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Anchorage and Play in Frenchman's Creek: Children, Gender, and National Identity

Abstract:In Daphne du Maurier's Frenchman's Creek children are sketchy constructions. Yet, they perform a pivotal function that positions the heroine within a maternal and essentialized feminine identity. This operates to foreclose threats to the gender dichotomy posed by the heroine's adventures and illicit sexual liaison: threats which resonate with a critical tension between the feminized cultural capital of respectability and Second World War discourses of feminine patriotism. This construction of a sexually suspect mother also illuminates the vulnerability of patrilinealism, its imbrication with the matrix of national and imperial identity and the uncertain constitution of white identity. Here, the female child simultaneously constitutes the most feared and/or the most treasured embodiment of white cultural capital.