Rebecca- Relationship Between Mrs. De

Rebecca- RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN MRS. DE WINTER and REBECCA Rebecca is Daphne Du Maurier's Magnus opus- a masterpiece that has been translated into many languages, made into movies and TV serials and also Broadway show. The novel was published in 1938, at approximately the same time when other contemporaries of Maurier were also writing about crime and romance with female protagonists. Rebecca is a touching thriller- revolving about a middle-class woman's inadequacy and her desire to unearth the character of her husband first wife, Rebecca- who was mysteriously murdered.

Rebecca was everything that the girl wants to be. She has no identity of her own and whatever little sense of self she had was lost when she married into higher social class and became Mrs. De winter. The girl, however, fails to see herself as Mrs. De winter for she feels that only a sophisticated upper-class woman like Rebecca deserved to have that title.

She longs to be like Rebecca and this leads to a journey of self-discovery which also helps her unearth the mysterious past of her husband Maxim and his first wife. Through her exploration of Rebecca's character, she discovers much to her horror, that Rebecca was murdered by Maxim himself. The question then was: why would someone like Maxim kill his apparently beautiful sophisticated wife.

Did he ever love her? If yes, how could he possibly love his second wife, since both are poles apart in class, personality and social skills? These questions disturb the girl and she starts copying Rebecca based on her personal image of her. Rebecca is thus an elusive entity for the girl who longs to become more like her and thus develops her own images and version of her. She follows these images, copying them in her desire to be deserving of the title of Mrs. De winter.

Her marriage with Maxim was not exactly successful because the girl was pre-occupied with her middle-class upbringing and wanted to somehow trade that for a more adult, grown-up attitude. She found herself inexperienced in sexual matters which left her often feeling empty and unfulfilled after her sexual encounters with Maxim. Mrs. De Winter blamed this on her middle-class ness, something that she had come to resent deeply.

She felt that only a woman like Rebecca could have a fulfilling marriage and a satisfying sexual life with her husband since she was experienced in the art of winning and pleasing people. The opening pages of the book clearly indicate the rather mismatched union of second Mrs. De winter and Maxim and we are told that "Nature had come into her own again.. things of culture and grace.. had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly.. The rhododendrons..

had entered into an alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard things.. conscious of their spurious origin. (5- 6)" When the girl looks at some shrubs in her garden, we meet her view of Rebecca for the very first time. The author has used symbolism to foreshadow the girl's connection with Rebecca. We are told that while the girl had always pictured a domesticated, homely marriage but when she married Maxim, she felt that a successful marriage needed upper-class manners and sensibilities and found herself inadequate.

For her then, Rebecca becomes the symbol of a successful woman who could have a thriving marriage. Looking at shrubs, the girl exclaims that shrubs are: slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic.. something bewildering, even shocking.. To me a rhododendron was a homely, domestic thing, strictly conventional.. these were monsters.. too beautiful I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all." (70) It turns out that these had been planted by Rebecca, her pride and joy. The lesson of an 'over-natural' and therefore deviant female sexuality is being mapped out.

Rebecca is powerful and superior in the eyes and imaginary world of the girl. She starts loathing her 'innocence' for she craves sensual appeal of Rebecca. She is so immersed in her amplified and glorified version of Rebecca that she cannot read into others' often negative description of Rebecca and connects everything to her puffed-up image of the dead woman. For example when Ben, a local boy, tells her 'You're not like the other one...

She gave you the feeling of a snake' (162), she completely ignores the negative connotations and instead equates the word snake with power and sensuality. Her feelings of inadequacy are further aggravated with Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper's, stories about Rebecca. It is Mrs. Danvers who tells her that Rebecca "...was never one to stand mute and still and be wronged.'I'll see them in hell, Danny,' she'd say... She had all the courage and spirit of a boy... She ought to have been a boy...

She did what she liked, she lived as she liked. She had the strength of a little lion... She cared for nothing and for no one." (253 -5) The second Mrs. De winter develops such a deep sense of inferiority that it drives her to copy a fancy dress costume identical to the one owned and worn by Rebecca. For once she feels as powerful and successful as Rebecca was in her imagination: Everybody looked at me and smiled. I felt pleased.