Rebecca question

No, the emotional trauma that he went through would have made anyone snap and he was not a bad person otherwise.

After hearing what Rebecca did and what happened with Mrs. Danvers I would feel almost an obligation to stay with him. I don't know what would be between the two of us though.

I would have left him, not for killing his first wife, but for being a secretive, miserable jerk who was oblivious to my suffering in the marriage. His poor new wife was frightened, unhappy, thrust into a situation for which she had no preparation (lady of a manor!), and he just went on like an ostrich with his head buried in the sand. He treated her like a child.

That being said, their relationship wasn't supposed to be healthy or supportive. Just because I wouldn't put up with it doesn't mean that the second Mrs. DeWinter wouldn't continue with her starry-eyed worship of the man.

And I did love this book. It's so interesting to hear what others have to say about it.

No, I wouldn't want to leave all of his money. Call me a golddigger but really, what did the MC have going for her before she met him? Really.

I would divorce the guy in a hot second, but i also don't think i personally would have wound up married to him in the first place. The drive to the cliff in Monte Carlo was creepster enough to have put me off then.

And i'll admit that i don't buy into the idea that Rebecca goaded Maxim to kill her as some sort of pseudo-suicide. I believe that at that point in their marriage, they just flat-out hated each other and it was yet another mean-spirited fight.

If Rebecca truly was the strong-willed horsewoman/hunter/sailor type she's portrayed as by the local gossip in the community around Manderley, i think if she wanted to kill herself she'd have just done it herself. She would not have needed (or wanted) any help with it.

Yes. I would worry for my own personal safety... I understand that Maxim and Rebecca were having major problems, but that doesn't give him an excuse to kill her.

She should have dumped him - not because of the murder, but because he's so bloody boring.

Yes, of course. For some reason, i just didn't like maxim in the story.

Maybe not. Du Maurier went to great lengths to show Maxim in a sympathetic light despite what he admits to doing to Rebecca..........But I would remove all guns from the house.

Nope. But I would of got rid of Mrs Danvers!

I wouldn't go that far, but I never completely understood why she married him so quickly in the first place. Why do into a marriage with barely any love (unless you're being forced into it by family and cultural norms, of course, but that certainly wasn't the case here.)

Well, I'd think twice before pissing him off lol

hmmm... I don't know if I'd like to be married to a husband I couldn't yell at...

I never really liked Maxim...

If I found out my husband murdered his first wife, I don't care what the circumstances were, I would run! Definitely divorce-worthy.

No, I understood with the way the author had it unfold. Always liked Maxim.

No it wouldn't have bothered me, although I think the character he married was on the weak side and probably would have been better off.

No golddigger if you see the movie. The Joan Fontaine character is a naif, pursued by a man who sees her as the very antithesis of Rebecca. She is flattered and overcome by his attentions.

No

Probably a stupid idea to marry him in the first place. She barely knew him. I smell golddigger.

By his own admission, he put up with the situation with Rebecca rather than face the scandal of a divorce. He killed her believing her pregnant, so in his mind, he killed her baby too. He "only meant to scare (them)" so he is someone who cannot make realistic judgments about his own behaviour. Anyone who remains married to, let alone in love with, that man has got major issues. The story does, of course, rest upon the fact that the protagonist has major issues of insecurity and jealousy and so on. She is just the sort of person who would hero-worship a bloke like him. So I suppose, if I were her, that's what I would do, wouldn't I.

Du Maurier's characterisation is faultless. Sally Beauman's sequel gives a damning and all to plausible insight into Maxim. Rebecca speaks...