Ep. 14. Daphne du Maurier during World War II

Inviolable Voices: Stories of Writers and Literature

Listen in for the story of Daphne du Maurier's World War II years. The year before WWII started, du Maurier felt like she was a pretty lucky person. She was happily married to an honest, upstanding WWI hero and had just written her biggest critical and commercial success: the 1938 novel, Rebecca. The war changed nearly every aspect of her life, though. The long separation from her soldier husband gave her the space to evaluate her marriage for the first time, and she was not happy with what she saw. This was in part triggered by a strange affair she had with an impotent married man throughout much of the war, which set her up, after the war, to have a wandering eye for women. Ultimately, she realized the one being that she could really love was one that she could only borrow, never own: the Cornwall house Menabilly, which she had loved from afar since her early 20s (it's the inspiration for Rebecca's Manderley), but finally had the chance to inhabit during the war.