Books: On the Road to Manderley

When the unnamed heroine of Rebecca thought she went back to Manderley again, she was dreaming, of course, about the grief-drenched mansion where she had been so scared and had acted so dumb. But there has nevertheless been a real and steady procession back to Daphne du Maurier’s literary landmark by women who know exactly how to conduct themselves. Some of the world’s most prosperous authors check in every year either at Manderley or at one of the two other historic homes on the tour: Thornfield Hall, where Jane Eyre was governess, and Wuthering Heights.

Although the book trade often inaccurately lumps the results together as “gothics,” romantic suspense stories or romantic biography would be more descriptive. Under any heading, the genre comprises one of the few boom areas in a generally depressed publishing industry. In the past year or so, sales have almost doubled. Three notable examples—Mary Stewart’s Crystal Cave, Victoria Holt’s Secret Woman and Elizabeth Goudge’s Child from the Sea —all spent a comfortable winter on the bestseller lists. For top gothics, paperback sales—the real and durable market—can run into the millions.

According to Doubleday and Fawcett, the principal publishers, the readership for such romances consists mostly of women looking for nonelectronic escape: teen agers, housewives, travelers and other solitary people. Literary reviews are rare and have little influence. What sells is the author’s name on the jacket and that illustration showing a girl and a castle.

Women’s romance was rediscovered as a really rich commercial prospect in the late ’50s when sales of straight historical novels and detective stories sagged and publishers needed a new kind of formula entertainment to promote. Today the field is dominated by Victoria Holt, the most prolific writer, and Mary Stewart, the most accomplished. Right behind come such veterans of genteel fiction as Norah Lofts, Catherine Gaskin and Phyllis Whitney, the only American in this group who has a major reputation. Elizabeth Goudge tends toward “atmosphere” and romantic biography. There are newcomers coming along—Jill Tattersall, Jane Aiken Hodge—but neither has yet had a major hit.

For the genre, the breakthrough book was Victoria Holt’s Mistress of Mellyn (1960), which sold a million copies. Though it was in itself a touchingly direct tribute to Rebecca, Mellyn has become the model for many of the new romances. The plot concerns Martha Leigh, a young gentlewoman in reduced circumstances, who comes to a vast mansion in Cornwall to care for the motherless daughter of enigmatic Connan Tre-Mellyn. Even before Martha falls reluctantly in love with Connan, she learns that his wife’s death was both scandalous and mysterious, that he is surrounded by neighbors with ambiguous motives and that there is now a child at the gatehouse that provocatively resembles his daughter. Martha becomes mistress of Mellyn, but not before she is nearly buried alive.

These days, any experienced romantic reader would greet each page like a fond landmark on a trip back home. Martha is a typical heroine: shy but proud, quick with the truth but slow to subtlety, attractive in certain lights but no raving beauty. Connan is a worthy offspring of Mr. Rochester, a weary, sardonic fellow who never gets around to explaining the only thing the heroine has to know. Romantic props abound: deliciously enigmatic dreams, shadows in windows, gossiping servants, a horse that throws the child. Even the nomenclature is classic: Alvean, Gillyflower, Celestine.

Next to a naive girl the most important prop is a house. It should be a vast, forbidding domicile replete with walled-in rooms and a name that resounds like the surf it often fronts: Manderley, Mount Mellyn, Castle Crediton.

The literary pros who construct these buildings agree that the hardest problem is getting the girl into the house for a believable reason. The classic way-introducing her as governess—is still not scorned, but it is somewhat dated and overused. Alternatively, she can be a secretary, nurse, an orphaned relation.

After the house, the general setting is vital. Anywhere in Wales or Cornwall will do, and there is choice literary real estate in Scotland and Ireland. The trend, though, is toward more exotic places. Mary Stewart has been to Greece, Austria and Lebanon in search of fresh landscape. Even Victoria Holt, who built her career on familiarity with English history, has packed her bags; her next book will be set in Australia. Phyllis Whitney is just back from Norway with practical advice about scouting locales: “Islands are easy. You do your homework before going and get introductions from people like librarians when you arrive. Cities are harder. In Istanbul, I solved the problem by concentrating on just one mosque, one covered bazaar, one small town up the Bosphorus.”

One must not suppose that all these ingredients are conjoined in cold blood. The best genre writers, like Victoria Holt and Phyllis Whitney, identify with their heroines. They also identify with their audience. It is not entirely coincidence, therefore, that like the Bronte sisters many gothic writers are products of a sequestered, lonely childhood with plenty of time for fantasy:

> Mary Stewart, nee Rainbow, 54, is a vicar’s daughter from Durham in the rugged northeast of England, who had enough narrative knack by boarding-school age to keep the other girls awake telling stories for hours after lights-out. She is the brisk, jolly image of a faculty wife; her husband is head of the geology department at Edinburgh University. In 1950, having learned she could not have children, she sat down with some foolscap on the table and Wuthering Heights in her head and began writing novels. Says she: “I probably would never have written them if I’d had babies.” At her best, her prose moves as fast as Charlotte Bronte’s, which is fast indeed.

> Phyllis Whitney, 67, can scarcely recall a time when she was not scribbling something. Her father was an itinerant shipping agent, and she spent her childhood in Japanese and Philippine hotels. To her, hair-raising suspense stories suggest home and hearth because that was usually all her mother could find to read aloud at bedtime. She has written everything: stories for Sunday-school papers and pulp magazines, juvenile and teen-age books as well as novels. She hates housework and has no hobbies, preferring to sit at the typewriter all day writing fiction or dealing with a huge correspondence. Outside, her husband, a retired businessman, cuts trails through their 100 acres of western New Jersey woodland so the grandchildren can ride in the snowmobile.

> Elizabeth Goudge, 70, has led an even quieter life. The only child of a parson, she spent her youth in two English cathedral towns, Wells and Ely. She never married, never expected her writing to become more than a pastime, and now lives serenely in a tiny 17th century house in the Thames Valley. The most lyrical of the group, she is also the least concerned with plot. Child from the Sea is her 25th novel, and she claims mildly that it will be her last. — Victoria Holt is a pseudonym, the only one in the group. Its owner is a childless London widow named Eleanor Hibbert, 64, who now spends much of her time on luxury cruises. She is incredibly prolific—more than 100 books in all—and contrives wondrously complex plots. In addition to romances, she does straight historical novels under the name Jean Plaidy.

If any of the ladies breaks the pattern slightly, it is Norah Lofts, simply because she is outspoken. Sample, on the relation between her art and life: “I’ve had two very happy marriages and before that an affair or two, and the only time I’ve seen a man on his knees, he’s been chasing a collar stud.” She is the most perceptive writer, the only one who can make a meaningful connection between her research and the dramatic situation. A grandmother at 66, she lives in Bury Saint Edmunds, the ancient market town where she was born, in a Manderley-size house whose architecture manages to combine Tudor, Queen Anne and Georgian periods. There is a Rolls in the garage, but the author insists: “Except for gin and cigarettes, I could live on a pound a week.”

All the ladies clearly prefer working to spending. Indeed, one of the real mysteries that surrounds the genre is what the authors do with incomes that can run well into six figures annually. They all feel their writing matters, and few are willing to admit they write formula fiction, let alone “women’s novels.” Says Mary Stewart: “I cannot read what you would call a woman writer.” Speaking of critical neglect, Norah Lofts says, “I feel neglected, I feel infuriated, I feel resigned—sometimes all at once. I just think it’s very wrong because it may deprive some people of the joy that a good read would give them.”

* Martha Duffy