TV

BBC2’s “Daphne” Explores Du Maurier’s Bisexuality

One of the earliest coded lesbian images in Hollywood is the character of Mrs. Danvers, the creepy housekeeper in Alfred Hitchcock’s adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s bestselling 1938 novel, Rebecca. Seemingly obsessed with her first mistress, the late Rebecca de Winter, Mrs. Danvers both frightens and repels the new Mrs. de Winter. It is a classic image of lesbian desire as unsettling and “other.”

In Daphne Du Maurier’s own life, however, a British television movie makes clear, lesbian desire may have been unsettling, but it was also important. The 90-minute drama Daphne, which recently aired on BBC2 in the U.K., was scripted by Amy Jenkins, creator of the acclaimed British TV series This Life.

Starring Geraldine Somerville (Harry Potter’s mother in the Harry Potter films) as Daphne Du Maurier, the drama explores the life of the writer, whose other famous works include The Birds and My Cousin Rachel. It charts her unrequited love for her American publisher’s wife, Ellen Doubleday (Elizabeth McGovern), as well as her alleged affair with actress Gertrude Lawrence (Janet McTeer, who in 1990 starred as Vita Sackville-West in Portrait of a Marriage).

The story begins in 1945, as Daphne’s husband, Tommy, returns from the war. Although they married for love – and they now have three children together – the couple finds it difficult to reconnect after the years of separation. On the work front, Daphne feels frustrated that Rebecca‘s success seems to eclipse all her other novels. To compound her troubles, an American author is suing her with the claim that she has plagiarized parts of Rebecca.

But while traveling via ship to New York to appear at the trial, Daphne’s life takes an unexpected upturn when Ellen Doubleday appears in her cabin. Dressed in incredibly glamorous and elegant outfits, with silky dark hair, white skin and bright red lipstick, Ellen – after the austerity of wartime Britain – seems to embody the warmth and pleasures of America. Daphne is instantly, wordlessly smitten.

A close friendship develops between the two women, and once Ellen realizes Daphne’s feelings for her, she tells Daphne earnestly that she believes everyone has the right to love “without censure.” Nevertheless, she is heterosexual and cannot return Daphne’s feelings. Daphne writes her frustration out in a play called September Tide about a forbidden love between a young man and his mother-in-law. She sees the mother-in-law as being based on Ellen.

But her feelings become confused when the part of the mother-in-law is taken by Gertrude Lawrence, an older, worldly and confidently bisexual actress who is friends with Noel Coward. Although initially contemptuous of Gertrude, whom she sees as brash and slutty, Daphne is increasingly drawn to her charisma, and eventually the two have an affair. Much of the rest of the drama is taken up with Daphne’s competing feelings for the two women. She idolizes and pines over the unavailable Ellen, while at times being cruelly dismissive to the more available Gertrude.

In some ways, her conflicted feelings for the two women can be seen as tied to her conflicted feelings about her sexuality.

She can be frank about her desires. On holiday in Florence with Ellen, who has again rejected her sexually, she tells her defiantly, “Perhaps I’ll go to the Ponte Vecchio and pick up a prostitute.”

She is also frank about her feelings of masculinity. When her children admire her in a party dress, she sighs that she wishes she could just wear “velvet trousers and a belt.” She refers to Ellen making her feel like a boy – a boy of 18 – and wanting to fight dragons for her.

But she also has some discomfort, particularly when it comes to labeling herself. In a voiceover about her feelings for Ellen, Daphne reflects, “Love is love. … If anyone should call [her love for Ellen] by that unattractive word that begins with L, I’d tear their guts out.”

Once Daphne and Gertrude are having an affair, Daphne tells Gertrude that “ever since the ma’m’selle at finishing school [whom she had a crush on], I’ve known I had Venetian tendencies.” When Gertrude looks puzzled by the phrase, Daphne tells her that it’s “Du Maurier code for the L people.”

“You mustn’t despise the L people,” Gertrude says.

Daphne answers, “All right, but I’m not one of them.”

In a climactic scene, Daphne accuses Ellen of rejecting her only because she cares about what society thinks. Ellen responds that it is Daphne who cares about what society thinks; Daphne who won’t allow herself to be happy. And there is a sense that perhaps this is true — Daphne has continued to pursue Ellen partly because she knows that she will never give in.

Daphne follows on the heels of two groundbreaking BBC miniseries that put lesbian relationships front and center: Tipping the Velvet and Fingersmith. At 90 minutes, Daphne inevitably has less time to develop complex relationships than the two Sarah Waters miniseries. It is also less overtly sexy. Kim Thomas, executive producer of Daphne, told British newspaper The Observer that she wanted to mimic the sensibility of the films of Du Maurier’s own era, such as Brief Encounter.

Unfortunately, Daphne is also less lively and entertaining than Tipping or Fingersmith, due partly to a rather limp central performance from Geraldine Somerville as Daphne. Elizabeth McGovern is radiantly beautiful and warm as Ellen (and also very funny in a scene where, distraught at having to turn Daphne down again, she sobs that perhaps she should try and take hormones to change her sexuality). Janet McTeer is instantly compelling and glamorous as Gertrude, with a strong masculine as well as a feminine energy. But in Somerville’s portrayal, Daphne frequently comes across as someone who was invited to a lot of rather fun-looking parties, only to sit at them looking tired and long-suffering.

The story is well-constructed, however, and writer Amy Jenkins does a good job of winding Daphne’s two loves together, showing the ways in which they affect and complement each other.

It is worth noting how unusual it is to see a love triangle on television that takes place entirely between women. Outside The L Word (and even inside it), drama in lesbian TV relationships is usually created by one of the women falling for a man. Although Daphne and Gertrude are both bisexual, their husbands barely figure as part of the plot. The drama is also notable for centering entirely around the sexualities of middle-aged women — something very rarely seen on television.

This fictionalized portrayal of the real-life Daphne Du Maurier’s sexuality is also worth considering in light of a tradition of biopics that have censored or edited out their subject’s queer relationships. In recent years, this trend has seemed to improve, at least for gay men; Kinsey, Alexander, Capote and Infamous all acknowledged, to some extent, their central subject’s queerness.

But these portrayals are still likely to be controversial. Michael Thornton, a writer for the conservative British newspaper The Daily Mail, wrote a piece denying that the real-life Du Maurier had any lesbian feelings, even as he quotes her referring to her “obsessions” for Ellen and Gertrude.

But Margaret Forster’s biography of Du Maurier, on which Daphne is based, makes it hard to escape the conclusion that the author had feelings for women, though the claim that she had a sexual affair with Gertrude Lawrence may be more tenuous. However, if Daphne has indeed exaggerated its real-life heroine’s queerness, then perhaps this can be seen partly as a counterbalance for all the years of biopics that would have ignored it entirely.

Daphne will premiere on Logo (with limited commercial breaks) on July 15th at 10 pm.

Lesbian Apparel and Accessories Gay All Day sweatshirt -- AE exclusive

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Back to top button