Opening the Pathway:

Plot Management and the Pivotal Seventh Character

in Daphne Du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now”

(8, 120 words, including 145-word abstract)

Terence Patrick Murphy

Department of English

College of Liberal Arts

Yonsei University

Seoul, Republic of Korea

120-749

Dept of English Tel. 82-2-2123-2300

Dept of English Fax: 82-02-392-0275

tmurphy@yonsei.ac.kr

Home Tel. 82-2-391-4307 (with answering machine)

Mobile Phone: 010-7760-4307

July 2008

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Abstract

How do writers of narrative fiction integrate local instances of situational discrepancy

with the more global concerns that arise from the attempt to create engaging and

ultimately satisfying plots? If tendentious situation monitoring is used as a local strategy

to enable the correct reading of potentially ambiguous conversational exchange, third-

person narrators use plot management to steer the reader through situational

discrepancies that are crucial to the outcome of the plot. The link between these two

narrative tasks is provided by the concept of the skeleton Propp structure, which serves

to constrain the number of possible arrangements and re-arrangements of the character

functions within the narrative fiction. By linking the function of situational discrepancy

in narrative fiction to that the overall management of the plot, this essay will examine

how Daphne du Maurier’s short story of shock and surprise, “Don’t Look Now” works.

Keywords: marked order narrative; open plot pathway; pivotal seventh character; the

principle of natural hierarchy; skeleton Propp structure; situational discrepancy; plot

management.

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Introduction

Early in Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now” (1971), the reader is induced

to think that John, an English tourist on vacation in Venice with his wife, has seen a

little girl, perhaps being chased. At the very end of the narrative fiction, however, while

being stabbed to death, the reader is confronted with the shocking realization of John’s

terrible mistake. That little girl was not in fact a little girl at all—but rather a

nightmarish old dwarf woman, the murderer responsible for a string of vicious killings

in the fabled Italian city. This deeply shocking reversal of fortune for the main character

raises a central question for critics interested in exploring the intersection between

stylistic investigation and plot structure. How do writers integrate the localized

instances of textual discrepancy—such as John’s belief in the reality of a little girl being

pursued—with the more global concerns that arise from the attempt to create engaging

and ultimately satisfying plots? This issue is of abiding significance in “Don’t Look

Now” because the narrator’s use of an instance of character focalization causes readers

to share John’s mistaken belief—even while the narrator provides enough textual

signals to suggest that the character’s perception of this situation might be flawed. How

does the narrator succeed in doing this, without raising the reader’s suspicion? How

then does the narrator overturn this initial false impression, surprising or shocking her

reader with her unexpected ending in a way that does not lead to dissatisfaction?

The textual linguistic concepts of situation monitoring and management provide

the means to explore how Daphne du Maurier is able to integrate local instances of

narrative discrepancy with the global constraints imposed by the creation of an

aesthetically satisfying plot. According to Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressler,

situation monitoring refers to the narrator’s description of a fictional situation in terms

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of the available evidence. Management, on the other hand, is a form of discourse action

utilized when the writer is attempting to steer the description of this situation toward

some fundamental goal (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 125). If tendentious

situation monitoring is utilized as a local strategy to facilitate the reader’s understanding

of potentially ambiguous conversational exchange (Murphy 2005b), third-person

narrators use plot management to steer the reader through situational discrepancies that

are crucial to the eventual outcome of the plot. The link between these two narrative

tasks is provided by the concept of the skeleton Propp structure, which serves to

constrain the number of arrangements and possible re-arrangements of the character

functions in the narrative fiction. By linking together the concepts of situational

discrepancy and plot management, this essay will attempt to explain how Daphne du

Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now” works.

Chronological and Marked Order Narratives

The orthodox position on the relationship between story and discourse makes a

distinction between the ideal representation of a set of events in chronological order and

the actual representation of these events in the form of narrative discourse. As Jonathan

Culler suggests, the concept of story is viewed as “a sequence of actions or events,

conceived as independent of their manifestation in discourse”, while the concept of

discourse refers to the “discursive presentation or narration of events” (Culler 1981:

170) This position blurs the possibility of a distinction between an ideal representation

of story sequences that are chronological and those that exhibit a marked order (cf.

Genette 1972: 25-29; Chatman 1982: 43-48; Bal 1985: 79-99; Abbott 2007: 40-41;

Bridgeman 2007: 53-54). Defenders of the orthodox position tend to reply by denying

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that this distinction is real at the level of discourse. They suggest that no truly

chronological narratives exist because any such discursive narrative will inevitably

contain some clause sequencing in non-chronological order. This position contains an

element of truth. For, if the presence of such local non-chronological sequencing were

decisive, it is clear that the orthodox position would be right. Even a romance as

ordinary as Cinderella flouts, if only occasionally, a strict chronological clause order.

