I will then discuss how these opposing forces act upon the unnamed narrator, who in trying to emulate Rebecca, further distances herself from her husband and results in an increasing loss of identity. As the novel progresses, we see through the unnamed narrator increasing evidence of Rebecca's transgressive behaviour. The unnamed narrator, caught between a paternal love interest who doesn't want her to grow up, and the spectral and sexually ambiguous Mrs Danvers, who acts as an agent for the deceased former Mrs de Winter. In this essay, I will discuss how Du Maurier uses the characters of Maxim and Mrs Danvers to illustrate a gendered power struggle between the systems of patriarchy and feminine sexuality. Written in the nineteen-thirties, Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca cannot help but betray the patriarchal framework and subsequent attitudes towards rampant femininity that were held in the early twentieth century.
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