#but who should play maxim de winter?

[maddie-grove]

Someday I will craft the perfect post about Taylor Swift, corsets, and Rebecca that will make everyone so, so mad.

[jon-withnoh]

💙 with danvich? 🫣 if that's okay!

“Who are you looking for?” Maxim asked. His hand closed around my arm, a silent reprimand. 

“Robert.” I allowed him to pull me closer. I suppose it was undignified, standing on tiptoes to look for a footman. “I want him to fetch Mrs Danvers.” 

“What for?” 

I cast around for an answer. “That dish over there looks almost empty. It should have been refilled already.”

“I doubt you have to tell her that personally,” Maxim said dismissively. “That woman runs like clockwork. She’ll have given instructions.” 

“I just—“ Maxim’s fingers twitched around my arm when I continued to argue. “You always want me to take a more active part in all this. I’m just trying to be a good hostess. I… I want to make you proud. Make you happy.” 

Maxim shook his head, but there was amusement in his eyes now. “Go speak to her then, if it soothes you. I’ll be here waiting.” 

“Thank you, Maxim.” I stood on tiptoe again and kissed him on the cheek. 

I instructed Robert to send Mrs Danvers into the morning room. I went there to wait, leaning against the desk in the low light of the lamp over by the divan. She did not keep me waiting for long. 

“Danny.” My face broke into a wide smile before I even knew what I was doing. 

“Hush, I haven’t closed the door.” 

“Hurry up then,” I said and giggled a little. Everything seemed brighter now that she was here, everything was more fun. 

“You’ve had too much champagne.” 

“I’ve had no more than anybody else.” 

“Then you’re a leightweight.” 

“Maybe.” I held out a hand. After a moment’s hesitation she came to meet me. “You’d know better than I do.” 

“Now you’re verging into the vulgar.” She looked almost as stern as Maxim had earlier, but underneath her frown was something I never found with him: deep and lasting tenderness. 

I wrapped my arms around her waist and rested my head on her shoulder. She humoured me, but I could feel her looking over her shoulder, checking that the door was still closed, that we were safe. 

“I wish you could come out there with me.” I murmured the words against the side of her throat. 

“I will be out there with you.” Her hands were on my hips, steadying me. Always so steady. My Danny. “Unheard and unseen as a good servant ought to be.” 

“Well I don’t want that.” I knew I was being petulant, but the injustice of our situation weighed even heavier on me now that the champagne had loosened my tongue. “I want you loud and very very visible.” 

She sighed and held me tighter. “My darling. You’d do well not to long for all sorts of things you can’t have.” 

“But I have you, don’t I?”

“Always.” 

“That’s good.” I drew back. I needed to see her, needed her to look at me. Her frown had dissolved into a small sad smile. I leaned in and kissed the corner of her mouth, then turned her to face me properly. I was not too drunk to gauge her reaction, to anticipate how far she might dare to go in this unlocked room with dozens of people outside. Still, I had not reached her limit quite yet. I stood on tiptoe and kissed her again, my lips gentle against hers. I felt her sigh, but she did not push me away. She held me, and kissed me, and shook her head when my kisses became deeper, more demanding. 

“Not here.” 

“I know.”

“Maybe later.” 

“Yes, maybe.” 

We were both thinking the same thing. Maybe tonight, after Maxim had gone to sleep, I would find my way to her bed or she to mine. Always quiet. Always careful. Maxim could never know. No one could ever know. 

“I had better go,” Danny said. She untangled herself from my embrace, patted my cheek. “Make myself invisible.” 

“And I’ll go play Mrs de Winter.” I did my best to feign enthusiasm. 

“You’re getting very good at it, you know.” 

“You have to say that.” 

Danny shrugged. Before I could hold her back, she had made her way to the door, had opened it a crack, ready to slip outside when no one was looking. 

“Mrs Danvers,” I called. She turned. “There was one thing—”

“I gave orders for more asparagus to be brought upstairs ten minutes ago. I noticed it was running low.” 

“Oh, I… alright. Thank you, Mrs Danvers.”

She gave me a curt nod and left the room, closing the door behind her. 

Of course it’s okay! Thank you for the prompt :)

[missaudreystiara]

Favorite book?

This is a really rough question to answer - I can only narrow down to the top 3 I’m afraid!

1. Rebecca, Daphne Du Maurier - I love all Victorian gothic/Neo-Victorian gothic lit if I’m honest but for some reason this one sticks with me more than others (I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve read it and I think I’m up to owning 4 editions now 🥲). It’s one of those books where I mostly dislike all of the characters and yet they’re all brilliant? It was also super funny to me that this is the book Mr Wilford chose for book club on Snowpiercer because if you know the plot of Rebecca it kind of reflects how he sees his relationship with Audrey (ie he knows he’s a bad person but hopes Audrey will keep choosing him anyway - kind of like Maxim De Winter and his new wife)… what’s extra funny though is that I knew the plot to Rebecca and still thought Audrey was playing the long con with him until season 3 aired 😂

2. Never Let Me Go, Kazuo Ishiguro - another favourite genre for me is dystopian literature and this is my favourite dystopian novel. The story is so sad but also really beautiful and it hits me hard in my romantic heart that even in an alternative world the one hope for the main characters is their love for each other. I also partially wrote my undergrad dissertation on this book!

3. Ballet Shoes, Noel Streatfeild - this is a children’s book, don’t judge! 😂 this is my absolute favourite book from my childhood and one that I’ve re read as an adult more times than I should probably admit to. Growing up, I was really into ballet and performing so it really spoke to me, and the character Posy spoke to me especially (she was the sister that loved ballet and my fellow redhead). I’m not sure it was hugely popular when I was growing up as mostly people were reading Jacqueline Wilson or Michael Morpurgo, so if you missed this one I’d definitely recommend it as a nice feel good read.

I didn’t want to go into plot too much in case you or anyone who sees this doesn’t want spoilers BUT always happy to discuss books in more detail if you have read them! 😇

Thank you for the ask!! 🖤

[neednottoneed]

du gehörst nur mir // you (only) belong to me

Rebecca - Mrs Danvers/Ich - Explicit - 2k - Complete

Summary: I should have known, in retrospect, how it was going to end. How it always ended with us, ever since I had taken her down to the boathouse, ever since my affair with Mrs. Danvers had begun five months prior. I should have known it from the way she talked about Rebecca, from every my Rebecca that fell from her lips.

I should have known it wouldn’t take her long to possess me in the same way.

