Femme fatale: a seductive woman who lures men into dangerous or

compromising situations and who attracts men by an aura of charm and mystery (Merriam-Webster). This term is of high importance when considering Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca and how the inclusion of such a powerful role indicates the oppression of women under domestic settings in 1920s society. The existence of the femme fatale in the novel serves to oppose what the general male considered as an “ideal woman” during this era in attempt to accentuate the faults in the male-dominated society, and how men tried to assert their control on women through societal power and female submission.

          According to the male patriarchy described in Teresa Petersen’s article, “Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca,” any acting out of a female against male authority was prohibited and intolerable, especially when it went against the male view of the “ideal woman.” Both the nameless narrator and Rebecca, the deceased first wife of Maxim, had conflicts with the portrayal of the ideal woman in contrasting developments. The story begins with the narrator believing Rebecca to be the more ideal woman of society based on the surface view of how others recall memories of her, but we later find out that Rebecca contrasts what society idealizes as she is “the lady of the night” and includes antagonistic qualities such as strength, will, sexual promiscuity, and overt manipulation. In the reality of 1920s society, the narrator would have been more fitting to the role as she portrays the untainted female character that society idolizes to acquire and be exemplifying purity, daintiness, subjectivity to men, and subordination.

          Daphne du Maurier noticed the restraints 1920s society placed on women by idealizing domestic women and the malevolence against them when attempting to reject to patriarchal submission. If a woman ever appeared to be a threat to male power in society, she would be removed or controlled into obedience by male authority. Rebecca represents a perfect example of a threat to male power as she denies conforming to any societal standards involving her gender and sexuality. Rebecca’s projection of masculine power portrays her as a threat to Maxim, along with the rest of the male-dominated culture, because the 1920s society idealized a stance in which the only thing that can come of a powerful woman is destruction, which leads Maxim to kill her off before the story even begins. With that being said, the claim of this paper is that Rebecca is depicted as the femme fatale because of her defiance against societal oppression through sexual and gendered issues.

          The narrator of the novel begins and ends her story still trying to conform to what is expected of her not just from Maxim, but also from all of the peers around her such as servants or guests. Rebecca, however, represents the non-conformist female character, as she was able to acknowledge societies limits on women, and confront society head-on displaying rebellion, although not in the most practical of ways. After having lain with numerous lovers, Rebecca made it clear that she didn’t desire a traditional marriage, and the characterization of Rebecca as a woman in control of her own body and destiny deliberately shows her defiance of oppression.

          In the story, Rebecca gains leverage over Maxim once he realized his mistake in marriage four days after, and she uses this time to make a bargain with him. She convinced him that he would look foolish to divorce four days after marriage and that instead she would play the part of a devoted wife mistress of Manderley, she would make it “the most famous showplace in England,” and people would visit and envy them saying they’re the most ideal and happy couple in the country. Rebecca’s power over the house causes Maxim’s fear of gender equality to rise, because her control removed masculinity from Maxim while simultaneously threatening him and the male dominant society of the 1920s.

          Maurier presents the problem of female subjectivity to men through the creation of a mirroring effect that relates Rebecca’s control of the female narrator to that of a man’s control over a woman. The narrator proves to be fearful of even mentioning or referencing Rebecca when she says, “I don’t mind that, I love bathing. As long as the currents are not too strong. Is the bathing safe in the bay?” (Maurier) and then immediately regrets this slip-of-the-tongue because the bay, having been where Rebecca dies, produces fear in the narrator. The narrator also becomes hyper paranoid about any remark of Rebecca that might provoke Maxim’s memory of her in attempt to avoid any problems in her adaptation to domesticity. Even in death Rebecca controls the narrator, a characteristic of masculinity, in which characterizing Rebecca as a controlling figure, Maurier highlights the 1920s “ideal woman,” that is one of being controlled by a man, even in her thoughts.

