Jamaica Inn

Jamaica Inn is a novel by the English writer Daphne du Maurier, first published in 1936. It was later made into a film, also called Jamaica Inn, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. It is a period piece set in Cornwall around 1815. It was inspired by du Maurier's 1930 stay at the real Jamaica Inn, which still exists as a pub in the middle of Bodmin Moor. The plot follows Mary Yellan, a woman who moves to stay at Jamaica Inn with her Aunt Patience and Uncle Joss after the death of her mother. She quickly finds out that the inn is an unsavoury place, mistrusted by the locals, and that her uncle is closely linked with a group of suspicious men who appear to be smugglers. Characters The characters presented throughout the novel include (in order of introduction): Mary Yellan, main character Joshua "Joss" Merlyn, inn-keeper and uncle of Mary. Patience Merlyn, Mary's aunt and wife of Joss Henry "Harry", a pedlar and associate of Joss Jeremiah "Jem" Merlyn, Joss's younger brother Squire Bassat, Squire of North Hill, local Magistrate Rev. Francis Davey, Vicar of Altarnun Hannah, Vicar of Altarnun's housekeeper Mrs. Bassat, wife of Squire Bassat Plot Mary Yellan, 23 years old, was brought up on a farm in Helford. After her father's and later her mother's death and with the subsequent decay of their farm, she is forced to sell it and their surviving animals, and as a promise to her mother, Mary goes to live with her only surviving relative: her mother's sister, Patience Merlyn, in a coaching inn called Jamaica Inn. Patience's husband, Joss Merlyn, is a local bully, stands almost seven feet tall and is a drunk. On arriving at the gloomy and threatening inn, Mary finds her formerly pretty, merry and friendly aunt, who had once been proposed to by a prosperous and honest farmer who loved her, in a ghost-like state under the thumb of the vicious Joss, and soon realises that something unusual is afoot at the inn, which has no guests and is open to the public only to serve food and mostly drink. She tries to squeeze the truth out of her uncle during one of his binges, but he tells her, "I'm not drunk enough to tell you why I live in this God-forgotten spot, and why I'm the landlord of Jamaica Inn".