Previously in this series: The sequel to The Beauty And The Beast those hot blonde triplets deserved.
MRS. DE WINTER: How could we be close when I knew you were always thinking of Rebecca? How could I even ask you to love me when I knew you loved Rebecca still?
MAXIM DE WINTER: What are you talking about? What do you mean?
MRS. DE WINTER: Whenever you touched me, I knew you were comparing me with Rebecca. Whenever you looked at me or spoke to me, or walked with me in the garden, I knew you were thinking, “This I did with Rebecca, and this, and this.” It’s true, isn’t it?
MAXIM: You thought I loved Rebecca? You thought that? I hated her!
MRS. DE WINTER: I…literally of course I thought that you loved her.
MAXIM: Well, I didn’t. I hated her real bad.
MRS. DE WINTER: Why in God’s hell would you act surprised that I thought you loved your first wife, given that you have displayed absolutely zero indication to the contrary to me, ever?
MAXIM: Well, you know, I guess we just crossed wires on that one. But rest assured that I hated her from the get-go, and have only ever loved you.
MRS. DE WINTER: How did we cross wires?
MAXIM: What?
MRS. DE WINTER: Crossed wires would suggest that at some point you tried to communicate the truth to me and I misunderstood. When, before this actual moment, have you ever said to me anything like “By the way, my beautiful dead wife, of whom everyone speaks so fondly and whose praises I have never once contradicted, I did not love at all, while you, the terrified woman I alternately ignore or berate, I love a whole bunch, which I choose to demonstrate by refusing to put her mind at ease telling by her literally never about how depraved and evil my dead wife was?
MAXIM: I –
MRS. DE WINTER: That would have been a five-minute conversation.
MAXIM: I suppose I thought you would just sort of…pick up on it, I guess. I’m always brooding about it.
MRS. DE WINTER: Surely even you must admit that “silently brooding about hatred” looks an awful lot like “silently brooding about a lost love,” to the untrained eye.
MAXIM: I hadn’t thought of it that way.
MRS. DE WINTER: You bring me back to the house you shared with her, you spend all of four seconds getting me acquainted with running a massive country estate, you leave me with a squadron of Rebecca’s beloved, devoted old servants who spend half their time ominously reminding me of how beautiful she was while dusting her old bedroom, which you have allowed to be turned into an actual shrine, and also the one time I asked you if I made you happy, you said you didn’t know what happiness was.
MAXIM: All right. All right. From that perspective, I admit, things look…unclear.
MRS. DE WINTER: That’s what Prince Charles said on the day of his engagement to Princess Diana, by the way.
MAXIM: No. Really? That bad?
MRS. DE WINTER: The interviewer asked them if they were in love after they announced their engagement, and Diana chirps out, “Of course!” and Charles pulls the rug out from under her immediately with “Whatever in love means.”
MAXIM: Jesus.
MRS. DE WINTER: Yes. So.
MAXIM: I suppose that it was a completely normal conclusion for you to draw, then, that I was still in love with Rebecca, given that I never told you anything about her
MRS. DE WINTER: Thank you.
MAXIM: Also, just to reiterate, she died by accident. By a violent blow to the head, during a vicious quarrel the two of us were having, after which I disposed of her body. But the dying itself, that was an accident. Her head fell on a rock. Right here, in this boat house, where by pure happenstance you and I happen to be having a quarrel right now ourselves.
MRS. DE WINTER: Mmm.
MAXIM: You believe me, don’t you, darling? That it was an accident?
MRS. DE WINTER: I’ve never said anything to indicate otherwise, have I?
Tags: books, movies, revenge, sequels, sequels no one asked for, you literally never mentioned this before
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Perfection.
And the prequel we all deserve:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr59DKnFKx0
I can’t open this link at work, but I’m 99% sure I know exactly what it is and it’s my favorite thing in the world.
You are correct. It is your favorite thing.
Max is an unbearable douche!
What did Rebecca even do to offend him apart from recognize that he is an unbearable douche.
Wait did I just answer my own question?
But seriously – he is frustratingly vague on her supposed depravity.
She smoked and flirted– with men .
