Frightening Women: Gender and Sexual Deviance in Hitchcock's "Rebecca"

Hitchcock isn’t exactly known for being a feminist. Which makes it all the more interesting that he chose to shoot several films from the point of view of a woman. I recently saw Rebecca, which was based on the novel by Daphne du Maurier. “Rebecca” is not the female narrator and protagonist (who in fact goes unnamed throughout the film), but is rather the deceased first wife of our protagonist’s new husband, Maxim de Winter. When “the new Mrs. de Winter” finds herself mistress of Maxim’s impressive Cornwall estate, Manderley, it is Rebecca’s lingering hold on the house and servants that creates a rift between the newlyweds and nearly drives the poor girl mad.

An orphan of lowly parentage, the new Mrs. de Winter interprets her husband’s distance as grief over the loss of his first wife, and can’t help but compare herself to Rebecca’s legendary beauty, intelligence and confidence. Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper, clearly disapproves of the new Mrs. de Winter, and devotes herself to keeping Rebecca’s presence alive throughout the house. When Maxim reveals to his new wife that Rebecca’s death had not been accidental, that their marriage had been a sham and he had loathed Rebecca from the beginning, the new Mrs. de Winter is overjoyed – no longer jealous of her husband’s first wife, she believes that she and Maxim can finally find happiness together. But for Maxim, it is already too late: “Rebecca has won. Her shadow has been between us all the time, keeping us from one another. She knew that this would happen…. I've loved you, my darling. I shall always love you. But I've known all along that Rebecca would win in the end.”

Does Rebecca win in the end? In the inquisition surrounding the discovery of her body, one of Rebecca’s former lovers accuses Maxim of murdering her, because Rebecca was pregnant with another man’s child. A visit to Rebecca’s doctor clears Maxim’s name, however: it turns out that rather than being pregnant, Rebecca had cancer – thus providing a motive for her “suicide.” As Maxim is driving home, about to be happily reunited with his wife, however, he sees a terrible light in the distance – in her devotion to Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers has set fire to Manderley rather than let another woman take Rebecca’s place. In the final shot of the film, Mrs. Danvers stands in Rebecca’s room, surrounded by flames, looking utterly possessed. The shot closes with a close-up on Rebecca’s pillowcase, embroidered with the letter “R.”

It is telling that our blue-eyed, blond-haired protagonist has no name – she is obviously the weakest female character in the film, defined only by her relationship to Maxim and Rebecca (“the new Mrs. de Winter”). Young and naïve, our protagonist plays the part of a child discovering a world to which she does not yet belong. Maxim addresses her like a child (“Oh, come on. Eat it up like a good girl.” “You can’t be too careful with children.”) and praises her for her innocence (“It's a pity you have to grow up.”). When she arrives at Manderley, she acts more like she’s playing house than actually running an estate (“You behave more like an upstairs maid or something, not like the mistress of the house at all.”).

The protagonist’s childlike innocence is juxtaposed with two other more damning versions of female sexuality: Rebecca’s adulterous promiscuity, and Mrs. Danvers’s depraved queerness. The traits that Maxim’s new wife so envies in Rebecca – “breeding, brains and beauty” – turn sour when Maxim reveals Rebecca’s “life of filth and deceit.” Rebecca played the part of wife and mistress of Manderley, but led a secret life on the side, visiting her lovers in a flat in London, and even inviting them to her cottage at Manderley. Maxim, bound by “the family honor” was forced to agree to this “dirty bargain” in order to prevent the public humiliation of a divorce. The release of this information transforms Rebecca from the tragic victim of an untimely death to a “devil” who got what she deserved. Invoking the classic virgin/whore dichotomy, Rebecca’s sexual agency is portrayed as guilt, thereby reserving innocence for Maxim and his new wife. In her analysis of the du Maurier novel, Alison Light writes,

“Rebecca, then, is the focus of the novel’s conflicting desires for and descriptions of the feminine. She is the character through whom the fiction of romance is undermined and whose murder will rescue and re-establish its norms. She jeopardizes the given social categories by existing outside them” (11).

Rebecca is all the more dangerous because she herself is fully aware of the threat she poses to heterosexual monogamy. Maxim recalls her taunting him on the night she died;

When I have a child,” she said, “neither you nor anyone else could ever prove it wasn't yours. You'd like to have an heir, wouldn't you, Max, for your precious Manderley?”

Then she started to laugh.

“How funny. How supremely, wonderfully funny. I'd be the perfect mother, just as I've
been the perfect wife. 'No one will ever know. It ought to give you the thrill of your life, Max, to watch my son grow bigger day by day... and to know that when you die, Manderley will be his.”

