Rebecca
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My husband is a murder- No problem according to second Mrs. De Winter
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Melissa
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rated it 3 stars
Jun 16, 2014 08:07AM
I was rather shocked that the second wife had no isse with the fact that her husband was a murdered and then lied to cover it up. Hello! Its like the girl had no ideas or morals for herself. I would be constantly worried he would kill me if I got out of line. In fact, I thought that is where the book was going.
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Agree, but you need to remember this is the world somewhere between the wars in a totally class-obsessed England. The second Mrs de Winder is totally and utterly stuck in this world, which means her husband "top of the upper class" has the right to do most things which normal "lower middle class people" like her and especially the "working class" people could never be aloud to do so. As he has "breeding" the reasons why he killed his first wife, are of course not corse, but totally understandable! He could no longer be expected to tolerate the vulgar, even if upper class 1st Mrs de Winter. He has no need to kill the 2nd Mrs de Winter, she will do whatever he says as he is superior. There is a clip of the "Three Ronnies" on YouTube, which perfectly explains it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0JSah...
Well the second wife had no strength. Imo a weak character no personality. She acted like his property instead of his wife and partner. But like Gisela mention probably has much to do with the class system in England. But even with that i think i would have left him he killed his first wife.
Gisela! loved the clip--very good explanation. I need to reread Rebecca. I felt she was trapped by society, and couldn't even allow herself to have an opinion.
Yes- it was murder but she manipulated her way into getting herself killed. Suicide by husband.
Silverpiper wrote: "Yes- it was murder but she manipulated her way into getting herself killed. Suicide by husband."<Is he really justified in killing her, just because she was a terrible person?
Absolutely not justified! Rebecca was the only interesting part of this book. It came down to control. Maxim couldn't control Rebecca so she had to die. Good thing the second was so weak.
Melissa wrote: "Absolutely not justified! Rebecca was the only interesting part of this book. It came down to control. Maxim couldn't control Rebecca so she had to die. Good thing the second was so weak."Definately, that is also why he couldn't stand to be with his sister (whom he claims to like) for long as she also wouldn't be totally controlled by him. The guy has a definate problem.
Elizabeth wrote: "Silverpiper wrote: "Yes- it was murder but she manipulated her way into getting herself killed. Suicide by husband."<Is he really justified in killing her, just because she was a terrible person?"
Probably not, but she wanted to die and made sure he was angry enough to kill her. Maxim was weak which was why he fell prey to her in the first place. If Maxim had been tried for murder Rebecca would really have been the winner. This way she doesn't quite get everything. Call it poetic justice!
Rebecca was a real bitch, that played Maxim like a fiddle! she knew what buttons to press in to making him do whatever she wanted. However, i do not condone his killing, but i think she railled him up so much, that he forced to, by lossing his temper. Remember that she taunted him for years, with her stays in London and her luston one hand, and on the other hand, her constant RPG in Maderlay, as the perfect wife/hostess.I would say that if i were the 2nd wife, i wouyld be wandering what would happen to me, if i crossed him...
I was getting a major Jane Eyre vibe from this book, I don't know if that was intentional or just ripping it off. I used to think Jane was a prig sometimes, but Jane Eyre seems very strong and capable next to Mrs. No-name DeWinter.
When narcissists collide . . . . . . one must die!
;-)
What pushed Maxim over the edge was that Rebecca claimed she would bear a child that wasn't his. She was not murdered because she was a terrible person... She had violated the agreed rules. The second Mrs Winter was a weak person to start with, but in the first part of the part, she's the stronger party of the two... she has nothing to fear from Maxim... He was basically the weaker of the two...
There should be more threads like this. A little levity would be very welcome around here."Captain obsessed with whale; business-as-usual according to crew"
"Shady millionaire buys house to stalk ex-GF from end of dock every night; neighbors shrug"
Feliks wrote: "There should be more threads like this. A little levity would be very welcome around here."Captain obsessed with whale; business-as-usual according to crew"
"Shady millionaire buys house to stal..."