OH I think she was like “I’m fucking my cousin a real bunch and I’ll never have sex with you and I’ll have his son and you’ll have to raise it,” which is pretty bad, jerk-wise
like I will a billion percent concede that she was evil but he did NOT EFFECTIVELY COMMUNICATE TO HIS SECOND WIFE THAT HE LOVED HER
that is the living definition of subverting the patriarchy though, when all you control is the line of male descent you are positively morally obligated to mess it up. God knows I would.
She also threatened the poor mentally disabled man with the institution if he narced her out. That was ugly.
According to Maxim, and considered that he happily admits to having murdered her, he may not have been the most reliable source, hmmm?
She may have possibly, one time, enjoyed copulation.
#WorstWifeEver
Also, she engaged in affairs with both men AND women, or, as Max de Winter so sensitively put it, “She was not even normal.”
It always makes me sad that Mrs. de Winter II didn’t have a friend to take her by the shoulders and tell her ‘you deserve better than this!’ because, seriously.
I would also accept a Valkyrie mother like at the end of The Bloody Chamber.
you know the passage in Rebecca where Max is off murdering the little foxes or purchasing humidors or some other gentleman of leisure activity and what’s her face goes wandering around the estate and there’s a couple pages where she thinks very pointedly about how great it is to be alone here and how much she loves Manderley, especially when Max isn’t there?
All gothics are about marrying for the house, anyway, but Rebecca is the greatest of them because it not only makes the subtext test (not necessarily a virtue), but it dares to be a tragedy where she loses the house in the end but does not manage to lose the man. it’s pretty interesting I think.
AND: most instructively when you compare it to all the romances that are its sickly children, you know how there is always a Bad lover, sometimes a couple of bad lovers, to contrast with the good one? in Rebecca, the rival for Boring’s affections isn’t another man, it’s Mrs. Van Hopper. She’s a paid companion by trade and training; she doesn’t escape from that by marriage, she just moves to a better employer. and the prime skills of the paid companion are submissiveness, listening to boring conversation, and keeping your private thoughts to yourself. she knows what’s up, and she suffers for not doing her due diligence in finding out what happened to the last person to hold the position. you are always supposed to ask about possibilities for advancement in interviews to show you are ambitious, but also you want to know if your predecessor quit or was fired or got hit on the head and drowned.
“She’s a paid companion by trade and training; she doesn’t escape from that by marriage, she just moves to a better employer. and the prime skills of the paid companion are submissiveness, listening to boring conversation, and keeping your private thoughts to yourself. she knows what’s up, and she suffers for not doing her due diligence in finding out what happened to the last person to hold the position. you are always supposed to ask about possibilities for advancement in interviews to show you are ambitious, but also you want to know if your predecessor quit or was fired or got hit on the head and drowned.”
YES! This right here!
I LOVE this reading a whole bunch. So Rebecca makes the financial underpinnings of gothic romance textual? Being a wife is doing a job, and the salary is this sweet sweet house?
I wonder if you could go farther and say that that women marry for the house not just in gothic romance but in all traditional marriage plots, like Lizzie Bennet saying that she knew she was in love with Darcy when she first saw Pemberly.
I read an interesting essay years ago about how Jane Austen novels are really all about economics, not romance. Seemed pretty accurate to me. (Unfortunately, I can’t remember the author’s name).
Surely that’s why he chose her? He seemed to be looking for the most innocent and easy to fool girl around.
Oh Maxim, when your friends told you to avoid mentioning your ex with a girl you like, they never meant for you to go that far.
Also – Prince Charles is just awful. Really awful. He should remain gagged at all times for the good of Britain and the Commonwealth. BUT – I still think that was an incredibly gauche question for a journalist to ask a royal in 1981.
For the majority of history, love would have never entered the equation. Chuck pretty much knew he had to marry 1) a virgin from a royal or noble family, who was 2) reasonably attractive 3) well-manned enough to be in the public eye and 4) without any obvious hereditary insanity.
That pretty much eliminated 95% of female aristocrats right there.
I mean it just BAFFLES me that this horrible man-child will someday be the ruler of the Commonwealth. “Long” live the king?
Yuuup. Although, I think Chuck will pretty much sound the death-knell for the British Royal family. They’ve only held out this long by giving off an aura of majesty. His utter lack of decorum, tact and charisma will probably dispel the illusion for most of the public and they’ll finally see the Windsors for what they are – a bunch of inbred loafers on the dole.
