A Hybrid of Detective and Romance Fiction (Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier)

Member Name: assethound

Product:	Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
Date:	12/09/00 (2024 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great story, wonderful writing.

Disadvantages: What on earth is that girl's name??

Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca is one of my favourite books. The language du Maurier uses is incredibly rich and considered. It should be noted that du Maurier's book and the film of the book, starring Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, should be seen as a wholly separate, as they have some vital differences in plot and motivation. Of the two I believe the book is by far the stronger, and the film definitely loses much in its interpretation of the story.

The basic plot:

The main character in this book is significantly known only as the second Mrs de Winter. At the start of the book she is a timid young woman, employed as a companion by the monstrous Mrs Van Hopper. They are staying in a glamourous hotel in Monte Carlo when the girl becomes acquainted with the mysterious widower Maxim de Winter, and marries him after a whirlwind romance.

The remainder of the book deals with the second Mrs de Winter's attempts to fit into the role she has unwittingly assumed with her marriage, unwittingly stirring the housekeeper Mrs Danvers to sabotage her at every turn, even encouraging her to wear the same costume as Rebecca when Maxim reluctantly holds a ball in her honour. Does Maxim still love Rebecca? Will the girl ever become a confident woman in her own right? There is murder and mystery afoot, and an underlying feminist critique of what a woman and a wife should be. There is a lot more to this book than the film would lead you to believe, and you may be surprised at how bleak a picture du Maurier paints of marriage, given the classic storybook romance at the beginning of the book, when Maxim sweeps the girl off her feet and marries her in a matter of days.

Read this book and revel in du Maurier's use of language and suspense.

Do not read the following if you do not wish to know the plot before you read Rebecca.


Although it could be classed as romantic fiction, Daphne du Maurier’s
novel Rebecca does not fit the conventional pattern of genre romance fiction. In classic romance fiction the dramatic impetus is on courtship which leads inevitably to marriage as an illusory form of closure. Alison Light, in her article ‘“Returning to Manderley”: romance fiction, female sexuality and class’ argues that:

"Romance offers instead of closure a postponement of fulfillment …Romances may pretend that the path to marriage is effortless (obstacles are there to be removed) but they have to cry off when the action really starts – after marriage." (Ashley, P.224-225)

Rebecca challenges this genre model by positioning marriage as the central focus of the drama, thus disrupting the genre model of romance fiction and establishing marriage as a site of drama and conflict. The novel’s concern with discovering the ‘truth’ of, and about, the dead Rebecca, and the inquest that follows the discovery of her body conflates the genre of romance fiction with that of detective fiction. This conflation of the classically female dominated genre of romance fiction (Viv Gardner states that “The association of women with the domestic and romantic novel served to reinscribe the notion of women’s rightful place as in the home, replicating women’s experience in their writing.” (Shaw, 180-181)) with the traditionally male dominated genre of detective fiction creates a confrontation between the two genres. This confrontation results in a shift of emphasis from the fantasy of the pseudo-closure of successful romance of romance fiction to the mimetic investigative/realist character of detective fiction. At the heart of classic genre detective fiction is the quest for ‘truth’. Ralph Willett states in Hard Boiled Detective Fiction that:

"…the detective’s quest is by analogy the attempted establishment of meaning and the re-ordering of the &
#8220;real world”…Edward Said has denied the possibility of a textual universe with no connection to actuality. Such a statement supports an argument that part of the struggle derives from the status of the crime novel as mimesis…" (Willett, p.54)

Although Willet’s book discusses American detective fiction, this same ‘realist’ or mimetic tradition is apparent in English detective fiction, with its emphasis on empiricist methods of detection, and detailed narrative techniques. This detail is apparent in Rebecca, particularly in the closely observed descriptions of Mrs Van Hopper and her hotel room:

"Her bed would be littered with the separated sheets of the daily papers folded anyhow, while French novels with curling edges and the covers torn kept company with Amrican Magazines. The mashed stubs of cigarettes lay everywhere – in cleansing cream, in a dish of grapes, and on the floor beneath the bed." (Rebecca, p.45)

It is necessary to have the character of Rebecca in the novel in order to establish the ‘meaning’ of femininity in the context of marriage, and to re-order the ‘real world’ of the novel by murder in order to re-estalish the patriarchal order that she has disrupted.