The issue of what constitutes a chronological narrative, however, cannot be decided by

pointing to such discrepant sequencing. Instead, what constitutes the real division

between chronological and marked order narratives is manifest only at the level of the

plot’s global structure. At this level, chronological narratives are stories about a

character who, lacking something important, sets off on a journey to find it (Propp

1968: 35; Murphy 2004; Murphy 2005a; Murphy 2008); marked order narratives are

stories about a character who attempts to comprehend a past act of villainy (Propp 1968

30-35; Culler 1980: 172-173; Pyrhönen 2007: 109; Murphy 2008). The best examples

of chronological narratives are romances; detective fiction and Gothic horror are the

major examples of marked order fiction. Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), for

example, is a chronologically ordinary tale of a woman, Elizabeth Bennett, who lacks a

husband; Matthew Lewis’s marked order narrative The Monk (1796) is a tale of a

woman, Antonia, who must ward off the advances of a Monk who has secretly made a

pact with the Devil.

In neo-Proppian analysis, chronological narratives may be said to adhere to the

basic skeleton Propp structure outlined by Vladimir Propp in his Morphology of the

Folktale (1968: 26-65). They consist of eight characters, typically introduced in the

following order: the Father, the Hero, the Villain, the Dispatcher, the Donor, the Helper,

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the False Hero and the Prince. In contrast, marked order narratives consist of seven

characters, typically introduced in the following order: the Father, the Reluctant Hero,

the Good Advisor, the Bad Dispatcher, the Information Donor, the Accidental Helper

and the Murderous False Hero. The pivotal distinction between the two types of

narratives relates to the execution of the eighth function. In chronological narratives, the

pivotal eighth function turns on the revelation of the Hero’s lack of or desire for

something. In contrast, in marked narratives, the pivotal eight function turns on the

Hero’s sudden feelings of suspicion regarding a past act of villainy (Propp 1968;

Murphy 2008).

Table 1 suggests that chronological and marked order narratives exhibit eight major

Table 1: Unmarked and Marked Skeleton Propp Structures

Chronological Narrative Marked Narrative

1. The Father 1. The Father

2. The Enthusiastic

Heroine

2. The Reluctant

Heroine

3. The Bad Villain 3. The Good Advisor

4. The Good Dispatcher 4. The Bad Dispatcher

5. The Gift Donor 5. The Information

Donor

6. The Helper 6. The Accidental Helper

7. The False Hero 7. The Murderous False

Hero

8. The Prince

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differences. A first difference relates to the Initial Situation at the tale’s commencement.

In chronological narratives, as Propp suggests, the Initial Situation is not a function

(Propp 1968: 25). In marked order narratives, however, it is. When the story begins, an

act of villainy has already taken place (Murphy 2008). A second difference relates to the

number of characters. Chronological narratives contain eight participant functions. Due

to the doubling-up or what Propp calls the “combination” of certain of these functions

(Propp 1968: 81), however, the number of characters may be as few as five. Examples

of such doubling-up include the Heroine carrying out the function of the Helper; the

Villain carrying out the function of the False Hero; and the Dispatcher carrying out the

function of the Prince. In contrast, marked order narratives contain seven participant

functions, and the number of characters may be as few as four. In marked order

narratives, the doubling-up includes the Heroine carrying out the function of the Helper,

and the Villain carrying out both the Dispatcher and the False Hero functions. The most

significant point is that marked order narratives contain one less character than

chronological narratives. Due to the absence of the Prince or Princess, marked order

narratives are either irresolute or catastrophic, depending on whether the Hero or

Heroine chooses to turn back from impending disaster or not. A third major difference

relates to the function of the Hero. In chronological narratives, the Hero is a person who

desires something and goes out in search of it. As a result, the basic disposition of the

Hero is one of enthusiastic desire for undertaking the journey. By not turning back, the

Hero can hope to get what he or she wants. In contrast, in marked order narratives, the

Hero does not lack anything. The basic disposition of the Hero is one of reluctance, fear

and suspicion about the journey. This reluctance is not misplaced. By turning back, the

Hero may hope to save him or herself from disaster. A fourth difference relates to the

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function of the third character. In chronological narratives, the third function is carried

out by the Villain; in marked order narratives, it is carried out by an Advisor. The

distinction is vital. In chronological narratives, the Heroine must accept or reject the

reconnaissance of a Villain who appears to be good. In marked order narratives, the

Heroine must accept or reject information from an Advisor who appears to be bad. It

seems likely that the uncertainty the reader experiences when confronted with the

entrance of the Advisor in marked order narratives is partially the upshot of the fact that

this good character occupies the same position as that of the bad character of the Villain

in chronological narratives. In either case, the default option is for the Hero to make the

wrong choice, a decision which helps to set the story in motion. This bad choice is

overcome at what Propp calls the story’s “peak” (Propp 1968: 53). In chronological

narratives, the bad choice is overcome when the Hero’s lack is liquidated (Lüthi 1982:

