‘Returning to Manderley’—Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class
1984; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 16; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1057/fr.1984.2
ISSN1466-4380
Autores Tópico(s)Gothic Literature and Media Analysis
ResumoThus opens Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca, published in 1938. With thirty-nine impressions and translations into twenty languages in as many years, Rdebecca was and still is an enormous bestseller. Hitchcock made a film ofthe novel in 1940, its latest TV serialization was only a couple of years ago and even more recently it has been the subject of an opera. Whilst one study of its initial success claims that 'every good historian should read it in tandem with contemporary newspapers' (Beauman, 1983: 178), its clear that Rebecca speaks as much to readers in the 1980s as it did to those in the 1 940s. Ille story of the plain, genteel orphan girl we never learn her rurne who marries the aristocratic widower has got eveShing a romance needs and more: jealously mystery, adultery and murder. Jealousy and envy of her husband's first wife the beautifil, upper-class Rebecca propels the nameless heroine down the dark corridors of Rebecca's past. But in unlocking the secrets of Rebecca's character, the girl gets more than she bargained for: her husband turns out to have murdered Rebecca himself. All is not lc st, however, for the heroine's bourgeois virtue triumphs and in the end she manages to save both her husband and her marriage. Rebecca is a rewrite of Jane Eyre amidst a nostalgia for the wariing of the British Empire and the decline of its aristocracy. It's a lingering firewell to the world of Monte Carlo and of paid companions, to splendid brealists and devoted servants, the ease and arrogance of life in a stately home like Manderley, the Cornish mansion of the suave gentleman-hero, MaximiZan de Winter. Obviously, it is a ripping yarn. But apart from that how do feminists and socialists account for the continued popularity and appeal of a book like this? In the aftermath of Charles and Di, a lot of critical attention has been turned toward romance and its fictions, from Mills and Boon to 'boddice rippers' and the latest high-gloss consumerist fantasies (see, for example, Batsleer, 1981; Margolies, 1982; Harper, 1982 ). At the centre of the discussion has been the question of the possible political effects of reading romances what, in other words, do they do to you? Romances have on the whole, been condemned by critics on the Left{althoughJanet Batsleer's piece is a notable exception). lEey are seen as coercive and stereotyping narratives which invite the reader to identify with a passive heroine who only finds true happiness in submitting to a masterful male. What happens to women readers is then compared to certain Marxist descriptions of the positioning of all human subjects
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