To be fair, William has a mountain rescue-y kind of job that apparently requires him to actually do stuff. But the rest of them– yeah.
It has been looking to me like Will and Harry go through these stints of working where they seem to be preparing for the inevitable day they’ll have to support themselves.
Takes after his dear old dad, does Chuck.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CP4cMAt2en0
The Duke is just a RIOT. So cantankerous.
I think the monarchy would definitely die with Charles if Will and Harry weren’t so beloved. (And let’s not forget Kate and the royal kiddos.) I think the public might just lie back and think of England while Charles is on the throne.
I think Queen Elizabeth will outlive him, just to protect the family interests.
Either that or we’ll have a George IV situation, where he waits decades for the throne and then pops off a few years later.
He’s okay on a few things (e.g., supporting organic farming, historic preservation, etc.), but is also into a lot of nonsense like homeopathy and is just generally not very bright.
Long live the Queen, I think you mean. Such a nice long life that we can skip right over Charles.
Well, George III’s sons and their marriage issues kind of put paid to the whole dynastic marriage thing.
It is still mind-blowing that, once Charlotte was born, everyone was just like “yay, legitimate heir!” and stayed with their mistresses, leading to the whole marriage race when they were all old men when Charlotte died.
Victoria and Albert must have been such a relief after all that.
She still needs to throw a bowl of peaches at his head for that time he “flirtatiously” threatened to make her stand in the corner. And told her to dress like a ten-year-old.
Pretty sure she should also get to wear all the black satin and pearls she wants because gas-lighting probable murderers don’t get to give fashion advice!
I think we all need this right now: http://www.harkavagrant.com/history/brontessm.png
Also, I had it in my brain that Rebecca had different endings in America and the UK, because of the Hayes Code, but now I can’t find anything about that online. Is that a different Hitchcock movie? The 39 Steps?
I think you’re thinking of “Suspicion” (1941), which is another Hitchcock film with Joan Fontaine. (Where Cary Grant is apparently poisoning her, but they tacked on a happy ending where it was all a hilarious misunderstanding and Everything Was Fine).
As far as I know, it was never actually released anywhere with an alternate ending (either in the US or the UK). I’m not sure that another ending was even filmed.
The ending of “Rebecca” hews fairly closely to the book, although in the book he shoots her vs. her dying “accidentally” from shoving.
That ending was terrible and made me sad. I’m not watching Hitchcock movies for happy endings, people!
I’ve never heard of there being an alternate ending actually filmed, but that would have been fantastic! Rebecca was Hitchcock’s first Hollywood studio film, and murderers had to get their comeuppance. Also, Olivier and Fontaine didn’t get along because he was pissed at Selznick for not casting Vivien Leigh. Thanks, Robert Osborne!
One of my favorite parts of teaching Rebecca is discussing the big reveal, because inevitably someone says, “but it was an accident!” Et voila! Now I know who watched the movie instead of reading.
I’ve never forgiven Prince Charles
I really think that in this much deserved sequel the second Mrs de Winter should be allowed to have her own name. One that is not ‘Maxim’s little fool’ or ‘Rebecca II (not as hot and not as fun)’
I’ve always thought her name IS Rebecca, but she was never called Rebecca, only Becky, and Max couldn’t bring himself to say it.
The actual name on her birth certificate is “You There”. Her parents knew she was destined for a life of paid companionship/ ignominious second wifehood.
I wrote a paper on Rebecca for my Femme Fatales in Film women’s studies class in college (A+ class, would take again and again and again). The moment that I realized that Mrs. de Winter II doesn’t have a first name in a film completely focused on the name and person Rebecca was like that surprised hamster gif. AND THEN when I looked up the etymology of Rebecca and found out it literally means snare or noose…oh man mind blowing stuff right there. That class was so awesome.
So my only addendum to suggest for this post–she gets a FIRST NAME. Something super lofty and way better than Rebecca. And then gets away with murdering Maxim, taking all his money, and goes back to the riviera/takes to the sea and lives out her life doing whatever the hell she wants without a damn man.
Well, she also has no first name in the Daphne du Maurier book. I thought that was kind of an interesting and cool authorial choice, myself.
Oh I totally agree that it is an excellent authorial choice. It’s one of those perfect things you have to notice that no one ever tells you and it is so blandly insidious that it got me so riled up about a fictional character’s treatment by other fictional characters that I’m yelling about it on the internet eight years later. Downright brilliant authorial choice!
Athena, war goddess. Athena de Winter.
How about Borghild? Borghild de Winter.
Furiosa de Winter. One Maxim, one bullet.
If I could like this comment more than once, I would.
YES
Boadicea.
“And you know what else? I’ve had it with not having a first name. I’m Rebecca now. Nobody else is using it. I’m taking her summer party dress and her first name.”
Rebecca II: Electric Boogaloo
Rebecca II: Rebecca the Chud
Rebecca II: Rebecca with a Vengeance
(alternate title — Rebecca II: The End of Winter)
Rebecca II: The Edge of Reason
i really like that name etymology bit. i wonder how often writers are deliberate in name decisions…
Toastbrain, are there any other aptly named characters in fiction we should know about?
Like half the names in Harry Potter, but those are a lot more obvious about it.
That would have been a five-minute conversation. Sums up so many things. So many.
Were you in my house this weekend? Seriously.
This was my entire reaction to Othello.
Mallory! This is perfect. Please do a convo with Mrs. Danvers next. When I read this book I wanted to confront that woman in no uncertain terms. I wanted the protagonist to tell her *I* am Mrs. deWinter. And Mrs. Danvers works for *me*. One more show of attitude and Mrs. Danvers would be at the edge of the property, on foot, carrying her belongings, without a job WITHIN THE HOUR. Now that we understand each other, move every piece of furniture, every curtain, every item out of that shrine of a room and burn them. Wipe down the walls top to bottom and scrub the floor. I’ll have an interior designer in there by next week, planning how to decorate *my* bedroom.
SO MUCH YES. I was always so annoyed and confused why nobody did this. Even if poor little miss noname (my vote is Athena) was too delicate and fawnlike frightened, surely Max could have stuck his oar in at some point “OI! Thats my bloody delicate and obidient new wife you are talking to!!! and you will do so with respect, or you can go and STAY with Rebecca!”…… But thats just my opinion, not a carefully thought out scenario I have choreographed in at least seven different ways inside my head over the years.
Just coming here to say that this reminds me that I want someone to do some sort of mash-up of “Rebecca” and “Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm” and if there’s any place where this request might actually be realized, then it’s here.
My favorite part is the police inquest after Rebecca shoves Miranda to her death.
Also, Lorenzo DeMedici Randall is played by George Sanders.
Aw man. I have to show this to my students next year. They usually end up loving Rebecca, but get really angry at certain things. I’m always really proud of them, because they get angry at the RIGHT things:
“But are we EVER gonna find out her name?”
“Ew, he’s more than twice her age!”
“Why is she okay with him KILLING HIS FIRST WIFE?”
“Why doesn’t Maxim just fire Mrs. Danvers for being a psycho stalker?”
“OMG Jasper dies in the fire!” (He does not. There is a reference to Frank taking him to his office before the fire breaks out. I have the page folded in my book for easy reference so I can immediately quell the panic. Team Jasper all the way.)
Oh thank you for telling me about Jasper, I have been so worried.
Also, “Why are all the local senior law enforcement officers obsequious pals of Max de Winter who stop for a sumptuous lunch and some light chitchat at his place while investigating him FOR MURDER, and who seem to view their job as sorting out this terrible misunderstanding so everybody can get back to golfing and bridge?”
Ah, the private law, the literal etymology of privilege.
Shorter Maxim:
The next scene should be about her firing the entire staff.
I have read Rebecca many a time but I still can’t manage to remember anything that Rebecca ever did that was actually all that wrong, except for maybe sleeping around? which I would normally oppose but nobody who hasn’t been married to Maxim de Winter gets to judge I think. Even with a double layer of unreliable narrators who both have a vested interest in making her come over like a very bad lady I think she comes out of it looking pretty good
edit: oh wait, she killed somebody I guess? well, we all make mistakes. at least she wasn’t a doormat.
She also threatened the poor mentally disabled guy with sending him to an institution if he told on her for having affairs in the boathouse. Inexcusable. And anyone who “Danny” loved had to be as gross as her with all that ego tripping.
