a radical resistance to absence
by Douglas Messerli
A few days ago, I reread
my 2008 review of Alfred Hitchcock’s classic film Rebecca, and was a bit
astounded to note that I had relatively little to say about the notorious Mrs.
Danvers, strange particularly given the major role she plays in the film. Below
are my 12-year-old comments:
“Mrs. Danvers may still
have illusions, but it is her delusions that dominate her relationship with the
second Mrs. De Winter. Believing that Rebecca has returned to haunt the place,
she keeps her mistress’s room as a perverse shrine, maintaining everything
“just as it was” and attempts to destroy the usurper she sees in Max’s second
wife.
In such a world of horrors, wherein no one
knows the truth, is it any wonder that the fresh, young woman who has married
the man who has put Rebecca to rest at the bottom of the sea, has no idea where
or who she is? Knowing no one of Rebecca’s social class, what is she to do at
that desk in that beautiful, fire-lit room.
If Mrs. Danvers had not gone mad,
destroying the great mansion by fire, perhaps the second Mrs. De Winter might
have had set those vaulted corridors aflame simply to find her way home to real
identity and a place in which to enact it.”
One might accuse me, as Terry Castle has
suggested in The Apparitional Lesbian, as being one of those many people
who upon witnessing lesbian love in literature and cinema have “trouble seeing
what’s in front of them.” However, I was not at all blind to the fact that one
might see Mrs. Danvers as the lesbian admirer, if not exactly lover, of the
first Mrs. De Winter. But why, even I must ask myself given my long propensity
to interpret even films without an obvious LGBTQ sub-texts (The Third Man,
Arsenic and Old Lace, Pillow Talk and many others) did I not even
bother to mention the fact, particularly when so many critics have written
extensively about those very issues?
I could excuse the oversight simply by
arguing that, despite the film’s true focus being upon Rebecca and her past
relationships, our attention nonetheless is very much given over to the second
Mrs. De Winter’s attempts to simply adapt to the unknowable world into which
she has suddenly been flung. With her own husband’s near constant disparagement
of her intelligence and ability to survive in his world and, even as she puts
it, the fact that she is constantly being eyed up and down by the locals as if
she were some prize cow, along with the turmoil in George Fortescue Maximillian
De Winter’s soul that she hopes to soothe, that Mrs. Danvers’ and Rebecca’s
relationship may appear to be the least of this central character’s (if you
argue that she actually is a central character) problems. In this film, the
fact that Mrs. Danvers lives in a dead world of her own making forces us to want
to shift our eyes to the forlorn younger figure simply trying to discover how
to survive in the present—which in fact was very much what my essay was about.
When Mrs. Danvers sets fire to the house
in order to destroy any present pleasure Joan Fontaine’s version of Mrs. De
Winter might find in the arms of Laurence Olivier’s Maxim she actually destroys
the past, permitting their love to flourish. In short, Danvers unintentionally
is a self-destructive force that allows us to accept this gothic-like travesty
as a modern romance; with the destruction of Manderley so too are Rebecca and
Mrs. Danvers transformed from ghouls haunting the present to become simply the
cremated dead, particularly since Maxim has now no possibility, if he even had
the desire, to replace the unknown woman buried in the family vault with
Rebecca’s newly discovered body. As the second Mrs. De Winter puts it in the
ambling prologue recounting her dream of Manderley and its grounds: “It seems
has if nature had come into its own again.”
Yet that very observation seems to demand
that we seek to discover what it was previously in that beautiful mansion that
was so much against nature that it led to angst, delirium, fear, and death in
the living figures entrapped within the house. Homosexuality and the sodomy
laws were, obviously defined for centuries as being precisely that: against
nature. Lesbian love, on the other hand was not legally outlawed in Great
Britain, but it certainly would have been described, when perceived, as being
against the natural expression of love by the society at large. Accordingly, it
now appears to me to be crucial to explore those very issues involving Mrs.
Danvers and Rebecca if we are truly to comprehend what this work is telling us.
