Deconstructing Maxim: a Rebecca rant
A few days ago, an aside of penknife's about Jane Eyre reminded me of my issues with Rochester and even more so with his literary descendent, Maxim de Winter, in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca.
Now, Rebecca is an excellent, very well constructed and suspenseful novel. I read it first as a teenager. Going back to it as an adult, however, I got annoyed and disturbed by one of its central premises more and more each time. Maxim, the man our unnamed narrator falls in love with and marries, belongs clearly to the tradition of Byronic heroes - tall, dark, handsome, brooding, with a mysterious past. During the course of the novel, he marries an impressionable young girl, dumps her into a situation where she's surrounded by strangers, withdraws almost completely from her, treats her downright cruel at times, and then finally reveals his big secret. He is not, as our heroine has previously assumed, still in love with his first wife, the late title character, Rebecca, but claims his marriage with Rebecca was a sham, that he in fact hated Rebecca. She had affairs, they were only together for the sake of the estate, Manderley, and when he couldn't stand it anymore and was informed by Rebecca she was pregnant, he killed her and covered up the murder. (Later on, we find out Rebecca had not been pregnant but had had cancer and presumably provoked Maxim into killing her.) To which our heroine basically reacts with "so you didn't love her? I'm so happy, at last!" and forgives him instantly.
I'm never quite sure whether the reader is meant to as well - the novel ends with the burning of Manderley, courtesy of Rebecca's old housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and Maxim still anything but stable, whereas various film versions end it with a embrace, of course - and it's tricky to say with a first person narrative. And it doesn't ring false psychologically, either; the second Mrs. de Winters is a mass of insecurities, feels overshadowed by the dead Rebecca the entire time and draws what little selfworth she shows from her relationship with Maxim. But let's take it at face value and say we're meant to see it as a happy ending.
This is a novel published in 1938, and meant to be contemporary, not historical. At which point there was such an option as divorce. Maxim implies it wouldn't have worked because Rebecca was to all outward appearances an exemplary wife, excellent administrator of Manderley, great hostess etc., but that's hogwash. If he didn't want to go through the trouble of hiring a detective in order to prove she had affairs and get divorced on that ground, he could just as easily cited that old cliché, irreconcilable differences. He had the local ground, the money and the friends (the only relation of Rebecca's we meet is the parasitical Jack Favell who clearly was dependent on getting income from her); he'd have had the law on his side as well. But at no point does it occur to our heroine that if Maxim hated Rebecca, divorce would have been the legal alternative to murder.
And speaking of the murder. There is a strong sense of "the bitch deserved it" pervading the last part of the novel from the point on Maxim discloses the truth to his second wife. And why exactly did Rebecca deserve to be murdered? She had extramarital sex and a sharp tongue. Maxim believed her to be pregnant as well. (Presumably Rebecca's hypothetical child deserved death, too.) If the narrator is right with her final guess after the "Rebecca had cancer" news, Rebecca was also ruthless and inventive enough to deliberately provoke Maxim into killing her so she wouldn't have to go through the long painful death (and possibly so he would not enjoy the single life after but end up in goal), but it is a guess. The narrator can't know, one way or the other, any more than she could know what married life was like for Maxim and Rebecca when she imagined it earlier when she still believed Maxim had loved Rebecca. And whatever Rebecca intended, Maxim did commit a murder. Not a manslaughter, either. He went the considerably long (and extensively described) way from the main house to the beach cottage with a loaded weapon, confronted and shot an unarmed woman he believed to be pregnant.
So we're left with the impression that murder is justified if your wife cheats on you. So is behaving manipulatively and at times downright cruel to your second wife in order to maintain her worshipful view of you, instead of, say, tell her the truth (if not about your murder, then about your first marriage in general). After all, all you really needed was the love of a good woman (tm).
I suppose I would be more generously inclined towards Maxim if I had the impression that we're meant to see he behaves like an utter bastard. (Which is, btw, why I have no problem at all with Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Neither Heathcliff nor Catherine Earnshaw are meant to be taken as nice, sympathetic people, or described as such. They're compelling monsters, but they are monsters. And when Isabella Linton tries to "read" Heathcliff as a classic Byronic hero misunderstood by the world and only in need of the love of a good woman, she gets ridiculed by the main narrator Nelly Dean, Catherine, and Heathcliff himself for her trouble; by the time she escapes her abusive marriage, she's soundly cured of the idea.) But I don't. Instead, I have the impression I'm supposed to feel sorry for him and consider him as romantic. And that just raises every hackle I have.
