Chapter by Chapter: My Cousin Rachel; Chapter One

My Cousin Rachel, by Daphne du Maurier

My Cousin Rachel, Chapter One:

Foreboding, foreboding, foreboding.
(In other words, #onbrand.)

First sentence: They used to hang men at Four Turnings in the old days.

FOREBODING!

Our narrator, Philip, opens with a memory of being seven years old, going to see a hanged man with his twenty-seven year old cousin and guardian, Ambrose. Because, sure.

Ambrose pokes at the body with a stick—because, again, sure—and launches into a Life Lesson:

“See what a moment of passion can bring upon a fellow,” said Ambrose. “Here is Tom Jenkyn, honest and dull, except when he drank too much. It’s true his wife was a scold, but that was no excuse to kill her. If we killed women for their tongues all men would be murderers.”

FOREBODING! (Also, COUGH.)

Ambrose walks off down the road, Philip barfs, throws a stone at Dead Tom Jenkyn, feels guilty about it, then scampers off down the road after Ambrose.

Fast-forward eighteen years, and Philip, now twenty-five, is thinking a whole lot about Tom Jenkyn (and not at all, it should be noted, about Tom Jenkyn’s murdered wife, but you know, what else is new (pauses to glare in the general direction of the 8 billion Ted Bundy/Charles Manson biopics)):

It is strange how in moments of great crisis the mind whips back to childhood. Somehow I keep thinking of poor Tom and how he hung there in his chains. I never heard his story, and few people would remember it now. He killed his wife, so Ambrose said. And that was all.

“…in moments of great crisis.” FOREBODING!

FOREBODING! (with bonus shades of mega-privilege):

The point is, life has to be endured and lived. But how to live it is the problem. The work of day by day presents no difficulties. I shall become a justice of the peace, as Ambrose was, and also be returned one day to Parliament. I shall continue to be honoured and respected, like all my family before me. Farm the land well, look after the people. No one will ever guess the burden of blame I carry on my shoulders; nor will they know that every day, haunted still by doubt, I ask myself a question which I cannot answer. Was Rachel innocent or guilty?

FOREBODING!:

How soft and gentle her name sounds when I whisper it. It lingers on the tongue, insidious and slow, almost like poison, which is apt indeed.

And then we get a tiny bit more: That adult Philip’s physical resemblance to Ambrose is related to whatever Tragedy he’s tiptoeing around, that other people saw The Tragedy coming BECAUSE of the resemblance; that some women “through no fault of their own impel disaster.”

(I have found that the gender stuff in Daphne du Maurier’s books is A Lot.)

Last sentence: Had I looked back at you over my shoulder, I should not have seen you swinging in your chains, but my own shadow.

FOREBODINGGGGGGGGGG!!!