130). In marked narratives, the bad choice is overcome at the moment the villain’s true

nature is definitively revealed. In Cinderella, the Heroine lacks suitable attire to go to

the Prince’s ball; the peak of the narrative occurs when Cinderella in her Godmother-

donated clothes is admired by all the guests at the ball, including the Prince. In The

Robber Bridegroom, the Heroine suspects the intentions of her marriage suitor; the peak

of the narrative occurs when the Heroine, who has been warned about her would-be

husband, secretly witnesses the Robber Bridegroom and his cronies murder a young

woman. A fifth major difference relates to the function of the Donor. In chronological

narratives, the donated gift takes the form of an exchange of goods. In Cinderella, for

example, the gift is the fine dress and magnificent equipage that allows the Heroine to

go to the ball. In marked order narratives, the gift takes the form of an exchange of

information about certain villainous events in the past. In The Robber Bridegroom, for

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example, the Old Woman provides true information about the villainous past of the

Reluctant Heroine’s prospective marriage partner. A sixth major difference relates to the

function of the Helper, the character who, according to Propp, spatially transfers the

Hero, liquidates the lack, solves the difficult task or transfigures the Hero (Propp 1968:

79). In Cinderella, the Helper is a composite participant. The Fairy Godmother initiates

this function by donating the fine clothes that Cinderella wears to the ball; but when

Cinderella tries on the lost glass slipper in competition with the other court ladies for the

hand of the Prince, she does this herself, without assistance. In The Robber Bridegroom,

the Helper is also a composite participant. While hidden in the lair of the Robber

Bridegroom, the Reluctant Heroine witnesses the murder of a Young Girl. In order to

steal her ring, one of the Robber Bridegroom’s cronies cuts off the Young Girl’s finger,

which then falls from the table and rolls into the lap of the Reluctant Heroine. It is this

severed finger that the Heroine produces at the wedding ceremony in order to expose

the villainous character of the Robber Bridegroom. What the difference between the

glass slipper and the severed finger appears to suggest is that the assistance offered by

the Helper in marked order narratives is accidental. The seventh major difference relates

to the function of the False Hero. In chronological narratives, the Hero competes with a

False Hero for a suitable marriage partner. Chronological narratives like Cinderella are

stories about romantic competition. In marked order narratives like The Robber

Bridegroom, however, the Reluctant Hero inadvertently becomes involved in a life-or-

death struggle with a Murderous False Hero, in which victory consists exclusively in

staying alive. The end of the marked order narrative is therefore either irresolute or

catastrophic, depending on whether the Hero manages to do this or not. The eight major

difference is also related to this life-and-death struggle. Chronological narratives end

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with a wedding; marked order narratives do not. When the Reluctant Hero defeats the

False Hero, marked order narratives end with punishment alone. When the False Hero

defeats the Reluctant Hero, they end in catastrophe for everyone.

“Don’t Look Now”: A Marked Order Narrative

Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now” is a long short story about John and

Laura, a married couple who go on vacation to Venice in order to try to forget the

unfortunate death of one of their two children, a young girl named Christine. While

there, they encounter two mysterious Scottish twin sisters, one of whom is blind and

apparently clairvoyant. While together in the woman’s toilet, the non-clairvoyant sister

tells Laura that they should be happy because she is able to see that Christine is with

them. But she also warns the couple that her blind sister thinks that John and Laura

should leave Venice immediately because they are in danger. While Laura takes

comfort in the idea that Christine is safe, John openly scoffs at the news and determines

to shield his wife from any further contact with the twins. Not long afterwards, while

temporarily isolated from Laura, John catches a momentary glimpse of an enigmatic

figure whom he believes to be a young girl, perhaps being pursued:

John hesitated, his eye caught by a small figure which suddenly crept from a cellar

entrance below one of the opposite houses, and then jumped into a narrow boat

below. It was a child, a little girl—she couldn’t have been more than five or six—

wearing a short coat over her minute skirt, a pixie hood covering her head. There

were four boats moored, line upon line, and she proceeded to jump from one to the

other with surprising agility, intent, it would seem, upon escape. (19)

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Upon returning to their hotel that night, John and Laura receive a telegram from Mr Hill,

the headmaster at their son’s boarding school. The telegram is to inform them that

Johnnie, their other child, has fallen sick, and urges them to return to England.

Believing that Christine’s mysterious message is actually a warning about their son’s

sudden illness, Laura convinces John that they should leave Venice as soon as possible.

