Thirsty Classics is a nine-week miniseries celebrating lesbian cinema from before 1980. We often talk about these films like homework or mere stepping stones, but Drew is here to share how they can be fun… if you’re horny enough. This week: Alfred Hitchock’s Rebecca (1940) starring Joan Fontaine, Laurence Olivier, and Judith Anderson.
In 1966, Jean Rhys gave a voice to the mad woman in the attic.
Her acclaimed novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, is a postcolonial reimagining of Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre. Instead of focusing on the stubborn, studious, and white, Jane, it turns instead to Mr. Rochester’s first wife, a mere inconvenience and source of gothic horror in the original. By examining England’s relationship to Jamaica, men’s relationship to women, and women, specifically women of color’s, relationship to sanity, Rhys calls into question the dangerous simplicity of the original text.
But 28 years before Wide Sargasso Sea, and 91 years after Jane Eyre, another novel was published about a young girl, a brooding man, and a mad woman ruining their tale of romance. This book, Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, would eventually be turned into Alfred Hitchcock’s only film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture.
I love Rebecca, the book and the movie. I love the passive protagonist. I love how insecure and pathetic she can be. I love her love, her innocent, passionate, stupid love. I love how astute the book is about class, about not belonging, and wanting to belong. I love Daphne du Maurier’s prose and I love Alfred Hitchcock’s cinema.
If you’ve never read the book or seen the movie do that first without influence. But then I must implore you, I really must insist, you revisit the movie from Mrs. Danvers’ perspective. There is not a rivaled piece of literature to do this work for you, but it’s all there, and it deserves, she deserves reevaluation.
Danvers is Rebecca‘s mad woman in the attic, or, rather, mad woman in the perfectly preserved east wing of the Manderley estate. She is Maxime de Winter’s head housekeeper and the antagonist of the film. She immediately dislikes the unnamed protagonist, the second Mrs. de Winter, insisting that she does not belong (she doesn’t) and is nothing like Maxime’s first wife, Rebecca (she isn’t).
The main problem, the unspoken source for all this animosity, is that Mrs. Danvers is very gay and very much in love with Rebecca. Even with Rebecca dead, she remains true. Her love has not waned.
We first see Mrs. Danvers when the second Mrs. de Winter arrives at Manderley. Second and Maxime met at Monte Carlo, he a mysterious and wealthy widower, and she, a plain and unassuming companion to a boisterous rich lady. It was less a whirlwind romance and more an anxious courtship, Second second-guessing every word and action, Maxime alternating between condescending charm and fits of anger. But they married nonetheless and have now arrived at Manderley, his place of birth, Rebecca’s place of death.
It’s raining, so Second enters the grand hall looking even more disheveled than usual. The two dozen servants are standing at attention waiting to greet her. The camera pushes in and Mrs. Danvers walks into frame. She’s wearing a long black dress and a white collar with a jewel in the middle. Her hair is braided tightly against her head. She has a mole on the right side of her chin. Her eyebrows are perfectly shaped crescents
Danvers is not known as a sexy character. And I’m not going to try to convince you otherwise. But I will say that for me, personally, unstable, highly competent ice queen isn’t something I’m not attracted to. And beyond hotness, the way she toys with Second is both clever and consistently humorous… if you’re on her side.
Last October, at Variety’s Power of Women event, Natalie Portman roused the crowd with an appeal. “Stop the rhetoric that a woman is crazy or difficult,” she said. “If a man says to you that a woman is crazy or difficult, ask him, ‘What bad thing did you do to her?'”
The twist in Rebecca is that Maxime didn’t love his first wife. He hated her. His preoccupation with her death is not due to residual feelings, like the insecure Second imagines, but because he was the cause. He murdered her and he fears retribution. The movie clarifies that he killed her by accident, largely because Rebecca has a “happy ending” and the Hayes Code required all actual murderers to be punished. But you’d have to be stupid (or in love) to believe Maxime’s tale of a scuffle that ends in a trip, a bump on the head, and a body tied to the hull of a ship.
The argument that ended in Rebecca’s death supposedly began with her telling Maxime she was pregnant with someone else’s baby. Supposedly she mocked him. Supposedly on their honeymoon she told Maxime horrifying things about her past, “things I’ll never tell a living soul,” he says. Supposedly, Rebecca was “incapable of love or tenderness or decency.” Supposedly.
I don’t believe men when they talk about women, and I, especially, don’t believe husbands when they talk about the wives they murdered. The film sets up the character of “Cousin” Jack Favell, as Rebecca’s mistress, the key to her sordid life. But I don’t believe him either.