But he threatened her first! And in just the same way, too, taking advantage of her marginalized position as a woman to make threats (of exposing infidelity) that would have no effect on a man in the same position the way it would have had a devastating effect on her. So she in her turn makes a threat based on his disability that would destroy his life, but would have no effect on someone like Max with a dominant social position and no known mental troubles. I think it is deliberately symmetrical. The effect of institutionalization would be worse, I’m sure, but the fundamental thing she’s doing is the same thing he is. It’s supposed to make you pity Ben but it makes you see how brave they both are, how much they’re both risking either to defend or to undermine Max, a man who can’t conceive of ever losing the privileges they both started and ended life without ever touching.
She killed someone? Since when? The “Rebecca was evil” spiel all came from her husband. Who, you know, murdered her, and thought that was a perfectly reasonable response to her infidelity. So he might not be an impartial judge. She probably wasn’t a nice woman, what with threatening Ben, but that’s hardly an excuse for murder. After seeing what an abusive git Maxim is, I can’t blame her for the infidelity either.
I actually do remember thinking Rebecca was evil when I read the book, probably 90% due to the fact that I’d recently gotten out of an emotionally abusive friendship with someone who, I only realized after three years, was expertly manipulating everyone around her into loving and pitying and admiring her for being so strong and brave, etc, by faking a lot of psychological issues because she got off on everyone’s pity and adoration. So I projected a lot of that onto Rebecca (and a lot of other books I read at the time too, probably); I wonder how evil Rebecca would seem to me now, ten years later.
I mean, probably still pretty evil, albeit in a pretty impressive way, right?? Her response to being diagnosed with cancer is, “I bet I can goad my husband into killing me, that’ll show him” and then she did.
Obviously none of this changes the fact that Maxim is The Worst.
“I bet I can goad my husband into killing me, that’ll show him” and then she did.
Clearly needs to be printed onto a t-shirt, and then used as some kind of test for future mates.
“I had to kill my wife! She was goading me! It was all her fault, undoubtedly because she’d just been diagnosed with ovarian cancer!” says the abusive husband. Yep, definitely believing his version of events.
My mother got me to read the book when young and vulnerable, and made me think that it was a portrait of an ideal man. *shudder* It’s impossible to tell what Rebecca was really like, because it’s filtered first through her abusive murderer and then through his jealous and also abused second wife. Which makes it all the more interesting, of course. She doesn’t sound particularly nice, based on other people’s comments, but Maxim’s clearly making her sound ABSOLUTELY EVIL to justify killing her. Infidelity isn’t the nicest thing to do, she appears to have bullied Ben badly, but this is not the same as committing war crimes, as Maxim seems to think.
“My mother got me to read the book when young and vulnerable, and made me think that it was a portrait of an ideal man.”
…Oh. Oh, dear.
My A+ favorite part is how Maxim is all, “You think I killed her, loving her?” as if that would be the real over-the-top fucked up part. Killing someone you love, no go, but murdering a woman you hate because, basically, she laughed in your face is understandable.
I would like to note for the Toasties that there is a later-written, non-du Maurier sequel called Mrs. de Winter that’s pretty sweet. Also, let us not forget that in addition to the emotional abuse that Maxim may have exaggerated, she did threaten the mentally disabled homeless man with an institution if he told on her, and he’s still afraid of her despite knowing she drowned. Rebecca is not a nice person. Narrator all the way.
I read that! – it’s by Susan Hill. Have to say I thought it was rather depressing because all Max’s former glamour had gone and SPOILER BUT NOT MUCH OF ONE you were just left watching this dysfunctional unequal relationship of two people with no apparent aims in life. I think she (Susan Hill) probably got it about right but the novel feels a bit strained to me.
Anyway, having watched the BBC adaptation in the 70s with Joanna David and Jeremy Brett, it all seemed marvellous and completely justified (I was very young) whereas now Max seems like a monster to me.
Has anyone else read Sally Beauman’s sequel, ‘Rebecca’s Tale’? It’s 100% on R’s side — she loved Max and worked hard to make Manderley lovely, but he rejected her and she took lovers only to get a baby. The man she threatened was a creepy creeper who was hanging around the cottage spying on her. She had visions of 2nd Mrs de Winter just as 2nd MdW had visions of her — and she’s spitting mad that this nobody is going to replace her. And there’s loads of stuff on her upbringing, how she came from nothing and leveraged her beauty and charm into a good life with Max. A lot of it is about generations, memories, and longing for a child — the parts in Rebecca’s voice are written to the baby she thinks she’s carrying (before she goes to the doctor).
