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September Tide
In a Cornish house lives the widowed Stella, a woman of considerable gifts and beauty who regularly rejects proposals of marriage from her neighbour Robert Hanson. Cherry, Stella's daughter, brings home her artist husband Evan for the first time and Stella is shocked by the bohemian incompleteness of their marriage. She finds herself attracted to Evan and soon they are passionately in although much is left unspoken, Evan eventually compels Stella to admit her feelings.-3 women, 3 men
80 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
2 people are currently reading
138 people want to read
About the author
Daphne du Maurier
426 books10.2k followersDaphne du Maurier was born on 13 May 1907 at 24 Cumberland Terrace, Regent's Park, London, the middle of three daughters of prominent actor-manager Sir Gerald du Maurier and actress Muriel, née Beaumont. In many ways her life resembles a fairy tale. Born into a family with a rich artistic and historical background, her paternal grandfather was author and Punch cartoonist George du Maurier, who created the character of Svengali in the 1894 novel Trilby, and her mother was a maternal niece of journalist, author, and lecturer Comyns Beaumont. She and her sisters were indulged as a children and grew up enjoying enormous freedom from financial and parental restraint. Her elder sister, Angela du Maurier, also became a writer, and her younger sister Jeanne was a painter.
She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in Beaumont's Bystander magazine. A prestigious publishing house accepted her first novel when she was in her early twenties, and its publication brought her not only fame but the attentions of a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, whom she married.
She continued writing under her maiden name, and her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories The Birds and Don't Look Now/Not After Midnight. While Alfred Hitchcock's films based upon her novels proceeded to make her one of the best-known authors in the world, she enjoyed the life of a fairy princess in a mansion in Cornwall called Menabilly, which served as the model for Manderley in Rebecca.
Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England. Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: A Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.
While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love of fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. At an early age, she recognised that her readership was comprised principally of women, and she cultivated their loyal following through several decades by embodying their desires and dreams in her novels and short stories.
In some of her novels, however, she went beyond the technique of the formulaic romance to achieve a powerful psychological realism reflecting her intense feelings about her father, and to a lesser degree, her mother. This vision, which underlies Julius, Rebecca and The Parasites, is that of an author overwhelmed by the memory of her father's commanding presence. In Julius and The Parasites, for example, she introduces the image of a domineering but deadly father and the daring subject of incest.
In Rebecca, on the other hand, du Maurier fuses psychological realism with a sophisticated version of the Cinderella story.
She spent her youth sailing boats, travelling on the Continent with friends, and writing stories. Her family connections helped her establish her literary career, and she published some of her early work in Beaumont's Bystander magazine. A prestigious publishing house accepted her first novel when she was in her early twenties, and its publication brought her not only fame but the attentions of a handsome soldier, Major (later Lieutenant-General Sir) Frederick Browning, whom she married.
She continued writing under her maiden name, and her subsequent novels became bestsellers, earning her enormous wealth and fame. Many have been successfully adapted into films, including the novels Rebecca, Frenchman's Creek, My Cousin Rachel, and Jamaica Inn, and the short stories The Birds and Don't Look Now/Not After Midnight. While Alfred Hitchcock's films based upon her novels proceeded to make her one of the best-known authors in the world, she enjoyed the life of a fairy princess in a mansion in Cornwall called Menabilly, which served as the model for Manderley in Rebecca.
Daphne du Maurier was obsessed with the past. She intensively researched the lives of Francis and Anthony Bacon, the history of Cornwall, the Regency period, and nineteenth-century France and England. Above all, however, she was obsessed with her own family history, which she chronicled in Gerald: A Portrait, a biography of her father; The du Mauriers, a study of her family which focused on her grandfather, George du Maurier, the novelist and illustrator for Punch; The Glassblowers, a novel based upon the lives of her du Maurier ancestors; and Growing Pains, an autobiography that ignores nearly 50 years of her life in favour of the joyful and more romantic period of her youth. Daphne du Maurier can best be understood in terms of her remarkable and paradoxical family, the ghosts which haunted her life and fiction.