When asked if Rebecca and Jack were lovers, Mrs. Danvers replies, “She had a right to amuse herself didn’t she? Love was a game to her. Only a game. It made her laugh I tell you. She used to sit in her bed and rock with laughter at the lot of you.”
The text of the film confirms that Rebecca was not the monster Maxime describes. Even his mention of her black hair feels coded, an attempt to other, just like in Jane Eyre. But I’d recommend going one step further. While it’s widely acknowledged that Mrs. Danvers is in love with Rebecca, this lesbian subtext recognized by even the straightest critics, it’s rarely suggested that Rebecca was in love with Danvers too. But she was. That’s what I’m suggesting.
It’s revealed that Rebecca was not actually pregnant, so whether or not she slept with Jack is debatable. But even if she did it seems like it was just a ploy for control. The person she confided in was Danvers. The person she stayed up late at night with was Danvers. The person who undressed her and bathed her was Danvers.
Mrs. Danvers lost the love of her life, her partner, less than a year prior to our story. And then this new girl arrives, using her name, living in their home. Any madness she shows feels justified.
The most famous scene in the film, the gayest scene in the film, finds Danvers and Second in Rebecca’s old room, in the east wing, by the sea. Second goes into the room out of desperate curiosity. When Danvers appears, a shadow behind a silk curtain, Second says she just came in to close the window. Danvers calls out her lie.
“You’ve always wanted to see this room, Madame,” Danvers says. “Why didn’t you ask me to show it to you? I was ready to show it every day.” She opens the big curtain and light flows in, illuminating everything. The room is perfectly preserved.
She begins her tour, first leading Second to Rebecca’s clothes. She places one of the furs against her face and then Second’s face. Then she moves to Rebecca’s underwear. It was made especially for her by nuns and she touches it delicately. She explains how she’d brush Rebecca’s hair, help her take a bath, and then put her to bed. Danvers places her hand through Rebecca’s nighty. It’s sensual. It’s sad. “Do you think the dead come back and watch the living?” she asks, hopefully.
Alfred Hitchcock was an abusive man, a creep behind the scenes and through his lens. But the reason so many of his films remain queer classics is because of the humanity he bestowed upon these characters. There were plenty of coded gay villains in early Hollywood, but Hitchcock was unique in how he portrayed them.
Peter Lorre’s sniveling Cairo in John Huston’s The Maltese Falcon is obviously intended to be gay, but he exists almost solely as a foil to Bogart’s masculine Samuel Spade. He’s not just bad morally, he’s bad narratively. He holds no power, has no arc, is more of an amusement and a plot point rather than a person. Hitchcock’s villains had power. And their queerness was present on screen.
There is love and sexuality in Rebecca. We see fully developed desire in Mrs. Danvers. She’s not a joke. She’s complicated, damaged, maybe evil, definitely tragic. A human being. Cairo is gay because he’s effeminate and weak. Danvers is gay because she’s madly in love with another woman.
It’s just a shame she isn’t centered in the narrative like so many of Hitchcock’s queer men.
Rebecca ends, like Jane Eyre, with the mad woman burning down the estate and taking herself with it. The acceptable couple is free to move on, free to live out their lives in peace from difference. A happy ending.
A remake of Rebecca is currently in production. It will be directed by Ben Wheatley, another straight man artistically consumed with violence. It will star Armie Hammer as Maxime, Lily James as the second Mrs. de Winter, and Kristin Scott Thomas as Mrs. Danvers. It’s sure to be a handsome adaptation, if somewhat unremarkable.
It’s a shame because this story has already been told. It’s a shame because there are so many more stories to tell. Like the love story between a young mistress with black hair and her servant, her confidant, her mistress, who would worship her till death.
Rebecca is one of my favorite books and movies. I love this article! Hard agree with all of your points. Thank you for writing this :)
Thank you for reading! :)
Drew, again I must fangirl at you. I had avoided reading Rebecca for decades because I thought it would be as pleasurable as eating vegetables that I do not like but I know are good for me. Oh, how wrong I was. The book is a thrilling joy ride! I endorse your “don’t believe husbands when they talk about the wives they murdered” strategy and, as always, love your writing. And major bonus points to you or to whomever wrote the very funny photo captions.
Thank you! I’m glad you finally read it! The book especially really captures the foolishness of first love. And has so many more details about Rebecca’s life that I find both puzzling and fascinating.