          Alongside gender social oppression comes the loss of identity for the females in this era. The forever-nameless narrator is anticipated to dissolve into the background of the story while Rebecca’s character is intended to grasp onto every moment of the novel, even with her being physically absent. A woman’s identity is forever lost in the shadow of a man as she becomes a robot commanded to uphold domesticity. The narrator, in attempt to establish an identity at Manderley, aside from the identity of Rebecca that had been overshadowed and dominated her since she first arrived, wants to be dressed to impress as a declaration of assuming the role as wife and lady of Manderley at the costume ball they’re hosting. She anticipated an unforgettable, bold, and unexpected ensemble to assume her new role along Maxim and her new peers, but the costume choice was that of the Rebecca-obsessed Mrs. Danvers, meaning her intentions were not good. In Judy Giles’ article, “A Little Strain with Servants,” it is argued that through Mrs. Danvers manipulation and the weakness of the narrator, Rebecca’s prominent presence remains more evident than that of the narrators considering that she cloaks herself in Rebecca’s clothes and unknowingly walks around in her shadow. Beatrice, one of the narrator’s new peers, even admits, “you stood there on the stairs, and for one ghostly moment I thought [Rebecca had been resurrected] ...” (Maurier).

          Harriet Linkin suggests in her article, “The Deceptively Strategic Narrator of Rebecca,” that the juxtaposition of Rebecca against the narrator of the novel allowed for the reader to have connection with the safer fantasy of the narrator while still being able to discover the darker yet alluring fantasy that Rebecca’s character represents. Maurier’s juxtaposition of the female character suggests the female character dichotomy of the women either being virgins or whores, moral or immoral, as well as submissive idols or evil manipulative women. The narrator of the story is presented as innocent and virginal, making Rebecca her opposite, except the evil character is usually displayed as less pleasing, yet Rebecca does not fall under this generality. While alive, Rebecca represents rebellion in her defiance to societal rules and idolized feminine behavior, but while dead, she represents power, as she orders the lives of the characters still alive. Although the narrator is not as fascinating as Rebecca, she is still vital to differentiate from Rebecca’s seductively dark nature, seeing as she originally believes Rebecca to be the essence of virtue and the keeper of Maxim’s heart. Maxim falsifies her belief when he reveals the true story behind Rebecca’s death, and in his admittance of murder to the narrator, he states, “She was vicious, damnable, and rotten through and through...incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal” (Maurier). But, as far as Rebecca’s portrayal of evil goes in the novel, the only confirmation of her evil nature comes from Maxim, who also happened to be her husband and her murderer, making him an unreliable source for genuine accuracy.

          Issues with male authority and masculinity are located where females make efforts for their divergence from society. Specifically, Maxim’s greatest complaint about Rebecca was that she was not “normal,” which proposes the assumption that Maxim killed Rebecca not for her claim to be carrying another man’s child, but for her deviation from society. Rebecca’s refusal to obey society’s ideas of femininity while exhibiting gender equality enraged Maxim, who represented the stability of society through gender. The overall effect of Rebecca’s murder suggests a threat against the continuance of male authority and masculinity itself as defined through ownership and the power of hierarchy. In reference to the engulfing fire that burned Manderley down in flames by the end of the novel, Maxim murdering Rebecca for her adulterous pregnancy can serve as the ignition of the fire, as he feels his masculine power slip away and see’s destruction of the non- conforming as the only solution to his struggle for authority. Rebecca’s murder ignited the fire that symbolized her intimidation to the structure of Maxim’s world with her rebellion of the idealized feminine roles and adoption of a dominant patriarchal figure.

          The force of domesticity is extremely problematic in the novel, which Alison Light emphasizes in her article, “Forever England,” by proposing how the narrator was imprisoned by a masculine essence nearly leading to her death as she faded into the background of Maxim’s life and her own through her conformance to domestic life. Maurier’s use of Rebecca as the commander of every instant within Rebecca further achieves her attempts to classify the faults of their patriarchal society.

          Opposing viewpoints on the interpretations of Maurier’s Rebecca, traditionally marketed as a gothic romance where the hero and heroine conquered the evil women that separated them in, is provided in Auba Pons article, “Patriarchal Hauntings.” Pons suggests in the article that, “villainy [evil] in the novel is not exclusively linked to gender, therefore the victim and abuser statuses cannot be equated to femininity and masculinity, respectively” (Pons). Villainy is rather connected to a powerful position within patriarchy. Dorothy Robbins also provides another position on Rebecca in relativity to the reality of the ‘evil’ in the novel within her article, “R Is for Rebecca,” where she argues that the ghost of Rebecca doesn’t exist but rather only the memory of her from the obsessive Mrs. Danvers and the powerful name she possessed that haunts the house and narrator.