Maxim’s lies about his relationship with
Rebecca and his inability to explain facts about the condition of her boat are
also against the law. In Daphne du Maurier’s original novel, more importantly,
Maxim does in fact kill Rebecca, placing her corpse in her boat before he
scuttles it. And, quite obviously, Maxim’s hatred of his first wife, his desire
to kill her, and his active attempt to hide her dead body are all also “against
nature,” and therefore, like any depiction of homosexuality, were outlawed by
the movie industry’s Hays Code. The studio creators and producers were well
aware of these problems. As the head of the Production Code Administration,
Joseph Breen, wrote to the David O. Selnzick, Rebecca’s producer:
“We have read the
temporary script ... and I regret to inform you that the material, in our
judgment, is definitely and specifically in violation of the Production
Code.... The specific objection to this material is three–fold: (a) As now
written, it is the story of a murderer, who is permitted to go off "scot
free"; (b) The quite inescapable inferences of sex perversion; and (c) The
repeated references in the dialogue to the alleged illicit relationship between
Favell and the first Mrs. de Winter [the script defines them as cousins], and
the frequent references to the alleged illegitimate child–to–be.”
Breen later wrote, in a second letter:
"It will be
essential that there be no suggestion whatever of a perverted relationship
between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. If any possible hint of this creeps into this
scene, we will of course not be able to approve the picture. Specifically, we
have in mind Mrs. Danvers' description of Rebecca's physical attributes, her
handling of the various garments, particularly the night gown....”*
As we now know Breen’s objection “a” was
in fact changed in the script, allowing Rebecca—no matter how unbelievably—to
trip and fall, dying quickly from a head injury. Yet clearly Hitchcock and
Selznick felt the necessity of remaining close to du Maurier’s text regarding
Breen’s second objection in order to maintain the integrity of the story they
were telling. Just why the Hays office did not, in the end, reject the in
respect to item “c” as outline above is fairly obvious. Perhaps Favell’s
flippant remark to the second Mrs. De Winter, “Don’t you know, I am Rebecca’s
favorite cousin” simply rendered any actual family relationship questionable,
as if being a cousin meant nothing more than a coded way of saying I was like
family or I was her best friend meaning obviously someone with whom she was
sexually involved. Both heterosexual and LGBTQ individuals have often
referenced their sexual partners as being “cousins” or “best friends” to hide
their true relationship. And finally, Rebecca is not pregnant with Favell’s
child.
Even before we have entered that house of
horrors Manderley, the young girl who will soon marry Maxim is doing labor for
another sort of abuser, working as a companion for the Babbitt-like American Edythe Van Hopper (Florence Bates), who in her endless
chain-smoking habits almost reminds one of the later fire bug Mrs. Danvers.
There is also a sense here, particularly given Mrs. Von Hopper’s own illusions
about her sexual attractiveness, of a would-be relationship of, if not of an
older and young lesbian lover, at least of a mother with an ungrateful child.
As Fontaine’s character tells Maxim, “I looked up companion in the dictionary
once, and it described it as ‘a friend of the bosom.’”
Von Hooper would have her even give up
her eyes for a view of Monte (Monte Carlo) and remain mute during her own
ridiculous attempt at conversation with Maxim De Winter. In her continued
demand for attention and full commitment from her young companion Mrs. Von
Hopper might almost be said to foretell not only Maxim’s own abuses toward the
second Mrs. De Winter, who he clearly perceives as a kind of gauche innocent to
engage him while he reminds her of her worthlessness. Even his proposal for
marriage is a study in patriarchal abuse: “I’m asking you to marry me you
little fool.” And once the second Mrs. De Winter arrives in Mandeley her
husband leaves her pretty much to herself without even attempting to help her
adjust to the new world that lay outside of anything she might previously have
imagined.
But if Maxim can be defined by absence,
so Rebecca can be recognized in her total presence, her “R” monogram stamped
upon every napkin, handkerchief, and letterhead of the house in a kind of
radical resistance (in chemistry R is the symbol for the organic Radical, while
in electricity it is the symbol for resistance) to the DW (one is tempted to
suggest “dead wood” were it not that death is already obviously linked to de
Winters last name) that follows on her stationery headings. Most clearly Maxim
stands for the tradition, the reason we later discover that he will never
publicly reveal his hatred of her sexual aberrations, male or female. The only
times that Max goes “off his head,” as his sister, Beatrice describes his brief
temper tantrums, is when he is faced with something that might require him to
move out of the passivity to which he has grown accustomed, to demand that he act
in way different from the past. Of his new wife, he demands that she never wear
a satin gown or pearls or ever become 36. In other words, she is to forever
remain the naïf he has unearthed to take his mind away from the truths haunting
him. It as if Maxim and Rebecca lived in an atmosphere that any moment might
explode. In chemistry R stands for gas.
