Deconstructing Maxim: a Rebecca rant
Jul. 9th, 2005 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakA few days ago, an aside of ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.
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.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 03:28 pm (UTC)So is the world ready for Rebecca's POV?
re: Jane Eyre, wasn't it George Eliot who complained that Charlotte Bronte should have been protesting the divorce laws rather than building a melodrama around them? Then, I'm with you on preferring Wuthering Heights, and being a much bigger fan of Emily's than Charlotte's.
Do you know Villette? I read a great essay -- it might have been the preface to the Signet edition -- talking about that book as the already-famous Charlotte writing self-conscious meta about her own life. (Which is the only way I find it readable!)
And speaking of authors punishing women for being "unconventional" (going back to Rebecca) -- I was rather surprised on rereading "Pride & Prejudice" to find that Lydia's actually pretty appealing. I mean, she's not the brightest bulb in the box (but, come on, Wickham fools everybody, including the shrewed judge of character, Elizabeth, who only gets the goods on him from Darcy -- and then doesn't bother to tell anybody!) but most of the "awful" things she does consist of having high spirits and chasing boys. In the 1930s, she would have been the heroine, with her boring older sisters as the sticks in the mud. For that matter, I'm not sure that married life with Wickham wouldn't be more fun than family hour with the Darcys (and certainly with the Knightleys!)
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 03:52 pm (UTC)Indeed it does. More Maxim whitewashing. Grr, arrgh.
So is the world ready for Rebecca's POV?
It has already been written. (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0061032042/qid=1120923246/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_ur_1/103-7509036-0346221?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) I have to add that imo, like Jean Rhys' Saragasso Sea does with the first Mrs. Rochester, I think Sally Beaumont really pulls it off here - writing a novel inspired by a classic which can stand on its own feet. Each section is told by a different narrator (and a somewhat different view of Rebecca), and each voice is believable, including the one section where we get to hear Rebecca's own voice.
Villete: no, haven't read it, but am aware that a lot of autobiographical meta went into it. Incidentally, there is of course a du Maurier - Bronte connection beyond the similarities between Jane Eyre and Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier wrote a biography about Branwell.
Wickham fools everybody, including the shrewed judge of character, Elizabeth, who only gets the goods on him from Darcy -- and then doesn't bother to tell anybody!
Absolutely, Elizabeth is quite taken with Wickham and very charmed. The unreliable charmer shows up in Austen quite often, doesn't he, with Frank Churchill probably being the most benevolent variation.
Lydia: is either the Harmony or the early Cordelia of P&P, and yes, Austen is hard on her for what wouldn't be regarded as bad in another period. But then, just think of Marianne and Elinor Dashwood - Lydia at least is spared the near death experience as punishment...
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 05:03 pm (UTC)The unreliable charmer shows up in Austen quite often, doesn't he, with Frank Churchill probably being the most benevolent variation.
Of course! You have to meet the Wrong Guy before the Right Guy comes along (ane Uh-oh, you're about to get me rolling in my First Fandom. Consider yourself warned!) Oddly, while I have certain soft spots for Wickham and, most definitely, Willoughby, Frank Churchill consistently tops my list of Characters I Hate. Maybe because he jerks around Emma (who sort of deserves it) and Jane (who most definitely doesn't) and ends up getting the girl he wants anyway. Wickham, at least, has to settle for Lydia when, all other things being equal, he'd probably rather have Elizabeth. And probably my favorite "Wrong Guy" in Austen is Northanger's John Thorpe, who is incapable of carrying on conversation about anything besides how fast his carriage can go! You have to wonder how often Jane the maiden aunt had to sit next to That Guy at a dinner party. And considering that her books were anonymous for most of her lifetime? The poor stooge didn't even have a clue who he was talking to!
Of course, he's hardly any competition for Tilney -- so it occurs to me that the "Wrong Guy" in NA is actually Isabella. Which opens up a whole other realm. . .
You know, it's only because my attempts at pseudo-Regency prose came out so wretched that I had to resort to writing in fandoms that involve vampires.
But then, just think of Marianne and Elinor Dashwood - Lydia at least is spared the near death experience as punishment...
True, though Marianne goes home with Alan Rickman. . .oh, wait. That's not Book-Canon is it?
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 06:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 03:44 pm (UTC)The book ends, in terms of what is shown on the last page, with the burning of Manderley. However, the "ending" for Maxim and the narrator is the beginning of the book, and this is not a happy ending at all. They are transients in expensive hotels, with no close friends and a decidedly trivial life -- deliberately trivial, as is shown in the moment when she reads about the hunt and reminds them too much of Manderley (and what happened there). She describes them as happy, but I believe strongly that we're meant to question what kind of people would consider this shell of an existence happiness.
