Talk:Daphne du Maurier

message: There's an oddity at the bottom of this page which I thought I'd removed, but it keeps resurfacing - anyone else able to clip it off? StoneColdCrazy 20:37, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: Do you mean the wiggy date? I think that was vandalism. I removed. David Hoag 23:59, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Page oddity

message: She is defined as a "Cornish" novelist, even though she was born in London and was of French descent, presumably because her books are mainly set in Cornwall, she lived in Cornwall and was involved in Cornish politics (i.e. Mebyon Kernow).  I am English but I live in Germany.  Even if I wrote books set in Germany and became involved in German politics, I don't believe people would then refer to me as 'German'.Eorake 13:37, 2 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, it really depends on where you associate with I suppose. I was born in Surrey, of a family with its roots solidly in London, but I grew up in Cornwall, and I very definitely regard myself as Cornish (and also as English, since I'm not a Cornish nationalist). -- Necrothesp 12:54, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: History is full of nationalists with tenuous connections to the nation whose cause they adopt. Stalin, Napoleon, De Valera, Hitler, etc. A phenonemon referred to by Orwell as I think "transferred nationalism". Exile 21:24, 11 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Definition of Cornish

message: There's no comprehensive info on the author. One can't get an idea of what her writings are like by reading this article.
61.246.98.145 13:08, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Reads like a stub 

message: I was a little surprised to see such a classic example of sexism in the article.
'Though literary snobs have often berated Du Maurier's writings for not being 'intellectually heavyweight' in the way that George Eliot's or Iris Murdoch's are...'
A woman author is only being compared with other woman authors! du Maurier is a women first and an author second! Why not a heavyweight female author and a heavyweight male author, after all there ARE more male heavyweight authors in the 19th/early 20th centuries. Unless anyone objects I'll change one of the authors to Thackery or something (or can someone suggest a male contempory). 
I know this can be a touchy issue and some people may see my suggestion as reverse discrimination, or unneccesarily touchy/militant, but I think this is an important, if subtle, point. ChristineD 01:22, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Subconscious sexism in article

message: On sifting through the large body of writing on the life of du Maurier, including letters, biographies and newpapers articles, we knew that the subject of her complex sexuality, first brought to the world's attention by her official biographer after her death, would be a contentious topic. We have attempted to address this issue with both candour and brevity but are aware that not everyone will agree with the views stated here. However, what no-one can deny is what Daphne du Maurier herself said (albeit opaquely) on the subject; she referred to a masculine energy in her psyche, what she called her "boy-in-the-box",and this was the side of her which gave her inspiration for her writing; an outlet for the realm of fantasy. This "boy-in-the-box" was infatuated with the unobtainable Ellen Doubleday and had his amorous attentions returned by Gertrude Lawrence. Yet where we have written that she in no way saw herslf as a Lesbian (and would have been appalled to have entertained the suggestion)is in no way a veiled piece of homophobia: our comments have been erased on this issue several times but that is unfair, both by the prudes who deny her the rich and colourful emotional life that she unequivocally had, and the Gay Lobby who wish to bring her into the fold.
Du Maurier was a complex character, not only on the topic of sexuality but on many issues.  Though she had several homosexual friends in her life, it appears to have been a case of "something that should happen to other people, other families" . She was terrified that her spoiling of her son Christian would make him gay and chose to ignore homosexuality elsewhere if it appeared too close to home. She was, after all, a product of Edwardian society, and her views were shared by virtually the entire populace; since the civil rights movements of the 1960's we have all perhaps progressed some way towards enlightenment.
In reply to certain comments concerning purported sexism: we have mirrored only the opinions of the critics from the back-catalogue of reviews that we were able to source. Reviews of her early novels compare them to the likes of Treasure Island but once the sensation that was Rebecca had hit the public's consciousness and the comparison had been drawn with the novels of the Bronte sisters, du Maurier was set firmly in the cast of Romantic Novelist. After all, the literary establishment was, like most of the old orders, a glorified boy's club, and du Maurier recognised this. Certainly compare her to whosoever you wish to nowadays, either male or female, but remember that historically she has always been termed a "writer for women". We wholeheartedly agree that that is both an antiquated and offensive description and that she was a significant and important writer, regardless of gender. Far from a sexist put-down, we actually compare her with the gentleman Wilkie Collins: surely a comparison any writer would kill for? MARC & NATASHA Ygrasil 02:14, 7 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sex & sexism: in defence of the evidence 

message: I added a references tag to the top of this article, and also tagged the statements which need citations with .  There are some references at the bottom, but (IMO) each of the marked statement needs direct citations (e.g. Du Maurier was suspected to be a lesbian according to ...). -Elizabennet | talk 18:50, 20 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  References 

message: The "personal life" section is well-cited and sourced. However, these passages:
stray considerably into original research. If they're what Forster or Thornton says, they need to be more clearly attributed to them. If they're the editor or editors' opinion, they need to be somewhere else than this article. Daniel Case (talk) 22:31, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Original research tag 

message: ... her personal life need to be mentioned first, before her works? She was best known (to the general public) as a novelist and playwright, not as a wife and mother or for her alleged lesbian affairs. Katie1971  ( Let's talk!! ) 15:05, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why does... 