One has to wonder, moreover, in all these
years of marriage to the woman he hated, what Max did precisely to relieve his
sexual desires. The film is purposely opaque about this question. But we are
given hints when, the day after he has raged against his new wife, Maxim runs
off, his with is assistant Frank Crowley (Reginald Denny), to London on “estate
business.” For reasons unexplained, Maxim refers to Crowley as “poor Frank,”
perhaps related to the fact that Rebecca, at one point, even attempted to
arouse Frank’s sexual desires. If Frank were homosexual, obviously De Winter
might truly sympathize with his friend’s inability to deal with Rebecca’s
flirtations. Near the end of the film, after he has just been cleared of
Rebecca’s death Maxim begins to tell Frank, “There something you don’t know...”
which his friend immediately interrupts by responding, “Oh no, there isn’t,” a
rather assertive and inexplicable statement between a simple employer and his
accountant. These two, we finally perceive are much closer to one another than
we might have previously been led to expect. And a moment earlier Colonel
Julyan, who has just told Favell that he intends to stay the night in London,
tells De Winter, “You have a great friend in Frank.” In just a few words—a true
intimate, a great friend, and a night in London—Hitchcock and his writers have
told us, below the table so to speak, almost everything about Maxim’s and
Frank’s relationship, something that clearly did sail right over the heads of
the prurient Hays Code board members. Besides, given the British boarding
school system male-on-male buggery was fairly traditional. If, however, the
code might possibly allow the lesbian scenes to remain, no obvious homosexual
allusions would ever have been permitted.
It is on that day that Maxim escapes with
Frank to London that the second Mrs. De Winter unwittingly discovers the real
truth about Rebecca’s Manderley. Brooding over Maxim’s departure, the young
bride hears voices and for a few seconds spies on Favell’s leave-taking of Mrs.
Danvers, who he and Rebecca call by her male nickname, “Danny.” As he starts to
walk away he discovers Mrs. De Winter to be in the next room and before an open
window stops to talk to her, calling back to Danny that their attempts to be
discreet about his visit were all to no avail. Introducing himself, Favell so
astounds her with his aggressive behavior that she invites him in for tea, to
which Danvers vehemently shows disapproval. “You’re right Danny, we musn’t lead
the young bride astray,” exiting the floor-length window through which he has
just entered.
That brief encounter serves as a prelude
to just what he has suggested, an attempt to lead the bride astray by Mrs.
Danvers. I’m tempted indeed to describe this next scene of six long minutes
(the later inquest of Maxim is of the same length, and the only longer scene in
the film is the 13 minute long confession and backstory of his Maxim’s life
with Rebecca played out in the beach cottage) as “The Seduction.” For
immediately after Favell’s last words Mrs. De Winter moves almost urgently to
the West wing room that she knows to have been Rebecca’s, having seen an open
window flapping in the wind from the East wing which she and Maxim now live.
She opens the door to that room, encountering a world of sheer beauty as the
trees and sea combine to create a series of stunning shadows across the
shimmering curtains.
Fast behind her Mrs. Danvers arrives to
query the unexpected visitor, “Do you wish anything Madame?” and before the
young woman can even speak suggests that she has been waiting to show her this
room since the day the second Mrs. De Winter arrived.
There is an almost other worldly openness
about the elderly woman as Mrs. Danvers shows the newcomer the wonders of this
preserved tomb (“Nothing has been altered since that last night”), as one might
almost describe it, where she and Rebecca spent long hours every night after
the endless parties Rebecca attended. “I always used to wait up for her no
matter how late,” Danny proudly announces. Ignoring the advice of Maxim’s
sister Beatrice (speaking of Danvers, “I wouldn’t have much to do with her, if
I were you.”) Fontaine’s character remains almost awestruck as Danvers goes
through the various closets of her dead idol, taking out first her firs and
holding them close to her face before ruffing the fur across her cheek and
offering to do the same for her sudden acolyte (“Feel this!”)
“I keep her underwear on
this side,” continues the woman we now recognize as Rebecca’s lover, displaying
the panties and bras as if they were treasures spun of gossamer.
“While she was undressing, she’d tell me about
the party she’d been to.... Everyone loved her. When she finished her bath
she’d go into the bedroom and over to the drawing table. [Signaling for
Fontaine to join her] Come on Danny hair drill! I’d brush it like this
[imitating the movement of the brush] for 20 minutes at a time. Then she’d say,
goodnight Danny and step into her bed.”
If these several scenarios have been
absolutely bizarre and sexually shocking even today in the sense that Mrs.
Danvers is revealing what might almost be seen as an intimate involvement of
the two in the boudoir, her next movement to the bed itself is beyond
suggestive:
“[Revealing a nightcase
with the letter R embroidered upon it] I embroidered this case for her myself
and I keep it here always. [Taking out Rebecca’s nightgown] Did you ever see
anything so delicate? [Motioning for Mrs. De Winter to join her] Look, you can
see my hand through it!