In the story itself, Maxim is indeed manipulative toward the narrator, sometimes deliberately so and sometimes unconsciously -- he keeps her shut out of his inner life, just as he is trying to essentially divorce himself from his inner life (aka, his memories of his time with Rebecca and what he did to her). He is not incapable of kindness or friendship, but he is incapable of reconciling his murder of Rebecca with any sort of authentic life afterward.
Of what is Rebecca guilty? We don't know. Yes, her sexual infidelity is definitely part of what's going on, but I don't think we're supposed to believe that it's the only one of her sins or the greatest. Other hints are dropped -- one of her lovers' criminal activities, her cruelty toward the retarded man who lives near the sea -- that tell us Rebecca wasn't just an unfaithful wife but a genuinely vicious person. (And these clues don't come from Maxim himself -- they are reported by numerous sources, from in-laws to faithful friends to the retarded man, so on and so forth.) Maxim does murder her -- and he is in no way absolved of what he's done by the author, whose judgment I believe differs from the narrator's -- but it is worth remembering that Rebecca set him up to do so, attacking him just where she knew he would be most likely to snap. She was dying, and she chose to die in a way that would ruin Maxim in every way -- it's brilliant and it's brutal, and in some ways it's Rebecca's testimony that Maxim is NOT a heartless bastard; she expects guilt to undo him more than the law. She dies smiling.
Part Two
Date: 2005-07-09 03:44 pm (UTC)Maxim is cleared of wrongdoing by the inquest; they learn that Rebecca set up the murder. Although the narrator takes this rather breezily -- she's a cold, cold woman in her way, and you begin to wonder at this point of Maxim has a "type" -- Maxim is still haunted. (Perhaps it's the knowledge of how skillfully he has been manipulated; he's still Rebecca's toy.) They head back toward Manderley, but dread is already sinking into Maxim and to the narrator too. And they return to find the house in flames, burning to the ground. Given the vividness with which Manderley is painted in the book (and its central role in the psyches of both Maxim and the narrator -- in fact, the taunt that pushes Maxim over the edge into murder is Rebecca's gloating that her illegitimate child will inherit Manderley -- I think that Manderley is meant to represent the spirit/inner life/soul. Mrs. Danvers destroys it. And the narrator and Maxim live out the shadows of a life without it; Rebecca's murder has taken that from them forever, and you have to wonder about the narrator that she does not miss it more.
I think some people do read the book as you say, particularly girls who first come across it in high school, but I think that Rebecca is enormously more psychologically and morally complex than that. It is one of my favorite books, and Maxim's confession is one of my favorite scenes in any book. The stunning revelation of the heroine's real character -- the nakedness of her delight in her rival's death and her husband's anguish -- is as brilliantly done as anything I've read.
Re: Part Two
Date: 2005-07-09 05:12 pm (UTC)Nice analysis, Yahtzee. Very interesting thought.
One difference between Jane Eyre and Rebecca is that second Mrs Rochester gets to have a child, while the second Mrs DeWinter doesn't. Given the links in JE between dreams of children & dreams of Thornfield burning, I'm sure this is significant. Rochester merely wishes his wife dead, but doesn't push her, and by the end of the novel attains renewal, symbolised by the child (and the renewal of his sight). DeWinter actually kills the miscreant wife, and in consequence never attains the symbolic renewal, leading a sterile sham of a life. Notably, Rebecca's narrator cleaves closer to DeWinter when his sins come to light, while Jane flees in horror.
Re: Part Two
Date: 2005-07-09 05:22 pm (UTC)He's put himself in her hands, so from that point on she's in control, probably for the first time in her life.
Re: Part Two
Date: 2005-07-09 07:26 pm (UTC)Re: the confession scene as revealing the heroine's real character: it certainly is, I was just not sure whether or not du Maurier intended it to be, but you know, given how skilled a writer she is, you're probably right.
Remarkably, even Maxim is taken aback by the swiftness and totality of her absolution; he takes comfort in it, but there is an uneasiness to the passion between them afterward
The emotional control has certainly shifted in her favour. Though I have to say that my first interpretation of his lamenting the lost innocence in her was that he regretted this control shift, not that he was somewhat shocked by the speed and completeness of her absolution. However, I do like your interpretation, and it certainly helps with my Maxim issues.
Re: Rebecca described as cruel by sources other than Maxim: absolutely, but still not death penalty warranting. Mind you, one could wonder whether that makes her the traditional Gothic hero (cruelty being an attribute of same quite often)...
