The Weight of Memory in Hitchcock’s “Rebecca” (1940)

Alfred Hitchcock’s first American film—part love story, part ghost story, part courtroom melodrama—centers on a poor, timid young woman who falls in love with wealthy aristocrat Maxim de Winter, a widower tortured over the death of his first wife. When the young woman becomes the second Mrs. De Winter and moves into Maxim’s estate, she finds her predecessor’s initials stamped all over the house, and its staff in thrall to her beautiful, vibrant memory. But at the heart of the first Mrs. De Winter’s legacy lies a rot, and just what that rot represents in the film—be it the oppressions of vitality and ambition, the wages of class mobility, the unruly desires of sexuality, or the latent evidence of civilizational decline—is our subject today. Wes & Erin discuss the 1940 Best Picture winner “Rebecca,” starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. Upcoming Episodes: Emily Dickinson, Rosemary’s Baby. Pre-order Erin’s forthcoming book “Avail” here: http://subtextpodcast.com/avail For bonus content, become a paid subscriber at Patreon or directly on the Apple Podcasts app. Patreon subscribers also get early access to ad-free regular episodes. This podcast is part of the Airwave Media podcast network. Visit AirwaveMedia.com to listen and subscribe to other Airwave shows like Good Job, Brain and Big Picture Science. Email [email protected] to enquire about advertising on the podcast. Follow: Twitter | Facebook | Website Transcript 0:20 Erin: or patreon.com/subtextpodcast. Alfred Hitchcock's first American film, part love story, part ghost story, part courtroom melodrama, centers on a poor, timid young woman who falls in love with wealthy aristocrat Maxim de Winter, a widower tortured over the death of his first wife. When the young woman becomes the second Mrs. De Winter and moves into Maxim's estate, she finds her predecessor's initials stamped all over the house and its staff still enthralled to her beautiful, vibrant memory. But at the heart of the first Mrs. De Winters legacy lies a rot. And just what that rot represents in the film, be it the oppressions of vitality and ambition, the wages of class mobility, the unruly desires of sexuality, or the latent evidence of civilizational decline, is our subject today. We're Talking about the 1940 Best Picture winner, Rebecca, starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. This is Erin O'Luanaigh. This is Wes Alwan, and you're listening to Subtext. So, Wes, a couple weeks ago, the great Joan Plowright passed away. I don't know if you know who she was. I feel like no one in the news media knew who she was because it wasn't very widely cover. 1:40 Wes: I don't know about her. 1:41 Erin: Well, she was Laurence Olivier's widow. And it just caused me to reflect on the kind of strange coincidence that we had decided to do this film or that I had suggested it because in a way you might say that Joan Fontaine and Joan Plowright sharing that first name, it sort of indicates that there's something of the second Mrs. De Winter, maybe about Joan Plowright. She's not a second wife, she was a third wife, but she followed his 20 year marriage to Vivien Leigh, which was extremely fraught and extremely volatile and one of the great love stories probably of the 20th century, but a difficult marriage to follow. And Vivien Leigh didn't pass away before his marriage, so there was a divorce. But I was just thinking about that and about the casting stories behind this film, about the fact that Olivier, who was at that point having an affair with Vivien Leigh, wanted her to play the Joan Fontaine part. So there was a lot of tension on the set, which Resulted in Joan Fontaine, I think, feeling really as ostracized and as unwanted as she is in the film. It's funny because to me it seems obvious and I'm sure other people have said that Vivien Leigh would have been totally wrong for the part of the second Mrs. De Winter, because she was Rebecca. You know, she was the one that everybody thought was the most beautiful, most incredible woman in the world. Right. So that story and how that affected the environment of the movie really interests me. A lot of behind the scenes facts about this film really interest me, like Selznick's involvement. But just thinking about this real life phenomenon of Second Wives and how they may or may not line up with actual things going on in the filmmakers own lives just interested me. But had you seen this film before I suggested it? 3:28 Wes: No, no, I had never seen this. 3:30 Erin: Yeah, you know, it's Hitchcock's first film that he made in America, which is funny because it's set in England and you know, a lot of battles with Selznick and a lot of battles with the studio over some censorship issues, which will probably get. They'll probably come up as we go through the plot. But otherwise, I think, I mean, it's a bit. It's a strange film. You know, it has these three genres, really, that it's invoking at various points and maybe some dropped threads. I don't know, we can talk about that. But it's kind of fascinating. I think it's one of his most enjoyable films, even for all of its flaws and the atmosphere and the. Especially the performance by Judith Anderson as Mrs. Danvers. Classic. I forgot to send you the Carol Burnett. The Carol Burnett's gonna be good. Yeah, I think it's called Rebecky. Everyone's always going, Rebecky. Yeah. And I think, you know, Carol Burnett's the Other Woman. 