(Or, Danny sees Ich flirting at a party and gets jealous)

for @msmaryadmitrievna. thank you for the fantastic prompt <3

du gehörst nur mir

I should have known, in retrospect, how it was going to end. How it always ended with us, ever since I had taken her down to the boathouse, ever since my affair with Mrs. Danvers had begun five months prior. I should have known it from the way she talked about Rebecca, from every my Rebecca that fell from her lips.

I should have known it wouldn’t take her long to possess me in the same way.

What I didn’t know was how much I wanted her to.

(What I didn’t know was that I wanted to possess her back.)

As promised, in the months that followed the beginning of our affair, Mrs. Danvers had helped me truly become Mrs. de Winter, showing me how to navigate the social graces of being Maxim’s wife, of being a woman in the public eye. With her I flourished, so much so that even Maxim noticed, convincing me to throw a small dinner party a late night in January, the first one since the disastrous costume ball some months prior.

The party was, by all accounts, a success. It had been us and a few of Maxim’s friends and their wives, a small but elegant dinner followed by drinks and dancing. Formalwear had been required, no costumes in sight. I had worn a short lilac dress despite the cold, a sheer thing that fell just below my knees.

I had spent the night hanging off Maxim’s arm, laughing at his jokes, smiling, playing Mrs. de Winter the best I knew how. Towards the end of the night I found myself enjoying it, enjoying his attention, the attention from the other men in the room. If Maxim noticed the way their eyes lingered on me, for one night he didn’t care, the only sign of his possessiveness his arm snaked around my waist.

I leaned into him, into his warmth, an almost-empty glass of cabernet in my hand. We were happy, I told myself. Tonight, we were happy, and there was no acting involved.

I finished the last of my wine and set my glass down, turning back to Maxim, whose fingers had tightened on my hip. He was staring at someone across the room, and I turned, catching sight of Mrs. Danvers, who had already turned her head away. Her profile was sharp, her hair pulled back into a lower bun than normal, the closest she would allow herself to informality. Maxim had given the rest of the servants the night off, Frith included, but I knew as well as he did that Mrs. Danvers would never allow herself a break.

Maxim frowned. “I don’t like it,” he said, half to himself and half to me.

“Like what, Maxim?”

“The queer way she watches you,” he said. “She used to look at Rebecca the same way.”

My stomach turned at the mention of Rebecca.

“You know how she is,” I said softly. “Please, Maxim, I don’t want to think about Mrs. Danvers tonight, not when everything is going so well.” I smiled up at him, trailed my fingers down his arm.

He did not answer me.

“Darling,” I said, and he finally turned his attention back to me. I reached up for him and kissed him, lingering, my mouth firm against his.

His hand on my hip slid a little lower, and I kissed him harder, the way she would have, the way a wife was supposed to kiss her husband.

I opened my eyes as I pulled back, and as I did so he smiled, pressing a kiss to my forehead.

“How about,” I said, “I go get ready for bed, hm? The party is winding down anyway, I should think.”

Maxim looked down at me, smiling. “I’ll meet you upstairs in thirty minutes then.”

“Of course, Mr. de Winter,” I teased, and as I broke away from him I pretended not to notice that his attention had wandered back to Mrs. Danvers, and that she had gone back to staring at me.

I did not go up to my bedroom right away. I’d known I wouldn’t, just like I’d known that when I entered the west wing, she would already be waiting for me.

The windows to the balcony were thrown open, the cold night air sending a chill through the room, though not an unpleasant one. I welcomed it on my flushed skin, taking a breath. I could see her just beyond the doors to the balcony, half-warped by the thick glass.

“Jealousy’s not a becoming look on you, Danny,” I called, and she turned. She did not step off the balcony, however, and I sighed and went to meet her.

“I don’t know what you mean,” she said. But she turned back away from me, staring out at the sea.

“I think you do.” I said. I touched her elbow and this time she did face me, stepping back until we were on equal footing, using her height still to tower over me.

“You reminded me of her,” she said, her eyes boring into mine. “Flirting and laughing with those—those men. With all of them.”

I swallowed. I had long grown used to her mentions of Rebecca, to her comparisons of me to her. But I had been feeling good about being Mrs. de Winter, if only for tonight, and didn’t want to be compared again.

So I did what I knew would work. I ignored her barb, and picked a fight.

“Maxim said he doesn’t like how you were watching me,” I said coolly, relishing the look on her face when I used Maxim’s name.

“And I don’t like how he was watching you,” she snapped. “Like you’re some piece of property, some thing he owns.”

“I’m his wife, Danny,” I said, and maybe it was my own exasperation at Maxim, but now I was truly angry, and I needed someone to take my anger out on and she was there. It wasn’t fair to her, I knew it wasn’t, but when had anything in our lives ever been fair?

I could have blamed it on the wine. But I was sober, and I knew it, and she did too.

“You kissed him,” she said, her voice strangled. Her hands fluttered at her sides, her tell that she was upset.

But I was in no mood to coddle her, not that night.

“Of course I did, he’s my husband,” I said, the second time I had uttered such a sentiment in as many minutes. Her face flushed as if I’d struck her, and it just made me bolder.

“What right do you get to be jealous, Danny?” I asked. “Hm? You knew I still shared my bed with him.”

Her eyes flashed. A warning. One I would have heeded, had I not been so angry, but I couldn’t stop myself. “And what would you have done, anyway? Would you touch me in front of all of them? Would you flirt with me?” My voice was raising but I couldn’t stop it. “I think you wouldn’t. I think you would have just watched, like you did tonight, watched as my husband did all the things to me in public you’ll never get to—”

“Stop this,” she hissed. “Stop this. You aren’t her. You don’t belong to him.”

With every word she pushed me further back onto the balcony, her lips crashing into mine so it was if she was trying to steal every breath from my lungs, possess me in a way Maxim could not.

“Danny—” I gasped, but I thrilled at her kiss, the heat of it. She kissed me again, one hand snaking in my hair, tilting my head back.

“I think,” she said, her mouth at my ear, her voice low and dangerous, “you’ve forgotten who you really belong to.”

Without another word she roughly turned me around, pressing me against the railing of the balcony, the metal of it digging into my stomach. Her body was flush against mine in much the same way it had been the night after the ball, the horrible wretched intimacy of her whisper in my ear, her proximity that at the time had made me shudder—but now for an entirely different reason.

"You’re mine," she said, her hands roving over my body. "Mine, mine." She whispered it fervently, feverishly, like a prayer or a curse, her mouth against my shoulder, then my neck. Raving mad in the way I had only ever seen her talk about Rebecca.

But this—I had never seen her like this, not when it came to me. This possessive, this jealous.

This obsessed.

