Was it just me who found Maxim really creepy?

[M.S.]

I found it really creepy how he treats the narrator like a child and how he's seemingly put off by women in their thirties. He even says himself that the narrator is young enough to be his daughter. I thought he was a bit predatory going for a naive and much younger girl.

[Astrid]

Maxim is a 45-year-old man who murdered his wife (instead of giving her a divorce long ago) and married a 23-year-old woman in a year, and he never showed love or respect to his second wife. He is creepy.

[JanetE]

I have read that Daphne Du Maurier was appalled that readers and critics labelled "Rebecca" a love story as she meant it to be a study in jealousy. For me, her story is both. I like Maxim. I find him to be haunted and hurting. I agree that he is weak and very much a victim of his time when protecting one's reputation and avoiding scandal were keys to a successful life. He murdered Rebecca in cold blood - and still I like him and hope that, with the help of his second wife, he can recover and redeem himself. I have read the book numerous times and watched the 1940 Hitchcock adaptation (with Laurence Olivier as Maxim and the murder changed to become an "unhappy accident") and the 1979 BBC miniseries (with Jeremy Brett as Maxim in a version that is true to the book). I find Laurence Oliver's "Maxim" extremely creepy while I recommend Jeremy Brett's "Maxim" as the best ever - handsome, haunting, hurting - Mr. Brett's is a "Maxim" you can root for.

[Urgozo]

I hated Maxim - he was a walking red flag. Not only creepy and predatory, but having a short temper, having horrible remarks about "women" in general and being misogynistic poc for most of the book. I wanted him down for his crimes.

[FellowBibliophile KvK]

Maxim is certainly not a great communicator and is not of a generation that were generally in touch with their feelings. To give a point of comparison, in *The Doll*, DuMaurier has one short story where she uses the "N" word, as does her contemporary Leslie Charteris, and as does Fredrick Forsyth in *The Day Of The Jackal*. That was the mentality of the era.