Deconstructing Maxim: a Rebecca rant

A few days ago, an aside of 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. ( Spoilers Galore. )

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.