The next morning, they receive a phone call from the Hills telling them that Johnnie’s

situation is somewhat complicated, and Laura determines to leave Venice immediately

alone by plane, with John following afterwards. Within an hour or so, the hotel porter

has booked her aboard a charter flight, and she is gone. Later that same afternoon, as he

is attempting to leave, John sees what he believes to be his wife together with the two

Scottish sisters on a vaporetto apparently returning to Venice again. This causes John to

turn back also, only to discover, upon his return to the hotel, that no one at the hotel has

seen either his wife or the sisters anywhere. His suspicions renewed, John accidently

finds a police station and decides to go in to report an apparent kidnapping. While

waiting, John falls into conversation with an Englishman who tells him of a string of

vicious murders that have been taking place in the city. After returning to his hotel, John

phones England to find out how Johnnie is doing. Much to his surprise, he discovers

that his wife has returned home safely and that Johnnie’s appendix operation has been a

success. Meanwhile, the police arrive at John’s hotel to tell him that they have located

the twins and ask him to accompany them to the police station. Not having much choice,

John goes along in order to apologize for causing the twins trouble. When John explains

to them about his image of his wife together with them on the vaporetto, the non-

clairvoyant twin tells him that they believe him—but insist that this event must be a

psychic vision of the future. This is because, according to them, John has psychic

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powers that he has not yet acknowledged. Still sceptical, John decides to accompany

them home to their pensione to ensure they arrive safely. On the way back, however, the

psychic twin goes into a trance and cries out: “the child … I can see the child…” (du

Maurier 1971: 52). After the blind sister is once again calm, her sibling suggests that

John leave since there is little more that he can do to help, and he does so, wandering

off in the general direction of his hotel. All of a sudden, John catches sight of the

enigmatic figure of the little girl being pursued by a strange man. In an effort to save her

from possible danger, John follows her into a narrow alley. At the last minute, the small

figure turns to face him, and to his horror John discovers that he has made a terrible

mistake:

The child struggled to her feet and stood before him, the pixie-hood falling from her

head on to the floor. He stared at her, incredulity turning to horror, to fear. It was

not a child at all but a little thick-set woman-dwarf, about three feet high, with a

great square adult head too big for her body, grey locks hanging shoulder-length,

and she wasn’t sobbing any more, she was grinning at him, nodding her head up

and down. (du Maurier 1971: 55)

As he realizes too late that the vision of his wife and the two sisters is indeed a psychic

image of Venice after his own death, in which the threesome journey to Venice together

“for a sad purpose”, the old woman stabs John to death, while the police hammer in

vain on the locked door of the lair of the dwarfish old woman, with John’s final

thoughts being: “What a bloody silly way to die!” (du Maurier 1971: 55).

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Narrative Defaults and Plot Management

As Robert de Beaugrande and Wolfgang Dressler suggest, the default

assumption for the narrator’s situation monitoring is the simple description of the

available evidence. What this means is that when situation monitoring is being carried

out, the reader believes the narrator has taken up the role of reliable witness in noticing

some unexpected object in order to make it the topic of the discourse (de Beaugrande

and Dressler 1981: 164). Ordinary situation monitoring thus involves the assumption

that all unmentioned objects in the situation are expected and unworthy of comment.

This assumption is enormously time-saving and helps to explain how the narrator in

Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist can describe a typical conversational exchange in the

following manner:

'I suppose yer the new boy, ain't yer?' said the voice through the key-hole.

'Yes, sir,' replied Oliver. (Dickens 1993: 42)

In this scene, the majority of the work of comprehension is performed by the reader. It

is the reader who attaches “the voice” to a human presence and “the keyhole” to a

door—as well as these two things to a completely imagined human reality. For his part,

the narrator has confined himself to a simple report of the direct speech of the two

characters, coupled to a minimal monitoring of the unusual or changing aspects of the

situation. By highlighting Noah Claypole’s willingness to engage the unknown Oliver

in conversation on the far side of a door, the narrator is counting on the reader to draw

certain negative assumptions about the owner of this temporarily disembodied voice.

The convention of monitoring only what is unusual or changing is enormously

productive in advancing the major topic of any narrative discourse with a minimum

amount of effort.

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In marked order narratives, however, there are key moments when the narrator

departs from the default assumption requiring situations to be described in this manner.

In other words, instead of taking situational responsibility for what is happening, the

narrator allows one of the characters to step forward as an unreliable witness. In this

way, the writer suppresses the discrepancy that would otherwise arise from the fact that

the narrator and unreliable witness have “opposed notions about what is going on” (de

Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 165). The narrator does this by carrying out a

significant form of plot management: the unreliable witness is allowed to perceive

someone or something that is not actually there or to misinterpret the nature of someone

or something that is. In “Don’t Look Now”, for example, the narrator fails to provide a

“reasonably unmediated account” of the initial sighting of the enigmatic figure of the

little girl, using an instance of character focalization by which John is allowed to step

forward as an unreliable witness instead (de Beaugrande and Dressler 1981: 163; Hough

1970: 204; Leech and Short 1981: 334). In doing this, the narrator avoids the accusation

that she has conveyed false information to her reader by attributing responsibility for the

perceptualization of the enigmatic figure to John (cf. Grice 1978). In this way, the

reader is waylaid by the passage into accepting something that the narrator ultimately

knows to be false.

