copy for yourself if you can. It’s worth it and I know I’ll be re-reading this one.
I've read other books about doppelgangers, but this one is different. A religious motif predominates, from the devout Catholicism of some of the family members to the title of the book. I usually think of page-turners as being plot driven, but this one is very much character-driven. Just who is Jean de Gué, and what has he done that has led to this crisis? Is John better equipped to avert the crisis as an outsider with no emotional baggage? Is de Gué ever coming back, and if he does, is John prepared to leave?
Set near Le Mans, the novel has a strong sense of place. The setting is integral to the plot. Although it wasn't historical fiction at the time of its writing, it will appeal to readers of historical fiction set in post-WWII Europe.
by Daphne DuMaurier
1942
PS Library
This is one f my favorite DuMaurier novels, and I am constantly debating myself about if this book is about impersonation in itself, or through psychological idioms..... Schizophrenia, mid life crisis.........The book begins when John , a wealthy
DuMauriers use of suspense and surprise are evident throughout the novel, and her engaging characters are easy to like and follow. Her use of atmosphere, and her ability to make you feel as though you are part of the book make this, as well as most of her novels, a fantastic story.
The
Du Maurier writes in her typically direct style. The protagonist's actions speak for themselves. While dark and psychological, the novel offers little explicit analysis into his motivation. Like My Cousin Rachel, the minimally burdensome onus is on the reader to develop their own opinions.
If you enjoy this novel, try also Don't Look Now and Other Stories.
© Koplowitz 2011
When Jean's chauffeur arrives at the hotel, John is unable to convince him of what has happened - and ends up accompanying the chauffeur to Jean de Gue's chateau, where the Frenchman's unsuspecting family assume that he really is Jean de Gue. Naturally, they expect him to continue running the family glass-making business and arranging shooting parties - things that John has absolutely no experience in. Before long, it starts to become obvious that Jean is using John as a scapegoat; Jean's family and business are both in a mess and he wants someone else to have to deal with them.
Throughout the book, I was forced to revise my opinions once or twice about what was really going on. If everything in the book is supposed to be taken literally, then we need to suspend belief at times: could two men really be so identical that even their mother, wife and daughter can't tell the difference? There is also another way to interpret the story, one which goes deeper into the psychology of identity - I won't say any more about that here, but if you read the book this theory may occur to you too.
As usual, du Maurier's writing is wonderfully atmospheric. She has a way of making you feel as though you're actually there in the hotel room in Le Mans, the grounds of Jean de Gue's estate in the French countryside and Bela's antique shop in the town of Villars.
When John first arrives at the de Gue chateau, every member of the household is a stranger to him but we (and John) are given enough clues to gradually figure out who each person is and what their relationship is to Jean de Gue. From the neglected pregnant wife and the hostile elder sister to the resentful younger brother and the religious ten-year-old daughter, every character is well-drawn and memorable.
Another thing I love about Daphne du Maurier's writing is her ability to always keep the reader guessing right to the final page (and sometimes afterwards too). This was a fascinating and unusual story, one of my favourite du Maurier books so far.
Slow start and then...wow, did it take off! Du Maurier had such a talent for Gothic fiction, and once again, that talent is showcased here. She just keeps weaving and weaving until the reader can't hardly wait to find out how it ends. The
John whose own life is meaningless discovers love with this family.
I’ve read I believe six of Daphne Du Maurier’s novels now, and I can honestly say that this is different from the others. It’s not an historical novel, nor is it a novel of suspense. There’s no real feeling of terror that the reader feels (except maybe for one scene at the end) while reading this book. There’s no real mystery, here, either, except for the one of Jean’s past that John tries to piece together bit by bit. So what kind of novel is The Scapegoat?
It’s a brilliant novel about human nature, which pits two men who are in appearance very similar; but in other ways are very, very different. John’s life may be going down the tubes, too, but he doesn’t ever contemplate running away from his troubles the way that Jean does—therein lies the difference between the two men. I have to think that Jean de Gue (the real one) is a bit of a coward, running away from his responsibilities. But on the other hand, John is also a bit cowardly. I find it hard to believe that anyone, after making such an impact on a family in the space of the week, would just be able to walk away at the end. Also, I found it hard to believe that John could react so calmly to what Jean reveals about John’s life at the end of the book.
Still, this novel shows how amazing it is that people will believe anything you want them to, if it’s in the realm of possibility. After all, nobody would believe that two men, identical in appearance, would meet by chance one day and switch places—it’s just too fantastical to contemplate (which is why the chauffeur believes “Jean” to be drunk when he picks John up at the hotel at the beginning of the book). It’s a brilliant novel, as I’ve said about the way of human nature. It’s not my favorite of Daphne Du Maurier’s novels, but it’s pretty good all the same.
Despite all the pitfalls, John comes to care for this new family and strives to find ways to make the glass factory a success - until a tragedy strikes that brings an unexpected financial windfall to the family's fortunes - but news of that windfalls also brings back...... More than that I'm not telling - you know I'm not into spoilers and book reports. As with all Du Maurier's books her writing and characterizations are subtle and sublime and I'm once again left with an enigmatic ending that kept me guessing just a little bit more.
This novel builds in the usual way. Like a snake that winds itself around you - slowly, gradually, until you're close to the end and you feel like you can't breathe. The
... woah. Cool, right?
I love that the house is once again a character in this book - I love that the main protagonist is just thrown into this world he knows nothing about.
The one thing I didn't like about this book is the ending, and I won't spoil it for you but it just fell a little bit flat for me.
Overall, it's a solid Daphne du Maurier read and I loved it right up until the last few chapters. c: