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been a major industry in both Cornwall and neighboring Devon because of the innumerable hospitable coves, some complete with caves for hiding contraband.
But there's also a replica of du Maurier's study, thought to be quite as the author would have arranged it herself.
Although Jamaica Inn is quaint, and its link with du Maurier's book enticing, her more famous novel, Rebecca, was set on the Cornish coast nearby. Many people have tried to come up with the exact cove on which the house in that book stood. Really, it doesn't matter. The literary value of that book, in which the heroine is something of an anti-heroine and remains nameless throughout, is enough to draw anyone to Cornwall, or put them off entirely, depending. Most modern criticism thinks it is a feminist treatise of sorts, glorifying and strong and unusual Rebecca, possibly gay, and certainly selfish. On the other hand, the unnamed narrator seems to be a solid and stable character, one who, now that the first flush of out-of-the-box feminism is past, might be the more enduring one, and also the more admirable one. If you go to Cornwall, read Rebecca. Then prowl the coasts, and see if the brooding headlands offer any insight into the character of Rebecca or the nameless narrator. And which one might have been the alter ego of du Maurier herself?
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