Her hands circled around and made quick work of the buttons on the front of my dress. I watched as one fell to the ground below, my attention torn from it when she slipped her fingers under the fabric and brushed her thumb over my breast before removing her hand and pressing it against the hollow of my throat.

“Mine,” she murmured again in my ear, her free hand now making its way down my waist, my thighs, before she rucked my skirt up and slide her long fingers in the waistband of my underwear. She laughed as she slid her fingers through my wetness, a low, wicked thing.

“Already so wet and willing for me,” she murmured. “You’d never be this way for him.”

It wasn’t a question, but I answered her anyway.

“No,” I whispered, my voice hoarse. “Just for you.”

She nudged my legs further apart then as two of her fingers slid inside me. I groaned, opening my eyes. I could see the lights from the party spilling out of the windows below, hear the murmurs of voices.

“What do you think he’d do, hm?” she asked, now circling her fingers almost lazily inside of me. I whined and tried to grind down on her hand, but she pressed her other hand lightly into my chest, firmly holding me against her. “Your husband? Any of them? Any of those men down there who were flirting with you, what do you think they’d do if they knew you were letting your housekeeper fuck you against a balcony right now?”

Her voice dipped on the word fuck, sending electricity straight to my core. I had rarely heard her swear before, and only once when she had taken me to bed. I knew for the most part she considered herself above such language, and a dark pleasure shot through me at the knowledge I could undo her in such a way.

“Answer me, Mrs. de Winter,” she said, her lips trailing down my jaw. “Do you think any of them could ever even dream of having you like this?”

She had quickened her pace as she spoke, her fingers expertly curled inside me. I was gasping now, panting.

And suddenly her fingers were gone, and I whined at the absence of them, gasping in shock as she suddenly clutched me to her, her hot breath on my ear.

“I asked you a question,” she said. “I want an answer.”

“Danny—Danny please—” I moaned, trying to grab for her wrist with my left hand, pull her back between my legs.

“Not until you answer me,” she said. “Do you think any of those men would ever have you the way I am now?” She smirked. “Do you think, when your husband takes you to bed tonight, he’ll ever make you feel the way I do?”

“No,” I said. “No, no, there’s—there’s just you. Only you.” I twisted before she could stop me, crushed my mouth to hers hard enough to bruise, to show her I meant it, my right hand still gripping the railing of the balcony.

This time when I pulled her hand back between my legs, she didn’t resist, instead pushing my underwear aside and sliding her fingers back into me, beginning the quick pace she had set before. I gasped as she did so, biting her lip until she pulled back from me and set her mouth determinedly against my neck.

I did not protest. I knew she was determined to mark me and I did not care; welcomed it, even. I would come up with some sort of excuse.

Something hot coiled inside me, and I knew I was close to coming, my stomach tightening as I pressed my hand over my mouth to stifle my moans.

And quick, too quick, she was there, her nails digging into my wrist, pulling my hand away.

“No,” she hissed. “No, Mrs. de Winter, I don’t want you to be quiet. I want everyone to know exactly who’s making you feel this way.”

“Danny,” I groaned, “God, Danny…”

She thrust into me again and I was gone, her name spilling from my lips over and over and over, the cold railing of the balcony biting into my palms, my knuckles white as I gripped it to keep from falling. Her arm around my waist and the other between my legs were the only things keeping me upright.

When I finally came down my thighs were shaking, and without a word she drew me to her. I clutched at her back as she withdrew her hand from between my legs, dimly aware that she had smoothed my skirts back down.

I kissed her then, hungrily, my hands gripping her arms that were wound around my waist.

Mine, I thought as I kissed her. Mine.

I wanted to undo her. More than that, I wanted to prove to her that I was hers, that I could possess her as much as she could me. That Rebecca was the ghost, the shadow, and I was Mrs. de Winter, flesh and blood and alive. That I was the one who had chosen to be with her.

When I pushed her against the wall and sank down to my knees, she didn’t protest, merely lifted her skirts to give me easier access. I kissed my way up her thighs, occasionally biting at the delicate skin, relishing the sounds she made when I did so.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

I pulled her underwear down and immediately set my mouth against her, clutching at her hips. She gasped my name, one of her hands shooting out to grip the balcony railing, the other tightly wound in my hair, almost crushing me to her.

She moaned loudly when she came, louder than I had ever heard her before, so often did we have to be careful, quiet, so no one would discover us. And in that instant I didn’t care if the entire damn party downstairs heard her. I wanted them to know that she was mine, that I had finally found something in this wretched estate to hold onto.

It was my name she was saying. Mine. Not Rebecca’s.

Mine.

Mine.

Mine.

[emptymasks]

I’ve seen a lot about your thoughts on Elisabeth and Tanz der Vampire, and they’ve been really helpful getting into those musicals! But you have a huge list of other musicals that people can get into…

So I was wondering if you had any musicals you hadn’t mentioned in a while that you really like or would like to talk about??? (preferably something from your lists that has a blue heart please?)

Oh if only you knew how long the list of European musicals really is... I however have only seen 9 (if I counted right) and I have a lot more that I still need to watch. Oh also, I only put the blue hearts on any musicals that I was providing multiple links for so people could see which version I reccoment the most highly. If a musical only had one link and didn't have a blue heart it doesn't mean I didn't like it.

I've watched: Mozart das Musical, Elisabeth das Musical, Tanz der Vampire, 3 Musketiers, Mozart L'Opéra Rock, Dracula (the Graz production), Rebecca das Musical, Roméo et Juliette and Schikaneder.

If you enjoyed those two you're likely to enjoy Rebecca! It's written by the same composer/lyricist team as Elisabeth and Mozart (and same lyricist as Tanz der Vampire - though if you're listening to any German musical, original or translated, 90% of the time the lyrics will have been done by Michael Kunze that man is everywhere). The Stuttgart production has my favourite set design of any musical! Well... Actually probably. There are so many big set pieces it's insane, way more than I've seen in some Broadway and West End musicals. You can tell so much work went into it and the visual effects that I won't spoil if you don't know the plot but if you know the plot you know what I mean by the effects at the end are so good and I didn't expect them at all and I freaked out so much the first time I watched it. Jan Ammann as Maxim in the Stuttgart production is the best Maxim. No I won't take any argument. Other actors feel a bit one-dimensional to me, but the way Maxim acts at times comes from trauma and some actors and productions seem to forget that, but Jan really goes for it and his Maxim is a lot more sympathetic and I just want to give him a hug. Pia Douwes as Mrs Danvers, if you've seen her in Elisabeth what more do I need to say, she's amazing. A musical goddess. Her Danny is a bit more wild than some, but she kills it. My favourite video, which I put the blue heart next to, has understudy Christina Patten as Ich/I, but I adore her she's my favourite. She adds some spunk to Ich in act 2 and her voice is so pretty and aaaa. I just love these three actors together in these roles.

