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Tuesday 17 December 2019

The husband in Rebecca

Earlier, I mentioned some red flags about Maxim de Winter. As the story unfolds, it becomes manifest that he’s not a nice man, even if the narrator adores him. 
At the beginning of the story, she’s 21, he’s 42—he’s old enough to be her father, and treats her as such. 
“He considered me a moment, his eyebrows raised, whistling softly. "Listen, my sweet. When you were a little girl, were you ever forbidden to read certain books, and did your father put those books under lock and key?"
"Yes," I said.
"Well, then. A husband is not so very different from a father after all. There is a certain type of knowledge I prefer you not to have. It's better kept under lock and key. So that's that. And now eat up your peaches, and don't ask me any more questions, or I shall put you in the corner."
"I wish you would not treat me as if I was six," I said.
"How do you want to be treated?"
"Like other men treat their wives."
"Knock you about, you mean?"
"Don't be absurd. Why must you make a joke of everything?" (Ch.16) 
What a creep. 
This is not an equal relationship. Often, Maxim says to her “my sweet child” condescendingly, and he makes her feel like Jasper, the dog—he can just pat her now and then, give her a bit of attention, and she’s happy. 
Even if he doesn’t get angry or raise his voice, he’s often rude to her—curt, abrupt, unkind, sometimes even mocking. 
For example, when she breaks the china cupid and places the pieces in an envelope and hides it in a drawer, not telling anyone, he may be correct to say that she acts like an in-between maid, not the mistress of the house. However, he doesn’t bother to understand why she acts that way, why she feels like she doesn’t fit in, and what she can do other than “making an effort”. 
I’ve also noticed that Maxim never apologises or tries to soothe her, it is the narrator who says sorry when he gets grumpy or offended. 
Now look at this passage: 
“He stared at me moodily, his hands in his pockets, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels. "I wonder if I did a very selfish thing in marrying you," he said. He spoke slowly, thoughtfully.
I felt very cold, rather sick. "How do you mean?" I said.
"I'm not much of a companion to you, am I?" he said. "There are too many years between us. You ought to have waited, and then married a boy of your own age. Not someone like myself, with half his life behind him."
"That's ridiculous," I said hurriedly, "you know age doesn't mean anything in marriage. Of course we are companions."
"Are we? I don't know," he said.
I knelt up on the window seat and put my arms round his shoulders. "Why do you say these things to me?" I said; "you know I love you more than anything in the world. There has never been anyone but you. You are my father and my brother and my son. All those things."
"It was my fault," he said, not listening. "I rushed you into it. I never gave you a chance to think it over."
"I did not want to think it over," I said, "there was no other choice. You don't understand, Maxim. When one loves a person..."” (Ch.12) 
There is indeed a big age gap between them, but the main issue is incompatibility and lack of communication. Maxim and the narrator are very different (note from the beginning: she bites her nails, he has an emery board in his pocket). 
They don’t share much with each other either. The narrator may make out like they enjoy talking and have a good time when alone (in this sense, she’s an unreliable narrator), but he never talks about the past and never really talks about his feelings. Jane Austen would distrust him, for his lack of openness. Maxim doesn’t tell the narrator about Jack Favell and Mrs Danvers. 
On her side, the narrator doesn’t share much with him either—her insecurities, her fears, her obsession with Rebecca and feelings about Mrs Danvers are all kept to herself. She doesn’t tell him about the book with Rebecca’s handwriting, nor the visit to Rebecca’s morning room and their old bedroom, nor the encounter with Jack Favell in the house, nor the incident at Maxim’s grandmother’s house, nor the references to Rebecca that the employees make, nor anything of importance. There is no communication in their marriage.  
“I seized advantage of his smile, I smiled too, and took his hands and kissed them. "How absurd to say we are not companions," I said; "why look how we sit here every evening, you with a book or a paper, and me with my knitting. Just like cups of tea. Just like old people, married for years and years. Of course we are companions. Of course we are happy. You talk as though you thought we had made a mistake? You don't mean it like that, do you, Maxim? You know our marriage is a success, a wonderful success?"
"If you say so, then it's all right," he said.
"No, but you think it too, don't you, darling? It's not just me? We are happy, aren't we? Terribly happy?"
He did not answer. He went on staring out of the window while I held his hands. My throat felt dry and tight, and my eyes were burning. […] 
"Well, why don't you answer me?" I said.
He took my face in his hands and looked at me, just as he had before, when Frith had come into the room with tea, the day we went to the beach.
"How can I answer you?" he said. "I don't know the answer myself. If you say we are happy, let's leave it at that. It's something I know nothing about. I take your word for it. We are happy. All right then, that's agreed!" He kissed me again, and then walked away across the room. I went on sitting by the window, stiff and straight, my hands in my lap.” (ibid.)  
Poor naïve girl. If he doesn’t say he’s happy, he’s not. He doesn’t say he loves her either. That is very telling. Does Maxim ever say love? Not during the proposal. Not now. 
As readers learn more about Rebecca, we start to realise that Maxim marries the narrator because he can easily control her, which we can guess he couldn’t quite do with Rebecca. 
All this examination of Maxim de Winter’s character and behaviour towards the narrator is not idle musings. It is, I believe, key to interpreting the novel as a whole. I’m on chapter 17, about the fancy dress ball at Manderley, but I’m aware of the 2 main interpretations of Daphne du Maurier’s book. We have to see how the story unfolds. Du Maurier’s a brilliant plotter, I should add. 
I suppose, interpreting the book might be difficult, because the narrator is perceptive but unreliable—she’s head over heels in love with Maxim, for whatever reason. But at the moment, we can see all the problems, and can also compare him to some other male characters in the book. His agent Frank Crawley, for example, seems like a very kind, considerate man. It would be much better for her if the narrator’s married to him instead of Maxim (I know, I know then we wouldn’t have the book). Maxim’s brother-in-law Giles Lacy also seems nicefat and probably boring but nicesee the way he tries to comfort her at the ball whilst Maxim is cold to her all evening. A woman’s stupidity in love always gets on my nerves. 
By the way, there is an interesting detail. Remember how Beatrice (Maxim’s sister) asks the 2nd Mrs de Winter about pregnancy and she talks like it’s not a possibility, even after Beatrice suggests sometimes there’s no morning sickness (Ch.15)? 
Look: 
“I got into bed, my legs very weary, a niggling pain in the small of my back. I lay back and closed my eyes, thankful for the cool white comfort of clean sheets. I wished my mind would rest like my body, relax, and pass to sleep. Not hum round in the way it did, jigging to music, whirling in a sea of faces. I pressed my hands over my eyes but they would not go.
I wondered how long Maxim would be. The bed beside me looked stark and cold.” (Ch.17) 
They sleep in different beds.