The mimetic character of genre detective fiction is contrasted with the ‘fantastic’ character of genre romance fiction; this establishes an increased tension between the ‘romance’ and the ‘reality’ of marriage. The romance of marriage is the eventual closure resulting from Maxim de Winter’s revelations of murder, laying the ‘ghost’ of Rebecca. The reality is the overpowering sense of alienation that the second Mrs de Winter experiences as she struggles to become successfully feminine within the context and confines of her marriage. The conflation of the genres of romance fiction and detective fiction places the focus o
f the drama on the investigation of Rebecca as both an obstacle to romance and as signifier of the negative femininity that must be avoided and repressed if marriage is to be successful.

In order to identify and examine the ‘correct femininity’ that Alison Light refers to: “In imagining the drama of romance as a murder, [Rebecca] shows successful hetero-sexuality to be a construct, not a natural given. Correct femininity has to be learnt…” a close reading will be made of the first chapter of Rebecca. This close reading will establish that the signification of the character of Rebecca throughout the novel, and her murder at the hands of her husband, plays a vital role in establishing the construction and boundaries of ‘correct femininity’ in the novel. Concurrent with this close reading there will be a discussion of the implications that the character of Rebecca has for the learning process that the second Mrs de Winter experiences as she attempts to fulfil her role as a wife under the ideology of the patriarchy.


It is significant that the narrator of the novel begins her text with a description of a dream of Manderley, from the perspective of an exile abroad after the events of the novel have taken place. In Louis Althusser’s writings on Freud and Lacan in 1969, he states that:

"Freud had already said that everything was dependent on language. Lacan specifies, “The discourse of the unconscious is structured like a language.” In his great first work, The Interpretation of Dreams…Freud studied dreams’ “mechanisms” or “laws”, reducing their variants to two: displacement and condensation. Lacan recognized in these variants two essential figures designated by linguistics: metonymy and metaphor…" (Althusser, p.24)

If this is accepted, then du Maurier’s use of the discourse of the dream can be seen as importa
nt in revealing through its discourse of plant-based, or nature imagery the repressed underlying structures that form the dualistic and contradictory patriarchal constructions of hyper-sexualized femininity, and of regulated domestic femininity in Rebecca. By dreaming in these terms, the second Mrs de Winter reveals that she has repressed and internalised these conflicting and mutually inscribing models of patriarchal constructions of femininity.

Signifiers for Rebecca build up during the novel, starting with the first chapter, with its references to rampant uncontrolled nature and the opposition between culture and nature:

"Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive." (Rebecca, p.5)

This dream imagery of nature encroaching on the grounds of Manderley functions both as a signifier for the as yet textually absent Rebecca, and an indication that nature is a signifier for the feminine. By using this imagery, femininity is placed in direct opposition to culture, and therefore must be controlled and regulated. This opposition between culture and nature is important, because it reveals that the correct femininity of the novel, and by analogy, with the inclusion of the genre of mimetic detective fiction, the real world outside the novel, is learnt. The remainder of the novel, and its representations of both the girl and her predecessor, Rebecca, must thus be read with the nature/culture opposition of the imagery of the overgrown and overblown grounds of Manderley as an informing background, and as a signifier for the uncontrolled female sexuality that Rebecca represents.