          Although the novel seems to be romantic fiction on the surface view, Gina Wisker’s article, “Dangerous Borders,” suggests that it was one of Maurier’s intentions in the conventionally conservative genre of romantic fiction to use the comfortably aristocratic settings of country houses and hotels as a way of representing an unease at the configurations of power and gendered relations of the time. Similarly in Avril Horner’s article, “Gothic Configurations of Gender,” the Gothic’s tendency to interrogate received ideas has resulted in memorable and often disturbing critiques of conventional thinking about gender. This focus on certain gothic imagery, such as the ghost of Rebecca, endures figures that demonstrate the Gothic’s capacity to represent the instability of gender categories. The surface layer of the story of Rebecca as a romantic story is simply a façade for the societal problems for women through the variety of issues with gender and sexuality that are exemplified in a way that were accepted in the era. Through the femme fatale of Rebecca, who represents societal oppression as well as the masculine power that men have over women, seeing as she is able to hold that position of power until and well after her death.

          This novel seems like a gothic romance of two lovers trying to overcome the evil woman, but Maurier did that on purpose to accentuate Rebecca as the femme fatale. Her role as the femme fatale includes her corruption of Manderley and the new de Winter couple in attempt to highlight that this role of the evil seductive woman was given to her for her defiance against societal oppression through the issues of gender and sexuality in a male patriarchal society. Rebecca is not the “ideal woman” that the narrator believed her to be because she never fell into the line of submission and sub-ordinance to men. “Men are simpler than you imagine...but what goes on in the twisted, tortuous minds of women would baffle you” (Maurier, 201). Anne William article, “Daphne Du Maurier: Writing, Identity, and the Gothic Imagination,” offers the psychoanalysis and sociopolitical history to basic themes of the Gothic tradition, including rebellion both political and personal as well as the role of women in society. And so, Rebecca’s role as the femme fatale allows for Maurier to emphasize that an unfree world can only be dealt with if you become so absolutely free that your existence is an act of rebellion in itself.

​

Annotated Works Cited

​

Giles, Judy. “'A Little Strain with Servants': Gender, Modernity and Domesticity in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca and Celia Fremlin's The Seven Chars of Chelsea.” Literature and History, 2003, pp. 36–50. Atla Religion Database.

          This paper explains and breaks down the markers of Rebecca’s sexuality and femininity, as these markers also work as signifiers of a particular wealth and social position. The author points out certain details articulated by Mrs. Danvers of Rebecca’s lavish things that have been preserved since her death such as her bedroom and the items in it, including the bed with its golden cover and the wardrobe of clothes, and how these things function as markers of Rebecca’s femininity and sexuality. It is argued that Mrs. Danvers, with her ‘skull’s face,’ performs the role of tempting both narrator and reader to consume the erotic and aesthetic symbolizations she offers. Giles proposes that the Rebecca bedroom scene with Mrs. Danvers and the narrator has convincing lesbian sub- text, and that it combines the erotic coding of Mrs. Danvers’ infatuation with the dead Rebecca with codes of consumption that suggest the ways in which sexuality, consumption and mistress/servant relationships become inextricably linked. Du Maurier’s novel inscribes the bourgeois home as neither refuge nor prison but as a complex space in which the dynamics of traditional and modern relationships are played out in all their historical specificity.

​

Horner, Avril, and Sue Zlosnik. “Gothic Configurations of Gender.” The Cambridge Companion to the Modern Gothic New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014. LION.