4:24 Wes: Oh, yeah. 4:26 Erin: This is so bad. I can't believe it. I adore her. Anyway, she, you know, they're like having dinner. 4:31 Wes: I want to say there's an M M sound in there. Not Martha, but. 4:35 Erin: Oh, I'm good. This is so painful for me. But anyway, they're having dinner at the big table at one point and there's, you know, like a serving dish and somebody pulls the lid off the platter and it's Mrs. Danvers head, you know, in the middle, telling Carol Burnett that she should die or whatever. Anyway, really, really good spinoff. But yeah, this definitely isn't Hitchcock's best film. It is probably, though, in my top five. I want to say, like, what's your favorite Hitchcock? 5:06 Wes: I guess I'd have to say Vertigo. It's not a very interesting choice, but I don't know. I think you know Hitchcock way better than I do, so you have a lot more to choose from. 5:17 Erin: I've seen every Hitchcock film I made a point to do, so. 5:21 Wes: So this is in your top five films, or top five Hitchcock? 5:25 Erin: No, no, no. Top five Hitchcock. You know, and it's not. It's not like, probably in his best five in terms or top five in terms of best of his, but it's, you know, favorite implies a little bit of partisanship there on my part. You know, I just. I like it. It was one of the first, I think I had ever seen first Hitchcock's I'd ever seen. And I remember realizing at, like, 10 or 11 years old that, like, Joan Fontaine's character doesn't have a name, but the title is a name, you know? 5:54 Wes: Yeah. It took me while to figure out that she wasn't Rebecca. 6:00 Erin: Right. 6:01 Wes: Yeah. This is confusing. She's just Mrs. De Winter through the whole thing, which I had to abbreviate in my notes as MDW, so she just became MDW and Mrs. Danvers became MD yeah, the. 6:21 Erin: The Love Doctor is in. 6:23 Wes: Yeah. Seriously. 6:24 Erin: No, I looked up. I looked up the name Rebecca last night for the first time, and it means to tie or to bind, so I thought that was suggestive. 6:34 Wes: Is it of Hebrew origin? 6:36 Erin: Mm, yeah. 6:38 Wes: Yeah. 6:38 Erin: But it's definitely a. You know, it has a kind of romantic, sexy kind of, I think, valence to it. I don't know. I never thought about that with that name before. Too closely. But I was just thinking quite a bit about that name and what it might suggest. Just to the ear, Rebecca. Three syllable. 6:59 Wes: You know, a nice embroidered monogram. That's just an R is much more appealing than, say, an L. Yes, that's right. Or Larissa. 7:10 Erin: That's right. 7:11 Wes: It wouldn't work as well. 7:12 Erin: Well, and of course, the single R is, you know, I can't look at that, even though sometimes it's also with the. The D E and the capital W. I can't look at an R and not think Regina. Regina. You know, the monarchical cipher. 7:27 Wes: Oh, I see. 7:28 Erin: Yeah. 7:28 Wes: Okay. Right. 7:30 Erin: So she's, you know, she's the queen of the castle. She's the queen of Manderley. Manderley. Which is itself kind of a strange name. You know, it sounds like a hotel resort in, like, Cancun or something. You know, like, there's some. 7:43 Wes: I mean, Cancun that's interesting. 7:44 Erin: Yeah, there's some. Yeah, some tropical location. There's something slightly tropical, right? 7:51 Wes: That's right, yeah. I mean, there'd be a casino in there and Manderley, actually. Well, there is in Vegas. What's it called? Mandalay Bay, actually. 8:02 Erin: There you go. Maybe that's why I'm thinking that. Not that Vegas is tropical. 8:09 Wes: I once saw, like, imitation Pink Floyd concert there. 8:13 Erin: Oh, nice. 8:15 Wes: Anyway, so he lives in a jaw dropping mansion and she's a bit like Cinderella. And she's compared to Cinderella, I think by the Laceys at one point. But, you know, we start out with her in this very funny, vain and envious stepmother, Van Hopper. Although she kind of becomes a witch by the end of the first act when she kind of curses Rebecca, she suggests that Maxim is marrying her because they have already slept together. She can't be a great lady. He's marrying her out of desperation. So there's a very fairy tale quality to this. It's not just a Vegas casino or a resort in Cancun. 9:01 Erin: It's Monte Carlo. 9:04 Wes: Yeah, exactly. There you go. Well, where is Manderley? 9:08 Erin: It's in Cornwall, I think. 9:10 Wes: Yeah. Okay. 9:11 Erin: Yeah. 9:11 Wes: All right. Making sure I'm not. 9:13 Erin: Oh, I'm sorry. No, no, no. I thought you meant. Yeah, the opener. When they're. When they're in Monty. I adore Monty. 9:17 Wes: Right. She meets a knight in shining armor, except his armor is actually a little bit. Quite a bit blemished because, well, he's a knight in shining army armor who, you know, you save from suicide on your first meeting. That's what happens. Right. Am I interpreting that correctly? 9:40 Erin: Mm. 9:41 Wes: So he's a depressed knight in shining armor. 9:44 Erin: Yeah. 9:44 Wes: Which is an interesting twist. 9:47 Erin: And he's a knight in shining armor who also treats her like garbage, which is an interesting twist, too. 9:52 Wes: And he does, which seems to be. The more of these older movies I watch, it seems to be their idea of the bad boy. Like the guy who gets women. This is how you're the bad boy. You just like, you know. Shut up. Stop. Stop bawling. Stop blubbering. 