The long opening passage to the novel describes what happens when the cultivated representation of nature is
allowed to grow unchecked:

"Scattered here and again amongst this jungle growth I would recognize shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous. *No hand had checked their progress and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them.*" (My emphasis)
(Rebecca, p.5-6)

This functions as a signifier for the constant need to keep femininity in check, in line with the patriarchy’s construct of Woman’s inherent lack of self-regulation and control, and tendency to ‘uncivilised’ and uncontrolled sexuality. There is a clear parallel to be drawn between the monstrous and sexually uncontrolled plants of Manderley’s dreamscape and Rebecca, who has “…a certain malformation of the uterus…which meant that she could never have had a child” (Rebecca, p.384). The construction of an unregulated female sexuality being dangerous to the reproductive health of women has links to Nineteenth century constructions of femininity. In Unstable Bodies. Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity, Jill Matus notes that Nineteenth century medical discourses connected unregulated sexuality in women with sterility, and with malformed children, quoting one doctor as stating that:

"the ill-regulated excitement which takes its source in a premature development of the sexual propensities, tends to destroy the power of re-production".(Matus, p.65)

The connection of unregulated sexuality with sterility or with malformed children connects Rebecca directly to the unchecked growth of the plants in Manderley’s grounds. Another example of the signification of Rebecca in the dream-grounds of Manderley is the nettle:

"Nettles were everywhere, the vangard of the army. They choked the terrace, they sprawled about
the paths, they leant, vulgar and lanky, against the very windows of the house." (Rebecca, p.7)

The lankiness of the nettles is a precursor for Rebecca’s physical prescence, stamped upon Manderley by the artefacts she has left behind; her powerful handwriting on items in her desk in the morning room, and her mackintosh, found in the flower-room, and inadvertantly worn by the second Mrs de Winter, an indicator of Rebecca’s physical size:

"She who had worn the coat then was tall, slim, broader than me about the shoulders, for I had found it big and overlong, and the sleeves had come below my wrist. Some of the buttons were missing. She had not bothered then to do it up. She had thrown it over her shoulders like a cape, or worn it loose, hanging open, her hands deep in the pockets." (Rebecca, p.125-126)

This description of the difference in size between the second Mrs de Winter and Rebecca clearly codes them as representing different constructions of femininity. Rebecca’s tallness, and casual mastery exhibited in the way she wore her mackintosh with her hands in the pockets, codes her as masculine – as phallic/feminine, whereas the second Mrs de Winter is coded as conventionally feminine by her small size. The construction of Rebecca as phallic/feminine, a usurper of masculine characteristics such as physical size and ease in the public arena – London, and the costume ball - is signified in the first chapter by the rhubarb plant:

"There was another plant too, some half-breed from the woods, whose seed had been scattered long ago beneath the trees and then forgotten, and now, marching in unison with the ivy, thrust its ugly form like a giant rhubarb towards the soft grass where the daffodils had blown." (Rebecca, p.6-7)

This phallic construction of Rebecca codes her as transgressing the boundaries of ‘correct femininity’.
Throughout the nove
l, up until the point where Maxim reveals his murder of Rebecca, the narrator exhibits an envy of the ease that she has projected upon Rebecca in social situations. This can be read as a dissatisfaction with the passive and domestic role that she has taken on in marrying Maxim, and that she had when working as a companion to Mrs Van Hopper. The donning of Rebecca’s clothes, and the use of her pen by the narrator can be read as the second Mrs de Winter exploring different constructions of femininity in an attempt to integrate herself into the institution of marriage, and to learn how to be feminine. The murder of Rebecca comes at a point in the novel where the second Mrs de Winter has measured herself against Rebecca’s phallic construction of femininity and found herself lacking. This inadequacy culminates in the narrator standing at the window of Rebecca’s bedroom, about to jump, with the encouragement of Mrs Danvers. The phallic construction of femininity that Rebecca represents can only be overcome and controlled by a revelation of how patriarchal control can be regained.

