REBECCA by Daphne Du Maurier--I have a problem with it.

[raccoon]

Warning: spoilers below











I love the book, have read it several times, and love the BBC production with Emilia Fox and Charles Dance. It's one of my favorite books. I have just one problem with it.

The heroine doesn't seem to have a problem with Maxim being a murderer. Granted, Rebecca was a nympho, she goaded Maxim--it's possible she goaded him into shooting her. Also, she attacked him at his weakest point--his love for Manderley and her threat that it would pass on to some other man's child.

In fact, when she finds out he's a murderer, her thought is not, "OMG, one day he might kill ME," but "He did not love Rebecca." (I read an essay about that once. It hadn't occurred to me until then.)

Still, he was a murderer, and someday he might get ticked off at the heroine, and let her have it.

Anybody else feel this way?

[zanne]

1. I see what you mean.

However, it is a romantic (not Romantic) novel and romance is the premise, not morality. But then again........

[rudy23]

2. That's one of my favorite Hitchcock movies

I kind had the same reaction you did. Maybe murder wasn't that big of a deal back then (kidding).

[Sal Minella]

4. Forgiving a "crime of passion" isn't all that rare in fiction or real life, is it?

Since the heroine has no intention of bedding anyone else, she has no fear of triggering the murderous aspect of Maxim's nature.

Personally, I'd call Rebecca's death "justifiable homicide," not murder.

[MADem]

7. I thought it was suicide by husband, myself, as I noted downthread. NT

[pansypoo53219]

3. it's also

just a rip-off of Jane Eyre.

[dipsydoodle]

5. Last night I dreamt I went to.....................

Sunnybrook Farm again..............lol.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxY3neqqBA

[MADem]

6. Wasnt the death of Rebecca "Suicide by husband?" She had cancer, IIRC.

Back then, it was incurable.

The heroine (if you could call her that) was a weak-willed wuss, but that sort of female was in fashion back then. It's the same sort of mindset that cultivated where Nancy Reagan got "the gaze." We're well rid of that shit, I'd say, but the book is a study of expectations and roles of the era.

Hopefully, if they did run off to another country after the house was torched, it was to a place where the new Missus could learn how to use a gun...!!!

None of the females in that book are role models, really, or sympathetic at all--from Rebecca, to Wife Number Two, who needs a good slap, to the maid, Mrs. "Creepy" Danvers--they're all kinda wretched.

Makes one wonder what Lady Browning (aka Daphne Du Maurier) really thought of her fellow females and what issues she had, too.

[Sal Minella]

8. Rebecca committed "suicide by cuckolded husband," yes.

But at the time of Rebecca's death, Maxim believed he was killing an unfaithful wife who (Maxim believed) was pregnant by another man.

[raccoon]

9. But the heroine changed over the course of the book.

True, she was a wuss in the beginning, but by the end of the book, she had wised up and become much more assertive.

[MADem]

10. She was still pretty wussy, though, as I remember.

I dunno, in this day and age, you just can't imagine a young lady putting up with that degree of bullshit for five minutes!!!! And at the end of the day it's "Oh well, dear, you shot that awful first wife and let her carcass sink into the sea in her boat, but at least you love ME best!!!!"

Ugh!!!

[raccoon]

11. Gender roles have changed a lot, fer sure.

She was pretty non-assertive from the beginning of the book. Remember she was working as a companion to the older woman. The book doesn't mention any family members, so she apparently had nobody to fall back on.

Add to that, Maxim was old enough to be her father, and rich. She wasn't used to being rich and having servants.

[Mz Pip]

13. That's what I thought

Rebecca knew she was dying and decided to kill 2 birds with one stone - herself and her husband. She set him up for her murder. But the bullet went right through her, didn't graze a bone or leave a mark so she only got half of her wish.

THere was a fantastic dramatization of "Rebecca" a number of years ago with Jeremy Brett. I thought it really captured the characters.

Mz Pip
:dem:

[JitterbugPerfume]

12. sometimes escapist literature

is just a good read, and not meant to be dissected .


I love the book for what it is .