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Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca

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Daphne du Maurier a prominent English writer (1907 – 1989), author of novels, plays and short stories, has been designated as “an entertainer born of entertainers”, who appeals to “the average reader looking for a temporary escape from the perils of this mortal life”. Her best-known novel, Rebecca, first published in 1938, and adapted many times for the theatre, the cinema and the television, has proved to be “an enduring classic of popular fiction”. The most successful of all the adaptations that have been made until the present day continues to be Alfred Hitchcock’s Academy Award-winning 1940 film Rebecca, which in fact outstripped the popularity of the novel itself. On the other hand, du Maurier’s novel has inspired two sequels: Susan Hill’s …show more content…

Nigro, for example, suggests the following reading: “The common assumption about Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca figures the first Mrs. de Winter as a secretly conniving manipulator who had convinced the world that she was as morally flawless as she was beautiful. According to the second Mrs. de Winter, the narrator of the novel, Maxim murdered Rebecca justifiably: only he knew the true, corrupt Rebecca. What if, however, Maxim is the one who is lying, and Rebecca was as good as reputation held her, if his jealousy was the true motive for her murder? Thus, from a feminist perspective, reading Maxim as a Gothic villain implies the emergence of Rebecca’s character as a feminist heroine, “a woman whose worst crime was ‘simply that she resisted male definition, asserting her right to define herself and her sexual desires.’” However, the reassessment of Rebecca as a heroine is essential who rejects patriarchal norms and not as mainly as a villain who creates conflict in an idealized romance. This kind of analysis perhaps does not break the notion that exploitations of power are gender-based, which has the consequences which are disagreeable: it promotes the female perception of man as ‘the Other’ that is the enemy, where this concept propagates inequality; and it also establishes women as victims. So Rebecca is in reality a victim of her husband’s wrathfulness, and there isn’t any excuse for Maxim de Winter’s crime. As a result, Maxim who is the patriarch himself has arisen as the new villain of the novel. Hence, the rooted villainy is related to the patriarchal exploitations of power rather than gender, as the main character Maxim uses his power of class and status to abuse

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348 Words | 2 Pages

Rebecca, the dark classic written by Daphne DuMaurier, is filled with deceit and manipulation stemming from every character. It features many different forms of deception which effectively produces a brilliant story about the dangers of falsity. Through an unreliable narrator, Maxim’s lies, and Rebecca’s manipulation, Daphne du Maurier sets up a story focused around the theme of how significant acts of deception, in any form, end in nothing but despair. Although the story is shown through her point of view the readers know very little about the narrator.

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571 Words | 3 Pages

A short story is called a short story for a reason. It is a story that has a lot of action and dialogue packed into only 10-40 pages. And The Birds by Daphne du Maurier did very well with getting everything the story needed into only around 35 pages. This story very easily could have been a 200-300 page book. And that's why I think that the short story and the film are so different.

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616 Words | 3 Pages

“If we don’t end war, war will end us”, - HG Wells. War is a huge part of the story, “The Birds”, by Daphne du Maurier. This story starts with the concept that birds start to attack people because “black winter” came too soon. The birds become greedy and attack people to get food. The birds sit on chimneys, windows, and doors, basically anywhere they can get inside houses and buildings.

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826 Words | 4 Pages

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca has captivated audiences since its initial release in 1938. Upon its initial publication, the novel did not receive the kind of critical acclaim one might expect from a novel with the commercial success at the time of its first publication and with such lasting influence. Sally Beauman writes in the afterword to the novel that while “some critics acknowledged the book’s haunting power and its vice-like narrative grip, but — perhaps misled by the book’s presentation, or prejudiced by the gender of the author — they delved no deeper” (Beauman 431). The novel was not merely overlooked, however. With the novel following the “the archetypal scenario for all those mildly thrilling romantic encounters between a scowling Byronic hero (who owns a gloomy mansion) and a trembling heroine (who can’t quite figure out the mansion’s floorplan)” (Gilbert and Gubar 337), it was and often continues to be seen as a rewriting of Jane Eyre into a more modern timeframe.

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227 Words | 1 Pages

Rebecca is a film that transmits the feeling that something is not right. It is unclear the reason for this feeling but the characters´ behaviors as well as the events confirm it. At the beginning is given to the audience a small clue that the story would probably is not going to have a happy ending or it would start with a tragic event. In this film results bizarre that one of the main characters lacks a name, second Mrs. De winter adopts her identity from her job first she is Mrs. Van Hopper´s paid company later she is Mr. De Winter´s wife. It is transmitted to the audience that this woman is so naïve and foolish that is only valuable to be recognized when she takes someone else´s identity.