10:11 Erin: Eat your food like a good girl. 10:13 Wes: Yeah, one always has to be careful with children. 10:18 Erin: That's a pretty. That's a pretty good impression. Well, I mean, I think we're meant to see him as not very nice, though in these moments. Sometimes it depends on how sympathetic you find Joan Fontaine's little, little girl lost routine. So maybe she needs to. Maybe she needs someone to take, you know, take a stern hand with her. 10:39 Wes: Modest. To A fault. 10:41 Erin: Right, right. Yeah. I find it interesting the way that she's sort of set upon by three major figures in the film and what each of those represent, all of them older women, so Mrs. Van Hopper at the beginning and then Mrs. Danvers and then Rebecca herself. But Mrs. Van Hopper, I take it's really difficult to tell, actually, because of everybody's transcontinental kind of accents. But Mrs. Van Hopper's American, right? 11:08 Wes: I thought the same thing. Yeah. 11:10 Erin: Yeah. She's. 11:10 Wes: Are they American or are they English? 11:12 Erin: Right, right. Because Mrs. Van Hopper, the actress who plays her, is actually American, but she's working really hard on some of those vowel sounds. She's kneading them into Englishness. I think from her name, Van Hopper, and from the fact that she goes to New York to see her daughter married is indicative of the. That she's American. And therefore the association that she wants to create with Maxim seems to be one of, you know, this sort of typical. Well, the sort of ugly American stereotype, right. Of the wealthy socialite class in New York. The aristocracy of America wanting to sort of, like, further legitimize itself by connections to the, quote, unquote, real aristocracy of England and of the Continent. And, of course, these marriages to shore up America's aristocratic claims were very commonly made. Right. We have the Vanderbilts marrying Polish counts and the Churchills and the, you know, this lord and that lord and. Yeah, the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers. All of those sorts of families that at one time were considered new money, even in America, are sort of trying to get their footing with these aristocrats. And oftentimes, the aristocratic families that they married into, it was a marriage of convenience in which the English aristocrat with the huge estate didn't have the money to run the estate and needed to be sort of bankrolled by American money to keep his ancestral grounds and home alive and running properly. And so there was just something of that. I'm just thinking about this because I'm thinking about the ways in which the movie, to me, seems to be making larger claims about England as an idea in the sort of waning, you know, came out in 1940. They were making it at the time. England was in World War II. America was not yet in World War II. And what the sort of dwindling years of empire might have to do with the house itself. Rebecca, some interesting things to tweeze out there, which I'm sure we will. Yeah. But Van Hopper is awful. And Joan Fontaine, who I'm gonna just refer to as Joan Fontaine, throughout the. Or throughout the episode, she, like, says, oh, she's. She's really a nice lady, or something like that. Like, she says something kind of positive about Mrs. Van Hopper. Even though we've never seen her be anything but, she gets increasingly cruel. But we've never seen her be anything but dismissive, rude and overbearing to her. So maybe what counts as nice for Joan Fontaine makes Maxim look great if her standards are too low. I don't know. 13:54 Wes: Yeah. It's when they have that impromptu lunch that he inquires, is Mrs. Van Hopper a friend of yours or just a relation? Then it turns out she's a paid companion. And he said, I didn't know companionship could be bought. That's a little risque. A little risque. Bit of flirting. 14:13 Erin: And also, he definitely knew that, but okay. 14:15 Wes: Right. Of course. Then she makes that remark about looking it up in the dictionary and laughs because it means a friend of the bosom. 14:24 Erin: She's like 8 years old. 14:25 Wes: And then he says, you know, I don't envy the privilege. And that's when she calls Van Hopper kind. She's very kind, really. And I have to earn my living. So I guess it's a Cinderella who doesn't quite know that she's being abused. Right. I mean, she is an orphan. Both her parents have died. Just that there's an orphan. I don't know what age they've died as. She's a young adult, I assume. 14:51 Erin: Her mother died when she was young, and then her father died relatively recently, I think. 14:55 Wes: Yeah. 14:56 Erin: Because the father was painting trees up until. Or one tree up until recently. 15:01 Wes: Yeah. So it is interesting to think. Yeah. She's someone who, you know, you could say modest to a fault, although I do find it very winning. She has a humility about her, and you certainly don't associate that with beautiful women. And it's quite the contrast to what we learn about Rebecca, where you expect the beauty to go along with a certain type of pride or formidability in character, let's say. But she herself has that orphan quality, and she's always apologizing for herself. And I think probably not quite sure who's treating her well and who's mistreating her. She's the type of person who could see a terrible person like Van Hopper as being kind, but she's gonna get past that at, you know, at a certain point. She does assert herself in the movie with Miss. Mrs. Is it Miss or Mrs. Miss Danvers. Mrs. Mrs. Danvers. 