du Maurier, Daphne - Rebecca
Tue, Oct. 12th, 2010 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
oyceterOur nameless heroine meets the recently widowed Maxim de Winter in Monte Carlo and rushes into marrying him. But when she arrives at his ancestral estate Manderley, there's creepy housekeeper Mrs. Danvers and lots and lots of reminders of the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca. Gothic stuff ensues.
I was reading this and having a ton of fun with the era (1930s?), which is modern and yet has enough different social mores to be unrecognizable and very foreign to me. I particularly felt for the narrator in the early parts of the book, where she's a poor companion to a rich, annoying older woman and feels dreadfully young and out of place pretty much everywhere. And unlike most Gothic heroes, I actually liked Maxim from the start when he asked the narrator to sit with him for dinner and added something like, "You don't have to talk to me. You can just sit and eat if you want."
Truly a man after my own heart!
(... I have mentioned being very antisocial, yes?)
The atmosphere at Manderley is appropriately creepy, and Mrs. Danvers is appropriately spooky. I did, however, find it interesting that almost all the hints of Rebecca are completely in the narrator's head. I realize the intent is to make it feel as though Rebecca is haunting the house, but instead, I wondered if the narrator would be speculating so much about Rebecca and obsessing so much over touching the same things Rebecca had touched if she hadn't been so young and unsure of herself.
Of course, I'm sure that's why Gothic heroines are usually young and unsure of themselves, which is why I love Jane Eyre so for knowing what she will and won't stand for.
And then, the Gothic reveal...
MAXIM: They have found Rebecca's body and now our lives are over!
ME: Yes! Reveal yourself as an axe murderer! Narrator, flee in terror!
MAXIM: Everyone will know... I KILLED REBECCA!
ME: *chortles*
MAXIM: She was horrid! She cheated on me! And then she was going to have someone else's baby and raise it as mine!
ME: Oh Gothics, your misogyny never changes, does it? Come on, narrator, bash him over the head and flee for the moors!
NARRATOR, also known as MRS. DE WINTER II, or MDW2: Oh Maxim! You poor dear!
ME: ?
MDW2: We'll cover it up! They can't tear us apart!
ME: ... I think you missed the part about him murdering his wife?
MDW2: Don't worry, you poor thing! We can handle this!
ME: O_o
So, probably like many things that end up creating a genre, this feels very different from what later become the genre tropes. The misogyny and such is still there, as noted, but the tall dark handsome stranger who may or may not be out to kill you, which I thought was a pretty standard Gothic trope, is... a killer you are trying to protect. On the one hand, I was really glad in the beginning that Maxim wasn't an alpha male. On the other hand, I think the narration completely justifying his murder of his first wife for cheating on him kind of ruins that whole liking Maxim thing.
I was reading this and having a ton of fun with the era (1930s?), which is modern and yet has enough different social mores to be unrecognizable and very foreign to me. I particularly felt for the narrator in the early parts of the book, where she's a poor companion to a rich, annoying older woman and feels dreadfully young and out of place pretty much everywhere. And unlike most Gothic heroes, I actually liked Maxim from the start when he asked the narrator to sit with him for dinner and added something like, "You don't have to talk to me. You can just sit and eat if you want."
Truly a man after my own heart!
(... I have mentioned being very antisocial, yes?)
The atmosphere at Manderley is appropriately creepy, and Mrs. Danvers is appropriately spooky. I did, however, find it interesting that almost all the hints of Rebecca are completely in the narrator's head. I realize the intent is to make it feel as though Rebecca is haunting the house, but instead, I wondered if the narrator would be speculating so much about Rebecca and obsessing so much over touching the same things Rebecca had touched if she hadn't been so young and unsure of herself.
Of course, I'm sure that's why Gothic heroines are usually young and unsure of themselves, which is why I love Jane Eyre so for knowing what she will and won't stand for.
And then, the Gothic reveal...
MAXIM: They have found Rebecca's body and now our lives are over!
ME: Yes! Reveal yourself as an axe murderer! Narrator, flee in terror!
MAXIM: Everyone will know... I KILLED REBECCA!
ME: *chortles*
MAXIM: She was horrid! She cheated on me! And then she was going to have someone else's baby and raise it as mine!
ME: Oh Gothics, your misogyny never changes, does it? Come on, narrator, bash him over the head and flee for the moors!
NARRATOR, also known as MRS. DE WINTER II, or MDW2: Oh Maxim! You poor dear!
ME: ?
MDW2: We'll cover it up! They can't tear us apart!
ME: ... I think you missed the part about him murdering his wife?
MDW2: Don't worry, you poor thing! We can handle this!
ME: O_o
So, probably like many things that end up creating a genre, this feels very different from what later become the genre tropes. The misogyny and such is still there, as noted, but the tall dark handsome stranger who may or may not be out to kill you, which I thought was a pretty standard Gothic trope, is... a killer you are trying to protect. On the one hand, I was really glad in the beginning that Maxim wasn't an alpha male. On the other hand, I think the narration completely justifying his murder of his first wife for cheating on him kind of ruins that whole liking Maxim thing.
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Wed, Oct. 13th, 2010 05:33 pm (UTC)