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1762 Words | 8 Pages

Many of Marie De France’s pieces show great romances and hardships, and a battle of power mixed with stereotypical male and female relations of this time. Power has a vital part in how it affects the characters within the text and the audience that reads it. Specifically, Marie De France’s “Chevrefoil (The Honeysuckle)” where power is one of the main social constructions, working along with gender to follow the story of Tristan and the king’s wife being powerless against the king. Gender roles of this time period were important in how power was addressed as men typically had power over women, but also of those younger than themselves. “Chevrefoil” has a lot of power struggles where the wife wishes to be with a younger man whom she loves, however,

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560 Words | 3 Pages

Dreams are often viewed as peaceful escapes, but sometimes dreams make someone's worst nightmares come true. In a excerpt from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, The narrator describes a dream where she walks up on a abandon house that has been consumed by nature. The author uses spooky diction to describe the many setting of the story. She used words like nightmarish, tenacious, and haunting to describe the gate the trail and the house. This setting created a very dreary mood.

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990 Words | 4 Pages

Rather than to blame a character for their villainy, Pon chooses to view the patriarchal system as the villain. Her perception is that the novel portrays the characters as unable to fulfil the expectation of gender roles from the patriarchal system therefore the characters are then led “towards hypocrisy, hysteria and crime” (71). Overall, Pons analysis is directed towards defending the idea that villainy in Rebecca is not directly related to gender, but instead it is connected with the desire to uphold a high position within terms of

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1603 Words | 7 Pages

The Gothic Influence Although the word “Gothic” is often associated with supernatural creatures or haunted, abandoned places, the word actually originates from an elaborate style of architecture. The reason that the word “Gothic” has become associated with these ideas of horror and death is because the architecture was thought of the ideal place for mysterious, suspenseful, and dark stories to occur. These types of stories became known as the Gothic genre. The Gothic literary genre often includes elements of fear, death, and strong emotions, and is set in set in a dark or mysterious place.

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959 Words | 4 Pages

The Feminist Part of The Crucible. Feminism In the novel The Crucible by Arthur Miller, I see a lot of feminism present throughout Salem, Massachusetts in the 1960s. One way it is present is with how men hold all the power, with jobs and they have more power than women in all. Also, Miller makes it seem like women are liars during the whole play.

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990 Words | 4 Pages

The men in the novel always feel superior to the women and so, they obtain the more powerful roles while the women are assumed to abide by and admire them. They are perceived as strong and brave. The women are weak and inept. For example, Peter was always taken as the leader, the one who is trusted to lead the others. Edmund embodied the ultimate male trait – aggressiveness – which he uses to menace his siblings.

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1035 Words | 5 Pages

Thirdly, the classification of women into different classes prevents them from identifying their upmost enemy: masculine power. The relationship between the different groups of women creates a powerful atmosphere of suppression. In fact, Gilead promotes the act of woman against woman. Wives and Aunts controls and enforces the disciplines of the patriarchal society to other women, so one can clearly see that even women takes advantage of power. For example, Serena Joy, the Commander’s Wife who lives in vain hope for traditional womanhood, is the true traitor against women.

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775 Words | 4 Pages

He thoroughly shows through these characters that Female physical traits equal weakness, while male traits equal power. He promotes his sexist views by showing the gender roles reversed to further enhance mans power. The women, Nurse Ratched for example, is looked at as destructive forces she is seen as a machine “a mistake was made somehow in manufacturing putting those big, womanly breasts on what would of otherwise been a perfect work”(6). “She’s swelling up, swells till her backs splitting out the white uniform”(5). At the end of the novel her breasts are exposed and her feminine (less powerful) side is seen.

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1360 Words | 6 Pages

A Modern View of Feminist Criticism William Shakespeare 's "Othello” can be analyzed from a feminist perspective. This criticism focuses on relationships between genders, like the patterns of thoughts, behavior, values, enfranchisement, and power in relations between and within sexes. A feminist examination of the play enables us to judge the distinctive social esteems and status of women and proposes that the male-female power connections that become an integral factor in scenes of Othello impact its comprehension. I believe that the critical lens that provides modern society with the most compelling view of literature is Feminist Criticism because it analyzes distrust and disloyalty among relationships, women being treated as possessions

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1000 Words | 4 Pages

Feminist literary criticism’s primary argument is that female characters have always been presented from a male’s viewpoint. According to Connell, in most literary works, female characters often play minor roles which emphasize their domestic roles, subservience and physical beauty while males are always the protagonists who are strong, heroic and dominant (qtd. in Woloshyn et al.150). This means that the women are perceived as weak and are supposed to be under the control of men. Gill and Sellers say that feminist literary criticism’s approach involves identifying with female characters in order to challenge any male centred outlook.

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