In certain marked order fictions, then, some narrative situations are presented in

which discrepancies are incapable of immediate, accurate resolution. But exactly how is

this done? How does the narrator ensure that the reader misreads the passage in the

required manner? The answer involves an understanding of the discourse function of

what I call the Principle of Natural Hierarchy. The Principle of Natural Hierarchy states

that in well-organized texts, the important information in any description should be

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presented in the main clauses, while the unimportant information should be presented in

the subordinate clauses. In badly organized texts, this Principle is flouted through the

inadvertent presentation of unimportant information in the main clauses and the

inadvertent presentation of important information in the subordinate clauses. Naturally,

marked order fictions are not badly organized in the manner of an incoherent text, but

they may, and often do, contain discrepancies. The major difference between a

genuinely incoherent text and a well-organized marked order narrative is that the former

offer discrepancies that are incapable of successful resolution, while the latter

eventually resolve them. What this means is that in successful marked order narratives,

the reader is able to resolve the discrepancy retrospectively, sometimes by consulting

the passages that contain the relevant wording again in order to configure the plot in the

appropriate manner.

In the key passage of Daphne du Maurier’s “Don’t Look Now”, the reader is

presented with the first of the story’s two central mysteries:

John hesitated, his eye caught by a small figure which suddenly crept from a cellar

entrance below one of the opposite houses, and then jumped into a narrow boat

below. It was a child, a little girl—she couldn’t have been more than five or six—

wearing a short coat over her minute skirt, a pixie hood covering her head. There

were four boats moored, line upon line, and she proceeded to jump from one to the

other with surprising agility, intent, it would seem, upon escape. (du Maurier 1971:

19)

Who is this little girl? The initial textual description does not provide for an

immediately clear answer. Instead, what is provided is a chain of cataphoric co-

reference that offers a number of semantically-related definite descriptions: “a small

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figure … a child … a little girl ... she… she”. Beginning with the second sentence, the

major form of voice style utilized is the monitored thought of the central character. In

consequence, it is John in his temporary role as unreliable witness who is made

responsible for the formulation of the most definitive description of the “small figure”:

“a child, a little girl—she couldn’t have been more five or six”. In other words, instead

of the narrator offering a continuous monitoring of the situation, the narrator has begun

to present John’s perception of the situation instead. Meanwhile, the discrepant

elements of the description are deliberately freighted with attributional weight to avoid

the raising of the reader’s suspicion: “a short coat over her minute skirt, a pixie hood

covering her head”. Here, the element that will ultimately prove to be the most

significant (“her head”) has been shunted to the very end, behind a chain of three other

noun groups with similarly worded main attributes suggesting diminutiveness (“a short

coat ... her minute skirt ... a pixie hood”). The net effect is to reinforce John’s perception

of the enigmatic figure’s child-like qualities. At the same time, the two elements of the

description that jar with John’s mistaken interpretation—the manner in which the figure

initially creeps into view from below a cellar entrance and her “surprising agility”—are

both positioned within subordinate clausal constructions. The narrator thus succeeds in

making the mystery of a little girl seemingly intent on flight—rather than John’s

uncertainty about what he has seen—the topic of the passage. This set of key stylistic

choices causes the unsuspecting reader to believe that what they have been offered is an

unmediated description of John’s sight of an agile little girl, perhaps being pursued.

These stylistic choices are reinforced by the mental wall in the minds of most readers

separating the typical behaviour of children from the repeated act of murder.

“Don’t Look Now” is a marked order narrative about villainy; it is not a

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chronologically ordinary narrative about someone who lacks something. However,

when readers begin reading the story’s first section, this is not immediately obvious.

While the story begins with the couple sitting together in a cafe in Venice, the narrator

does not offer a description of who these people are or what they look like. Instead, the

story begins in a marked manner with a directly quoted speech exchange between

husband and wife. This serves to indicate in a subtle manner that the couple may have

divergent interests and may even serve different functions in the story. Shortly thereafter,

the narrator begins tracking John’s monitored thought exclusively in order to indicate

his concern about Laura’s inability to get over the memory of her dead daughter,

Christine.

Initially, “Don’t Look Now” may resemble for some readers a chronological

story in which the Heroine Laura lacks something. However, when the two sisters

almost immediately tell the married couple that they should not worry because Christine

is with them, John’s wife appears satisfied, apparently trusting this unexpected news. In

the terms of neo-Proppian analysis, therefore, the first participant (Christine) has not

absented herself; and Laura’s desire cannot serve as the motivation for the story’s

continuation. Balanced against this is the possibility that this story is really about John.