I like this game
Single woman hates richest man in county; changes mind after she sees his mansion.
Mercurial alcoholic hides mentally ill wife for years, tricks governess into bigamy.
Elizabeth wrote: "I like this game..."Me too!
Married millionaire pregnant with her lover´s child - husband lurks in the neighbourhood seeking revenge - family shocked!
Youngest daughter in love with rogue runs away - parents will pay money for information.
Games like this, new to y'all? I used to devise dozens of 'em when I hung out on cinema sites.Didn't think Goodreaders were interested in games. Somehow its just different in tone. People too dispersed; good games need a tight, cohesive group.
Monica wrote: "Well the second wife had no strength. Imo a weak character no personality. She acted like his property instead of his wife and partner. But like Gisela mention probably has much to do with the clas..."The Joan Fontaine character certainly followed this line. She was meek, easily intimidated by our "lesbian" character and head over heels.
I am glad to know that 2nd Mrs de Winter is having no problem with her husband (murderer).Because if she loves him truly so she should be a perfect companion for her husband. But the fact is that there is a lot of age difference b\w the couple. so instead of representing themselves as husband & wife, they proved as father and daughter.
Oh come on, you wouldn't support the man you love even if he murdered someone? Surely there is someone in your life that you would stand behind even in the face of them murdering someone... And as Javeria notes, she was so much younger than Maxim that it would only be natural to her to stand by him and support him. He was the only person in her life, since the death of her parents, who showed her any amount of love. For whatever reasons, he loved her. For a lonely, shy girl, that is worth anything.
Morality may be 'right', but it doesn't make you happy. Only love does that.
Another aspect of it all is that Rebecca was killed, in part, because she "threatened" Manderley. That's the thing that actually makes him snap. The idea that he would lose Manderley to her bastard child. In that sense, it would have been interesting to see what would happen if the second Mrs. DeWinter had threatened Manderley, what he would have done (in a world where Manderley hadn't burned down). That he is so worried with Manderley is of course natural since that is pretty much his whole identity (as it was at that time with landowners). His whole mission in life was to maintain the property and pass it on to the next heir in line. In that sense it's really interestin that the book begins and ends with a destroyed Manderley. Maybe the book is trying to talk about how the murder was a form of self-preservation/self-defense since as said before the land was his identity. Then again maybe the book is trying to question the right landowners had, at that time, to do anything to save the property/land that they had?
If this is the case, then the ruin of Manderley is what forever saves Mrs. DeWinter from harm.
And then there's the age old question that's contemplated even in courtrooms . . . how bad did (s)he need killin'?
gertt wrote: "Lesserknowngems wrote: "Another aspect of it all is that Rebecca was killed, in part, because she "threatened" Manderley. That's the thing that actually makes him snap. The idea that he would lose ..."Manderley is entailed. I chapter XX right before he kills her Rebecca says
"If I had a child, Max, " she said, "neither you, nor anyone in the world, would ever prove that it was not yours. It would grow up here in Manderley, bearing your name. There would be nothing you could do. And when you died Manderley would be his. You could not prevent it. The property' s entailed. You would like an heir, wouldn't you, for your beloved Manderley? You would enjoy it, wouldn't you, seeing my son lying in his pram under the chestnut tree, playing leap-frog on the lawn, catching butterflies in the Happy Valley? It would give you the biggest thrill of your life, wouldn't it, Max, to watch my son grow bigger day by day, and to know that when you died, all this would be his?"
She talks about how she would be the best mother in the world. It's actually the last thing she says before he kills her.
gertt wrote: "It's been awhile since I read the book and I couldn't remember...You were right then...it was Rebecca being pregnant with another man's child that threw Maxim over the edge.
That's what I like a..."
And it make you think about things you otherwise wouldn't have thought of. I always wondered why Manderley seemed to have such a big part in the book, I mean both beginning and ending it, and I was always wondering what Manderley actually symbolised. Maybe Manderley is actually a symbol of the murder of Rebecca. The book starts with it, since the romance in the book could only have happened because of the murder (have to get rid of wife number one to have room for wife number two), at the same time at the end they don't talk about Manderley, in the same way they probably don't talk about Rebecca. Does that make sense to anyone else but me?
