«I Wanted to Be Old»: Gender and Aging in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Susan Hill’s Mrs de Winter
Abstract This article aims to analyse the process of aging as a major factor that articulates the politics of gender in Daphne Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca (1938) and Susan Hill’s sequel Mrs de Winter (1993). Even though Du Maurier’s seminal novel has been traditionally interpreted as a novel of romance, by means of focusing on the aging process of different characters, and especially, of the female narrator, this article intends to read Du Maurier’s Rebecca as a novel of awakening. The comparative analysis of Du Maurier’s text with the sequel that Susan Hill published decades later will serve the purpose of defending the interpretation of Du Maurier’s narrative as a novel of awakening, since the action in Susan Hill’s novel takes place twelve years later and gives significant importance to the aging processes of the characters. This article will also analyse the association between male aging and patriarchy, female youth and traditional femininity, old age and masculinity crisis, and female aging and female awakening.
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Taylor, Helen (ed.). 2007. The Daphne du Maurier Companion. London: Virago.
Woodward, Kathleen. 1986. «The Mirror Stage of Old Age». In Memory and Desire: Aging, Literature, Psychoanalysis, edited by Kathleen Woodward and Murray M. Schwartz, 97-113. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Ashley, Bob, ed. 1997. Reading Popular Narrative: A Source Book. Leicester: Leicester University Press.
Auerbach, Nina. 2000. Daphne du Maurier: Haunted Heiress. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Beauman, Sally. 2007. «Rebecca». In The Daphne du Maurier Companion, edited by Helen Taylor. 47-60. London: Virago.
de Beauvoir, Simone. 1972. The Coming of Age. Translated by Patrick O’Brian. New York: Putnam.
du Maurier, Daphne. 1992. Rebecca. London: Arrow Books.
du Maurier, Daphne. 2004. The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories. London: Virago.
Forster, Margaret. 1994. Daphne du Maurier. London: Arrow Books.
Friedan, Betty. 1994. The Fountain of Age. New York: Touchstone.
Hill, Susan. 1999. Mrs de Winter. London: Vintage.
Horner, Avril and Sue Zlosnik. 1998. Daphne du Maurier: Writing, Identity and the Gothic Imagination. London: Macmillan.
Kelly, Richard. 1987. Daphne du Maurier. Boston: Twayne Publishers.
Light, Alison. 1991. Forever England: Femininity, Literature and Conservatism between the War. London and New York: Routledge.
Light, Alison. 1997. «Returning to Manderley: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class». In Reading Popular Narrative: A Source Book, edited by Bob Ashley. 222-226. London: Leicester University Press.
Pearsall, Marilyn, ed. 1997. The Other within Us: Feminist Explorations of Women and Aging. Colorado: Westview Press.
Sontag, Susan. 1997. «The Double Standard of Aging». In The Other within Us: Feminist Explorations of Women and Aging, edited by Marilyn Pearsall, 19-24. Colorado: Westview Press.
Taylor, Helen (ed.). 2007. The Daphne du Maurier Companion. London: Virago.
Woodward, Kathleen. 1986. «The Mirror Stage of Old Age». In Memory and Desire: Aging, Literature, Psychoanalysis, edited by Kathleen Woodward and Murray M. Schwartz, 97-113. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Miquel-Baldellou, M. (2018). «I Wanted to Be Old»: Gender and Aging in Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca and Susan Hill’s Mrs de Winter. 1616: Anuario De Literatura Comparada, 8, 87–105. Retrieved from https://revistas.usal.es/dos/index.php/1616_Anuario_Literatura_Comp/article/view/20725
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