The story has begun to track John’s fear that Laura will not be able to get over the death

of Christine, and the arrival of the Villains (the twin sisters) appears set to disturb the

process of his wife’s fragile recovery. As the first section is about to conclude, the

reader is faced with two possible plot structures, neither of which has become dominant:

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Not long after the sisters inform Laura that Christine is sitting with them, John,

physically temporarily separated from his wife for the first time, catches a glimpse of

the enigmatic figure of the little girl—and decides not to tell Laura. Upon their return to

the hotel together, the couple then discovers that a telegram from the Hills in England

has arrived. The first section of the story thus contains two significant plot events. The

first is the story’s execution of the real Dispatcher function, with John’s (but not

Laura’s) initial sight of the enigmatic figure, an event that will eventually send John on

the journey to his death; the second is the execution of a False Dispatcher function, with

the telegram from Mr Hill that will soon send Laura, but not John, on a trip back to

England.

When the second section of “Don’t Look Now” begins, Laura and John are

planning to leave Venice together. At this point, however, they receive a sudden

telephone call from the Hills, following on from the previous telegram, telling them that

the doctor may have to operate quickly on Johnnie because the situation with his

appendix has become more serious. Laura decides on the spot to go on ahead of John in

order that she can be with their child as soon as possible. Their plan is for John to take

Table 2: The Ambiguities of Plot Structure in the First Section of

“Don’t Look Now”

Laura’s Story

(Chronologically Ordinary

Narrative)

John’s Story

(Marked Order Narrative)

1. Christine 1. Christine

2. Laura 2. John

3. The Twin Sisters

(Advisors)

3. The Twin Sisters

(Villains)

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the ferry to Milan, following on by train with their car to England the next day. On the

ferry journey leaving Venice, however, John catches sight of something extraordinary:

Another ferry was heading downstream to pass them, filled with passengers, and for

a brief foolish moment he wished he could change places, be amongst the happy

tourists bound for Venice and all he had left behind him. Then he saw her. Laura, in

her scarlet coat, the twin sisters by her side, the active sister with her hand on

Laura’s arm, talking earnestly, and Laura herself, her hair blowing in the wind,

gesticulating, on her face a look of distress. (du Maurier 1971: 31-32)

This passage serves to introduce the second of the two mysteries in “Don’t Look Now”:

Why has Laura decided to return unannounced with the twin sisters to Venice? As a plot

event, the sighting of Laura and the twin sisters coming back to Venice is enough to

overturn John’s desire to leave immediately. From this point on, John’s goal becomes

that of finding his wife—or, failing this, of finding the twin sisters who are perhaps

responsible for her kidnapping. This event serves to set up two possible arrangements of

the skeleton Propp structure of John’s Venetian narrative. Using the first Propp structure,

John plays the role of the Hero who lacks something: his wife. Since his wife in truth is

not in Venice, this first Propp structure is an illusion.

In the second Propp structure, John is the Reluctant Bride, who has not yet

recognized that he must leave Venice because his life is in danger. The execution of the

Donor function thus takes advantage of two of the reader’s default settings for the

processing of narrative fiction. The first default setting is that of information processing.

In “Don’t Look Now”, the execution of the Donor function flouts the Principle of

Natural Hierarchy: the really important information comes from a chance encounter

with someone who lacks investigative credentials. The second default setting is that of

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character function. Here, the reader is misled by the False Donor/Real Donor dichotomy

because he or she tends to distrust or downplay good information when it comes from

an apparently bad character. Because the reader is principally concerned with John’s

search for information from the police about his missing wife, he or she pays less

attention to information from a somewhat disreputable English tourist about an

unknown murderer somewhere in Venice:

“Don’t tell me you’ve not heard about it?” The man stared at him in surprise.

“Venice has talked of nothing else. It’s been in all the papers, on the radio, and even

in the English papers. A grizzly business. One woman found with her throat slit last

week—a tourist too—and some old chap discovered with the same sort of knife

wound this morning, They seem to think it must be a maniac, because there doesn’t

seem to be any motive. Nasty thing to happen in Venice in the tourist season.” (du

Maurier 1971: 39)

Upon returning to the hotel, John decides to phone England and discovers that his wife

has returned safely and that his son is recuperating successfully. The police then arrive

at his hotel to let him know that they have succeeded in locating the twins. John feels

compelled to go with the police in order to apologize to the twins for accusing them of

being criminals, and they inform him that his sighting of his wife on the vaporetto

comes from the future. John then decides to leave:

“Well, I must be off,” he said. “Goodnight, and apologies, once again, for all that

has happened this evening.” He shook hands with the first sister, then turned to her

blind twin. “I hope,” he said, “that you are not too tired.”

The sightless eyes were disconcerting. She held his hand fast and would not let it go.

“the child,” she said, speaking in an odd staccato voice, “the child … I can see the

21

child…” and then, to his dismay, a bead of froth appeared at the corner of her mouth,

her head jerked back, and she half-collapsed in her sister’s arms. (du Maurier 1971:

52)

As she begins to succeed in the difficult task of soothing her agitated sibling, the non-

clairvoyant sister urges John to leave. Accepting what she says, John wanders off in the

general direction of his hotel. John’s illusory lack and its plot consequences have now

been liquidated. As a consequence, the story needs a goal to replace the misguided

search for Laura. It is at this point that the enigmatic figure comes into sight once again.

