The Scapegoat by Daphne du Maurier
THE SCAPEGOAT
DAPHNE DU MAURIER
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.
review
The Scapegoat was first published in in 1957 and tells the story of John, an Englishman, who travels to France to contemplate his future. While at a railway station bar in Le Mans he meets Jean de Gue, a French count, who is his double in appearance. The two men get drunk and John wakes up in a hotel room the following morning only to discover Jean has swapped lives with him and John has no choice but to go along with it.
John is driven to the de Gue estate where he meets the count’s family and has to fumble his way through the various family dynamics. We meet his formidable mother, the Dowager Countess, who is addicted to morphine; Françoise, the pregnant and dull wife; Marie-Noel, the religious and overly imaginative daughter; Blanche, the sister who wants nothing to do with Jean; Paul, the brother who has been left to carry the family business and Renee, Paul’s wife, with whom Jean seems to have been having an affair. As John gets to know each of the family members, he realises Jean has caused a lot of harm and is desperate to repair things but his good intentions make things worse.
The family glassworks is also in financial trouble and in danger of closing as Jean has failed to renew a contract that would have halved their meagre profits. Concerned for the future of the workers, John re-negotiates the deal to keep the business afloat not realising the family does not have the capital to cushion the subsequent loss in income. John soon learns the only prospect the family has of getting any money is if Françoise gives birth to a male heir or pre-deceases Jean as per the terms in her dowry. As John discovers more secrets, his hatred for Jean increases and he is determined to keep Jean away at all costs. However, a family tragedy brings Jean back into their lives and John has some important decisions to make.
The Scapegoat requires some suspension of disbelief as no one in the family, except the family dog, realises that Jean has been replaced by a man who is more identical to him in appearance than most identical twins are to each other. As John is a far kinder man than Jean, they are aware that his behaviour is different but that makes them wonder what he is up to more than anything else and they are suspicious of his attempts to make amends. The relationships between the various family members are all complex ones and du Maurier exploits the recurrent theme of duality as the layers are pealed back on their personalities bit by bit. No one is who they seem and they all show different aspects at different times and to different people. While Jean and John have literally changed places. John often comments on how people seem to change before his very eyes.
The novel takes place over the timespan of a week, however it feels so much longer as a lot happens over those few days and the de Gue family will be forever changed. As Jean’s cruelty continues to be slowly revealed, John’s understanding of the family increases and he finally finds the correct solutions to their problems. But just as everything is working out, Jean returns to reclaim his life much to John’s fury. The ending of the novel is very ambiguous which leaves the reader wondering how the family fared with Jean back at the helm and what John did next. It’s frustrating but the correct choice.