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Status In Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca

990 Words4 Pages

Gender Roles and Classification of Status Assumptions about how men and women are to behave were well portrayed during the 1900s and Daphne Du Maurier’s book, Rebecca, reflects the aspects of inequality between men in women through her exhilarating novel. There was a difference between the roles of men and women. A wife was to stay home and provide for the needs of a husband. While a husband was to dominantly suppress their needs towards their wife. These stereotypical expectations were portrayed through Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, published in 1938. Rebecca is about a young woman who marries a widower whose wife recently passed away. In this chilling novel the narrator falls in love with a man who upholds a dark secret about his dead …show more content…

This source of analysis presents an analytical perspective on the patriarchal hauntings within Rebecca. Pons’ connected villainy with the powerful positions within patriarchy. She proposes that “villainy in this novel is not exclusively linked to gender, and therefore, the victim and abuser statuses cannot be equated to femininity and masculinity” (69). Pon means to defend the idea that Daphne Du Maurier created a novel where we see both men and women desires to uphold a powerful position of status. This eventually leads to the characters in the story to commit acts of villainy. 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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