The ambiguous words of the blind sister first serve to reactivate this possibility: “the

child … I can see the child…”. Because the sister’s words can refer equally well to

Christine or the enigmatic figure, the reader is thrown back to the conclusion of the first

section of the story. This time, however, Laura is entirely absent. The narrator is

rehearsing once again the first four participant functions, with each poised

fundamentally between two dichotomous but equally coherent plot structures:

Table 3: The Ambiguities of John’s Situation in the Second

Section of “Don’t Look Now”

John’s Real Situation John’s Illusionary Situation

1. The Present Christine

1. The Absent Christine

2. John 2. John

3. The Twin Sisters

(Advisors)

3. The Twin Sisters

(Villains)

4. The Dwarfish Old

Murderess

4. The Helpless Little Girl

22

Marked order fiction that utilizes a pivotal seventh character would appear then to

require the liquidation of an illusory lack on the part of the Hero, before the fiction can

circle back to the earlier moment when the pivotal character was first described.

Because the blind sister’s words are ambiguous, the naive reader will be waylaid into

believing that when John gives chase (instead of turning back), his role will be that of

the real Hero confronting the murderous false Hero of the Venetian back streets. But in

marked narratives with catastrophic endings, the Hero cannot triumph in this simple

manner. By misunderstanding the meaning of the Donor information, the Hero

recklessly undertakes a course of action that dooms him irrevocably to death.

The twin sisters, whom John initially believes may be criminals or male twins in drag,

Table 4: Comparing Chronological Narrative with John’s

Delusional Understanding of his Situation

Chronological Narrative John’s Delusional

Understanding

1. The Father 1. The Absent Christine

2. The Hero 2. John

3. The Villains 3. The Twin Sisters

4. The Princess 4. The Little Girl

5. The Donor 5. The Police Officer

6. The Helper 6. John

7. The False Hero 7. The Murderer

8. The Princess 8. The Little Girl

23

warn him that he is in danger of misunderstanding the nature of his situation and must

turn back. But John ignores this warning and continues on toward his rendezvous with

the murderess. Later, John misunderstands the information about the murderer offered

by the Donor, the tourist at the police station. Since John believes he is the pursuer

rather than the pursued, this information does not lead him to consider that it is his own

life that might be in danger. At story’s end, this confusion continues when John mistakes

the policeman pursuing the murderess for the murderer himself. In a story in which he

initially made light of the apparent cross-dressing of clairvoyant twin sisters, John

becomes the ultimate cross-dresser: a truly Reluctant Bride.

Table 5: Comparing Marked Order Narrative with John’s Real

Situation

Marked Order Narrative John’s Real Situation

1. The Father 1. The Present Christine

2. The Reluctant Hero 2. John

3. The Advisors 3. The Twin Sisters

4. The Pivotal Fourth

Character

4. The Dwarfish Old

Murderess

5. The Information Donor 5. The English Tourist

6. The Young Woman Victim/

The Reluctant Hero

6. John

7. The Murderous False

Hero

7. The Dwarfish Old

Murderess

24

Plot Management in Marked Order Narratives

One of the central defining characteristics of a marked order narrative is the

reader’s experience of uncertainty arising from the contemplation of two ultimately

incompatible arrangements of the characters and their plot functions. The narrator sets

up this ambiguous situation by offering the Reluctant Hero an alibi convincing enough

to make the reader believe that the failure to turn back is a legitimate response to a

contingent emergency. This situation is typically resolved at the story’s peak, with the

definitive revelation of the evil nature of the Villain, which confirms the warning of the

Advisor. The sustained development of competing skeleton Propp structures up to the

story’s peak is responsible both for the reader’s potential misreading of the story and his

or her subsequent ability to order the cast of characters definitively. A good example of

the basic marked order narrative is the Hollywood horror flick, Wrong Turn (2003), a

movie which is relatively faithful to the skeleton Propp structure of The Robber

Bridegroom. In this movie, the Reluctant Hero, Chris, is trying to make his way to an

important job interview in Raleigh, North Carolina when he finds his path blocked by a

major traffic accident. In an effort to make the interview on time, he performs a U-turn

in order to use an infrequently travelled short cut. Unfortunately, this alternative route

brings him into the territory of some cannibalistic West Virginia mountain men, an event

which naturally serves to keep him past his deadline. In this movie, the alibi offered to

the Hero is simply Chris’s decision to take the dangerous alternative route in order to

make the interview, and the irresolute nature of the ending consists in Chris’s staying

alive, even at the cost of missing his interview.