I can see where Manderley can be a symbol of deception, as i concluded. It had to be destryed in order for Maxim and his 2nd wife to have a "normal" marriage, to be rid of Rebecca´s shadow, so to speak.So, in that capacity, it was Manderley who drawn Rebecca in, it was Manderley that she thougt as a prison - she always wnet for large stays in London, after the house-parties - it was in Manderley that she was murdered and finally, the new wife didn´t fit in Manderley; so, the burning of it, was a burning of a symbol, of evil going away.
Maxim loved his second wife it became a marriage of love. His marriage to Rebecca was a marriage of convenience as she would be accepted as the right sort of wife for him, this did not mean he ever really loved her. Especially when he realised how she really was
Yes, I suppose that it is weird that she had not problem with it. But the book was crafted to make you suppose that Rebecca had her husband almost out of his mind when he killed her...
Rebecca was taunting Maxim with other men even threatening to have a child by one and claiming it as Maxim'd so he inherited everything.
But whether she taunted him or not, it is still murder. So the question is if the book says that yes, bad people deserve to die, or, killing has a price. In this incident, Manderley (which happened to be why he killed her in the first place. Fear of losing Manderley.)
Unfortunately I think it says bad people deserve to die if they upset the status quo of the upper classes.
gertt wrote: "Lesserknowngems wrote: "I always wondered why Manderley seemed to have such a big part in the book, I mean both beginning and ending it, and I was always wondering what Manderley actually symbolise..."Historically, too-- the heyday of the large landowning gentry is gone, a part of the past. That the book begins and ends with a destroyed, nonexistent Manderley makes me wonder if this book could be read as allegory of upper-class moral corruption and decline...? (I'm not sure; I never really thought of this before now.) Perhaps--symbolically speaking-- the 2nd Mrs. DeWinter stood by him because there's an aspect of British culture that will always rally around the upper classes, right or wrong?
Rebecca definitely pushed all Max's buttons in an attempt to incite violence. Though she knew she was dying, she told Max she was pregnant with another man's child who would become the heir to Manderlay. The way I read it, she was trying to commit suicide by husband. If you were dying, would you try to destroy your spouse? Yet that is exactly what Rebecca, a sociopath, tried to do. She told her proud, aristocratic husband that she was pregnant with another man's child which he would have to acknowledge as his heir. She pushed every button she could to provoke him to violence. If she couldn't live, she was going to destroy his life as well. This makes her a very evil person and thus allows the reader to be comfortable with Max not being charged with murder.
But I think it is a stretch to say that he didn't pay for his crime. He lost Manderlay which was the reason he continued with the shame of his marriage to Rebecca. Being a basically decent person, he spent the rest of his life haunted by his role in Rebecca's death.
Moonlight wrote: " Though she knew she was dying..."I don´t recall reading that - was she dying from a disease? I really cant´remember any mention to that. What i recall is that she pushed every button on Maxim, maybe for him to kill her, but why i didn´t knew...
She was dying from cancer which was why she had to go London to see a doctor and used the name Mrs. Danvers
Caroline wrote: "She was dying from cancer which was why she had to go London to see a doctor and used the name Mrs. Danvers"Oh...thank you. I really forgot about that. Not that, in the bigger picture it mattered - she was a coniving and slimmy person and it kind of carries an sense of justice that she died, because she wanted to maake the ultimate provocation to her spouse. She must have thougth the he would never dare to do anything to her.
I think it's wrong to make maxim into this sympathic character. I don't think that is what the author was trying to do. She was trying to show that in this time, you were either this vile person for nothing conforming to your husband's world and should be murdered or you are invisible and on the verge of insanity ( like mrs. ). If any of us had been put back in that time, we would have met the same fate as Rebecca. No strong women allowed!
