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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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