Roméo et Juliette is another favourite of mine! It's hard to choose which one to recommend, but it has to be the original 2000/2001 production because of the sweetness and chemistry and voices of Damien Sargue and Cecilia Cara as Romeo and Juliet. They're so pretty and work together so well. The only reason I say it's hard to pick is Mercutio. I adore him, but in the original production they cut out a song they had planned for him and he doesn't really do much at all? In the 2010 revival they gave him two more songs and you care about him so much more and John Eyzen plays such a good Mercutio. So I'd recommend the original but if you want to like Mercutio more, which you should he's amazing, I'd recommend watching at least clips of John's. It's an interesting musical because all productions are non-replica and also change around the order of songs, add or take away characters, all sorts. The Hungarian production is also very popular and I'm sure it's great, I just haven't' gotten around to watching it yet.

Mozart das Musical was the first non-English language musicals I watched so I have a fondness for it, but it's not my favourite. However, I do realise I have forgotten most of the songs and the few I've gone back and listened to are better than I remember.

Dracula isn't super popular and I understand why, I don't love the plot of the Dracula/Mina romance in it, however. I do love this musical because despite how I find the plot lacking, the songs are so good! At least, I love them. And the actors are all doing a great job. And it's one of the few Dracula adaptions to keep Quincy Morris so they get bonus points for that.

Mozart L'Opéra Rock and modern French musicals... This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but they're often more like pop-rock operas now. So if you're not into musicals with that style of music it might not be for you, but I still enjoyed it even though I didn't think I would because of the style of music. Mozart and Salieri's chemistry is very good, Salieri's bisexual crisis song is iconic, actually all of Salieri's songs are iconic.

Schikaneder... eh. I didn't like it that much and I didn't really like any of the songs. There's no English subtitles, but someone sent me the entire English synopsis and I watched it with a German friend so I had double the help of understanding it. Doesn't mean others might not like it, just none of the songs stood out to me and I had no desire to listen to any of them again. It's by Steven Scharwz of Wicked fame and I love Wicked, but I didn't love this.

3 Musketiers!! God it's so underrated and not spoken about within the European musical fandom that I even forget about it and literally forgot to write about it earlier in this post. It's a Dutch musical (though did also have a German production) and it's really good!? Faces you might know are Pia Douwes as Milady de Winter, Stanley Burlseon as Cardinal Richeliu (Netherlands Der Tod in Elisabeth), Henk Poort as Athos (Netherlands Phantom and Jean Valjean). The dialgoue is funny, the songs are good, some of the set pieces have no right to exist in this tiny musical?? They made this giant boat and pelt the actors with rain just for one 5 minute song and then we never see the boat again? And while I recommend the Dutch one because Dutch musicals deserve more love and it has official English subtitles!! Official ones, not fanmade! I have the DVD and it comes with English subtitles (and Dutch and German subtitles) which is so nice. The German version is also good, good cast, Pia came back and Uwe Kroger as Richeliu and omg they rearranged the songs and the German arrangement of Nicht Aus Stein is insane and amazing and frankly iconic.

That's all of the ones I have watched. Next on my list to watch are Rudolf and Notre Dame de Paris, both of which I have listened to some songs from and already love (I've listened to way too much of Notre Dame de Paris and am so in love).

I want to start organising streams where I'll host the musical either by getting the video from Youtube or my own files and anyone who wants to join can come along and watch with us, chat with us if you want or just watch there's no pressure to chat. I thought about doing weekly streams? This would also make me finally watch some of the ones I've been meaning to for ages. But I keep wondering about time zones. I'm in the UK and would want to stream at about 11pm at the latest (11pm BST/GMT+1 as we’re in daylight savings at the moment, if the streams continue past the end of October which would be wild then I’ll make a note of the time change that would be to 11pm GMT), which I know can work for other UK and Europeans, but for any Americans would be in the afternoon. So, I wondered if doing it on a weekend would be better? Then it doesn't matter if it's in the afternoon? Maybe Saturday evenings then? It would either be Saturday evenings UK time or Friday evenings UK time. What do you guys think? If people are down then I'll make a separate post with a list of what we'll be watching each week and if anything happens to me that means I can't stream one week then everything will just get pushed back a week, but I don't see that as likely to happen. And I'll only be streaming those that have English subtitles, so don't worry about not being able to understand anything.

edit: am also open to 10pm bst if others want that, im just trying to think of what time works best for everyone so sorry if 11pm is a little late for europeans, i know 10pm could be a little early for americans. also in case it sounded like these are the only musicals i will be streaming, thats not so, ive got more than just the ones mentioned on this list!

(Tagging some people who I know are or might be interested in streams to see what you think of that plan: @sirona-art @ringwraith100 @tanz-der-trash @smilingwoland @the-weird-dane @witchgaye @ami-fidele @kisstheghouls @looking-4-happiness @ladysapphire928 @sloanedestler @tinywound @persephonaae @phoenixdewinter @uwucoffee @freshbloodandgothicism )

[sincerelybluevase]

Careful, Madam Chapter Six

A/N Thank you all for being so patient! I didn’t think I’d ever finish this, but the final chapter has been written. You’ll have to wait a little bit for that, since the wonderful @thegirlisuedtobe is making a beautiful teaser for it, which I obviously want to post first. But rest assured; this fic is finished after chapter seven! The previous chapters can be read here.

All night I lay thinking as to what to do. Systematically, I went through every option I could think of until I arrived at the inevitable conclusion.  

The best I could hope for was for Maxim to be convicted of murder. I didn’t see that happen any time soon, though; everyone thought he and Rebecca had had the perfect marriage, so why should he have wanted to kill her? His identification of the wrong woman could easily be explained away as an honest mistake made when he was sick with grief and horror. That could not explain why Rebecca lay dead in her cabin, but then the authorities could hardly expect Maxim to know everything, now could they?

I could accuse Maxim of killing Rebecca and testify against him instead, but I rejected that idea just as I had done earlier that day when it first occurred to me. I did not think I would be believed, and even if I was, I didn’t think people would forgive me for betraying my husband. After all, he had lifted me up out of poverty and obscurity when he made me his wife. Many already believed I was after his money; if I repaid what they thought of as his kindness by seeing to it that he got hanged, they would think me a conniving little schemer who had murdered her husband to inherit his money. It would be all over the newspapers, and so everyone would know. Reporters would harass me, everyone else would snub me. I thought I might be able to bear that, but what life would that be for my child? For there was my little stranger to think of now.  