I agree with your insight, Gertt. There's no strength in cruelty, machinations and manipulation; that's the venue of cowards.
This whole story is about what happens to women that don't conform to a man's world. If Rebecca was horrible, then why did Maxim fall in love with her? He couldn't control Rebecca and thus she had to die. Now, as for the new Mrs. Winters, she spend every waking moment trying to compare herself to Rebecca. Get a Life. How is that dignified? Then when she finds out her husband murdered someone..she is like..okay honey...please...
The only interesting part of the book was Rebecca. The Mrs. Winters was so boring and pathetic!
gertt wrote: "I don't consider Rebecca to be a strong woman. She was self-centered, selfish and cruel. In fact, the 2nd Mrs deWinter was the stronger of the two...even though she was young and naive, she was a..."I absolutely agree here. I think most people here are missing the point. The question is not that Max is a murderer... the point is if he is justified or not in taking that extreme step that he did. In retrospeect, it appers that Rebecca is the victim...but she is not. She is not a character painted in grey like Rachel in Daphne du Maurier's other landmark novel "My Cousin Rachel" (I still cannot decide about Rachel and everytime I read that novel, I am torn between whether she is the greatest heroine or most villainous)... however, here Rebecca is evil personified. She leads such a dual life -- one where she is an angel to Max and Bea's grandma and a charming hostess for manderley...and again her life of debauchery with Jack Favell and her unholy alliance with Mrs Danvers and how playing men is her one great pastime...how she behaves with Frank and Giles, cases in point...no..Rebecca is evil and perhaps that exonerates Max from killing her...and even when she was facing death..she was mocking at Max and life with her warped sense of humour and oodles of manipulation..she was attarctive even at that moent...but only as evil can be attractive. On the other hand, the second Mrs de Winter evolves as a character...I think she is one of du Maurier's finer creations...the way she was in the beginning of the novel...and her poise, self-assurance and gracetowards the end....her overcoming her fear and demons..i find that transformation as beautiful....regarding British times, culture, tradtion, landed property etc...there is a similarity between this novel and My COusin Rachel...and a careful study of the two...will reveal the nature of the times and I think du Maurier's subtle support of that in the way she describes these things through the narrotors' point of view, language and style in both novels.
Apologies for not remembering names, as I haven't read this in a few months. However, no matter how Rebecca treated Maxim, she was shown to have many nasty character traits. She obviously threatened the mentally challenged gentleman with being returned to the asylum, and he made several mentions of how he liked the second Mrs. DeWinter better. Also, if I recall, either Mrs. Danvers or her cousin reminisces (with admiration!) that Rebecca "broke" her father's most unmanageable horse and that the poor animal was bleeding by the time she was done riding him. Ill treatment of animals and disabled persons---certainly not signs that someone is a kind human being, and possibly signs that she was pathologically evil. Although, as seems to be the consensus, I can't exactly say that she deserved to die.
The recent novel "Gone Girl" by Gillian Flynn had a definite Rebecca vibe. Both main female characters were super-manipulative sociopaths who plotted to get their husbands' blamed for their "deaths". Both husbands were selfish and narcisstic but fell into the wife's trap. Neither husband is justified in murder...but those two women were CRAZY evil!
She had such a low self-steem, such an extreme need for pleasing others that it took her to accept her husband being a murderer. The first thing she saw was the opportunity to get next to her husband, because their marriage was a little cold, and because she felt so inferior/envious of Rebecca.By the way, if my husband killed someone, I'd kick him in his guts. But only after I helped to carry and bury the cadaver.
gertt wrote: "Actually, the 2nd Mrs DeWinter was trying to 'get a life', that's why she married Maxim. She was just a young girl with no family or finances and little future other then working as a companion to..."I don't believe that was mere desire to "get a life" that made the 2nd Mrs de winter (none of us remember her name, haha) to marry Maxim. In some level, she loved him, so much that she was very disappointed as Maxim distanced from her while they were married. If she was only looking for social mobility, then she wouldn't give a fuck in the world as long as she was the mistress of Manderley.
