Plot Summary
The House on the Strand
Daphne du Maurier
The House on the Strand
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1969
Plot Summary
The House on the Strand is a 1969 gothic novel by English author and playwright Daphne du Maurier. The novel is similar to du Maurier’s other works in that its characters follow unorthodox narrative forms using their abilities to directly perceive, but not directly interact with, history. Influenced by contemporary trends in psychoanalysis and classic works such as Dante’s Divine Comedy, it is told from the perspective of Dick Young, who trials a drug that sends him back in time to Cornwall in the 1300s. Suddenly recontextualizing history, his conception of the past and present become indistinct, inhabiting one another.
The novel begins in Kilmarth in the late 1960s, near a town called Tywardreath, whose English translation is the titular phrase “House on the Strand.” Young quits his job, taking up an offer to live on an ancient estate owned by Magnus Lane, a friend from his time in university who now works in London as a physicist and biologist. There, Magnus pressures him to participate in a drug trial as a subject. Young correctly suspects that Magnus developed the drug in secret and therefore cannot test it publicly. When he consumes the drug, Young discovers that he can suddenly see and enter an older landscape that emerges phantom-like around him. This landscape belongs to the early 1300s. He is quickly enamored by the stark contrast of this historically distant world to his modern one. He becomes interested in Roger who lives in Kilmarth and works as Sir Henry Champernoune’s steward. Roger is in love with Isolda who is married to Sir Oliver Carminowe. Isolda carries out her own infidelity with Sir Otto Bodrugan, Sir Henry Champernoune’s brother-in-law. Oliver discovers Bodrugan’s actions and has his men kill him.
Young visits the past universe multiple times, returning to the narrative of Roger and Isolda. He finds it successively harder to reintegrate into the present day each time he leaves. Moreover, he is frustrated with being unable to intervene in the lives of the two as he postulates how they might better their lives. He tries to intervene several times but is penalized with a bout of nausea that ejects him to the present. He also finds that his physical participation in the past world does not protect him against the physical obstacles of the present.
Eventually, Young’s American wife, Vita, grows concerned by his erratic behavior and takes her children to see him in Cornwall. Young rebuffs his wife as well as the job she has found for him in America, becoming increasingly bent on going to the past. Magnus resolves to go with him but dies in a strange train accident. Young is the only one who knows that Magnus inadvertently walked into the train’s path while using the drug.
Young returns again to the fourteenth century and tries to protect Isolda from being attacked by Joanna, Sir Henry’s widow. As a result, he hurts Vita, having approached her in the present reality. Vita flees with her boys; Young talks to a doctor who helps relieve his addictive symptoms. He explains the mental effects of the drug to the doctor, who tells him that it is extremely dangerous. Disregarding his warning, Young decides to take the one remaining dose of the drug.
In his final visit to the past, Young enters the year 1349, in the midst of the Black Death that decimated Europe’s population. Roger, on his deathbed from the plague, finally announces his love for Isolda. It is revealed that Isolda died from a lethal drug given to her by Roger, preferring it to dying of the Black Death. Young does not want to return to reality; as the drug wears off, he finds he is unable to fully return to either. The story ends as he tries to use a telephone, but his hand seems to refuse to grasp it.
The House on the Strand is pervaded by a sense of existential paralysis as its protagonist feels the emotional effects of compulsion to escape reality. Du Maurier goes a step further, extending his learned inability to grasp reality literally into the physical world. Its ambiguous ending suggests that it is arbitrary whether Young’s consequences are fantastical or biological: he has, in either case, relinquished reality by turning away to a pharmacological escape.
The novel begins in Kilmarth in the late 1960s, near a town called Tywardreath, whose English translation is the titular phrase “House on the Strand.” Young quits his job, taking up an offer to live on an ancient estate owned by Magnus Lane, a friend from his time in university who now works in London as a physicist and biologist. There, Magnus pressures him to participate in a drug trial as a subject. Young correctly suspects that Magnus developed the drug in secret and therefore cannot test it publicly. When he consumes the drug, Young discovers that he can suddenly see and enter an older landscape that emerges phantom-like around him. This landscape belongs to the early 1300s. He is quickly enamored by the stark contrast of this historically distant world to his modern one. He becomes interested in Roger who lives in Kilmarth and works as Sir Henry Champernoune’s steward. Roger is in love with Isolda who is married to Sir Oliver Carminowe. Isolda carries out her own infidelity with Sir Otto Bodrugan, Sir Henry Champernoune’s brother-in-law. Oliver discovers Bodrugan’s actions and has his men kill him.
Young visits the past universe multiple times, returning to the narrative of Roger and Isolda. He finds it successively harder to reintegrate into the present day each time he leaves. Moreover, he is frustrated with being unable to intervene in the lives of the two as he postulates how they might better their lives. He tries to intervene several times but is penalized with a bout of nausea that ejects him to the present. He also finds that his physical participation in the past world does not protect him against the physical obstacles of the present.
Eventually, Young’s American wife, Vita, grows concerned by his erratic behavior and takes her children to see him in Cornwall. Young rebuffs his wife as well as the job she has found for him in America, becoming increasingly bent on going to the past. Magnus resolves to go with him but dies in a strange train accident. Young is the only one who knows that Magnus inadvertently walked into the train’s path while using the drug.
Young returns again to the fourteenth century and tries to protect Isolda from being attacked by Joanna, Sir Henry’s widow. As a result, he hurts Vita, having approached her in the present reality. Vita flees with her boys; Young talks to a doctor who helps relieve his addictive symptoms. He explains the mental effects of the drug to the doctor, who tells him that it is extremely dangerous. Disregarding his warning, Young decides to take the one remaining dose of the drug.
In his final visit to the past, Young enters the year 1349, in the midst of the Black Death that decimated Europe’s population. Roger, on his deathbed from the plague, finally announces his love for Isolda. It is revealed that Isolda died from a lethal drug given to her by Roger, preferring it to dying of the Black Death. Young does not want to return to reality; as the drug wears off, he finds he is unable to fully return to either. The story ends as he tries to use a telephone, but his hand seems to refuse to grasp it.
The House on the Strand is pervaded by a sense of existential paralysis as its protagonist feels the emotional effects of compulsion to escape reality. Du Maurier goes a step further, extending his learned inability to grasp reality literally into the physical world. Its ambiguous ending suggests that it is arbitrary whether Young’s consequences are fantastical or biological: he has, in either case, relinquished reality by turning away to a pharmacological escape.