Resumo de My Cousin Rachel - Daphne du Maurier

Daphne du Maurier?s tenth book published in 1951 and almost immediately made into a movie(1952) is remembered for the lingering question it left in its readers minds : Was Rachel a cold blooded murderer or a much misunderstood person?
?My Cousin Rachel? is about love, about growing up, about obsession, jealousy but above all it is about a woman. A woman best summarized by one of the character, Philip?s godfather Nick Kendall at a pivotal point in the story. ?There are some women, Philip,? he observed, ?good women very possibly, who through no fault of their own impel disaster.? And disaster it is that the Ambrose family courts.
Ashley Ambrose, a rich landlord of Cornwall, brings up Philip, an orphaned nephew, in an all male house hold. Philip in turn grows up worshiping him. The story told mostly through Philip, talks of an older Ashley falling in love with a distant cousin Rachel at Florence during one of his foreign sojourns. The events in Florence are narrated through Ashley?s letters to Philip, few and fractured. Philip discovers a gradual shift in the tone of these letters regarding Ashley?s feelings for Rachel as they move from love to jealousy, to suspicion and finally to hatred. Ashley?s tragic death in a foreign land sets in motion a series of events that place Philip in Ashley?s shoes, literally.
As Rachel is expected at the property which by now belongs to Philip, he has nothing but malice for her. But Rachel?s arrival at the Ambrose household brings about an almost dramatic inversion of feelings. Philip sees what perhaps Ambrose saw and cannot but fall in love. And at a point of time hates Ashley for having been so unfair to Rachel. The story takes a turn when Philip decides that amends have to be made and decides to write the entire property in the name of Rachel.
What happens? Why is Ashley?s life being repeated with Philip again? Is Rachel responsible? Or not? Whose side will you take? Was the problem really with the men in the story, as Rachel puts it while explaining the change in Ashley?s personality to Philip? ?He was like someone sleeping who woke suddenly and found the world. Ambrose had woken to me just as some men wake to religion. He became obsessed in the same fashion.?
It is possible that you will be left with more questions than answers. A few of them larger than life itself. ?My Cousin Rachel? will remain a contemporary story because the issues and emotions addressed do not really change with time.

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