“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.”
Have you ever been mistaken for someone else? Has someone ever said to you “Oh I saw you in town the other week, but you were too far away for me to shout hello,” and you reply that wasn’t you, you’ve not gone into town for weeks. Do you ever look in the mirror, exasperated by your dull, meaningless life, and think that it should be more exciting? Do you crave something other than your lacklustre life? Why couldn’t you have been born into nobility, or be part of a dynasty of achievers? Do you ever wonder how different your life could be if you had done things differently? Would the life of the doppelgänger that people have mistaken you for be better than your own?
For John, his life is going to change immeasurably, not because he really wishes to have someone else’s life, but because someone is about to impose their life upon him.
Written in 1957, Daphne du Maurier's atmospheric novel ‘The Scapegoat’ is an unsettling tale set in France. Du Maurier chose this location whilst she was researching her family history for another one of her novels, The Glassblowers. The glass-blowing foundry of her ancestors was to become the failing business of the de Gué family, which is central to the narrative of the book.
“He turned and stared at me and I at him, and I realised, with a strange sense of shock and fear and nausea all combined, that his face and voice were known to me too well. I was looking at myself.”
The story is told by an Englishman, John, an English lecturer in French history. He sets off on his travels through France and whilst reflecting on his lonely, unfulfilling life, he is startled to find his doppelgänger staring at him at a train station in Le Mans. The man, Jean de Gué, is a French nobleman, and John confides to him that he is depressed with what life has to offer him. Swept up by Jean’s confident manner, John finds himself playing along with Jean’s games, overindulging in wine and spending the night in a disreputable hotel, rather than continuing his travels to a nearby monastery as he had intended.
When he wakes from his drunken slumber, John realises that Jean has disappeared, taking all of John’s belongings with him. Instead, he is left with Jean’s clothing and gifts for his family. Jean’s chauffer arrives at the hotel to take him home; unaware that John is not his master, and with John realising the police would think he was a madman if he told his story to them, he allows the chauffer to take him to a tired looking chateau in the country, and so the story begins, with John taking on the persona of the "Comte Jean de Gué".
At first John is angry and confused at the predicament he finds himself in, however, he suddenly realises he is free of the shackles that confined him as John. He isn’t plain old John anymore, as far as anyone else is concerned, he is Comte Jean de Gué, a role he could surely play, at least until Jean returned, and they could trade their lives back again.
"possessed by a reckless feeling I had never known before, the sensation that I myself did not matter anymore... no one could call me to account for any action. For the first time I was free."
As John enters the ancestral home, and quickly learns the effects Jean’s influence has on his family, it soon becomes apparent that John has become Jean’s scapegoat. The family business is in a mess, and Jean, out of his depth, needs someone else to take care of matters.
Not only has Jean meddled in John’s life, but he has also twisted the lives of his mother, siblings and in-laws to suit his own purposes. John’s anger about the situation begins to dissipate as he uncovers family secrets, and he begins to feel sympathy towards these people who accept that he is Jean de Gué. They treat him with either love or hate, but they don’t treat him with the indifference he suffered at college.
The longer John spends with the family, the more he begins to be committed to them, and righting the wrongs that Jean has subjected them to. Within a week, John has used his influence to try to ensure the workers at the foundry still have jobs, and that the family members are given roles in the family business that they should have been allowed to pursue when Jean was in charge.
Whilst reading the book, I did have to suspend my belief that two biologically different men could look and behave so like one another that their own wife, daughter and mother could not tell them apart. In fact, the only inhabitant of the chateau that suspected something was amiss was the dog, César. So, am I supposed to take this book literally, or figuratively? I don’t think it really matters; the book is written so beautifully that you don’t really care about how implausible it all is, you just get swept up by the story.
As the book continues, the two characters of John and Jean seem to merge into one another:
"I knew that everything I had said or done had implicated me further, driven me deeper, bound me more closely still to that man whose body was not my body, whose mind was not my mind, whose thoughts and actions were a world apart, and yet whose inner substance was part of my nature, part of my secret self."
John begins to realise that he houses a darker self, one well fitted to lying and deceit. The longer he hides his true self, the more confident he becomes, the persona of Jean starting to shadow his original self. Yet throughout, he still maintains his belief in trying to do good, to right the wrongs of Jean, a character that is not concerned with the feelings of others.
It could be argued that John was not the only titular scapegoat, indeed both Françoise, the Comte's neglected, pregnant wife, and Marie-Noel, the Comte’s daughter, are both willing to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of Jean. The young girl’s religious dedication adds to the already heightened sense of drama and suspense, but with it brings the sense of the macabre of an almost gothic tale.
There is an awareness of dark secrets, some evil doings that have taken place in the past, as du Maurier hints and steers the reader through the roles and relationships of the family, allowing them a sense of foreboding as John slowly catches up with the reader into an understanding of who Béla is, Renée's sensitive reaction to ‘his’ gift, the hostility of the elder sister and the resentful nature of the younger brother.
This is both a fascinating yet disturbing tale of the complexities of the human character. The conclusion of the book for some may seem weak, or even disappointing, but it does give rise for the reader to consider their own personality hidden within themselves. Whether we will admit it to ourselves, or indeed others, we all lead a double life to some extent. There is both good and evil in all of us. Which of our attributes will rise to the surface? The book fails to answer this question, instead it suggests that one man will go back to reality, albeit changed to a degree, and for the other a time of reflection and learning is required from the ‘opportunity’ granted to him. Whichever way you look at it, from time to time we can all feel as though we have been made a scapegoat by others, and that the best thing to do is reflect how and why these things happen and try not to harbour too many grudges.
(After reading this novel, it turns out that the 2012 film I enjoyed, starring Matthew Rhys and Andrew Scott, isn’t a true reflection of the book. For a start it’s not set in France. Set in England circa 1952, teacher John Standing has lost his job and decides to go travelling. He meets his doppelgänger Johnny Spence in a London pub and takes on the life of the failed businessman. Whilst the family interactions are initially similar to those in the book, there are a number of changes that make the story, and therefore the lessons learnt, quite different from that of the book, including the romanticised ending.)
Genre: Fiction, Classics, Mystery, Gothic, Psychological, Historical Fiction
Release Date: 5th November 2011
Publisher: Audible Studios
Listening Time: 13h 4m
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