Now, Rebecca is an excellent, very well constructed and suspenseful novel. I read it first as a teenager. Going back to it as an adult, however, I got annoyed and disturbed by one of its central premises more and more each time. Maxim, the man our unnamed narrator falls in love with and marries, belongs clearly to the tradition of Byronic heroes - tall, dark, handsome, brooding, with a mysterious past. During the course of the novel, he marries an impressionable young girl, dumps her into a situation where she's surrounded by strangers, withdraws almost completely from her, treats her downright cruel at times, and then finally reveals his big secret. He is not, as our heroine has previously assumed, still in love with his first wife, the late title character, Rebecca, but claims his marriage with Rebecca was a sham, that he in fact hated Rebecca. She had affairs, they were only together for the sake of the estate, Manderley, and when he couldn't stand it anymore and was informed by Rebecca she was pregnant, he killed her and covered up the murder. (Later on, we find out Rebecca had not been pregnant but had had cancer and presumably provoked Maxim into killing her.) To which our heroine basically reacts with "so you didn't love her? I'm so happy, at last!" and forgives him instantly.
I'm never quite sure whether the reader is meant to as well - the novel ends with the burning of Manderley, courtesy of Rebecca's old housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, and Maxim still anything but stable, whereas various film versions end it with a embrace, of course - and it's tricky to say with a first person narrative. And it doesn't ring false psychologically, either; the second Mrs. de Winters is a mass of insecurities, feels overshadowed by the dead Rebecca the entire time and draws what little selfworth she shows from her relationship with Maxim. But let's take it at face value and say we're meant to see it as a happy ending.
This is a novel published in 1938, and meant to be contemporary, not historical. At which point there was such an option as divorce. Maxim implies it wouldn't have worked because Rebecca was to all outward appearances an exemplary wife, excellent administrator of Manderley, great hostess etc., but that's hogwash. If he didn't want to go through the trouble of hiring a detective in order to prove she had affairs and get divorced on that ground, he could just as easily cited that old cliché, irreconcilable differences. He had the local ground, the money and the friends (the only relation of Rebecca's we meet is the parasitical Jack Favell who clearly was dependent on getting income from her); he'd have had the law on his side as well. But at no point does it occur to our heroine that if Maxim hated Rebecca, divorce would have been the legal alternative to murder.
And speaking of the murder. There is a strong sense of "the bitch deserved it" pervading the last part of the novel from the point on Maxim discloses the truth to his second wife. And why exactly did Rebecca deserve to be murdered? She had extramarital sex and a sharp tongue. Maxim believed her to be pregnant as well. (Presumably Rebecca's hypothetical child deserved death, too.) If the narrator is right with her final guess after the "Rebecca had cancer" news, Rebecca was also ruthless and inventive enough to deliberately provoke Maxim into killing her so she wouldn't have to go through the long painful death (and possibly so he would not enjoy the single life after but end up in goal), but it is a guess. The narrator can't know, one way or the other, any more than she could know what married life was like for Maxim and Rebecca when she imagined it earlier when she still believed Maxim had loved Rebecca. And whatever Rebecca intended, Maxim did commit a murder. Not a manslaughter, either. He went the considerably long (and extensively described) way from the main house to the beach cottage with a loaded weapon, confronted and shot an unarmed woman he believed to be pregnant.
So we're left with the impression that murder is justified if your wife cheats on you. So is behaving manipulatively and at times downright cruel to your second wife in order to maintain her worshipful view of you, instead of, say, tell her the truth (if not about your murder, then about your first marriage in general). After all, all you really needed was the love of a good woman (tm).
I suppose I would be more generously inclined towards Maxim if I had the impression that we're meant to see he behaves like an utter bastard. (Which is, btw, why I have no problem at all with Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights. Neither Heathcliff nor Catherine Earnshaw are meant to be taken as nice, sympathetic people, or described as such. They're compelling monsters, but they are monsters. And when Isabella Linton tries to "read" Heathcliff as a classic Byronic hero misunderstood by the world and only in need of the love of a good woman, she gets ridiculed by the main narrator Nelly Dean, Catherine, and Heathcliff himself for her trouble; by the time she escapes her abusive marriage, she's soundly cured of the idea.) But I don't. Instead, I have the impression I'm supposed to feel sorry for him and consider him as romantic. And that just raises every hackle I have.