Re: Part Two
Date: 2005-07-09 09:03 pm (UTC)I definitely agree that Maxim's surprise and dismay at the narrator's instant forgiveness (if it can even be called that -- she doesn't think there's anything to forgive) is linked to his loss of control, but I also think that on some levels he not only expects her condemnation but wants it. (There are also elements of fatalism in his attitudes toward the inquest.) I think Maxim feels guilty for murdering Rebecca, but not guilty enough, and he knows this; as soon as someone else will blame him for the murder, punish him, he can give up punishing himself and feel that he was in the right. The police don't. The narrator doesn't. Only Mrs. Danvers does that, and she does so by striking at the one thing Maxim could not lose -- the one meaningful punishment possible. (And on the Manderley = the soul theory, I think it is definitely significant that the one person most suborned by Rebecca, the one whose ties to Rebecca threaten the narrator's life and ultimately destroy Maxim, is the housekeeper.)
Naturally Rebecca doesn't deserve to die, at least not for any act known to the readers or to Maxim. But her murder is her action as much as his, and is meant to symbolically kill him as surely as his act literally kills her -- their cruelty is of a kind. I believe Rebecca is conscious of her vicious character and embraces it, while Maxim lives in denial until nearly the end.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 04:54 pm (UTC)Sally Beauman wrote a recent sequel, Rebecca's Tale, addressing these issues; it's a bit uneven but has some lovely stuff from Rebecca's journal.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 07:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 08:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 08:40 pm (UTC)"The Modern Gothic, as a genre, is a means of enabling a conventionally
feminine Heroine to have Adventures at all. It may also be a way that
conventionally feminine readers can see their own situation --
dependent and limited as it is -- validated, justified and glamorized
up to the hilt, without turning Heroines either into active persons or
into sexually adventurous persons, both of whom violate the morality
of conventional femininity."
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 09:22 pm (UTC)I like Jane Eyre. In fact it's practically the only 19th C British novel I can stomach at all. For it's time, it's quite feminist in it's outlook IMO. Jane refuses to compromise her self-respect for love of Rochester, or let herself enter a loveless marriage to the missionary just because society says she is a worthless female orphan who should be grateful for the opportunity to marry someone respectable. She's also bookish, strong-willed and an independent thinker in a age where those weren't considered suitable characteristics for women.
Have you ever read Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys? It's the story of Bertha Mason, and presents Rochester and Bertha in an entirely different light. It's an excellent book on it's own, and fascinating when compared to Jane Eyre. Based on your reaction to JE, I think you would really like it.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 05:59 am (UTC)Yes, I read Wide Sargasso Sea, and found it fascinating like you. Couldn't read JE afterwards without seeing Bertha as Antoinette.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-09 10:33 pm (UTC)While I sympathized with the narrator when I was younger, I wanted to slap some sense into her when I read it later in life. Maxim is no prize. Not that you can blame her for not seeing that. But the ending about how he laments how her knowledge of him changes her, would be enough to make *me* leave him right there. Oy.
Great book though, wonderfully atmospheric, and I remember my sense of shock at the ending quite well, even 20 years later. IT builds, and builds, and then suddenly it all makes sense. Great stuff.
Whereas Wuthering Heights always frustrated me. Heathcliff is awful, Catherine is spoiled-- they live lives of high passion, and it's interesting, but I'm so much more like Nelly Dean, without, I hope, being quite so lacking in imagination in some ways.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 11:01 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-07-10 06:02 pm (UTC)Susan Hill also wrote a sequel to "Rebecca", but I didn't care for it at the time. I didn't even finish it. Sally Beaumont's sequel on the other hand is very well written.
I don't think the readers are supposed to sympathize overly much with Maxim and the narrator. In the beginning, yes, it's easy to feel sorry for them. But as the story evolves we see that both of them are far from perfect as well. And they both don't get a happy ending.
By the time the story is told Rebecca is dead and Manderley has been burned to the ground. The narrator - we never even learn her name - and Maxim live abroad in a sort of rootless existence, moving from hotel to hotel. Their life appears to be utterly boring and without any accomplishments. The reader doesn't get the feeling that the narrator and Maxim are overly happy in their life after Manderley. To me it seems as if they are still haunted by the past.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 01:26 pm (UTC)The hotel existence of Maxim and the narrator reminded me of the exiles during the 30s somehow, which why I hesitate to call it boring, but yes, they're clearly still haunted by the past, and not at peace at all.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 05:00 pm (UTC)Maxim and his wife have no real need to be in exile. They could have found a nice house somewhere in England (preferably in a slightly remote area) and could have spent their life there. Or if they really felt as if they could no longer live in England because of all the gossip, they could have bought a nice house abroad. Instead they're moving from hotel to hotel like fugitives.
