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Du Maurier's RebeccaBernhard Frank aa Buffalo, New YorkPublished online: 30 Mar 2010.

To cite this article: Bernhard Frank (2005) Du Maurier's Rebecca, The Explicator, 63:4,239-241, DOI: 10.1080/00144940509596954

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Appel, Alfred, Jr. Preface, Introduction, and Notes. Lolita. ByVladimir Nabokov. New York: Vin-

Bryson, Bill. A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail. New York:

Graves, Arthur. “Making New Chestnut Trees.” Yankee (September 1946). Rpt. in Journal of the

Hosier, Mary A., Charles I3urnam. and Paul Read. “Breeding Strategy for a Blight Resistant

Nabokov. Vladimir. Lolita. 1955. Ed. Alfred Appel, Jr. New York: Vintage, 1991. Peattie, Donald Culcross. fl Natural Histoy of Trees of Eastern and Central North America.

Sisco, Paul. “Breeding Blight Resistant American Chestnut Trees.” Journal of the American

tage Books, 1991.

Chelsea, 1987.

American Chestnut Foundation I2 ( 1998): 16-2 I .

American Chestnut:’ Journal ofthe American Chestnut Foundation 1 (1985): 2-3.

Boston: Houghton, 1966.

Chestnut Foundation 18 (2004): 12- 16.

Du Maurier’s REBECCA

Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, published in 1938, has generally been viewed as romance or, abetted by the overdramatized (and censored) Hitch- cock film, as “unashamed melodrama” (Forster 138). Although it is hardly a staple on academic syllabi, the novel does have its champions. Rebecca “is much more than a simple thriller or mystery,” writes Richard Kelly. He chides the “literary snobs who will continue to patronize du Maurier’s novel” (70) and finds it to be “a profound and fascinating study of an obsessive personal- ity, of sexual dominance, of human identity, and of the liberation of a hidden self’ (54). He also finds “implicit incest” in the relationship between the nar- rator and Maxim (69). On the downside, the novel is vigorously debunked by the feminists who object to what Nina Auerbach sees as du Maurier’s trapped and immobilized women. She sees Rebecca as being “less about love than about brow-beating and submission” (10243).

Unlike George Orwell or Nadine Gordimer, Daphne du Maurier did not set out to write futuristic fiction, and her “Rebecca Notebooks,” which outline the novel-to-be, show no political agenda. However, it is not unlikely that as a sensitive young artist, writing on the cusp of World War 11, she did have her political intuitions and premonitions. If we address the fact that the focal point of the novel is neither the titular, impossibly beautiful Rebecca, nor the starchy Maxim de Winter, nor the assiduously unnamed narrator, but rather its magnificent centerpiece, Manderley, then an entirely new subtext is revealed: a political allegory that, though it may not seek to do so, foretells the future. “Part of Rebecca’s popularity was due to its being seen as representing some- thing that was threatened by the German invasion: the English way of life,” writes Martyn Shallcross (85). It is Manderley that epitomizes this way of life.

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The novel opens with the narrator’s dream of a Manderley gone to seed, and it closes with aching nostalgia for a Manderley lost. In between, the chief pre- occupation of the leading characters is again with Manderley: its glamor, which must be maintained; its rituals, which must be obeyed; and its honor, which must be preserved at all costs. And, as Maxim tells the narrator during his murder confession, it was this last that induced him to endure Rebecca’s excesses for so long.

As a microcosm for the British Empire, Manderley is filled with upstairsldownstairs servitude. It is surrounded by and overgrown with “blood red” rhododendrons, which, on the narrative level, may symbolize Maxim’s crime; in the political subtext, however, they would denote the blood of those hordes of colonial natives who facilitated its pomp and grandeur. Within that empire, two forces had been at work-the exploita- tive, evil aristocrats represented by Rebecca, and the benevolent but passive ones represented by Maxim de Winter. In the subtext, it is most fitting that Rebecca should be unable to have children and be dying of uterine cancer- an empire without a future, rotted from within. Goaded into rebellion, Maxim at long last overcomes the evil one, but is too guilt-smitten to lead the empire in any constructive way. It takes a union with the new blood of the working class-the timid narrator who, exploited by American com- mercialism in the person of Mrs. Van Hopper, initially makes few demands. She is, however, shocked by the senseless waste of food and the elaborate lifestyle generally; she feels comfortable only with her maid, Clarice-an inexperienced working-class girl. The pandemonium ensuing when the nar- rator attempts to pass herself off as an aristocrat at the masked ball is, in the political subtext, quite amusing. How quickly Labor was scolded back to its proletarian origins! The union of Aristocracy and Labor, strained as it is, will eventually lead to redemption. Manderley must burn down-farewell to the British Empire; but together, the two parties-the hero and anti-heroine- will become, by and by, the taproot of a new England.

Other characters also give off political overtones. Maxim’s sister and brother-in-law are the inept aristocracy, well-meaning but complacent. Frank Crawley represents the “boring” but ever-so-honest middle-class. And Maxim’s senile, near-blind grandmother is the staunch reactionary. In the scene where Beatrice takes the narrator to meet her, she rejects anyone but Rebecca: Only the status quo of evil imperialism will satisfy her. And indeed, evil will remain in the wings. Mrs. Danvers, a loyal extension of her mistress Rebecca, does not, as in Hitchcock’s film, burn to death. She leaves, perhaps to join Jack Favell, Rebecca’s cousin. These two may yet reemerge to wreak havoc at the next election, or the next invasion of a for- eign country. Yet for the time being, a modest existence is possible. Through a remarkable shift in the balance of power, with the once-timid

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narrator now leading Maxim, a humbled England, its class system modified and its life simplified, is suggested.

The subtext rises to the surface level at least once. Du Maurier controlled her narrative tightly; every scene serves to further the plot; nothing is wasted- with one seeming exception: the narrator’s prolonged interchange with a lower class family that is watching the shipwreck. Yet then the political future of Eng- land comes to the fore:

“Those are nice-looking woods over there, I suppose they’re private,” said the woman. The coast-guard coughed awkwardly, and glanced at me. 1 began eating a piece of grass and looked away. “Yes, that’s all private in there,” he said. “My husband says all these big estates will be chopped up in time and bun- galows built,” said the woman. (242)

Orwell’s vision in 1!@4 did not come true (at least for now), and, with the abolition of Apartheid, Gordimer’s, in July’s People, has been proven wrong; but du Maurier’s predictions, however unconsciously arrived at, of the death of an empire and a solution for England’s survival did materialize just decades after she wrote her novel.

-BERNHARD FRANK, Bu#ulo, New York

WORKS CITED

Auerbach, Nina. Duphne du Muurie,: Huunted Heiress. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000. Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebeccu. Garden City, N Y Doubleday, 1938. Forster, Margaret. Duphne du Muurier: The Secret Life of the Renowned Storyteller. Garden City,

Kelly, Richard. Daphne du Maurier. Boston: Twayne. 1987. Shallcross, Martyn. The Prhrte World of Daphne du Maurier. New York: St. Martin’s, 1992.

N Y Doubleday, 1993.

Bishop’s ONE ART

In the afterword to Becoming a Poet-David Kalstone’s study of Elizabeth Bishop-James Merrill writes that the poem “Crusoe in England” is “an exception to Bishop’s preference for the happy ending, or the ruefully cheer- ful‘one” (259).‘ If the melancholy of “Crusoe in England” makes it uncharac- teristic of Bishop’s work, “One Art,” another of the poems in her collection Geography I l l , exhibits a similar deviation, although it notably begins with a “ruefully cheerful” declaration:

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