Perhaps it would be best for the baby if I did nothing. There’s a lot to say for being born in wealth and privilege, and few children would be more privileged than the ones born with the de Winter name. Manderley was a glorious place to grow up besides. In my mind’s eye I could see my child and I on the beach dragging driftwood from the surf, laughing as Jasper chased after seagulls. Afterwards we’d have tea under the chestnut tree, and I’d cut the crusts off a sandwich, because that was how they’d like their bread. Maxim would scold our child if he saw, because he had, no time for such puerile nonsense, but it would be all right, I would shield them from his moods, his madness. Yes, I could continue to be the second Mrs de Winter, shy and silent, a quiet little thing at my husband’s side. Rebecca had played at being a devoted wife really rather successfully, hadn’t she? And she had never even loved him. I had. Surely I could pretend I still did? For my child, I could go back to being the girl I had been just a few days ago… But no, I thought as I turned on my side, watching the form of my sleeping husband in his bed, I can never be that woman again. Not after finding out Maxim had murdered Rebecca. He had killed once; what was there to prevent him from killing me, too, if I shamed him?

And I had shamed him already, hadn’t I? He simply didn’t know it yet. What I had done with Mrs Danvers would ruin him and Manderley, should it ever come out. He’d kill me for that ten times over, and Mrs Danvers, too.

Mrs Danvers. Queer, loyal Mrs Danvers. What was she doing now? What I wouldn’t give to be with her, to try and alleviate her suffering! For she must suffer greatly now that she knew her beloved Rebecca’s death was murder, and she must seethe with rage and hatred for Maxim. That was perhaps my biggest fear: that she hungered for revenge and would harm herself to get it.

To keep her, my little stranger, and myself safe, there was only one thing to do: run away with Mrs Danvers. But how to accomplish it? I had no money, and there was no ready cash at Manderley; we had accounts at every store and company so that there was no need to pay with bills and coin. Maxim had given me no jewellery during our marriage, so that couldn’t be sold either. Still, I supposed I could find a way. The most important thing was to find Mrs Danvers before she could do anything harmful, and convince her to come away with me.

If she didn’t want to run away with me, I feared my heart would break.

*

Despite my sickening worries, I must have slept then, for the next time I opened my eyes, daylight had found its way into the room. It pooled onto the floorboards, heavy and hot. The bed beside me was empty. I fumbled for my watch, saw that the inquest was about to start. Maxim had left me behind, as he said he would. Two days ago, this would have broken my heart, but that morning, I found it a mercy.

I went to the bathroom, where I vomited. Perhaps it was the baby making me sick; perhaps just the great stress of the situation I had found myself in. I brushed my teeth,  dressed quickly, then went in search of Mrs Danvers. I kept wiping my hands on my dress. What if she had gone to the inquest? I should have stayed awake. But no, I found her where I expected her to be: in Rebecca’s room.

“Oh, Mrs Danvers,” I said. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, clutching Rebecca’s crumpled nightgown. Her eyes had turned to slits, so swollen were they from crying. She smelled of sorrow, that strange salty scent that clings to the hands and face. My heavy heart had lifted at the sight of her; now, it began to ache. “Oh, Mrs Danvers,” I repeated, “how your eyes must hurt!” Like two embers burning in her sockets, I imagined. And so, before doing anything else, I went into the bathroom and turned on the tap. I wetted my handkerchief under the cold water, then took it to her and dabbed at her eyes. She made to fend me off, stiffened, then succumbed.

“I’m sorry, Mrs Danvers. I didn’t mean to leave you after what I said. I suppose you’ve a lot of questions. I wanted to come see you sooner so we might talk about it, truly I did, but I could not find you, and then Mr de Winter wouldn’t let me out of his sight.” A drop of water course down the inside of my wrist, making me shiver.

She stilled my hand. “I always suspected he killed her,” she croaked. “She wouldn’t drown, not even in that squall, not my mistress, not she. For a year, I’ve suspected. I just couldn’t prove it. Tell me, Madam: how did he kill her?”

My throat was tight and dry. I swallowed painfully. “He shot her.”

She bared her teeth, her lips curling back like that of a corpse. “I thought he would. He’s always been a coward. He wouldn’t dare kill her with his bare hands. She would have fend him off, had he tried. Did she suffer?”

“No. She died instantly.”

“Will her bones show that he murdered her?”

I shook my head. “He said the bullet went straight through.”

“So he shall be acquitted then, won’t he? Colonel Julyan, the doctor performing the autopsy, they’re all his friends. They’ll want to believe in his innocence, and even if they didn’t, they’ll want to avoid a scandal. There’ll be no justice for my mistress. Not unless we testify.”

“They wouldn’t believe us. They think me a slutty interloper and you queer and hateful.”

Her shoulders tensed, but only for a moment; then, she slumped. She took the handkerchief from me and pressed it to her eyes so forcefully drops fell down like tears. “Thank you, Madam, for telling me.”

I sat down next to her, dimpling the mattress. The stale scent of azaleas mixed with dust rose up to meet me. “I have thought our situation over. I’ve turned every option round and round in my mind, and there’s only one thing for us to do, Mrs Danvers. We must run far, far away from here.”

She lowered the handkerchief and stared at me with those sore, burning eyes. “Run away?”

I nodded. “We can’t testify, and we can’t remain here. Would you be able to work for him as nothing had happened? I can’t go on being his wife, at any rate, not now that I know he’s a murderer. What’s there to stop him from murdering again? And there’s my little stranger to think about now, too…” I pressed a hand against my belly. How long until it would swell?

“No,” she said in a low voice, “No, I can’t work for him anymore. You are right. But he wouldn’t let you go, Madam, especially now that you’re carrying his heir. And how would we live?”

We, I thought, and through the sickness and despair, my heart fluttered, she said ‘we’. We shall do this together, she and I. I placed my hand on hers. “Working girls like us can always find something, and I’ve saved a little money when I was Mrs van Hopper’s companion. Surely you’ve saved, too?”

She nodded. “Yes. Yes, of course. I’ve always had little use for money. But I meant, do you want us to live together, Madam?”

“Yes, yes of course! I can’t imagine living without you anymore, Mrs Danvers. I think that, foolish as it may seem, I’ve come to love you deeply these past few days. It’s as if I’ve looked inside of you and seen you, really seen you, not the cold, efficient housekeeper, but the warm, feeling woman underneath.” Blood rushed to my cheeks, and I felt shy again, tortured by my anxieties. Perhaps I had been too eager, too forward. “Besides, it would be practical. To the outside world, I can be a widow and you my aunt. No one would question it.”