While contemporary writers were dealing critically with such subjects as the war, alienation, religion, poverty, Marxism, psychology and art, and experimenting with new techniques such as the stream of consciousness, du Maurier produced 'old-fashioned' novels with straightforward narratives that appealed to a popular audience's love of fantasy, adventure, sexuality and mystery. At an early age, she recognised that her readership was comprised principally of women, and she cultivated their loyal following through several decades by embodying their desires and dreams in her novels and short stories.
In some of her novels, however, she went beyond the technique of the formulaic romance to achieve a powerful psychological realism reflecting her intense feelings about her father, and to a lesser degree, her mother. This vision, which underlies Julius, Rebecca and The Parasites, is that of an author overwhelmed by the memory of her father's commanding presence. In Julius and The Parasites, for example, she introduces the image of a domineering but deadly father and the daring subject of incest.
In Rebecca, on the other hand, du Maurier fuses psychological realism with a sophisticated version of the Cinderella story.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
July 29, 2024
This is the third of du Maurier's three plays. The dialogue is well-written, perfectly paced, and sophisticated. I'm sure that when it was being produced for live audiences (1948) the play went over well. It's based on the theme that we as people cannot always choose whom we love. But we can choose how we act on it. The strength of the play is in its three dimensional fully realized characters. There are no good people or evil people, no villains or saints, only complex people each with their own appeal and value trying to do the right thing for themselves and by others.
Recommended for mature people who like to think about moral issues realistically in complicated situations.
Recommended for mature people who like to think about moral issues realistically in complicated situations.
December 17, 2012
Beautiful, simple, understated. Everything you'd expect from Daphne Du Maurier.
November 18, 2018
Stella bends over backwards to welcome her daughter and new husband of one week. She turns the attic into a studio for the famous painter and lays on a supply of whiskey for him even though it’s hard to get in the post war years.
The neighbours gossip that she always did spoil her children, but she’s not ready to be a mother-in-law. She was widowed twelve years ago and has a friend, Robert, who proposes every month - like the tides, Stella says.
Evan Davies is an ARTIST, Cherry says, so they don’t share a bedroom. When her mother queries it, Cherry says his art is number one in his life.
He’s pleased by the house and Stella’s pleased with her new ‘artistic’ addition.
They click from day one. Stella picks his favourite foods for dinner, he plays her favourite song on the piano and comments how pretty that yellow dress is on her…
He paints female nudes unless he ‘has better inspiration’. Painting the char lady, Mrs Tuckett, she chats away about how Stella was always more beautiful than her daughter and Evan agrees.
Within months he’s drinking less and painting Stella from memory, and hiding them from Cherry. He turns down an offer to work in America.
And then one night, Cherry goes to the movies with a friend, and Evan cooks dinner for Stella. A storm rolls in and the ferry is cancelled. Cherry can’t get home and will stay with a friend.
They kiss, but are interrupted by a warning about a loose dinghy. Evan is determined to rescue it and he dives in, scaring Stella. The shock wipes out their inhibitions and they spend the night together.
But in the morning, reality crashes back in. Stella decides to accept Robert’s proposal, but Evan won’t let her. Instead, he telegraphs to say he’ll take the American offer.
***
There’s a lot of tidal imagery. But what I wonder is what happens now? Will Evan be happy with Stella-lite? Will he paint as well in America? What shoals will they run aground on over family holidays or get-togethers? I don’t think Stella is going to forget it, and Evan? He did his best work in her attic studio. That may become a bigger issue. I think it’s significant that he put Stella ahead of his work.
I’m reminded, too of the movie The Mother starring Daniel Craig in a similar role. Disaster lurks… I can feel it.
The play is on BBC for a few more days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007...
I read somewhere that Du Maurier wrote the role of Stella for Gertrude Lawrence. They said she’d had an affair with Daphne’s father, but I can’t confirm that anywhere. If anything, it seems to me that it was Daphne who loved her. [we’ll never know now, eh?]
4 stars
The neighbours gossip that she always did spoil her children, but she’s not ready to be a mother-in-law. She was widowed twelve years ago and has a friend, Robert, who proposes every month - like the tides, Stella says.
Evan Davies is an ARTIST, Cherry says, so they don’t share a bedroom. When her mother queries it, Cherry says his art is number one in his life.
He’s pleased by the house and Stella’s pleased with her new ‘artistic’ addition.
