The Parasites

"I picked it because it’s quite unusual for du Maurier. Normally, she plots and plans in great detail. Every single chapter—how it’s going to start, how it’s going to finish—will be worked out in advance. The Parasites is unusual because she pretty much just sat down and wrote it. I also picked it because it’s contemporary. People think she mostly writes historical fiction, but she does contemporary stuff, too, and is great at satirising social mores and pretensions. It’s the first book she writes in the writing hut in the grounds of Menabilly. It’s 1949, the year just following a return to the theatre with plays like Rebecca (1940), The Years Between (1945), and September Tide (1948). Being back in the theatrical world of her childhood stirred up a lot of memories of her father and mother, and their lifestyle, which contributes to the strong theatrical sense of The Parasites . Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . It’s also autobiographical. There are three main characters: Maria, Niall and Celia. Du Maurier spoke about them all as facets of her personality, they were ‘the three people I know myself to have been’ she said. In her work, du Maurier is known for being obsessed with doubles, for example, Mrs de Winter and Rebecca, and John and Jean in the doppelgänger novel, The Scapegoat (1957). Here, she fragments herself into three. Maria is an actress; Niall is a musician; Celia is an artist and illustrator. She’s playing with different reactions to the idea of talent. They have quite complicated relationships. Mama, the mother of Niall, is a dancer, while Pappy, the father of Maria, is a singer and actor. Celia links the two. Together, they’re half brother/sister, step-brother/step-sisters. While not technically related, Niall and Maria have been brought up together, and have a possessive, rather incestuous relationship. Daphne is fascinated by the emotional intensity of family relationships throughout her work. She’s also preoccupied with imaginative, artistic relationships between siblings, which is also why she’s so interested in the Brontës. Her own sisters were creative too; Angela was a novelist and Jeanne a painter. Bits of Daphne shine through in the character of Maria. She talks about herself as always acting, and play-acting is a big theme in Daphne’ du Maurier’s books. Early in the novel, Maria says, “I’m seeing a person called Maria lying on a sofa and losing the love of her husband, and I’m sad for that poor, lonely soul, I want to weep for her; but me, the real me, is making faces in the corner.” There’s this mocking, satirical side of du Maurier. She was very funny, witty, and had all these code-words—a du Maurier language. What you get through Maria is a sense of constantly acting, playing or being other people. Daphne was always doing that, taking on these characters and playing games of make-believe, just like her father did in the theatre. For readers who think du Maurier is all dark Gothic, The Parasites is packed with plenty of wit, both in the narrative voice and in the form of farcical, slapstick humour. For instance, there’s the scene at the big country house, Coldhammer, where Pappy turns up with far too much luggage and Freada, Niall’s older lover, is mistaken for his mother. She has packed her meagre things in brown paper parcels which the servants mislay, then she overflows the bath and the water seeps through the library ceiling. It’s a completely mad, comedic scene and timed to perfection. “Du Maurier is always taking on these characters and playing games of make-believe, just like her father did in the theatre” I picked The Parasites not only for du Maurier’s humor, but also for its style. The novel is written in first person plural. It begins, “It was Charles who called us the parasites.” The narrative moves in and out between ‘we’ and ‘us’. In parts, it’s quite clear that that the novel is given over to the thought process of one character and the reader sees from one individual’s perspective. Yet it’s impossible to deny that all of their thought processes are linked. This is quite an unusual style—not many novels use it. In some ways, it’s similar to what Virginia Woolf is doing in The Waves with six characters: Bernard, Jinny, Louis, Neville, Percival, Susan and Rhoda. Bernard says, “I am not one person; I am many people; I do not altogether know who I am—Jinny, Susan, Neville, Rhoda, or Louis; or how to distinguish my life from theirs.” Daphne achieves this stylistically by using the plural ‘we.’ It’s impossible for the reader to divide the three characters into distinct selves and this is precisely what du Maurier is interested in here, the ways in which our identities are inextricably shaped by and intertwined with family relationships."