She sat still for a moment, then clasped my hands and brought them to her mouth, kissing them with dry lips. “No one has ever wanted to live with me like that. I’ve always been needed as a nanny, or a housekeeper. Never as a person. Thank you, Madam,” she murmured.

I rested my head against her shoulder. “When should we leave, do you reckon?” Every fibre of my being wished to never see Maxim again, but if we left too hastily, we might make mistakes that could lead Maxim to us. Better to suffer his presence for a little while longer if that meant I could be rid of him forever.

“Not quiet yet, Madam. In a month, perhaps. It gives you time to lull Mr de Winter into a false sense of security, and by then you won’t be so sick with child anymore. Besides, it will give me the time I need to prepare our journey.”

“Will it be hard for you, to leave Manderley? It has been your home for years.”

She stroked a line on the back of my hand. “It was my home because of my mistress. I’ve a new mistress now. Where she leads, I shall follow, and let her be my home.”

Tears pricked in my eyes. “And you shall be mine. My God, I can hardly wait. It shall be heaven, to be with you, to never have to see Mr de Winter again.”

“Well, well, well,” a voice said.

I got up and whipped around. My bowels turned to water and my knees were so weak I almost had to sit down again.

Maxim stood on the threshold, his face that strange waxen mask I had observed in him often when he was tired or angry. “Maxim,” I said stupidly. “I thought… the inquest…”

“That didn’t take more than an hour. A verdict of accidental death. I rushed straight home to tell you the good news, only I couldn’t find you. You can imagine my surprise when Frith told me he had seen you gone into Rebecca’s rooms. I almost didn’t follow you here, but then I thought, what power does that perverted slut hold over me now that I’ve killed her and gotten away with it? Only I didn’t expect to find that my devoted little wife has turned out to be a perverted little slut as well, scheming with a housekeeper twice her age to elope.”

“I didn’t… we weren’t…”

“You little bitch,” he hissed. He dashed through the room and struck me so quickly I barely saw his fist move. His knuckles connected with my cheekbone. The pain took a few seconds to arrive, hot and sharp.

Oh, I thought stupidly. I made to press a hand to my cheek, but he grabbed my wrists and pulled me to him. “You little bitch!” he roared, spittle flying from his mouth. “How dare you leave me?!”

He shook me so hard my teeth rattled. This, I thought with icy certainty, this is how I shall die: at the hands of my husband. Funny; he hadn’t dared kill Rebecca with his own hands, but then I had never quite measured up to his first wife, now had I?

“Stop!” I pleaded. “Maxim, please stop! You’re scaring me!”

He slapped my face with an open palm, bringing tears to my eyes. He raised his hand to strike again when Mrs Danvers said, “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, sir.”

A metallic click sounded.

Maxim turned to look at her, his hand frozen in mid-air.

Mrs Danvers was pointing a gun at him.

Tagging: @solattea, @mlletina, @msmaryadmitrievna, @alice1nwond3rland, @need-not, @halewynslady

[lightdancer1]

One of Russian history's standard ironies is that otherwise brilliant figures lose wars to Russians and are more renowned for defeat than the Russians for victory.

The Bonapartist invasion of Russia is the classic example of this phenomenon. By every logical standard Napoleon waged a war with an army so vast the logistical strain of supporting it killed more of it than the Russian summer (also very fatal to parts of it) and the Russian winter both did. He waged that war without bothering to realize the kind of war his enemies were actually waging. His battles were among his most poorly fought performances with Smolensk, Borodino, and Malyaroslavets masterpieces of his failures at multiple levels.

He goes in with anywhere from 300,000 to 500,000 troops (that the margin is that vast in differences should speak for itself about how much historical facts can and do change with how one does historical statistics). Whichever number one goes with, the higher or the lower, he walked out on his own and 30,000 more than half frozen shellshocked survivors were all that emerged from the invasion of Russia, which culminated two years later in "Tsar Alexander got to Paris."

To sugarcoat a catastrophe of this magnitude to favor the idiot who lost it should, in theory, be impossible. In reality, of course, this is exactly what Napoleon did in his bitter and whiny exile after his failure.

In reality, Barclay de Tolly and Kutuzov did outgeneral Napoleon and played to his weaknesses and maximized their strengths. The narratives of how and why they did it and how Russia overcame its own weaknesses to prevail is the one that should be told. And yet it almost never is, especially in English.

[lizbethborden]

just some thoughts about stuff i disliked in rebecca 2020:

the constant lingering on heterosexual sex scenes. i feel like they were like “wow!!! we can show so much more than they could in 1940!!!” and just went ham. but it’s also a part of:

the determination to portray maxim and mrs. de winter’s story as unambiguously romantic when part of intrigue of the book is whether or not it actually IS romantic. in fact there are MULTIPLE interpretive takes that see the relationship as cynical and manipulative on either or BOTH sides of the equation and it’s quite frankly all there in the book, so the choice to play it like it’s purely romantic--even when there’s nothing ambiguous about how shitty maxim behaves toward her--is like. ok straight people, whatever

l*ly james. sorry i’m not trying to be nasty here but i don’t know how well-cast she was, or if maybe she should have been directed differently? it’s certainly hard to live up to the fontaine version of the character but she could have done Something. she was just straight playing her version of cinderella from cinderella 2015.

honestly the movie struck me as like 1:1 with cinderella 2015 for some reason lmao like down to the casting of a specific striking older actress for the villain and putting her in red lipstick and giving her a haughty, cool, but strangely sympathetic backstory moment

that man playing maxim. i don’t know who he is and i don’t want to know. literally devoid of charm

the failure to linger on scenes that deserved it. the rebecca bedroom scenes needed MORE TIME, especially the one where she’s in the window. where’s the time taken to make us believe she might jump or just let herself fall, or even that danvers might push her? i guess this was one of the areas where they didn’t want to bow too much to hitchcock so they just brushed past it, given that imo the bedroom scenes are like. some of the most memorable in his film?

the ending. this was definitely part of the movie’s campaign to really hammer all the ambiguity out of the story. the point of the end of the book is the wanton destruction, the lack of closure, no resolution, really, because in a way rebecca’s still won. rewriting this into a romantic happy ending about searching for a “true home” together is just... not really honoring the source text imo.