16:00 Erin: Where's the Mr. Nobody ever saw him 16:03 Wes: again, dead in a ditch somewhere. He's probably buried in the backyard. 16:08 Erin: On their honeymoon, she convinced him to jump out the window. 16:10 Wes: Convinced him to jump, yes. Don't be afraid. 16:14 Erin: So easy. 16:16 Wes: So creepy. Carol Burnett played Rebecca. She didn't play Danvers. Yeah, that's too bad, because I want 16:23 Erin: to see her as Vicky Lawrence. 16:25 Wes: Vicki Lawrence. There you go. Was Danvers okay? I would like to see that switched, actually. 16:30 Erin: I think the mole kept moving, too. I think that was one of the best. I haven't rewatched it for this, but it's, you know, it's memorable enough that I remember the. The head on the platter thing. 16:42 Wes: She will, you know. So she does stand up to Mrs. Danvers, but is there really much of an arc for her except, you know, the external arc of what she ages. 16:54 Erin: Right. In the only real moment of passion in the film, she finally becomes, I think, something like a suitable candidate to run the house and to be Mrs. De Winter. Right. But I think that involves, in part, standing up to Mrs. Danvers. It also involves actually hearing what's gone on, because, of course, she's been about what actually happened with the first Rebecca. I mean, with the first Mrs. De Winter. And something about the discovery of. Something about losing her innocence in hearing this story seems to affect a maturation, which is interesting because it's not firsthand experience when Maxim recounts it. And yet there's definitely. There seems to be a ghostly reenactment that happens, you know, and we, by that logic, are as matured. Or, you know, we grow up with Joan Fontaine in that moment because we see what she sees, which is this reenactment that occurs when he's recounting the fateful moment when Rebecca died. 17:55 Wes: How do you mean a reenactment? 17:57 Erin: Well, you know, they go to the scene. They, you know, there's some camera movements that kind of indicate that there's someone really standing there when there isn't. Right. And we sort of follow the camera follows the movement of where Rebecca might have been. You know, it's as if the whole thing is, as Maxim is telling it. It's as if we're watching it happen in a flashback, even though there's no figure who's motivating the camera movement, who's in the center of the frame. It's shot as if there is. As if someone's standing there, you know, so she gets caught up. She gets caught up on the story. 18:32 Wes: So this is the reenactment of the moment where he hits her and then she Falls. Right. 18:37 Erin: Yes. 18:37 Wes: Am I getting that right? Yes. Okay. 18:39 Erin: Yeah. Which, I. I've never read the Daphne du Maurier novel, but my sister informed me that she read it a few months ago. And Olivier's character, Maxim de Winter, kills Rebecca in the book, which makes a lot more sense. 18:55 Wes: And here he just manslaughters her. 18:57 Erin: Exactly, exactly. But, you know, she really had it coming. 19:00 Wes: We'll leave it to her to fall right on an anchor. Is that what she falls on? 19:04 Erin: Yeah, I think so. 19:06 Wes: Hit her head on a bit of anchor. 19:08 Erin: Yeah. It's slightly ridiculous, but I bet you never saw the double twist coming. Like, this film has a double twist 19:16 Wes: that she was an unfaithful single mother. 19:22 Erin: No, no, she wasn't. She wasn't. 19:25 Wes: No, I know. I know, but she could have. 19:29 Erin: She could have been. 19:29 Wes: She was with Saucy Jack. Saucy Jack Favell. 19:33 Erin: That's right. Rosemary's Baby. 19:35 Wes: Yeah. No, I didn't see that coming at all. And the fact that, of course, that he hated her. 19:40 Erin: Well, that's the first twist. Yeah. 19:42 Wes: You know. Yeah. Everything is kind of inverted. And the reality is inverted from Rebecca's perception of it, because part of. Right. What she's coming under when she gets to that house is. Well, it's this very grandiose setting. And now she's supposed to be mistress in a way. Although she has. You know, in Mrs. Danvers, she has someone who might be a bit of a competitor in that regard or someone who's gonna take on that role or that she could leave that role to. But what hangs over her is this idealized conception of Rebecca. And she suffers from what she thinks are people's comparisons between her and Rebecca. And I guess those comparisons are occurring. But unbeknownst to her, Max is not one of the people who. Maxim. Is he Max and Maxim or Maxim? 20:37 Erin: I think he's Maxim. 20:38 Wes: Is he always Maxim or is he also called Max? 20:41 Erin: I think he's always. Almost always Maxim from the moment. Okay. 20:44 Wes: I couldn't hear all instances. But anyway. Yeah. So Maxim, Right. Unbeknownst to her, he is not holding her up to that standard. But that is the standard. This lofty standard is now the one she has to live up to. And it's not one she ever thought she would have to live up to, given her station. Right. These are the perils of being rescued by the knight in shining armor. What are you gonna do? You get to the castle, right? And all the servants are like, oh, who's this? She's not royalty. 