And I do write the photo captions! haha
As a woman of serial obsessions, I did a deep dive into learning about Daphne Du Maurier. FASCINATING! How does one give up Gertrude Lawrence, I ask you?
Rebecca is one of my favorite Hitchcocks but I haven’t seen it in years. But you’re right, I should revisit the movie from Mrs. Danvers’ perspective
I really like your point about Hitchcock’s villains having queer power
And who is the actress who did so much to create Mrs Danvers on film?
Judith Anderson!
Oh my goodness. I love the book and movie and had never thought of this before. Time for another re-read/re-watch!
(Plus i love hitchcock and would love to read more of your queer takes on his films *coughgracekellycough*)
If Drew could queer Grace Kelly that would be the awesomeest of awesome! The shot in Rear Window in which we first see Kelly’s character is one of the 2 sexiest “reveals” on film for me (Rita Hayworth’s Gilda is the other, FWIW.) That her character was set up with a WAY TOO OLD FOR HER Jimmy Stewart has always bummed me out.
Was just coming down here to the comments to say I would love to read more of Drew queering Hitchcock!!
Thank you! It really is a shame most of Hitchcock’s queerest work focuses on men. Then again Rear Window does end with Grace Kelly wearing pants. And I could certainly write something about watching Vertigo as a closeted trans girl, so who knows!
Omg Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo is one of my roots.
Fantastic.
This was my mother’s favourite book and she foisted it upon me practically the second I could read with any proficiency.
There’s always been something about the book that filled me with some unnameable unrest, a subtext I couldn’t articulate – I was around 9 or 10 for goddess’ sake LOL.
Then as a young adult I read Wide Sargasso Sea and I felt immediate shame for how I’d so automatically assumed the shallow (white) male point of view so easily in the past. It was a real eye-opener for sure, and I learned a lot of unpleasant things about myself in the process.
It struck me that Rebecca also deserved a similar re-write (heck maybe all Du Maurier’s books should get a rewrite).
But I do hope KST finds a way to give Mrs Danvers her due.
Brilliant! I love your analysis (and photo captions!)
This was such a good read!
Gack! I hit a reply when I meant to comment. Please name the actress who deserves credit for bringing Danvers to life on screen.
Judith Anderson! She’s also really good in another favorite of mine, The Furies. That movie is not gay, but it does star Barbara Stanwyck so my experience of it is gay.
“There is not a rivaled piece of literature to do this work for you, but it’s all there, and it deserves, she deserves reevaluation.”
Hard agree! Drew, when are you writing this book?!
This reminds me of Affinity. Given how well researched Waters books tend to be, I wonder if the gay maid thing was more of a literary or cultural theme than I had previously noticed.
Great piece! I read Rebecca when I was in high school and loved it. I don’t remember if I picked up on the queer subtext at the time or not but I was definitely drawn to the book in a way that I wasn’t usually, even with books I really liked. I honestly can’t remember if I’ve ever seen the film and now I feel like I need to remedy that immediately.
OH! SHIT! That was great!!!
I became familiar w/ “Rebecca” through the PBS/Masterpiece Mystery production in the 1970s (truthfully, I can’t recall the casting of “2nd” or Danvers, but Jeremy Brett played Maxim). It was pointed out (in an afterword, I think by U.S. film critic Gene Shalit) that a key difference between this production, and the 1940 film, was how this one put back in the original (book) version of the death of Rebecca: “I shot her through the heart.” None of that wishy-washy “she hit her head” business.
I’m too poor for Netflix, but if I did, I might give the new version a try.
OMG It has been years since I watched this movie last (spring of 2001 actually) but it is still one of my favorites. Like most people I saw the movie through the eyes of the Second Mrs. DeWinter, reading your review my eyes were opened a bit wider. The last time through I was working as a high school English teacher having replaced a teacher who retired half way through, he was my Rebecca hence my identification with the second my heart was filled with joy when one student after seeing the film and my statement that I identified with the heroine said “You thought we loved Clarence? We hated Clarence!”
I need to see this film in the original again! Your analysis seems spot on even with the time lapse. Thank you.
“Love as God intended: One man and one woman… who look like father and daughter” – You had me in the first half, I’m not gonna lie.
Your snarky analysis and theories are very enjoyable, but the picture captions is fantastic. This way for presenting your suggestion is highly entertaining even if I don’t agree.
My first interaction with Rebecca let me to believe Mrs. Danvers is gay, while Rebecca was using everybody. After some research and thinking I believe firmly that everyone needs therapy. And maybe some hugs…