a lot of words were put in danvers’ mouth and i’m not sure anyone really knew if they sympathized with her or not, or whether she’s a lesbian or not lmao, like there were MULTIPLE very deliberately framed homoerotic moments with her and mrs. de winter--this isn’t me being a dyke, there’s a whole hand touch moment where their hands are in the center of the frame--but they also included the backstory where she raised rebecca but they also had weird “bonding” moments between her and mrs. de winter but they also but they also but they also.... like i just don’t know. i feel like, if you’re not going to give her a series like ratched where she gets a full backstory, leave her more of a cipher--but that might be another place where they wanted to distinguish themselves from the original film.

i guess it’s one way of dealing with a gothic story and particularly the sort of cerebral, dissatisfying stories like rebecca, but it just honestly left me cold

[orangistae]

Disappointed though not surprised to hear that the new Rebecca is bad and apparently misses the point of the story, but it has gotten me thinking about what a good modern adaptation would look like, so allow me to share my ideal version:

Jude Law and Saoirse Ronan in the lead roles. Law is a touch too old at this point, but too old is preferable to too young in this case, and I can’t think of anyone else in the right age bracket who can do handsome and charming/cold and menacing as well as he can. Ronan usually plays more spirited characters, but she’s also very good at doing meek (see the first section of Brooklyn) and is relatively plain-looking by Hollywood standards, making it clear that it’s not the usual thing of a middle-aged man following his dick and falling for a hot 20yo; Maxim specifically wants someone he can control, without too much pesky self-confidence. Everyone meeting them should be like, ‘Her?’ and she should absolutely notice, while getting zero reassurance from Maxim.

Helen McCrory as Mrs Danvers (a bit more human and less chilly than previous incarnations, lashing out because of her own grief, with her devotion to Rebecca played ambiguously as a mixture of maternal and romantic), and Tom Burke as Favell (handsome in a louche way, thinks he’s smarter than he is, should give the impression that Rebecca walked all over him and that that was his main attraction for her, sort of a Cersei/Jaime vibe).

Highlight the feminist themes not by making Mrs de Winter a plucky heroine but by playing up the toxicity of the central romance, just a solid two hours about the horrors of patriarchy (and the class system). The audience should feel uncomfortable whenever Maxim and Mrs de Winter kiss or she gazes adoringly at him or whatever, and not be shocked when it’s revealed that he’s a murderer. Rebecca should come off as relatable if not downright sympathetic, and Mrs de Winter as dangerously deluded for still being in love with a guy who’s so obviously an abusive asshole.

The audience should realise at some point that Favell, despite being kind of insufferable, is basically the good guy, and really feel for him when he realises that Maxim murdered the woman he loved and there’s nothing he can do about it. The burning of Manderley should play as divine retribution, and the ending should have that unsettled The Graduate air of ‘is this actually a happy ending though?’ The Hitchcock version didn’t exactly pull any punches wrt Maxim’s dickishness, but between the censorship and Olivier’s personal appeal, I think it’s still too easy to read that romance as aspirational, so there’s definitely room to go further.

Ideally it should have a female director, but I can’t think of any who quite fit the bill. The one who keeps coming to my mind instead is David Fincher, who doesn’t have the stylistic flair that I’d like, but is an expert at both psychological thrillers and toxic masculinity. Plus, I enjoy the parallels with Gone Girl, and it’d be a neat way to help the audience picture Rebecca without having to show her onscreen.

Anyway, I’m not really sure what the point was of writing this up, but I’ve spent too much time and energy thinking about it to keep it all inside my head, so tumblr, here you go.

ETA: upon further consideration, I’ve decided to go with Mary Harron as the director of this imaginary project. I’d forgotten/not realised that she directed Alias Grace, and between that and American Psycho, she’s obviously got an excellent understanding of and ability to portray the necessary dynamics and ambiguities. She also gets great performances from her actors, and something similar to the sombre visual style of Alias Grace would be far more suitable for Rebecca than the Instagram-friendly vibe of Wheatley’s version. I’m still fuming over the fact that Netflix handed the project to someone who clearly doesn’t understand and/or care about the story when there are so many better and more passionate directors struggling to get anything made at all.

[dollsome-does-tumblr]

i can’t believe there still hasn’t been a trailer or promo photos or anything for the new rebecca miniseries

like, am i gonna love it? am i gonna hate it?? i want to start forming a perhaps too-hasty opinion right now!!

(also, i JUST realized that lily james [the second mrs. de winter] and sam reilly [frank] are playing opposite each other again after being lizzy and darcy in ppz, and this pleases me as someone who really likes to read rebecca as, like, a situation where the nice man that should be your love interest is right there, second mrs. d-w! why in the world aren’t you going for him instead of your awful husband? it’s because you are on some level TERRIFYING, madam! i love how in any other more conventional romance, it would definitely end with her and frank getting together and maxim dying in a fire or whatever, but instead we get the much more disturbing ending of her deciding to be ride or die for maxim.)

[jameigo]

#6 A different perspective

09/11/2020

Now reading week is over, I had my first online seminar today. Whilst the screenplay we were studying I found terribly mundane, we discusssed how it was a deliberate ploy by the author, who then directed the film. It was also my turn this week to submit into a discussion group. This was slightly nerve wracking with people voicing their thoughts on my work, but I know everyone and so it wasn’t too bad. It was reassuring to hear positive feedback, be able to ask questions for advice, and also give feedback on others (which I do weekly anyway).

It was the first time today that I felt a need to sit on my bed, instead of at my desk for it. I also made myself a coffee to enjoy whilst having the 2 hour class, and made it much more bearable being in comfort. Plus, I’m sure you’ll all enjoy a different view to my usual desk perspective!

Now for what I’ve recently watched and that’s Netlix’s adaptation of Rebecca. Whilst admittedly I’ve not read the novel, even though it is currently on my shelf and I keep meaning to, I must say in comparison to the 1940’s Hitchcock film, it was very well done, as they both struck similar tones. As such, I will be taking it off my shelf imminently. I loved the locations (although more on this later) and especially the actors and actresses. Lily James has that lovely nievaty of hers that comes through at the beginning, and aptly changes and morphs into self-assuredness as the story unfolds. Anyone who knows the story knows that this is very important, and quite emotive. Maxim de Winter, played amazingly by our heartthrob Armie Hammer, conclusively reveals that he never loved Rebecca, and his wife’s efforts to be like her because she thinks he still loves her, backfire. Thus the moral du Maurier incorporates, and one we should all strive to remember, is to just be yourself. Changing yourself into someone else never ends well. This is especially emphasised by the fact De Winter’s second wife (the one played by Lily James) is never named which is all the more tragic. Keeley Hawes, who I simply adore, is also in it briefly and ugh I loved every moment. And Mrs Danvers, played by Dame Kristin Scott Thomas, was incredible. Sheer perfection. I have many other thoughts, but for breifety I’ll leave it there. I did feel Manderley’s exterior could have been chosen better, but it served it’s purpose. If anyone does want to share their thoughts on the adaption then please do message me!