21:18 Erin: Well, One wonders, in fact, even what she did as Mrs. Van Hopper's companion. Right? Because there's no. I mean, she's there, of course, to be pushed around by Mrs. Van Hopper. That seems to be like the. The thing that makes their relationship happen is that Mrs. Van Hopper needs someone to bully. Right. She can't bully in a vacuum. But insofar as she would, in a less fraught version of that scenario, serve as someone who would, you know, call and make reservations, like Joan Fontaine's character strikes me as someone who would be afraid to call up a restaurant and make reservations. You know what I mean? Which is apparently the state of. 21:57 Wes: I'm sorry to bother you. 21:59 Erin: Well, this is. 22:00 Wes: Are you sure you have a seat? You sure you have a table? 22:03 Erin: I speak from experience when I say that I'm one of the few people I know under a certain age, not that I'm that young, especially anymore, but I'm one of the few people I know who is comfortable calling up and making reservations. Right. Because, in fact, people don't talk on the phone anymore. And this is. Now, you know, there's quite a bit of timidity now about this, but, you know what I mean, even just as a companion to this one woman, she seems maybe not quite up to the task, never mind as a, you know, administrator of an enormous estate. 22:34 Wes: Yeah. 22:34 Erin: And it's clear that Maxim doesn't expect her to be. I mean, he has, if you like, a wife already, and Mrs. Danvers, you know, who's carrying on the upkeep, and therefore, Joan Fontaine can be what. I mean, if it weren't for the oppressions of the staff kind of expecting her to do the things that Rebecca did, she wouldn't have anything to do all day. In fact, it's commented upon that she doesn't really do anything. She doesn't do the aristocratic types of hobbies associated with her station. So all she does is sketch a little. She doesn't ride, she doesn't paint well. So if it weren't for everybody's expectation of her fulfilling this Rebecca like role, she could actually just be the sort of quasi ornament that she seems to be valued as for Maxim. And it's a strange sort of ornament because it's like an ornament of childhood rather than the. The way that a woman in her situation who maybe didn't have any real skills would be a trophy, you know, a trophy wife. So all she had to do was play with a hoop and a stick in the garden, and I guess she would Be fulfilling the function for which she was brought to the house. Yeah. You know, something or playing house in some sort of, you know, in some sort of anti. Realistic way, like with an actual dollhouse, as opposed to running the household. That's what Mrs. Danvers is for. Right. She's the. She's hired to be the real lady of the house. And you don't have to do much of anything when she just carries out the, you know, the everyday tasks. 24:09 Wes: So, yeah, it's interesting. Cause we're left to imagine what Mrs. Danvers relationship with Rebecca was like. 24:16 Erin: Oh, you think? Did you imagine what it was like? Is that something the film might be hinting at, Wesley? 24:27 Wes: I mean, it's. So Maxim marries Rebecca. It's a bit of a marriage of convenience, right? 24:33 Erin: What makes you say that? It might be. I just. 24:36 Wes: Well, it's not a marriage where they were in love. 24:39 Erin: Oh, I see. 24:40 Wes: So that long speech that he gives. She was incapable of love, tenderness or decency. Four days after we were married, she stood there laughing, her black hair blowing in the wind, and told me all about herself. Everything. Things I'll never tell a living soul. I wanted to kill her. So I guess she comes clean about her cynical intentions. Maybe he loved her. And then he said, I'll make a bargain with you. You'd look rather foolish trying to divorce me now after four days of marriage. So I'll play the part of a devoted wife of this is her saying this. Okay, mistress of your precious Manderley, I'll make it the most famous show place in England of you, if you like. And people will visit us and envy us and say we're the luckiest, happiest couple in the country. What a grand joke it will be. What a triumph. I should never have accepted her dirty bargain. Okay, so that's what I was a bit confused about when I said it was a marriage of convenience. Because I didn't fully grok that speech, you know, and I didn't rewind it. I just knew something was not. Was not good about their arrangements. So. And then she's, you know. I think it's understood. Well, he says she began to grow careless. She took a flat in London and she'd stay away for days at a time. Then she'd start to bring her friends down here. I warned her, but she shrugged her shoulders. What's it got to do with you? She said. So I don't know if he's concerned, it sounds like she has the permission to see other people. But the thing he's upset about is the appearances. It's a little unclear to me, but obviously she sucks. According to his account, every. 26:17 Erin: Everything he says about her makes her sound awesome. 26:20 Wes: I don't know. For some reason, Mrs. Danvers idolizes her. This woman, Joan Fontaine, let's just call her that, goes from having, like a evil stepmother to having an evil mother in law. You know, that's the. The way Mrs. Danvers comes across, but also like a cross between a bad mother in law and a Igor character or something, or some kind of creepy character. And so it's an interesting pair. It's a little bit of an odd couple when you think about it. Rebecca as the sort of party girl who has just manipulated her way into getting with a rich guy, but now kind of has power and control and can do what she wants for the most part. And this weird housekeeper who idolizes her, I assume in large part for her beauty, but for what else, you know? And is Mrs. Danvers the type of person to idolize people for her beauty? It's a little bit confusing. Yeah. So what is that relationship that we're supposed to imagine? 27:28 Erin: Yeah, I think it's for her vitality. Right. She was alive. Everything was a joke to her. Love was a joke to her. She didn't take anything seriously, and she was the most alive person in the world. It sounds like she didn't wear herself out quite. I mean, we could talk in a minute about the cancer, but she burned her candle at both ends. And something about that is what Mrs. Danvers, who we know likes candles, really found compelling and attractive. Mrs. Danvers is obviously, because of her situation, perhaps is a repressed character. Repressed, maybe in lots of ways. You know, that hairstyle with the braid around her head kind of gives this idea of being hemmed in. She's always in black. She's a missus. So we can assume that she's a widow. So she's in this sort of permanent mourning. And Rebecca is like everything that she's not, everything that everybody wants. And she also, you know, because. And this is, I think, where the film gets really interesting in its sort of cosmology of aristocracy. You know, Rebecca is, you know, you can almost argue she's an aristocrat by merit. She's a perfect aristocrat. She does everything. She plays the role perfectly. She does everything that an aristocrat is supposed to do, and she's great at it. And she has a kind of. She has a kind of vitality that is actually super aristocratic in that it is over and above the type of vitality that aristocrats typically have. Maxim is the tired sort of worn out aristocrat that we might be more familiar with, whereas Rebecca is this. She's like a B12 shot in the arm of Manderley. She brings the life, she makes it a house of slightly older cast in terms of the setting and the fact that she's sort of keeping alive, I think, balls and various, maybe 19th century forms, which we do see one in the film, but it's not with the frequency that Rebecca would have held balls. Yeah. So there's this interesting twisting, I'm trying to say, where Mrs. Danvers seems to be very much about reinforcing a legacy, the legacy that Rebecca represents, but that legacy is itself a kind of anti aristocratic legacy of an interloper. Because I take Rebecca to be probably low class. There's some hints about this. She's very, very good at playing upper class, but she, you know, she goes to this sort of seedy doctor that she was. That she was seeing before her marriage. So she's kind of a social climber. In other words, she's not blue blood, she's someone who has married into it, but who is a better aristocrat than the people who are actually blue bloods. So Mrs. Danvers, by holding up Rebecca as the symbol of aristocracy, as the symbol of this sort of dead, now dead English aristocratic vitality, it's a very interesting and sort of strange and turned in on itself kind of, kind of value that Mrs. Danvers has. But yeah, aristocrat by merit rather than by blood, you know, which doesn't exist except in this instance. I don't know what you think about that or if you think I'm. That's accurate. 30:57 Wes: Yeah. No, that's interesting. So Mrs. Danvers, the idea is that she's idealizing a certain conception of aristocracy that in a way Rebecca can make good on. 31:10 Erin: Yeah, yeah. I mean, do you think that Mrs. Danvers seems to love the way that Rebecca could inhabit these aristocratic forms? You know, she has a kind of devotion, as most people in her position probably do. She has a devotion to running the house and to the upkeep of empire, you might say. Right. The forms of the aristocratic lady are described as being among those things that Rebecca did so well. 31:37 Wes: Yeah. I mean, it would explain why Mrs. Danvers just try to take the new Rebecca, sorry, Joan Fontaine, under her wing and have a similar sort of relationship with her, just turn her into, you know, why isn't Rebecca replaceable? You know, maybe if Maxim had brought home Another aristocrat, she would have been replaceable. But Danvers is interested in that quality in particular. And in a way it is a good kind of external depiction of what depression is psychologically, which is self impoverishment. This kind of odd couple of a middle aged Goth with a young party girl. The self is impoverished, but everything is out there in the ideal. This is this wonderful, perfect Rebecca, who is anything but. You know, she's a shiny surface and yeah, she's got vitality, but she doesn't seem to have decency, at least by Maxim's account, if you believe it. So she's interested in status and she says things to that effect. From the beginning, her role is not. It's not like she's just there to be mean to Joan Fontaine, right, or a curmudgeonly nasty figure. She has a specific project which is to try to get her to identify with Rebecca and to be crushed by that identification, to give her the idea that she must emulate Rebecca and live up to Rebecca's very idealized image. And if she can't, then to kill herself, right? She's trying to kill Joan Fontaine from the minute she steps in the mansion. That's her project. So she'll. Even in the very beginning when she says the only good view of the sea is from the west wing, the room's very charming. No, this is what Joan Fontaine says, the room is very charming and I'm sure I'll be comfortable. So she's got a more modest room and she's not in Rebecca's room for obvious reasons. Maxim's probably said, yeah, don't, don't, don't do that. Hopefully he just has the psychological sense not to do that, right? He said, don't do it. But meanwhile, Danvers is trying to get her interested in that room and inhabiting that room, right? Which is another way of saying inhabiting Rebecca's role, which troubles Joan Fontaine and it troubles her, certainly does give her the idea that she has to live up to that and she'll eventually start thinking and changing her hair, which at the behest of the Lacey's, but who are also obviously comparing her to Rebecca and changing how she dresses, which turns out to be not something that Maxim is actually interested in. So it's really Mrs. Danvers project. When Joan Fontaine's character says, I do hope we'll be friends, you must be patient with me. Mrs. Danvers says, I've managed the house since Mrs. De Winter's death and Mr. De Winter has never complained. I think I'll go downstairs now. That room in the west wing I was telling you about is there through the door. Why don't you go in there? It's not used. It's not used? No. How do you do her? Do her? It's the most beautiful room in the house. The only one that looks down across the lawns to the sea. It was Mrs. De Winter's room. So the room with the best view, the most comfortable room, the most beautiful room. It's got everything. That's the room you want, it's not the room you've got. But why don't you go check it out and then throw yourself off the balcony? When you see how great it is, how great you'll never be. 35:08 Erin: Right, Right. 35:09 Wes: Right. So Danvers understands that the weight of any identification or desire to emulate Rebecca will be too crushing for Joan Fontaine's character. But obviously it's a similar. She's trying to induce that character with an identification that she herself has and manages somehow. Right. She lives with that idealization and it's important to her and it's very fetishistic. Right. Rubbing the fur on her face. Ooh, touch this. And showing the lingerie. It's like, wow. Creepy much? 35:44 Erin: You can't imagine until you've seen it how that got through the censors. 35:49 Wes: Tell us about the censorship. Yeah. 35:51 Erin: You can only suppose that the censors were actually too innocent to realize what was being suggested. Like it got past them because of their own naivete. But I mean, she sticks her hand inside the see through lingerie. I mean, it's just, it's. Yeah, it's unbelievable. You know, the suggestions for perversion were just like. 36:11 Wes: I didn't think it was suggesting a literal sexual relationship, but just. 36:15 Erin: Well, I think it's an infatuation of sort of. Right. Certainly it's an infatuation which has sexual overtones, though there is also arguably this, and I think how the film is trying to cover that or cover its own other potential interpretations is by having Mrs. Danvers as a sort of avenging mother. Right. You know, as you're suggesting, like this mother in law idea, you know, it's as if she's Maxim's mother in law who stuck around and nobody can get rid of her because she lives in the house. So there's that. But yeah, they supposedly took out stuff that was more suggestive of perversion, so who knows? Who knows what was going on? 36:57 Wes: Do you know what they took out? 36:58 Erin: I looked it up. This is just from the Wikipedia page. Censorship There's a whole little drawer for censorship on this movie's Wikipedia page. Okay, so three things. It's the story of a murderer who is permitted to get off scot free, so they had to change it so that he didn't quite murder her. The quite inescapable reference of sex perversion, that's supposedly the Mrs. Danvers thing. And the repeated references in the dialogue to the alleged illicit relationship between Favell and the first Mrs. De Winter. And the frequent references to the alleged illegitimate child to be sex perversion mentioned in the second point was a reference to the implied lesbian attraction felt by Mrs. Danvers towards Rebecca. Breen, the head of censorship complained of the impropriety of Mrs. Danvers description of Rebecca's physical attributes and her handling of the various garments, particularly the nightgown. Breen insisted that in the final cut there must be no suggestion whatever of a perverted relationship between Mrs. Danvers and 37:56 Wes: Rebecca that would have been so hot. 37:59 Erin: Though, no, scholar David Boyd describes Danvers attraction to Rebecca as inescapably