The difference between Wrong Turn and Daphne du Maurier’s short story is that

in “Don’t Look Now”, the Hero’s alibi is an illusion. John’s failure to leave is the result

25

of his psychic sighting of Laura on a vaporetto a couple of days into the future. The

illusory image of Laura functions as a false goal for John, creating a seemingly

legitimate reason for staying on in Venice, despite the warning of the sisters. The alibi

liquidates itself when the two sisters accept John’s apology for his false accusation

against them. But John’s fears for Laura and his distrust of the twins are groundless all

along because Laura has already left Venice.

The Pivotal Fourth (or Seventh) Character

In chronological narratives, the pivotal fourth character or Dispatcher, the

character whose function it is to send the Hero on a journey, is typically a good person

who initially appears to be bad (Propp 1968; Murphy 2008). In “Cinderella”, Prince

Charming plays this role by inviting everyone to the ball. Because Cinderella does not

have the requisite fine clothes, the invitation appears to come from a bad man

masquerading as a good one. In contrast, in the majority of marked order narratives, the

pivotal fourth character is a bad person who is only pretending to be good. In “The

Robber Bridegroom”, for example, the Robber Bridegroom pretends to be an eligible

bachelor in order to lure the Reluctant Bride to his home in the woods. Since he is in

actual fact a murderer, the Robber Bridegroom is a bad character in masquerade, and the

task of the reader is to see through this subterfuge.

In “Don’t Look Now”, however, the reader cannot do this. This is because the

pivotal character in this story is the enigmatic figure of the little girl, and it is simply not

possible for the reader to ask whether the little girl is a good character pretending to be

bad or a bad character pretending to be good. This is because she is not a little girl at

all—something the reader discovers only on the story’s very last page. In other words,

26

du Maurier’s short story surprises the reader because it sets up the pivotal fourth

character function and then fails to execute it immediately. As a result, the naïve reader

is likely to assume that Mr and Mrs Hill are the Dispatchers when they try to recall the

couple back to England to take care of their sick son, Johnnie. The reader is also likely

to pay more attention when John seeks out advice from someone he believes can help

him (the Illusionary Donor), while misrecognizing the significance of the information

about the past that should be his real concern (the Real Donor). The fact that the Hills

are not the Dispatchers and that the police officer is not the Donor only becomes

apparent toward the story’s end when John is dispatched by the second sight of the

enigmatic figure into a hazardous chase down the Venetian backstreets in a vain effort to

save what he believes to be a helpless little girl from a murderer.

“Don’t Look Now” thus represents a variant on the marked skeleton Propp

structure exhibited in The Robber Bridegroom (Propp 1968; Murphy 2008). In this story,

an ambiguous pivotal fourth character is retrospectively replaced by a definitive pivotal

seventh character. This unexpected plot outcome forces the reader into a major

rearrangement of the functions played by the cast of characters, and it is this enforced

mental reordering undertaken in order to comprehend an entirely unexpected plot

outcome that constitutes the experience of surprise or shock. The fact that readers are

able to do this in such a uniform manner offers some indication that the range of

possible interpretations, even for a fiction as complex as du Maurier’s short story, is not

particularly wide.

Conclusion

Plot management refers to the narrator’s ability to steer the fiction through

27

situational discrepancies that are crucial to the plot’s eventual outcome. Competent plot

management requires the writer’s choice of a suitable skeleton Propp structure to

organize the interactions among the major characters. The use of a suitable skeleton

Propp structure helps explain why the plots of great writers succeed in satisfying their

readers. Chronological narratives such as romances often use the unmarked skeleton

Propp structure made famous in Propp’s Morphology of the Wondertale (1968). In these

fictions, the reader’s interest is created mostly by the attributes of the marked character,

the nature of the goal he or she pursues, and the obstacles placed in the way of the

goal’s achievement. In the majority of marked order narratives, the writer’s use of

competing skeleton Propp structures, which creates potential ambiguities concerning the

identity of the third, fourth, fifth and sixth characters, ensures that the nature of the story

remains uncertain up until the narrative peak. In these narratives, the reader’s sense of

uncertainty is replaced at the narrative peak with a sense of excitement at the prospect

of the Villain’s defeat. In marked order fictions with pivotal seventh characters, the

reader’s surprise or shock is much greater. Surprise or shock is the upshot of the

reader’s need to re-arrange the characters and their functions in order to take account of

the wholly unexpected plot outcome. The reader is at first mystified because he or she

has relied on a more simple skeleton Propp structure than the story actually demands. A

common experience after finishing “Don’t Look Now” is the compulsion to reread some

or all of the key discrepant passages: John’s initial sighting of the enigmatic figure of

the little girl, John’s sighting of Laura returning to Venice, and John’s conversation with

the English tourist at the police station. Of these three passages, the initial sighting of

the enigmatic figure of the little girl is crucial, partly within the narrative fiction, the

figure is the pivotal character.

28

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