Elisabeth Bronfen states in Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, in discussing detective fiction, that:

"The dead woman who remains and in doing so engenders narratives, functions as a body at which death is once again coupled to the other central enigma of western cultural representation – femininity. The solution of her death is a form of documenting both of these unknowns. The dead woman, embodying a secret, harbours a truth others want and since the dead body is feminine, with death and femininity metonymies of each other, the condensation of the two allows one and the same gesture to uncover a stable, determinate answer for this double enigma." (Bronfen, p.293)

The secret of death and femininity that the discovery of Rebecca’s physical body and Maxim’s confession of her murder reveals is t
hat under patriarchal ideology Rebecca deserved to die, and that she was not a representation of the ‘correct feminine’. The second Mrs de Winter is relieved by Maxim’s confession, and not appalled, as she could be expected to be. Her relief stems from a realization that Rebecca is no longer a threat to the closure of romance, and that Maxim does not approve of the construction of femininity that Rebecca represents. The triad has become the classic dyadic relationship of romance fiction, and Rebecca has been transformed from a threat into an obstacle that has been overcome. Maxim’s confession is not just an admission, it is a warning of what will happen if his wife strays from the path of patriarchally approved femininity. Colonel Julyan’s complicity in the cover-up of the murder is an indicator that Maxim’s actions have the approval of the law:

"‘He knew,’ said Maxim slowly: ‘of course he knew.’
‘If he did,’ I said, ‘he will never say anything. Never, never.’" (Rebecca, p.390)

The novel ends with another dream, with the second Mrs de Winter transformed into Rebecca. This is a representation of her internalization of the patriarchal ideology that her marriage and the murder of Rebecca configures. She has now learnt and internalised the price of correct femininity, and the threat that its transgressors pose to the patriarchy.



BIBLIOGRAPHY


PRIMARY SOURCE

Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. 1938. London: Arrow, 1997.


SECONDARY SOURCES

Althusser, Louis. Writings on Pyschoanalysis: Freud and Lacan. Eds. Oliver Corpet and Francois Matheron. Trans. Jeffrey Mehlman. New York: Columbia UP, 1996.

Armstrong, Nancy and Leonard Tennenhouse, eds. The Ideology
of Conduct. Essays in Literature and the History of
Sexuality. London: Methuen, 1987.

Ashley, Bob, ed. Re
ading Popular Narrative. A Source Book.
London: Leicester UP-Cassell, 1997.

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Over Her Dead Body. Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1992.

Cranny-Francis, Anne. Engendered Fictions. Analysing Gender in the Production and Reception of Texts. Kensington
(Australia): New South Wales UP, 1992.

Davis, Kathy, ed. Embodied Practices. Feminist Perspectives on the Body. London: Sage, 1997.

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality. Volume 1. An
Introduction. 1976. London: Penguin, 1990.

Gherardi, Silvia. Gender, Symbolism and Organizational
Cultures. London: Sage, 1995.

Jeffreys, Sheila. The Spinster and her Enemies. Feminism
and Sexuality 1880-1930. North Melbourne (Australia): Spinifex, 1997.

Matus, Jill, L. Unstable Bodies. Victorian Representations of Sexuality and Maternity. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1995.

Munns, Jessica and Gita Rajan, eds. A Cultural Studies Reader. History, Theory, Practice. London: Longman, 1995.

Shaw, Marion, ed. An Introduction to Women’s Writing: From
the Midle Ages to the Present Day. London: Prentice Hall-Simon & Shuster, 1998.

Storey, John, ed. Cultural Theory and Popular Culture. A
Reader. Second edition. Hemel Hempstead: Prentice Hall-Simon & Shuster, 1998.

Ussher, Jane M. Fantasies of Femininity. Reframing the
Boundaries of Sex. London: Penguin, 1997.

Weeks, Jeffrey. Sex, Politics and Society. The Regulation of Sexuality Since 1800. Second Edition. London: Longman,
1989.

Willett, Ralph. Hard Boiled Detective Fiction. Halifax: British Association for American Studies-Ryburn Publishing, 1992.

The above are books I read but did not necessarily quote from when writing this critique of Rebecca.

Summary: