The Violence of Men

Aug 2021
Jamaica Inn - Daphne Du Maurier – Virago, 2012
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Like Dracula, this book opens with the protagonist in a coach that is travelling through a desolate landscape towards an ominous destination. In this case it is an inn with a bad reputation rather than a bat-infested castle, and the main character is a young woman, but otherwise the parallels are remarkably similar. Fortunately the storyline soon diverges into an interesting and stark look at male violence from a female perspective - one possible way to describe the premise is what if Jane Eyre had failed to redeem Mr Rochester? - but also, alas, follows Dracula in being rather less transgressive than it originally appears it will be.
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