They click from day one. Stella picks his favourite foods for dinner, he plays her favourite song on the piano and comments how pretty that yellow dress is on her…
He paints female nudes unless he ‘has better inspiration’. Painting the char lady, Mrs Tuckett, she chats away about how Stella was always more beautiful than her daughter and Evan agrees.
Within months he’s drinking less and painting Stella from memory, and hiding them from Cherry. He turns down an offer to work in America.
And then one night, Cherry goes to the movies with a friend, and Evan cooks dinner for Stella. A storm rolls in and the ferry is cancelled. Cherry can’t get home and will stay with a friend.
They kiss, but are interrupted by a warning about a loose dinghy. Evan is determined to rescue it and he dives in, scaring Stella. The shock wipes out their inhibitions and they spend the night together.
But in the morning, reality crashes back in. Stella decides to accept Robert’s proposal, but Evan won’t let her. Instead, he telegraphs to say he’ll take the American offer.
***
There’s a lot of tidal imagery. But what I wonder is what happens now? Will Evan be happy with Stella-lite? Will he paint as well in America? What shoals will they run aground on over family holidays or get-togethers? I don’t think Stella is going to forget it, and Evan? He did his best work in her attic studio. That may become a bigger issue. I think it’s significant that he put Stella ahead of his work.
I’m reminded, too of the movie The Mother starring Daniel Craig in a similar role. Disaster lurks… I can feel it.
The play is on BBC for a few more days.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007...
I read somewhere that Du Maurier wrote the role of Stella for Gertrude Lawrence. They said she’d had an affair with Daphne’s father, but I can’t confirm that anywhere. If anything, it seems to me that it was Daphne who loved her. [we’ll never know now, eh?]
4 stars
February 4, 2011
Stella's daughter comes home to visit, bringing her new husband and a few surprises. Stars Paula Wilcox and Alice Hart.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007k4qn
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007k4qn
December 22, 2014
Predictable but still interesting familial love triangle.
April 1, 2012
Juicy & predictable little tinpot of a love story. Though I did pick up some absolutely wizard 1950s slang.
May 28, 2019
This play was written by my favorite author, Daphne du Maurier. This is the revised edition from Mark Rayment and Samuel French publishers.
November 19, 2020
Listened. BBC Sounds.
September 23, 2024
STILL READING DAPHNE DU MAURIER. Yeah, well, anything Virginia Woolf could do ( FRESHWATER ) , Daphne du Maurier could do better ( SEPTEMBER TIDE ) ; so here DDM tried her hand at delivering a dramatic play in three acts.
Although VW held sway with her abstract, philosophical glory in the ordinary literary imagination, i. e. stream of consciousness -decipher that; DDM’s literary sensibilities were more pleasingly romantically-minded. The two women came from different backgrounds, VW seems to have had a strict clergyman for a father, DDM had an actor and theatre manager for her papa, and they lived different kinds of family and social lives, which ended up differentiating their literary works.
I feel that in this play, DDM really reeled in the big fish of very satisfying romantic love and, dare I say, delivered a lovely incident of love at first sight.
Unfortunately the dénouement played a disturbingly sour note when some old-fashioned, supposedly pre-World-War I emotional sensibilities made for unhappy protagonists all around.
Although VW held sway with her abstract, philosophical glory in the ordinary literary imagination, i. e. stream of consciousness -decipher that; DDM’s literary sensibilities were more pleasingly romantically-minded. The two women came from different backgrounds, VW seems to have had a strict clergyman for a father, DDM had an actor and theatre manager for her papa, and they lived different kinds of family and social lives, which ended up differentiating their literary works.
I feel that in this play, DDM really reeled in the big fish of very satisfying romantic love and, dare I say, delivered a lovely incident of love at first sight.
Unfortunately the dénouement played a disturbingly sour note when some old-fashioned, supposedly pre-World-War I emotional sensibilities made for unhappy protagonists all around.
May 16, 2016
I thought it was about romantic rights and "inevitable" rather than "predictable" as others have said - is it really fair to say something clearly telegraphed was predictable? The younger generation are disapproving about the older generation's obsession with sex (1950! doesn't it come in waves) but are in fact cheating themselves, and it's the man who both upholds and breaks the moral rules, leaving the women with little else but to try and save face.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews