My Cousin Rachel: My Cousin Rachel (Reissue)

St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 24th November 2025.

My Cousin Rachel. Daphne du Maurier.

This was a generally popular book with the reading group, though some liked it more than others. ‘A wonderful rollercoaster ride’, and ‘a fascinating study of psychology’ were some of the comments on it. We discussed the characters of Rachel: a complex person, worldly and cultured and very much her own woman – much more than a heroine in a Gothic romance, but someone who exercised her choices and didn’t fit into the morals and mores of her time. We talked about Philip, the all-male world in which he and Ambrose lived, and how his lack of knowledge of women led him into disaster.

We asked ourselves a number of questions. How did Rachel entrap Ambrose in Italy? By their shared love of gardens, we thought, and Rachel’s skill in appealing to people’s likes and the things closest to their hearts, plus the idea that Ambrose had little more knowledge of women than Philip did, and so was easy prey. Why does Philip, as narrator, refer to Rachel as ‘cousin Rachel’, until they became lovers? We thought the answer to this was something to do with possession, and with Rachel being a relative living in his house. Did Rachel do away with herself on purpose, out of guilt and depression? Most readers thought no, one or two thought maybe yes. And what is the significance of the gallows at Four Turnings, depicted at the beginning and the end of the book? Our best answer was that this was perhaps a symbol of Philip’s guilt.

We also talked about Daphne du Maurier as an author, how skilled she is at writing from a man’s point of view, and how she often has (here and in Rebecca also) one of her characters constructing a false picture of another character – Philip’s image of Rachel is the one that he knows and loves and who lives in his house in Cornwall, but the real Rachel has other aspects to her life as well, in Italy and probably with Rainaldi. Philip has fallen in love with his own idea of Rachel, not the real one.

Although everyone enjoyed reading this book, some thought that it was merely ‘a good read’, and had no wider point to make. A good book in itself, but one that raised no further questions.

Finally, a poll on whether Rachel was guilty or innocent (of poisoning Ambrose and trying to poison Philip in order to get their money and estate), resulted in a draw: four thought yes, and four thought no.

Obviously an interesting ‘reading group book’!