I think it doesn’t quite work, because Beauman has to persuade us that the narrator’s voice in Rebecca is lies lies lies, so it’s not clear why we should trust the various narrators in Rebecca’s Tale. And Rebecca ends up as a bit of a feminist Mary Sue — so perfect in every way.
But Beauman does make what I thought was a good point that makes me dislike Max even more: there’s no obvious gun wound in Rebecca’s bones. Which implies that he shot into the part of her body with the least bones — her stomach — while believing she was pregnant.
(I would marry Laurence Olivier as Maxim de Winter any day of the week, even if he was all mysterious and brooding.)
Mrs de Winter bored the socks off me, but a friend has just recommended Rebecca’s Tale and it sounds fun.
Also the sister in law who is the only person nice to the narrator never liked Rebecca and she had good sense and didn’t stand for artifice. I liked her even though her name (Caroline?) has slipped my ordinarily obsessed with the book at all times mind. If Narrator had been a little less afraid to confide in her the whole party disaster would have been avoided and she’d have known how evil Danvers is sooner.
Is it wrong that I cheered when Danvers was so upset Rebecca had kept something from her? You were just a tool all along, “Danny”!
Beatrice, I think?
Yes! Thank you.
It’s basically impossible for me to love this piece more than I do. I need a second me, to love this more. Brava.
All of this! I’ll preface this with the disclaimer that I haven’t read the book yet. The reason why I love the movie so much is how much subtle menace there is lurking behind every scene. I like to show it to people along with Gaslight and Suspicion as a way to demonstrate how emotional abuse can wear many faces. (You can argue with me about Suspicion if you like but I think it was a shitty, manipulative, emotionally and financially abusive relationship and the ending of the film wasn’t happy in the least.) Keep your wife isolated and friendless, fly into a rage whenever she relaxes and tries to please you, mope sullenly and be uncommunicative and leave her wondering just what she’s done wrong. Oh sure Max, you love her all right.
Also it’s why “The Screaming Skull” remains one of my favorite MST3K episodes. Someone tried to staple Rebecca and Gaslight onto a tepid horror movie, and failed in such a deliciously bad way.
Lovely ending, and I’m sure you know this, but for the benefit of anyone who’s seen the film but not read the book: in the novel, he admits to outright murdering her. They couldn’t show the hero murdering someone and getting away with it in film back then, due to the Hayes code, so they changed it to an accident. Another note for people not aware of it: Daphne du Maurier was gay.
My headcanon sequel:
The de Winters wander around various resorts after the book, as indicated, and it is just as boring and soulless as the narrator says. While at a resort, the narrator runs into a lovely young woman who teaches tennis. She begins to take tennis lessons, for real this time. She suddenly realises why she was so obsessed with Rebecca, and had that intense chemistry with Mrs Danvers, not to mention why she had so little going on in her marriage. Her delightful new lover also encourages her to think about the fact that her husband is a murderer and does not in any way deserve to have her trudging about nursing his self-esteem for him. So she raids their joint bank account and elopes with tennis coach lady. They live happily ever after, enjoying a relationship of mutual respect and oodles of hot sex. Maxim takes three weeks to notice.
"My mother got me to read the book when young and vulnerable, and made me think that it was a portrait of an ideal man."
…Oh. Oh, dear.
May I suggest Booda’s Yuletide fic Oh No You Didn’t?
Maxim’s the worst but he’s what our Narrator wants, along with Manderley, and there’s something about her matter-of-fact childishness in this that’s really satisfying.
Like half the names in Harry Potter, but those are a lot more obvious about it.
We do hear that its a "lovely and unusual name" in the book though, and that her father chose it… just not what it is because of the whole loss of identity/agency thing in there
Either that or we'll have a George IV situation, where he waits decades for the throne and then pops off a few years later.
Mrs. deWinters, #2 (who still has no name, poor thing) for the win.
In this sequel, could she FINALLY GET A NAME?????