clear to all but the most innocent of viewers. Congratulations, Wes. Though it is, though it is unclear whether this interpretation would have been accessible to audiences in 1940. Asked about it later in life, Judith Anderson denied intentionally playing Mrs. Danvers as a lesbian, stating, quote, we never thought of such things at that time. So there's nothing in it that indicates that anything was actually cut. But you know, not in this telling, in this terrible Wikipedia version of events. But who knows what was in there that had to be cut out such that it made the sticking the hand in the see through nightgown seem tame by comparison? I don't know. 38:41 Wes: Yeah, I think the lesbian interpretation, it's a little bit too generic, you know, and it's a kind of low hanging fruit that interpreters will go for. But it. Right. There's a clearly fetishistic aspect to Danvers tie to Rebecca. But to me it comes across that the relationship that we're talking about is not. So it's not so much about love as it is about identification. So that. That Danvers idealizes Rebecca as either representative of an ideal of something to imitate, something to be right. It would be more like she wants to be like Rebecca, not to have Rebecca. And one can libidinize and fetishize, you know, those things get mixed up and sexualize that desire for identification. But it's a bit different than wanting to do Rebecca or even loving Rebecca. Right? 39:34 Erin: Right. 39:35 Wes: To me it's psychologically a bit different. So I can understand why the person playing her would say that, because as perverse as it is and as perverse as it comes across, it's a bit more complicated than, oh, there's a lesbian attraction. 39:49 Erin: Oh, I definitely agree. I think, though, that it's important that that strangeness or that creepy feeling that we get around, maybe not around sexuality, per se. I mean, certainly, I think it's a fetishized relationship that Mrs. Danvers. But I think that what it might serve, and maybe only to the contemporary viewer, is to just complicate this idea of Rebecca's sexuality and of this sort of world eating, you know, kind of quality that she has in which, like, everyone is drawn to everything, kind of goes into her tractor beam, you know. So that, I think, is important because she's associated with sexual impropriety. And so the more that the movie can shade into that and can shade into all kinds of sexual, you know, quote unquote, sexual impropriety with others other than Maxim is important. I mean, you know, or it's not so much important as it is. It just opens up another angle on what Rebecca's supposed deviance might be. 40:46 Wes: Right. 40:47 Erin: It just sort of continues to set up interesting scenarios in which she seems to have been attracting and sort of tangling with, mentally or otherwise, everyone except for Maxim. I find it interesting in a way. I do think, though, that it is more than that she was like the child that Mrs. Danvers was too close to, that represented something that Mrs. Danvers wanted to fetishize because she didn't have it in herself. You know, the sort of, like, surprise, maybe, of a child that doesn't take after you, but takes after your sort of wildest ambitions for yourself, which you yourself cannot exercise, cannot live out because of your station and because of the limitations in your own life. Something like that. 41:28 Wes: It was a bit of a Mrs. Robinson. 41:32 Erin: Yes. Though that wouldn't quite line up because. Because Mrs. Robinson had those things and killed them off in herself. Right. And maybe that's the case with Mrs. Danvers, but it seems to me that that would be. It would be reflective of qualities which are so beyond Mrs. Danvers own station in life and seem to be so beyond her own personality that all she can do is admire them as an outsider. 41:55 Wes: Yeah. So maybe there's something in here about what it means to be a servant. She's a quintessential servant in a way, and we've seen this in some of the stuff that we've done before, but to be quintessentially a servant means to be in the position of not trying to inhabit the ideal, but just to be associated with it and to worship it, to get what you need out of it by having this type of contact with it. So there's no aspirational vector. There's no, I'm going to become like Rebecca. It's not even possible, of course, but she can kind of bathe and the light and the glory of Rebecca be adjacent to it. But anyway, you had me a little bit earlier thinking about, like, throuple with Mrs. Danvers, Jack and Rebecca, which is a horrifying, horrifying idea. But maybe in the second part. Yeah, we should talk about that because it seems like Danvers has kind of facilitated or known about the affair with Jack. 42:53 Erin: Yeah, there's bit of a madam quality. Yeah. 42:56 Wes: Yes, I was going to say that. Madame Danvers, it's another one. 43:01 Erin: Okay. 43:02 Wes: All right, thank you, thank you. 43:08 Erin: And thanks to everyone who listened. For an easy way to do that, go to subtextpodcast.com patreon.com subtextpodcast please send your questions, feedback and episode requests to [email protected] if we get enough questions, we'll do some bonus Q and A shows for subscribers. You can also find us on Facebook @subtextpodcast and on Twitter enjoysubtext.