The empty vessel first person that is equally a character. Brilliant.
Yesterday we mentioned Daphne DuMaurier’s Rebecca and The Scapegoat in light of a tale told in the first person in which the narrator has no real character, but functions instead as a stand-in for us readers, who can imagine thereby ourselves truly acting and being acted upon within the tale, experiencing its adventure, danger, and romance. But these two tales go beyond the simple tale as experience.
In both these tales, DuMaurier created empty vessel narrators whose defining character was precisely that – they were what might be called ‘deficient in personality’ (there surely is a medical term for this type of personality). This means that, while both narrators are perfect empty vessels, they also function as full literary characters, i.e., they have personalities. Those personalities just happen to be empty.
They are both also never named in their tales – even better.
In both cases it is the lack of personal development in the narrator-protagonist that causes him to be drawn into the shadow of the stronger personality that looms over the locus of the tale. And thus in both cases part of the struggle of the protagonists involves resisting this influence; part of the suspense lies in the question, ‘Will that shadowy Other completely submerge our hero?’
We can enjoy these tales as either analyses of these deficient personality protagonists, or as immersive tales.
There are differences between the two tales. In Rebecca, the nameless heroine is never confused with the first Mrs deWinter; no one, she fears could ever admire her who knew the mistress of Manderley before her. And Rebecca is dead; it is her specter that haunts the stage; the challenge of the heroine is to take control over the household on her own terms, in her own name, without feeling daunted by that personality in the grand portrait. But in The Scapegoat the nameless hero is forced to assume the name of his double in the provincial French household. This is far more in keeping with the model of Double Star and The Prisoner of Zenda we discussed yesterday. In the course of discovering the glass blowing business and the relations within the château, the hero finds that Jacques is not a very nice fellow at all, and sets out to do his best to undermine and undo the plans and former actions of the man who has thrust his identity upon our English schoolmaster nonentity. And Jacques is alive, and may return at any time – indeed he does return, and the suspense then turns on whether the narrator’s plans for the business and ménage will hold up, or whether Jacques will sell the business and betray his family, as he had intended before meeting the narrator and, struck with their uncommon likeness, forced upon him the switch in identities.
The Scapegoat is thus a more interesting tale from this point of view. But it lacks much suspense, since life in the château is something of a welcome vacation to the hero, and he is not committed to anything he does there; commitment and engagement only gradually overtake him. His is a tale of a man of mild tastes and middle age – the storm and stress of youth are long behind him. Rebecca on the other hand holds a high level of storm and stress, for it is a young woman’s tale, and involves her very real hopes and fears for a fulfilling life – a life she has not yet lived. It also engages us on a much deeper, more primal level: the level of the fairy tale and Bildungsroman.
— asotir
(Composed 10 May 2010 on keyboard)