This really makes it very clear how much the loss of Manderley has hit them. Since nothing will ever live up to Manderley they rather have nothing at all. They are haunted by memories of Manderley and maybe by thoughts about Rebecca. Moving around seems to keep the fear at bay.
no subject
Date: 2005-07-11 07:13 am (UTC)I do always wonder why the heroine's name is withheld from the reader. Critics often refer to her as the "nameless heroine," but shortly after she meets Maxim, he comments on her "beautiful and unusual" name and she replies that her father gave it to her. So it's not that she doesn't have a name, or that no one in the story knows it—we readers are the only ones in the dark. You could argue that it's a clue to the narrator's unrelliability, but I just can't read the book that way. Obviously it points toward the power that Rebecca (or is it just the idea of Rebecca?) holds over her. But I feel there's more to it than that. Maybe it's that the narrator's character isn't fixed, that the events of the story change her, while Rebecca is an unchanging force. I don't know.
I love the idea that Manderley represents the soul. With that in mind, it's fascinating that the scariest character in the story is the housekeeper. If you accept the idea that Rebecca is really the victim in the story, you could argue that Mrs. Danvers is the conscience. But I don't buy that—I do think that Rebecca was, as someone else here put it, a genuinely vicious person. I think Mrs. Danvers functions as her ghost would in a supernatural gothic; or perhaps, to read more psychologically, as a corrupt conscience. Regardless of the degree of Maxim's culpability, I do think we're meant to believe that Rebecca's spirit poisoned everything it came into contact with, and that the destruction of Manderley is tragic, but also cleansing.
Finally, it just occurred to me that the life Maxim and the narrator flee to after Manderley burns is pretty much the same as the life she was leading as a paid companion to the horrible old woman in the beginning of the story. I think that's quite interesting.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 03:49 pm (UTC)I have a lot of problems with Jane Eyre as a book, Rochester as a character, and Jane/Rochester as a couple. The book irritated me beyond belief when I first read it, and I could never decide whether Bronte knew how unhealthy and manipulative her main relationship was, even at the end of the book. The thing is, the moment in the proposal scene where Jane proclaims her equality to Rochester is often touted as feminist and revolutionary, but for me it's impact is negated by the utter crassness with which Rochester treats Jane before and after this moment, and the way she falls for him anyway.
Then I read Wide Sargasso Sea, and I had a total, ah ha! Moment. I have been much less annoyed with Jane Eyre ever since, because now at least I know that Jean Rhys got it, and the existence of her book mitigates the existence of Rochester for me.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 04:35 pm (UTC)As for whether Bronte knew how unhealthy that relationship was: er. I don't know, the Brontes were very much are a people of their own, so their interpretations might be unusual. I still would hesitate to believe that she saw the pairing as romantic - she might have seen Rochester's situation in the end as just and the fact that Jane gets him, anyway, as a victory. I have no idea why it is interpreted as feminist, probably because she's not bending herself into shape to marry him, and wants him even though he's decidedly not the Byronic Hero anymore? Personally, I always found the state Bronte leaves him in rather sadistic: doesn't he end up crippled and half-blind? (I haven't read the book in 17 years, mind.)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 05:43 pm (UTC)Because Jane just before he first proposes declares her love (i.e. she takes the initiative) and says she's his equal. Also because she doesn't marry him or become his mistress after finding out the truth (and doesn't marry her priggish cousin, either), yes. Mind you, I wouldn't interpret either as feminist in the modern sense, but for the Victorians it was certainly revolutionary.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 06:24 pm (UTC)I suspect it was quite scandalous even before it came out it was written by a woman.
As for them being equal, that seems to be rather dubious, given that he's now helpless and depending on her. For Victorian men, the idea must have been very disturbing.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 06:47 pm (UTC)Not just for Victorian men. I've seen more than one essay claiming it was all a castration metaphor written by today's critics...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 06:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 06:33 pm (UTC)The Victorian background comes really into play for me here - I do find it disturbing myself, but at the same time I try to look at it from her point of view, where it becomes a different thing - which mostly let's me ponder how screwed up Victorian England was, granted, but it takes it a bit out of the icky context.
And I'm afraid, when I first read it, I simply liked St. John a whole lot better because he travelled...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 05:39 pm (UTC)What Charlotte B. thought of it: hmmmm. If you read her juvenilia, the stories she wrote in the fantasy realm of Angria, the Rochester prototypes are definitely meant as romantic heroes, but the older she gets the more satire shows up, and in one of her last Angria storoies, where the heroine is already like Jane a governess dressed in grey, she rejects the Duke of Zamorna (Charlotte's übermale hero). On the other hand: going by the way she apologizes and apologizes for Emily's writing of Heathcliff and Catherine in her foreword of Wuthering Heights, you get the impression she thought her own couple were in a healthy relationship by comparison. Which, well, yes, in comparison to those two, who isn't?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-05 06:10 pm (UTC)