• Abstract and Figures
• Public Full-text

FREE MRS. DE WINTER: GOTHIC FICTION PDF Susan Hill | 304 pages | 03 Sep 2001 | Vintage Publishing | 9780099284789 | English | London, United Kingdom Mrs de Winter by Susan Hill Jessica Gildersleeve does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurierbelongs to this elite collection. Read more: Newly discovered Du Maurier poems shed light on a talented writer honing her craft. She is exceedingly young — shy, inexperienced, and under the thumb of a wealthy lady who has employed her as a travel companion. In Monte Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction, our narrator meets Maxim de Winter, a tall, dark and handsome aristocrat, recently widowed. He swiftly rescues her from drudgery, proposes marriage, and takes her back to England to live in his beautiful and ancient estate, Manderley. The dual spectres of Rebecca and Manderley haunt de Winter and his bride but the circularity of the narrative makes escape impossible. Now, night after night, she must dream of Manderley again — of its beauty, to be sure, but also, too, of its oppressiveness. When Manderley hosts an annual costume ball, for instance, the second Mrs de Winter is anxious to impress her new husband and his guests. But when she makes her grand entrance, her husband angrily orders her to change. Rebecca had worn an identical costume the year before. She stands in for the hordes of young women of the interwar Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fictiontheir families lost to the war while these young women were left to navigate the world unchaperoned and alone, without interested parties available to approve or consider their choice of husband. Read more: Explainer: what does 'gaslighting' mean? Female gothic narratives seek to expose the psychological manipulations and abuse of power disguised as romance. Read more: Psycho turns 60 — Hitchcock's famous Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction film broke all the rules. Strangely, however, these beauty and fashion products were all associated with Rebecca, a woman who never appears on screen. Together, these constitute a series of gothic hauntings that draw attention not only to the psychological trauma inherent in those earlier works, but the way in which that trauma and its terrors are profoundly gendered. Be Curious — Leeds, Leeds. Constructive invisibility, dangerous visibility — Cambridge, Cambridgeshire. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Jessica GildersleeveUniversity of Southern Queensland. Virago In Monte Carlo, our narrator meets Maxim de Winter, a tall, dark and handsome aristocrat, recently widowed. Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction has been altered since that night. Rebecca screens on Netflix from October Mrs de Winter: Gothic Fiction - Susan Hill - Google книги It concerns an unnamed young woman who impetuously marries a wealthy widower, only to discover that he and his household are haunted by the memory of his late first wife, the title character. A best-seller which has never gone out of print, Rebecca sold 2. It has been adapted numerous times for stage and screen, including a play by du Maurier herself, and the film Rebeccadirected by Alfred Hitchcockwhich won the Academy Award for Best Picture. After a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him and, after the Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction and honeymoon, accompanies him to his mansion in Cornwall, the beautiful estate Manderley. Mrs Danvers, the sinister housekeeper, was profoundly devoted to the first Mrs de Winter, Rebecca, who died in a boating accident about a year before Maxim and the second Mrs de Winter met. She continually attempts to undermine the narrator psychologically, subtly suggesting to her that she will never attain the beauty, urbanity, and charm her predecessor possessed. Whenever the narrator attempts to make changes at Manderley, Mrs Danvers describes how Rebecca ran it when she was alive. Each time Mrs Danvers does this, she implies that the narrator lacks the experience and knowledge necessary for running an important estate. Cowed by Mrs Danvers' imposing manner, and the other members of West Country society's unwavering reverence for Rebecca, the narrator becomes isolated. The narrator is soon convinced that Maxim regrets his impetuous decision to marry her and is still deeply in love with the seemingly perfect Rebecca. The climax occurs at Manderley's annual costume ball. Mrs Danvers manipulates the narrator into wearing a replica of the dress shown in a portrait of one of the former inhabitants of the house—hiding the fact that the same costume was worn by Rebecca to much acclaim shortly before her death. The narrator has a drummer announce her entrance using the name of the lady in the portrait: Caroline de Winter. When the narrator shows Maxim the dress, he angrily orders her to