Of course, since the tragedy of Othello precedes the popular fiction of Rebecca by more than 300 years, it is only through retrospect that those elements defined as "Gothic" can be applied to Shakespeare's play. Clearly, however, they are elements that du Maurier responded to, whether consciously or unconsciously, as revealed in her childhood memories of the "many prints from Shakespeare's plays scattered about the house, mostly up the green staircase." The performance possibilities were "endless" (1997, 30-31).2 Maggie Kilgour contends that one of the main and constant influences on the Gothic form is Elizabethan (and especially Shakespearean) tragedy (1997, 4). Perhaps du Maurier's youthful experiences with the play translate, in her novel, into elements that we identify as "Gothic."
The purpose of this study, however, is not merely to point out parallels between the two works but to reconsider the character of Rebecca. Reading Rebecca through the perspective of Othello enables us to see her as a woman whose worst crime, according to film critic Robin Wood, was "simply that she resisted male definition, asserting her right to define herself and her sexual desires" (1989, 232).3 Rebecca resisted the role of the modern Gothic female whom Joanna Russ sees as "women-as-victims," passive protagonists at the mercy of men's feelings and intentions (1983, 49). Furthermore, the novel Rebecca fits the model of the female Gothic which, according to Juliann Fleenor, "provokes various feelings of terror, anger, awe, and sometimes self-fear and self-disgust directed toward the female role, female sexuality, female physiology, and procreation" (1983, 15). Taking her opinions of Rebecca from Maxim (as she took all of her opinions, herself an enclosed Gothic figure), the narrator comes to see the first Mrs. de Winter as terribly controlling, libidinous, intimidating, awesomely beautiful-and pregnant.
The second Mrs. de Winter is forced into masquerade (a doubling technique) by her fear of displeasing Maxim. After the dress ball at Manderley she is aware that she has changed utterly ("This self who sat on the window seat was new, was different" [du Maurier 1971, 261]); she even displays behaviors which are reminiscent of the recalcitrant Rebecca's. "Don't let it happen again," she admonishes a servant who has left some flowers too long; "I am Mrs. de Winter now," she tells the fearsome Mrs. Danvers (289-90). However, she quickly submerges her new sense of individuality when Maxim confesses the murder to her. Rebecca is seen once more as "Damnably clever," a "devil," a "snake" (271-73). Maggie Kilgour distinguishes the male Gothic from the female in one very significant aspect-autonomy: "While the male moves through the standard Bildungsroman towards personhood and individuation, the female is never independent, and achieves her goal by entering into a new relation through marriage" (1997, 37). The narrator is the manifestation of the female Gothic heroine, the kind of woman both Maxim and Othello must exploit to achieve their own individuality Male autonomy, although desirable, is a state that ultimately ends in "total isolation" (38).
Both Desdemona and Rebecca (and the "I" narrator of the novel) are confronted with the doubles of the men they thought they knew, creating the uncanny feeling of "the strange in the familiar and the familiar in the strange" (Smith 1992, 285) which Freud wrote of in his 1919 essay Das Unheimlich ("The Uncanny"). In her essay "Laughing at Leviticus," Jane Marcus writes that the female experience of the uncanny will differ from that of the male, primarily because "women had [traditionally] been the providers of heimlichkeit or domestic bliss" (1991, 240), and the fragmented marriage relationships in both works magnify the conflicts between the women and the men. Both Desdemona and the narrator of the novel (Rebecca's reaction cannot be known but will perhaps be implied through this study) suffer with the terror they feel towards their husbands, the "terror" which characterizes the uncanny In addition, both works utilize the catalyst of a handkerchief as a common object that may become frightening in its symbolism, as Freud wrote in his essay There are also images of locks and keys in both works, implying enclosure and restraint. Although there is no evidence that du Maurier used Othello as a direct model for her novel, it is obvious that the play affected her, perhaps suggesting some character models for her novel, while other Gothic elements do exist independently in Rebecca.4 A wilderness pervades the opening scenes (although the play does use the image of a garden to symbolize moral growth), and the entire narrative of the novel is framed with the remembrance of the narrator's nightmares. Mirroring also plays a significant role in producing an uncanny effect in the novel, with the narrator as the child, Maxim as the father, and Mrs. Danvers as the surrogate mother (Smith 1992, 300). Rebecca parallels Desdemona, who, "being like one of Heaven," is distrusted by her husband and therefore "double-damned" (4.2.36-38). Desdemona is, however, considered virtuous and beautiful by everyone else: "he hath achieved a maid / That paragons description and wild fame; / One that excels the quirks of blazoning pens . . ." (2.1.61-63). Similarly, no one but Maxim, in fact, sees Rebecca as flawed: the Bishop's wife extols her as "very gifted" and "very beautiful" (du Maurier 1971, 124), and Frank Crawley admits that Rebecca was "the most beautiful creature I ever saw in my life" (134). Even the narrator is aware of Rebecca's competence and feels reproached by the beautiful but proficiently organized writing-table in the morning-room (83-86). Robin Wood views Rebecca's unkindness to Ben ("minor mental cruelty to a harmless lunatic") as perhaps the only crime she can be actually accused of committing (1989, 232). The narrator, "haunted" by Rebecca's pervasive presence at Manderley (Nollen 1994, 45) and her own sense of inadequacy, is easily led to accept Maxim's account of the past. Regardless of whether a work is a Renaissance tragedy or a modern popular novel, the woman is still assumed to be the instigator of domestic unrest and social turmoil when seen the through the perspective of the male characters. The accuracy of this vision should be interrogated in order to refocus and clarify basic assumptions about the roles of men and women.
