Don't Look Now

Italy is the setting of choice for many narratives that turn on sinister incidents. Daphne Du Maurier’s short story “Don’t Look Now” utilizes Italy as space not only for murder, but the supernatural and absurd. Italy, Venice more specifically, is a site for the return of the dead and premonitions of death in the text, as twin Scottish spinsters see John and Laura’s recently deceased daughter and John sees a moment that will take place after his own death. John and Laura believe they are on a holiday in Italy in order to escape their own tragic history through submersion in a much grander historical narrative, but this site of antiquity only serves to remind them of the personal, in such a way that leads John to his end. Because of the dwarf murderess’s childlike appearance and the loss of a young daughter, John thinks he will redemptively save a child’s life and instead only dies his “silly” death. This text seems to reject the popular conception of Italy as a tourist site where visitors from less old and more developed countries can come to be cleansed in the fount of sanitized, museumized history. Instead, Italy ends those who insist on using it in such a way and Italy’s history only reinforces their own, even using their history against them.