REBECCA- looking back, looking again.

The first time I read Rebecca I fell in love with the book. The haunting, sometimes thrilling often heart wrenching novel by Daphne du maurier made me an instant fan of the author and I have ever since recommended the book to many people wanting a good book to read. However the other day I saw a cinematic adaptation of the movie and for the first time I saw the story in a completely different light. While the novel is an extremely well written and intelligent spin on traditional ghost stories and blue beard room tales of dead ex wives, the film in its effort to stay true to the book drags endlessly. Perhaps we have grown up on a diet of high adrenaline thrillers where the camera twitches endlessly or horror films where dead people actually reappear to haunt the living. But there in lies the brilliance of Rebecca. She speaks no lines, she never makes any ghoulish appearances and yet in her absence she is omniscient, ever present and omni potent. Du Maurier through some very clever prose depicts how often the absence of a person occupies greater space than a living being. I have never been a great Lawrence Olivier fan and while he does seem quite convincing as the attractive but gloomy Maxin de Winter, he seems too self absorbed as a character (which is perhaps a good thing) and as an actor to really do anything much for the film.

However what really struck me about the film that I had never noticed before was the subliminal or not so subliminal subtext on women and their nature and the qualities that a wife must have. I have no clear knowledge about Daphne Du Maurier’s stand on feminism or the position of women in society but it is interesting how she puts the shy, gauche, inexperienced protagonist in the spotlight of our sympathy and builds up the novel to a point where it is revealed that the seemingly dazzling, talented and beautiful Rebecca was actually unfaithful and deceitful. I had never looked at Rebecca as a text which felt that being an anonymous but utterly domesticated Mrs. De Winter, was better than being Rebecca who life was more than the traditional life cut out for the female gender .Was Rebecca punished for being so beautiful that every man desired her? Did the author perceive an independent, almost alpha female personality a threat to the social and moral fabric of society? As the novel describes her Rebecca is a beautiful and accomplished woman who charms anyone and everyone who meets her. She is the “perfect hostess”, a socialite if one might call her of that age and a woman whose personality cannot be suppressed within the walls of Manderlay. The other characters in the novel and in the film seem to idolise her and are also ‘haunted’ by her memories. From the way the fire is made in a room to the writing papers, napkins, and linen in drawers, everything has her mark on it. Not a family seal, not the crest of the De winter family but her name, the almost ominous R, sewn, stamped and printed onto everything that once belonged to her.  She has beauty, breeding and brains as Maxim says, everything that a man can want in a wife and yet he is unable to pin her down, control her, something perhaps a man wants more in his wife. Perhaps her only fault was her refusal to be loyal to her husband. A woman who looked at sex as something that could be merely an indulgence of the wealthy and more radically the fairer sex, and not something that was a by product of a marriage. While men for centuries have been unfaithful in marriages, had mistresses, visited courtesans and financed beer bars and brothels, women have always been expected to stay faithful and more importantly silent.  I wonder if that explains Maxim’s hatred for her. The fact that she was so much more than just Mrs. De winter… Unlike his second wife whose first name is never revealed through the book, his first wife had an irrepressible quality about her. She was more popular than him, perhaps even more intelligent than him and most importantly she had a mind of her own. She would take her own decisions. The protagonist of the book; the second wife, does very little but sketch occasionally and run around like the pet dog of the house Jasper, observing everything but too scared to speak or take control of any situation. In fact she seems to be more in awe of her husband than in love with him which is why she tolerates his patronising attitude and his irritating habit of calling her ‘child’ and then treating her like one. She is so grateful or honoured to be married to such a rich man, almost rescued by a prince charming that she seemingly has no aspirations or expectations from a husband. So awfully lacking is she in self esteem that she declares herself “ I am not the sort of person that men marry”. Rebecca on the other hand makes such a splendid success of even her part as the ideal wife that Maxim has no choice but to ignore her follies. She is almost the ‘man’ in the relationship, making her own decisions, and expecting Maxim to turn a blind eye like many a wife would to her spouse’s roving eye.

One can argue that the author was probably making the average girl reading her novel feel good about not being “the most beautiful creature” anyone has ever set their eyes or perhaps just writing a very clever ghost story, but I cant shake off the feeling that she was trying to say something more. Declare that the ‘real virtues’ a man looks for in his wife are sincerity, kindliness and decency and not beauty, wit and intelligence as the conversation between Frank and the second wife very cleverly mentions. The lady who was quite content with basking in Maxim’s reflected glory and being an anonymous entity whose name was secondary to her being Mrs. DeWinter, survives and gets the hero while the woman whose popularity spilt over the four walls of her home had to die a painful death. The story also chooses an interesting end to the character of Mrs. Danvers. While the book perhaps limited her obsession to looking after Rebecca’s dressing table, writing paper and fur coats, the film is very suggestive of a more homo erotic attraction towards her mistress. The manner in which she preserves and specially mentions where she keeps Rebecca’s underwear or caresses her see-through night gown indicates more than just the ardent loyalty of a housekeeper. Interestingly, Mrs. Danvers too suffers a painful death, committing suicide of a different kind when she burns herself to death by setting the house on fire and stays in Recca’s room till the house burns down. A woman who feels that Rebecca’s way of life was right and admirable, has to suffer a painful death like her while also perhaps commenting on the fact that such intimacy whether mental or physical with another woman, or a possibly an alternative sexuality, or bisexuality is something that cannot and should not be allowed to survive. Such is Rebecca’s aura that even death cannot extinguish her presence and charisma. Even the absence of her makes her present, overcoming even death when her body is found at the bottom of the ocean. A woman who can manipulate men and make them weak in her presence is made very clearly immoral and undesirable. Rebecca dies while her philandering ‘cousin’ Mr. Flavel, escapes scot free with no blackmail gains and just mild embarrassment. Most importantly we never hear her side of the story. We will never really know what made her the way she was and if she chose to be unfaithful then what was the reason.  It is interesting how spaces are segregated for the renegade women in literature. While much earlier Charlotte Bronte put the mad woman in the attic, Rebecca is allotted a west wing and a cottage by the sea where she conducts her clandestine affairs. Both women are described as having dark hair and a certain initial exotic appeal. In fact, both the heros say that they fell for the women in their youth but then realised that their marriages were a mistake. Unlike the mad woman in the attic who had her say thanks to psychologists, feminists and writers, Rebecca will always remain the most subjective character-seen from everybody’s eyes except her own and spoken for and about by numerous people, but never given a chance to speak for herself.