change. Shortly after the ball, Mrs Danvers reveals her contempt for the narrator, believing she is trying to replace Rebecca, and reveals her deep, unhealthy obsession with the dead woman. Mrs Danvers tries to get the narrator to commit suicide by encouraging her to jump out of the window. However, she is thwarted at the last moment by the disturbance occasioned by a nearby shipwreck. A diver investigating the condition of the wrecked ship's hull also discovers the remains of Rebecca's sailing boat, with her decomposed body still on board. This discovery causes Maxim to confess to the narrator that his marriage to Rebecca was a sham. Rebecca, Maxim reveals, was a cruel and selfish woman who manipulated everyone around her into believing her to be the perfect wife and a paragon of virtue. On the night of her death, she told Maxim that she was pregnant with another man's child, which she would raise under the pretense that it was Maxim's and he would be powerless to stop her. In a rage, Maxim had shot her through the heart, then disposed of her body by placing it in her boat and sinking it at sea. The narrator thinks little of Maxim's murder confession, but instead is relieved to hear that Maxim has always loved her and never Rebecca. Rebecca's boat is raised and it is discovered to have been deliberately sunk. An inquest brings a verdict of suicide. However, Rebecca's first cousin and lover, Jack Favell, attempts to blackmail Maxim, claiming to have proof that she could not have intended suicide based on a note she sent to him the night she died. It is revealed that Rebecca had had an appointment with a doctor in London shortly before her death, presumably to confirm her pregnancy. When the doctor is found, he reveals that Rebecca had cancer and would have died within a few months. Furthermore, due to the malformation of her uterus, she could never have been pregnant. Maxim assumes that Rebecca, knowing that she was going to die, manipulated him into killing her quickly. Mrs Danvers Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction said after the inquiry that Rebecca feared nothing except dying a lingering death. Maxim feels a great sense of foreboding, and insists on driving through the night to return to Manderley. However, before he comes in sight of the house, it is clear from a glow on the horizon and wind- borne ashes that it is ablaze. The novel is remembered especially [1] for the character Mrs. Danversthe fictional estate Manderleyand its opening line:. There is little likelihood of my bringing back a finished manuscript in December. On returning to Britain in Decemberdu Maurier decided to spend Christmas away from her family to write the book and she successfully delivered it to her publisher less than four months later. Psychological and rather macabre. Du Maurier commented publicly in her lifetime that the book was based on her own memories of Menabilly and Cornwallas well as her relationship with her father. While du Maurier Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction Rebecca as a study in jealousy The suspicion that Tommy remained attracted to Ricardo haunted Daphne. A beautiful home But something terrible would have to happen, I did not know what She threw herself under a train. Childhood visits Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction Milton HallCambridgeshire then in Northamptonshire home of the Wentworth- Fitzwilliam family, may have influenced the descriptions of Manderley. The famous opening line of the book "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. The last line of the book "And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea" is also in metrical form; almost but not quite an anapestic tetrameter. Nabuco's A Sucessora The Successorissued inhas a main plot similar to Rebeccafor example a young woman marrying a widower and the strange presence of the first wife—plot features also shared Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction the far older Jane Eyre. According to Nabuco's autobiography, Eight Decadesshe Nabuco refused to sign an agreement brought to her by a United Artists ' representative in which she agreed that the similarities between her book and the movie were mere coincidence. In in the United States, du Maurier, her U. MacDonald who alleged that du Maurier had copied her novel Blind Windows. Du Maurier successfully rebutted the allegations. Du Maurier delivered the manuscript to her publisher, Victor Gollancz, in April Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction receipt, the book was read in Gollancz's office, and her "editor, Norman Collins, reported simply: 'The new Daphne du Maurier contains everything that the public could want. The Times stated that Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction material is of the humblest Pritchett predicted the novel "would be Mrs. de Winter: Gothic Fiction today, gone tomorrow.

Load more

  6

Copy Link