In these sentences, Danny has revealed
that she perceives her relationship with Rebecca as a permanent one, as a kind
of marriage by suggesting “I keep it here always” in the present tense.
Rebecca’s nudity is further revealed with
the description of being able to see through her negligee. For Danny, we soon
perceive, Rebecca is still living. She can hear her footsteps throughout the
house, she declares. And for a moment, we suspect, that if her new acolyte were
able to participate in Danvers’ adoration or, perhaps, even suggest she might
replace the dead woman as a “friend of the bosom,” all might have been forgiven
for the interloper’s presence in Manderley. Danvers even invites the young
woman to lay down and rest for a while, to listen to the sea.
But like any timid heterosexual, the
second Mrs. De Winter is horrified by the performance she has just witnessed
and escapes from the room with Danvers shouting “The sea, the sea!” after her.
The sea, in its endless shifting fluidity
obviously captures her and Rebecca’s lesbian sexuality.
As Anita Markoff has
written about several contemporary lesbian films:
“...Water can also be
seen to play a significant part in films dealing with lesbian relationships;
such as in Valerie and Her Week of Wonders, Thelma, and Céline
Sciamma’s films Water Lilies and more recently Portrait of a Lady on
Fire.
These films utilize rivers, lakes, and
swimming pools to create a build-up of romantic tensions between women. This
happens in a unique way in each film, but the one thing which is true across
the board is that these queer relationships would be missing something vital
without the presence of water. It is a fluctuating substance, in contrast to
the more heterosexual constructions of solid and liminal spaces within these
films. Water allows movement, and a lack of constriction of desire. It creates
the prospect of a sexuality that is fluid, and a longing that is socially
acceptable as the presence of water encourages nakedness. It splits bodies in
half, allowing the alluring possibility of visually experiencing the secret
parts under the surface.”**
I might suggest that this has long been
true of lesbian films for a long while. Consider, for example, the film from
1944 which I review below, The Uninvited.
In any event, the new lady of the house in
Rebecca has now retreated by to the East wing, where there is no view of
the sea, and when Maxim returns from his “business” in London clings to his
neck as if were a life raft.
One might think that Hitchcock, having so clearly made his case
about Rebecca and Danvers’ queer and, accordingly, unnatural sexuality, need go
no further.
Yet, the story reveals that Rebecca is so
very dependent upon Mrs. Danvers that she actually transforms herself into her
mother/servant/lover, invoking her name during her visits to a doctor in her
escapes to London where, instead of engaging in outsider sex, she hopes to hear
the news—in her final revenge against a husband who has stood against
everything she represents—that she is pregnant with Favell’s child, making the
sleazy monster’s son heir to his beloved Mandeley. If she seeks to rouse
Maxim’s anger, she couldn’t have chosen better.
Rebecca’s full name in the Hebrew means
“to tie firmly,” “to bind as in a noose.” And in that fact we can conjecture
just how thorough her revenge will be. Not only has she planned a way to hang
her husband through a lie which would eat away at his traditional values so
deeply that in desperation he would have no choice but to kill her, but she has
summoned up a witness by writing Favell to meet her at the cottage.
Finally, I suggest, it may have not
been Mrs. Danvers attempt to destroy Maxim’s and the second Mrs. De Winter’s
life through her ignition of the escaped “gas”—a substance known to have no
fixed shape or volume—but to punish the woman who betrayed her, killing herself
in the process as well. After all, she believed Mandeley truly belonged to
Rebecca not to Max, and in Danvers’ imagination Rebecca was still treading the
floors of the house she had made over in her image. If the ties of the past
holding back Maxim and his new wife were released through the fire, so was the
noose worn so obviously by Rebecca’s suffering lover Danny.
Presumably Maxim and his bride have now
discovered a new happiness, in part due to the formerly awkward bride’s sudden
maturity; if not, living in London Maxim will be able to now see his dear
friend Frank out of the confining public eye of Cornwall any time he
desires.
*I have depended upon
the remarkable research of Laureen Johnson in these passages.
**Markoff’s lovely essay
should be visited for its excellent study of the films she suggests. See
“Expressions of Desire and Water in Lesbian Cinema,” Screen Queens.
December 1, 2019.
https://screen-queens.com/2019/12/01/expressions-of-desire-and-water-in-lesbian-cinema/
Los Angeles, November 3,
2020
Reprinted from My
Queer Cinema blog and World Cinema Review (November 2020).
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