10 comments:

  1. totally agree with what you've said so far about this book... my conclusion is that in spite of its popularity it's not very good...

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    1. I'm confused. What makes you think (I'm saying) the book is not very good?

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    2. i didn't... i said that from the evidence you cited, my conclusion was that it was a sort of unsuccessful book... that might not be true, but it's probably one i wouldn't read... unless i got paid for it haha... anyway, you said "A woman's stupidity in love always gets on my nerves". this might not mean that you think it's a bad book, but to me that means that i wouldn't want to read it... see?

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    3. I'd say there's a huge difference between a good book and a book you like or want to read.
      I did say that a woman's stupidity gets on my nerves, but in the previous post about that character, I did list all the arguments about why it makes sense that she is like that, and it makes sense for the story that she has to be like that for the story to work.
      Rebecca is a brilliant book. It does what the author sets out to do, and it's very good.

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  2. good point: determining what is and what isn't great lit is the crux of it, i guess... and opinions differ... i've read books by George, Daphne's father and liked them pretty well and i've tried to read some of her's but unsuccessfully... she may be a good writer, but just not to my taste...i guess i reserve "great" for Shakspeare, Milton, and the like... Greeks, etc. depending upon one's education and experience, identification of semi-great books would seem to be pretty arbitrary...

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    1. I don't think I'd agree with your last point, but I'm not sure what you mean. Why and how arbitrary?
      Also, below another blog post of mine, you said that Jane Austen was bland and boring, and Mansfield Park was by no means brilliant. However, Jane Austen has a firm place in the Western canon, next to Shakespeare, Milton, etc. and has been generally recognised as among the greatest writers in the English language.

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    2. so we don't agree about that.. some of the haiku i've read i thought were truly great, but i don't suppose anyone else does... "generally recognized" covers quite a bit of ground... who, specifically? English teachers probably, professors who teach that genre. probably not Muslims or people in the Orient, tho... that's what i mean about "arbitrary"... a book that is considered great in one culture may not be deemed so in another... and even in the same cultures there may be differences of opinion. and there's the time factor: savants a hundred years ago had different opinions than experts do now, so who is right? Edmund Wilson, i just read, didn't think much of Lytton Strachey"s writing, especially after his Eminent Victorians, but i think he's one of the best writers i ever read... i'm no expert but that's what i think... i think there's a difference between well-known and "great", but the boundary is a subtle one, and even determining that would be controversial... each person has his/her own opinion and "great" may be a function of the newspapers more than anything else... or publisher's advertisements...

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    3. You mean Jane Austen's generally recognised by who, and imply that it's only English teachers?
      I have to say, you're very mistaken there. She's acclaimed by notable writers such as Virginia Woolf, Vladimir Nabokov, J. D. Salinger, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, John Fowles, Rudyard Kipling, E. M. Forster, Walter Scott, W. Somerset Maugham... and famous critics such as Edmund Wilson, George Henry Lewes, George Steiner, Howard Jacobson....
      Her novels are not only taught in high schools and universities in English-speaking countries, but also read everywhere in the world.
      Her face is on a UK banknote.
      This is not a fight you want to get yourself into, Mudpuddle. It is one thing to be indifferent to her works, which is perfectly fine, but to dismiss her altogether, you can't. Whatever you say the reason is, her works are still there, published, read, analysed, discussed, adapted, retold, remixed... everywhere, 200 years after the first publication.
      Also, you say that a book that is considered great in one culture may not be deemed so in another. I don't disagree. However, Jane Austen is very popular in Asia, a quick Google search and you can find lots of Jane Austen retellings set in South Asia and the Middle East.

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    4. I don't think there is much doubt about Austen's reputation. The only real test we have of "artistic greatness" is the consensus of the cognoscenti over time. Austen's novels have lasted over 200 years now, and she has been, and continues to be, admired by a very significant majority of those who care about Western literature. Of course, it is no doubt possible to identify some notable writers and critics who have been less than admiring (as the consensus is never 100% with *any* creative artist); but the consensus on Austen is fairly overwhelming.

      There are still, of course, cultural differences between the Orient and the Occident: many genuinely great writers of the Orient aren't too well known in the West, and, to a lesser extent, many great Western writers aren't known too well in the Orient. Kalidasa, say, is little known even amongst educated westerners, but once again, his reputation with those who know about Sanskrit literature hasn't ebbed for quite a few centuries now. But even here, among those in the Orient who know and care about western literature (the cognoscenti, as I call them), there is once again a significantly large consensus about Austen. I don't think her literary eminence is in much dispute.

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