MAX DE WINTER IS THE TRUE VILLAIN OF 'REBECCA'
Daphne du Maurier’s novel is more subversive than you think
The traditional reading of Rebecca, reinforced by Hitchcock’s famous screen adaptation, is that Max I’m-asking-you-to-marry-me, you-little-fool de Winter is a smouldering rough-diamond of a hero, wronged by a promiscuous bitch of a first wife, Rebecca, whose crazed lesbian servant, Mrs Danvers, worships her in all her cruel perversity. Look beneath the surface and a very different story emerges.
Daphne du Maurier was herself a promiscuous, independent bisexual woman who created an anti-heroine in her own image. We know that Rebecca, with her beauty and charm, seduced everyone in her path and that she told the ghastly Max up-front exactly the sort of wife she would make him: a glorious society hostess - the jewel in Manderley’s crown - but who, behind the glittering froth of champagne and lovely laughs, would shag all and sundry. Now, Max accepts her deal – the society wife who is far from faithful - and then can’t stand living with it. Well, whose fault is that then? No wonder he picks a pathetic little mouse as wife number two: someone he can safely bully and control as he couldn’t the magnificent Rebecca.
Max is also a murderer who ought to have been hanged by the neck, according to the laws of the time. When Rebecca tells him that she is pregnant, he shoots her, thinking that he is also killing her baby, fathered by her cousin – although Hitchcock protects him in the film by making it an accidental push rather than the deliberate double homicide that du Maurier describes. Hitchcock clearly saw how unacceptable Max’s behaviour was and didn’t want to alienate the sympathy of his audience.
You may notice, by the way, that Max never manages to father a child with either wife. Could it be that he simply cannot rise to the occasion and that his limp male pride was offended by his first wife’s sexual success?
The novel ends as it begins. The drippy girl is first seen touring the hotels of the French Riviera with the nasty, rich Mrs van Hopper. At the end, she is doing the same with her husband, Max. In other words, she has swapped one petty tyrant for another – and neither are capable of providing her with a good shag. No wonder Rebecca decided to choose her own path in life – and it’s a pity that when Manderley burnt down, bad Max – the man of winter - wasn’t inside. Maybe the second wife – ‘the girl’ – should have gone off with Mrs Danvers, which is sort of what happens in a novel I have written…
If you enjoyed this, you may also like my latest novel THE DIFFICULT WIFE by TIM ROBINSON. Amazon link: https://shorturl.at/dJRg2 . Soon available in all major bookshops.