           This paper acknowledges the work in Gothic studies over the last twenty-five years that has contributed significantly to our understanding of the complexities of gender and the cultural construction of sexual identity. One aim of this essay is to offer a historical perspective on the development of ideas about gender as cultural and feminist critics have theorized them. Its main aim is to explore how the Gothic's tendency to interrogate received ideas has resulted in memorable and often disturbing critiques of conventional thinking about gender. Moreover, our readings of some popular Gothic texts reveal that frequently they not only complement and reflect changing ideas about gender but may also anticipate them. To illustrate this, in the second part of the essay the authors focus on certain gothic imagery, enduring figures that demonstrate the Gothic's capacity both to represent the instability of gender categories and, in its more recent manifestations, to shore them up.

​

Light, Alison. Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism Between the Wars. 1st ed., Routledge, 1991.pp. 156-207.

​

          The ‘Rebecca Redex’ in this book discusses the relationship between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca in terms of its lesbian coding but does not consider the class positions of the various characters. Roger Bromley reads Rebecca as a response to the financial and political crises of the 1930s but perhaps surprisingly, has little to say about the way in which the figure of the servant housekeeper functions in the reproduction of the bourgeois hegemony in which he claims Rebecca is implicated. Alison Light addresses the ways in which Rebecca explores the pleasures and constraints of domesticity and femininity for women in the 1930s but does not examine the role of Mrs. Danvers in the novel.

​

Linkin, Harriet Kramer. “The Deceptively Strategic Narrator of Rebecca.” Journal of Narrative Theory, 2016, pp. 223–253. LION.

          This paper acknowledges that a rich body of criticism has emerged on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, often arguing against the perception of the novel as merely a popular vehicle of entertainment. The author acknowledges the terms of the narrator’s own contract with Maxim in which it stands clear that she must keep memory bottled like a scent and not let Maxim get a whiff. Through the focus of three different frames, being (1) the seduction of Maxim de Winter, (2) to be or not to be Rebecca, and (3) we can never go back [to Manderley], this essay views that characterization as a deliberately deceptive instance of dual focalization, or a situation in which the perceptions of two agents are communicated simultaneously, the most relevant being when character narration involves a narrator perceiving his former self’s perceptions.

​

Maurel, Sylvie. “'I Am Another Woman': Tropes and the Metamorphosis of Gender Roles in Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier.” Etudes Britanniques Contemporaines: Revue De La Société D'Etudes Anglaises Contemporaines, 25 Dec. 2003, pp. 103–114. Atla Religion Database.

​

          This article suggests that Rebecca is often considered as a conservative novel where gender roles are concerned. The paper argues that some of the tropes in the narrator's tale tend to loosen the supposed fixity of gender positions. Thanks to its tropes, and mostly through the play of resemblance, the narrative becomes an ethical evasion of the reductions of gender and instigates the subversion of, or at least resistance to, identity logic. Through a study of some of the narrator's similes, the paper seeks to demonstrate that far from subscribing to the clichéd representations of women that the novel seems to circulate, the narrator critically re-presents and re-stylizes such representations. Metaphor itself provides release from these crippling labels. As a "synthesis of the heterogeneous", it blurs the boundaries between sameness and difference, deconstructing old polarities and removing the feminine from representational frames.

​

Maurel, Sylvie. “Romantic Ghosting in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.” Anglophonia: French Journal of English Studies, 2004, pp. 131–140. Atla Religion Database.

​

          This text points out that Rebecca and Jane Eyre both include recipes and stereotypes that make the good days of popular literature. The article shows that Daphne du Maurier distanced herself from these infallible recipes and that she modifies, in particular, the traditionally diabolical and monstrous stereotype, haunting the heroine in the guise of the ideal woman. The text gives a Gothic hybrid, which, resurfacing in the inaugural dream becomes the tutelary figure of the novel. Offering release from, but also casting a glamorous veneer over domestic drudgery, the Modern Gothic validates the situation of the passive home-maker since its heroines remain conventionally feminine, namely neither active nor sexually adventurous persons, both of whom violate the morality of conventional femininity. The Modern Gothic then drives it home to the female reader that she is rewarded for being good. The author makes a point about the existence of aggressively sexual, beautiful, worldly women in the novel and how they are wicked and are punished accordingly because men don’t really like them.

