Maxim de Winter is the Absolute Worst
My unintentional reading trend these last few weeks has been “middle-aged man has a toxic relationship with young, easily-manipulated girl or woman.” After reading My Dark Vanessa, I picked up Rebecca for my book club. I read Rebecca in my very early teens and have, of course, seen the Alfred Hitchcock movie adaptation multiple times (as well as that awful made-for-TV movie adaptation starring Charles Dance as Maxim that I wish I could forget), but I had not picked it up in a very long time. Another unintentional reading trend is that 2020 seems to be the year of the re-read.
The nameless main character, who I’ll call The Girl, is a companion to a caricature of a vulgar American woman in Monte Carlo, where she meets rich recent widower Maxim de Winter who asks her to marry him very quickly. The main character goes home to England to Max’s grand house where she finds the neighbors and the house staff are all against her. She is friendless and alone and Max is worse than useless in giving her reassurance and good company. Max is a grumpy Heathcliff/Mr. Rochester type who is set in his routine and seems to prefer life without interruption and distraction and makes absolutely no effort to help The Girl settle into her new life, for which she has had no preparation. Rebecca is a coming-of-age story for The Girl, but it is disturbing that her growth into an adult happens in the context of a marriage.
The only friend The Girl makes is Max’s overseer, Frank Crawley, seemingly the only person who didn’t “simply adore Rebecca.” Frank is absolutely loyal to Max and clearly resented Rebecca for occupying such a large chunk of his attention — a problem he doesn’t have with The Girl, because she is childlike and unassertive by comparison, and that is deliberate.
Max has chosen The Girl as his bride because she is young and malleable and keeping her isolated keeps her malleable. He sends The Girl out to make calls to the neighbors and keep up appearances as the respectable lady of the great house, even though he knows she is introverted and has no talent or training for that kind of social exercise. When she expresses distaste for the calls and the awkwardness she has to endure and the specter of Rebecca’s perfect social life, he snaps at her for not acting like a proper lady, even though he is clearly invested in her naïveté and artlessness. In fact, he admits that’s why he married her in the first place. He refers to her as a “little girl” and claims that “husbands are not so different from fathers,” which is downright creepy. He goes on to say that “there is some knowledge I don’t wish you to have,” clearly indicating that he’s gatekeeping information to purposefully stunt the emotional and intellectual growth of The Girl.
Max gaslights The Girl, so she is always unsure of herself and is terrified of everything and everyone. When The Girl breaks the figurine of the cupid in the morning room, she hides the pieces like a child who has misbehaved in a museum, rather than a woman who has had an understandable accident in her own home. Max and the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, make a huge fuss over the missing pieces, saying how valuable it was and that it was a wedding present from Max’s marriage to Rebecca. After it comes out that it was The Girl who broke the figurine, Max lays into her about being so silly to hide the pieces instead of just asking Mrs. Danvers to clean up the mess and have the pieces mended. The Girl makes the point that she didn’t want Max to be angry with her for breaking something that is clearly of financial and sentimental value, but Max scolds for this as well, saying he doesn’t care about the cupid at all. Max’s conflicting messages keep The Girl unbalanced and make her doubt herself and her reality.
The Girl is clearly unhappy in her surroundings and with Max’s hot and cold treatment of her. Max gets annoyed with her for going somewhere or doing something The Girl had no way of knowing would upset Max. Then after their arguments, he manipulates her by fake blaming himself to make The Girl feel bad for him, to stop her complaining about his shitty behavior. Max’s secrecy about Rebecca is a calculated manipulation to keep The Girl unbalanced.
After not speaking about Rebecca for the entire book, he finally confesses to The Girl that he hated the perfect Rebecca. The reasons he hates her, however, are unjustified. He cites her telling him “disgusting” things about herself, which suggests that she has had premarital sex with other men — hardly actually “disgusting.” Rebecca seems like a “mean girl,” but why would Max care about that? The real reason he hates Rebecca is that she is independent and therefore won’t be bossed around by Max and Max can’t stand not being in control of everything. Max has always been an abuser, but Rebecca played his game better, so he found someone easier to abuse. Max has gaslit The Girl so thoroughly, that when she finds out she’s married to an actual real-life Bluebeard, her first thought is to be relieved that he was not in love with his first wife, not worry that she is married to a wife-murderer. Max never wanted a partner to share his solitary life. He wanted someone to control. Because he is the worst.