In Chapter 6, after Max proposes to her, she tells him that she loves him "dreadfully" and that she had been crying all night because she thought she would never see him again. Max laughs and says:"Bless you for that. One day, when you reach that exalted age of thirty-five which you told me was your ambition, I'll remind you of this moment. And you won't believe me. It's a pity you have to grow up."
She is embarrassed and then realizes that this was not the kind of thing that women admitted to men.
This always kind of defined the de Winter's relationship for me. She loved him passionately. He found her sweet and guileless and charming. He never wanted her to change.
And her knowledge that he killed Rebecca, did exactly that. It changed her and made her grow up.
Rebecca was evil and we feel relieved when Maxim lost it and killed her.Someone here called the 2nd Mrs de Winter boring...well. after the lying and bipolar Rebecca, who would be interesting, after all? But we have to remember that Rebecca married Maxim under false pretenses - she played the perfect fiançé and fooled him - he only saw her true colours after the marriage, when he took her to Monte Carlo, where she stood there, laughing and mocking him. so, in this capacity, i prefer the "boring" Mrs de Winter 2 than the lovely and poisonous Rebecca.
I felt that Maxim killed Rebecca in a fit of temporary insanity. He could no longer stand the deception of the life they lived together, which was a sham played out for the sake of not disgracing his family. When she taunted him about being pregnant by another man and how that man's child would be passed off as Maxim's and would inherit the very thing that Maxim loved most in all the world, i.e., Manderley, it sent him over the edge. And although he escaped being punished by the law, he lost Manderley in a display of poetic justice. My feeling has always been that the book probes the depths of love, and how the wrong kind of love can degrade people. Think about it: Maxim admitted that he loved Manderley more than anything in the world, even too much, and would do anything to protect it from scandal. His second wife loved Maxim but more with a desire to be loved than truly loving him, and only became a strong character when she discovered that she never needed to fear Rebecca again since Maxim never loved her. The competition was eliminated and she was now safe. And Mrs. Danvers loved Rebecca like the daughter she never had and spoiled her rotten and taught her to never love anyone, because if she did then Mrs. Danvers would lose that special place she held in Rebecca's heart.
Loving for all of the wrong reasons and making an idol of it seems to me the source of the true horror of the book. What we love and what we will do to protect that love can take us to some pretty dark places, and can shock us when we find out what we are capable of doing.
What you're all forgetting, or failing, to see is that this was written in a time when a woman was, generally, an accessory, a companion maybe, and certainly not an equal. You're all viewing this book from how women are NOW.The second Mrs de Winter (whose name we never learn, Amanda, so cannot forget it) was a young unsophisticated, naive, girl, totally without family who fell under Maxim's spell. What motive could Maxim possibly have for marrying her? Possibly as an innocent foil - he needed companionship, and what better than to marry a girl who would a) never uncover the secrets from his past and b) IF she did she wouldn't challenge or question him.
Rebecca was a beautiful, cunning, sly woman who used her beauty to get what she wanted. Of course this does not justify murder, but that's part of what makes this book great.
Take a charismatic man
Add a shy and unsophisticated girl
Add a dead wife
Add to the mix another woman, the icy cold housekeeper who is still very much in control of the Mr Charisma's country pile, who idolised the first wife, and obviously resents Mrs Shy
Stir well.......and you have a great novel
The thing Rebecca wanted was to make her own life easier because there was only one person Rebecca loved and that was herself.
Du Mauriere is one of the greatest writers of her time. She wasn't writing perfect people. Yes the second wife was weak--duh. Yes Maxim killed the first one--it's the only thing he ever did to stand up for himself, except perhaps getting married a second time. And he paid alright. If you want perfect people behaving well, go read N Sparks. And Jane Eyre rip off? Different characters in the same basic context. Rochester is like the mirror of Maxim, etc. Jane leaves and the second wife doesn't. They are opposites. Don't weak people deserve their own books too?
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