message: In Hampshire, England there is a road directly named after her, Du Maurier Close. Should this be mentioned? I can confirm, I live there.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.4.139.101 (talk) 00:06, 13 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Not unless it is based on part of her life that happened in the area. Lists of things named after famous people should be kept to the minimum.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 09:46, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Du Maurier Close? 

message: The article indicated by the reference 8, in Portuguese, says exactly the opposite to the text in this section. 
What is written in Ptguese is: "Carolina Nabuco afirma que quando estreou no Brasil o filme de Hitchcock, o representante da United Artists quis que ela assinasse um documento em que se lia que todas as semelhanças seriam mera coincidência. Naturalmente, a escritora brasileira se negou." 
Translation: "Carolina Nabuco states that, when Hitcocck's movie was first shown in Brazil, United Artists wanted her to sign a document saying that all the similarities were merely a coincidence. Naturaly, the Brazilian writer refused to sign it." 
Was someone deliberately dishonest in interpreting the text, or merely ignorant of the language?
--Betty VH (talk) 13:20, 4 February 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plagiarism 

message: 'Literary critics have sometimes berated du Maurier's works for not being "intellectually heavyweight" like those of George Eliot or Iris Murdoch... By the 1950s, when the socially and politically critical "angry young men" were in vogue, her writing was felt by some to belong to a bygone age.' 
These two statements do not seem connected. The angry young men were certainly not wanting intellectually heavyweight literature.
Are you just making the point that she kept going out of fashion? Valetude (talk) 19:51, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Out of fashion 

message: The Wiki article on her husband Frederick Browning sheds much more light on the nature of their relationship, and this ought to be replicated here. That article also refers to her own admitted wartime affair (citation quoted), but does not name the other person. Unless that person is still living, I would have thought that it could be revealed here, since this article devotes a section to her secret relationships. Valetude (talk) 20:04, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Marriage 

message: Quoting from the "Plays" section of the article:  "Since then, September Tide has received occasional revivals, most recently at the Comedy Theatre in London in January 1994, ..."
When I read that I wondered "how on earth would we know that the most recent revival was in 1994?"
I checked and found this review of a production that toured in 2007.  http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/reviews/septembertide-rev
Not a big deal but in the interest of accuracy we should probably avoid wordings such as the above "most recently at the ..."
CBHA (talk) 01:57, 22 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "most recently" as wording to avoid using. 

message: Substituted at 12:49, 29 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment comment

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*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080509164623/http://www.dumaurier.org/early.html to http://www.dumaurier.org/early.html
*Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080511162526/http://www.dumaurier.org/birds.html to http://www.dumaurier.org/birds.html
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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Why do the External Links include the Website of The Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, Yorkshire? I don't see the connection. Valetude (talk) 08:31, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I've deleted it. MichaelMaggs (talk) 09:18, 28 July 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brontë sisters? 

message: I've reverted these, because for many of the titles I have unable to find any evidence at all on the Web. I realize that not everything du Maurier wrote may be mentioned online, but I think we need some evidence for the existence of items such as short stories titled "Surgeon Who Cures Aching Minds" and "Why Megan Apologised". (Others of the short story additions are items—such as "The Lover", "The Supreme Artist", and "The Alibi"—that were included in collections that were already listed under "Short fiction".) The same goes for the entries of "Short non-fiction"; I can find evidence for some, but not for others.
I'm certainly open to the expansion of the "Publications" section, but before I devote time to the correction of formatting errors in the IP's expansion, I'd like to see some problems with verifiability addressed. In his or her edit summary when reverting my initial reversion, the IP who added these said "I have given the sources", presumably referring to the naming in the entries of the newspapers and periodicals in which the items originally appeared; but I'd like to have a source for the added information itself: From what source did the IP learn of these items' existence in those newspapers and periodicals? Deor (talk) 17:38, 20 November 2021 (UTC)
thread_title: Revisions to "Publications" section