Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca: a cautionary tale against villainous women

Abstract

Daphne du Maurier’s novel Rebecca offers an unsettling examination of how Gothic literature is utilized to portray the female struggle for identity within a patriarchal society. Published in the early twentieth century, the novel focuses on a period of immense change in British society. Challenges to traditional gender roles and sexuality begin to arise with the emergence of the feminist and gay and lesbian movements. Daphne du Maurier explores the anxieties surrounding these social changes. The novel can be analyzed through feminist, queer, and psychoanalytical lenses to gain a greater understanding of du Maurier’s response to the changing roles of women and how they threaten the patriarchal structure. A close examination of the novel’s three female characters reveals that they each represent some facet of the social movements that du Maurier utilizes to villainize them. Rebecca, an independent woman with an ambiguous sexual appetite, refuses to follow the restrictive guidelines set out by Maxim de Winter, and by extension, the patriarchy. While Rebecca’s challenges to patriarchy are partially contained by her death, she is not erased; Mrs. Danvers ensures that Rebecca’s memory lives on in Manderley. Mrs. Danvers exhibits her own embodiments of resistance; her sexuality is in question, her appearance is bizarre, and her interests are obsessive. These characterizations are, of course, filtered through the narrator; she herself partly casts these women as villains. The narrator, then, seems to be the least villainous—and yet she displays behavior that is questionable and could be described as scandalous. She often lies to achieve an elevated role in society, and she is willing to support a murderer to maintain it. Instead of celebrating the challenges these women pose to the heteronormative patriarchy, Daphne du Maurier is providing a warning that, from her perspective, should these social movements succeed, they will bring destruction to society.