​

“Merriam-Webster Dictionary.” Apr. 2019. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/femme fatale#learn-more

​

Petersen, Teresa. “Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca: The Shadow and The Substance.”AUMLA: Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association, 1 Nov. 2009, pp. 53–66. Atla Religion Database.

          This paper focuses on how Maurier uses the Gothic genre as a vehicle to explore the forbidden. The author proposes that in Maurier’s representation of a search for identity for the nameless narrator and Rebecca, she uses doubles and mirror imaging, and the subtext that emerges is a narrative of incest and lesbian desire, as well as other “forbidden” acts against the male patriarchy. The author includes background details on Daphne du Maurier’s life and events in her society during this time period as it relates to themes in the novel.

​

Pons, Auba Llompart. “Patriarchal Hauntings: Re-Reading Villainy and Gender in Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca.” Atlantis: Journal of the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies, 1 June 2013, pp. 69–83. Atla Religion Database.

          This journal provides opposing viewpoints on the interpretations of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. On the one hand, the novel was traditionally marketed as a gothic romance where the hero and heroine conquered the evil woman that separated them. On the other, certain feminist critics have recently provided a very different view of the story, aligning it with gothic narratives that deal with the dangers women suffer under the patriarchal control of their husbands. Of the two choices, the author defends the latter, which defends my claims on what Rebecca truly signifies in the novel. The author proposes, through a Gothic Studies and a Gender Studies reading, that villainy in the novel is not exclusively linked to gender, and so the victim and abuser statuses cannot be equated to femininity and masculinity, respectively. Based on this, the author argues that villainy in the novel is connected to being in a powerful position within patriarchy, and that it is the desire to maintain this position and perpetuate the patriarchal system that leads the main characters, both men and women, to commit acts of villainy.

​

Robbins, Dorothy Dodge. “R Is for Rebecca: A Consonant and Consummate Haunting.” Names (Maney Publishing), vol. 64, no. 2, June 2016, pp. 69–77. Atla Religion Database.

          The author of this paper points out in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the narrator, a second wife, is haunted by her predecessor’s first initial. A towering R is the signature mark of the infamous Rebecca, a woman presumed to have drowned, but revealed to have been murdered. The most visible manifestation of Rebecca’s ghostly presence is her omnipresent initial. So impactful is the R on the narrator’s psyche that the initial consumes her own given name, of which not a single letter is revealed. Reasons for the narrator’s concealed name are considered. These include her need for protection from a malevolent spirit, her desire for anonymity, and her obsession with her ghostly rival, who appears not as a disembodied haunting, but as the very tangible letter R.

​

Williams, Anne. “Daphne Du Maurier: Writing, Identity, and the Gothic Imagination.” Modern Fiction Studies, 2000, pp. 789–799. LION.

          This paper is essentially a study that proposes to do all of the following: psychoanalysis and sociopolitical history, close textual reading and reception and authorial biography, neuro-scientific research and the entire range of Gothic from its roots in the medieval/Renaissance period through the subsequent “mainstream” works in chronological order. The author covers information on what she believes to be the basic themes of the Gothic critical tradition: that Gothic had to do with rebellion both political and personal, with the role of women in society, with the disappearance of the sacred, and with the return of the repressed.

​

Wisker, Gina. “Dangerous Borders: Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca: Shaking the Foundations of the Romance of Privilege, Partying and Place.” Journal of Gender Studies, vol. 12, 2 Nov. 2003, pp. 83–97. Atla Religion Database.

          This paper makes a case for the historically contextualized and politically engaging reading of Maurier’s Rebecca. It argues that one of her intentions in the conventionally conservative genre of romantic fiction in the comfortably aristocratic settings of country houses and hotels, was to represent an unease at the configurations of power and gendered relations of the time. A wider problem is indicated in the troubling of genre of Rebecca, which signifies that of the period, hinting at an end to comfortable decadence and a run up to the chaotic climax of war. The novel in particular, with its threatening imagery, haunting, and deceptions, shakes the complacency of privilege, partying and place. The author argues that Rebecca exposes a set of fictive romantic idealizations: of Rebecca herself, of Manderley, and of Maxim. On the brink of war, the novel destabilizes assumptions, social behaviors and values, and problematizes conventional morality.