By refusing to give her husband control over her sexuality, Rebecca delivered a blow to the imperative of heterosexual monogamy – one that could not go unpunished (at least within the masculine cinema). The retribution that Rebecca “deserves” is not murder after all, which was precisely what she wanted. Rather, it is cancer: as if her ‘degenerate’ sexuality was forcing her body to deteriorate as well. (In the novel, the doctor’s x-rays actually show a malformed uterus – Rebecca was never capable of having children, making her – from a heteroreproductive viewpoint – both monstrous and pitiable.) In this sense, the final blow to Rebecca is the viewer’s participation in her denouncement. Having been invited to sympathize with the narrator, the viewer sees Rebecca’s sexual deviance as a despicable impediment to the happily-ever-after story of heterosexual monogamy – a story that most of us have at least some investment in. Therefore it is necessary for us to view her death as just deserts for a life of sin – to do otherwise would involve jeopardizing the innocence of both Maxim and the new Mrs. de Winter.

True, the new Mrs. de Winter has lost some of her naiveté (“That funny, young, lost look I loved... won't ever come back. I killed that when I told you about Rebecca. It's gone. In a few hours... you've grown so much older.”) The child bride has grown into a full-fledged wife, prepared to stand by her man no matter what he’s done (is it just me or is “Oh please, Maxim, kiss me, please” a strange response to finding out that your husband is responsible for putting his previous wife’s body on the bottom of the ocean?). But one more thing stands between the happy couple and blissful heteromonogamy. As we find out in the opening lines of the film, (“We can never go back to Manderley again. That much is certain.”) their home – the foundation of Maxim and his new wife’s life together, so to speak – has been destroyed. And it is not in fact Rebecca herself who destroys it (she is dead, after all), but rather it is Mrs. Danvers, whose devotion to her former mistress borders on obsession. A very peculiar obsession. A queer obsession, one might say. Despite her married name, no “Mr. Danvers” is ever mentioned, and her mannish demeanor and male nickname certainly led certain minds (mine) to curiosity about her sexual preferences. Once she started caressing her dead mistress’s underwear, there could be no question: Danny is a dyke.

“I keep her underwear on this side. They were made especially for her by the nuns in the Convent of St. Claire. I always used to wait up for her, no matter how late. Sometimes she and Mr. de Winter didn't come home until dawn. While she was undressing, she'd tell me about the party she'd been to. She knew everyone that mattered, and everyone loved her. When she'd finished her bath, she'd go into the bedroom and go over to the dressing table. Oh, you've moved her brush, haven't you ? There, that's better-- just as she always laid it down. ‘Come on, Danny, hair drill,’ she would say. I'd stand behind her like this and brush away for minutes at a time. And then she would say, ‘Good night, Danny,’ and step into her bed. I embroidered this case for her myself, and I keep it here always. Did you ever see anything so delicate? Look, you can see my hand through it.”

For as much as the new Mrs. de Winter is unsettled by the haunting memories of Rebecca, it is Mrs. Danvers’s queer presence that she is most fearful of. (“Well, it looks as though Mrs. de Winter were afraid... you were going to put her in prison, doesn't it, Mrs. Danvers?”) Of course, her fears are certainly justified – with what could quite aptly be described as murderous lust in her eyes, Mrs. Danvers almost succeeds in convincing her to commit suicide on the night of the ball (“Why don't you go? Why don't you leave Manderley? He doesn't need you... he's got his memories. He doesn't love you, he wants to be alone again with her. You've nothing to stay for. You've nothing to live for really, have you?”).

In the book No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive, Lee Edelman argues that queerness often symbolizes a threat to what he terms ‘reproductive futurism’. He argues that the queer, “in the order of the social, is called forth to figure the negativity opposed to every form of social viability.” In Rebecca, it is the morbidly queer Mrs. Danvers who embodies this negativity; her queer presence is the destructive force that endangers both heterosexuality and futurity. Her power over the protagonist (figured as both child and future mother) threatens to destroy the de Winters’s marriage. Burning down Manderley is more than an act of revenge – it is a violent attack on the de Winters’ future together. After the discovery of Rebecca’s cancer clears Maxim of any implication in her death, Favell bitterly tells Mrs. Danvers on the telephone, “And now Max and that dear little bride of his... will be able to stay on at Manderley and live happily ever after.” As the house goes up in flames, so does the happily-ever-after story. By turning order to chaos, this final act of destruction interrupts the awaited resolution of happy heterosexuality, thus assaulting the very premise of reproductive futurism.

The final shot of Rebecca’s pillow embroidered with her initial reminds us of her own destructive impulses. Did Rebecca win in the end? If she had witnessed the final chaotic scene of her husband’s home and future going up in flames, I imagine she might have had the same reaction as she did when she found out about her cancer: “She smiled in a queer sort of way.”