Tomorrow I have my first dissertation tutorial with my supervisier, so that will be... interesting. I’m not apprehensive, but I’ve not stuck the right chord yet with him as a lecturer, and so tomorrow will determine how I feel. I’m certainly going in with an open mind, and at the end of the day whilst personal relationship is important, I’d also sacrifice some of that for interesting and in depth feedback regarding my topic. I’ll keep all of you updated on how it goes!

I hope everyone is well, and as I said earlier, and always do, please feel free to message me :)

[gg-prompted-fics]

Spark-Exchange

Title: Bearishness

From: gg-prompted-fics

For: @sociopathbrony

Rating: T

Warnings: Jenka is a little depressed?

Summary: Jenka gets ready for winter. 

(set about 6 years after Klaus Wulfenbach makes a deal with the Jägers)

Leaning back against the broad, furry expanse of Füst, Jenka sighed. For a moment, she entertained herself by running through various supply lists, trying to figure out what she might need to stockpile and cache for the next winter, but she let that thought go swiftly. 

There were easier ways to survive in the wilds, and a Jäger could always hunt. But, the part of her that had been once been a woodsman’s daughter would still count her meager supplies and find them wanting, no matter how many centuries removed she was from those hungry, lean winters, before she’d made a stand against a Heterodyne’s raiding party, and caught the interest, and later mentorship, of General Khrizhan.

Still, Füst was slowing, and she would need a find a place soon for the bear to hole up for the winter. 

Letting out a disgusted grunt at the thought, she wriggled against Füst, cuddling deeper into his fur. Füst grunted and leaned against her slightly, as he presented an ear to be rubbed. Jenka scratched at it absently. 

“Hy’ll miss hyu, hyu big lump,” she whispered. 

“Hey, deed hyu hear dot? She said she missed us!” 

Jenka blinked, and was up in a flash, even as she found and identified the intruders. Maxim, Ognian, and Dimo.

Of course, it was those three who would randomly find her in the wilds, when she knew there wasn’t a single settlement for a good thirty or more miles around. She was waiting for them to randomly discover the Other someday at this rate. The three had the habit of popping up at odd times together. 

They were supposed to be on the western side of the mountains, now that she thought about. She wasn’t sure how far the news had spread about the incident that summer with Maxim, and she had wanted them as far from the news as possible. 

“Are hyu lot sayink hyu know vot lumps hyu are?” she growled. 

“Well, ve seem to take a lot uf dem to our heads,” Dimo muttered. 

Jenka rolled her eyes slightly, even as she filed the remark away. That had been said too seriously to just have been the normal joking, and Jägers were careful about that. A complaint like that meant he thought that they might be able to do better. It hadn’t actually been anything she could call him on, but it was further evidence the Jäger could be leader material. Someday. When he stopped making so many boneheaded moves. And maybe stopped letting himself get dragged into so many issues. Mischief was all well and good in town, but they had a mission, as hopeless as it seemed. 

“We don’t make dem,” Oggie protested, clearly seeing what could happen if Dimo kept making such pointed remarks. “We jusht happen to be dere.”

“Causink trouble,” Jenka agreed, and let the humor slip into her voice. The trio always seemed to get out of trouble by themselves, and while their luck would end someday, for now, Jenka was inclined to let them have it. 

There was little enough joy in this task. They’d likely spend the rest of their lives searching.

Jenka shivered, the prospect stretching bleak before her, even as she told herself it was hardly the first time, and least she wasn’t stuck in the charade of playing Lady Jenka, mysterious beauty, for an unknown period of time, without proper backup. Lady Jenka was great for sneaky games, especially when the Heterodyne came at the end to help set everything on fire, but Jenka didn’t want to be her all the time. 

Of course, she wasn’t sure she wanted to be Jenka, commander of the wild Jäger all the time either, for all that she had volunteered herself out of all the Generals for the task. 

Even now, she remembered all the outs the other Generals had given her. They’d known how it would be. Jägers were not meant to be on their own, with no equals. But none of the other Generals could have been spared from their tasks, and others were alone too. 

Still, at this rate, she’d promote Dimo just to have someone she could talk to, leader to leader. If he stopped being such an idiot anyway. 

“Yas,” Maxim said, after Dimo had kicked him. “Ve jusht happened to be dere. Jusht like ve happen to be here!”

“Uh-huh,” Jenka said, still waiting for the punchline. 

“Ve thought hyu’d need us,” Oggie said far too earnest. 

Jenka swallowed and looked away, feeling exposed. They shouldn’t have seen that. They shouldn’t know. The Generals were supposed to be the best of them, the ones who did all the worrying, the ones who led the Hunts, the ones who worried for the Pack. 

“It’s shtrange times,” Dimo offered slowly, “Livink vitout a Heterodyne.”

Jenka eyed him and wondered if he knew what she was planning for him one day. 

“Yes,” she said simply. 

“Und it’s almosht vinter,” Dimo said. “Sopposed to be a hard vun.”

“It might be cold!” Maxim added, with a theatrical shudder. 

“Hyu need us,” Oggie said simply, looking far too sincere. 

Maxim was looking at her, and suddenly she was far too aware that he was far more astute than he usually acted. 

“Do hyu need a fight?” he asked abruptly, looking all too knowing.

“No.”

“To fu-“

“No,” Jenka said, more sharply. She’d never been much interested in sex. 

“That leaves feel. Or someting more unusual, bot Hy’d bet feel.” 

Carefully, intent clear, he reached for her. 

Jenka let him, and seeing her non-reaction, the other two joined the embrace.

Maxim wasn’t wrong. 

Füst was a good bear, but he wasn’t exactly Jägerkin. And she needed her siblings.

Later, she would never be able to say how long they stood there, or how they had managed to settle her down into her bedroll, nor how long she lay breathing in Oggie’s arms as Dimo and Maxim curled tightly into her sides. 

All she knew was skin and touch and breathes, as they lay together beneath the stars. 

She hadn’t been held by her siblings like this since Mechanicsburg, when the Generals had realized what must be done. 

It was morning before she could string together a sentence properly.  

Maxim was brushing out her hair, and arguing with Oggie about how he’d braid it. 

“Hyu’ll knot my hair if hyu really do try to a fifteen shtrund braid.”

“Hy can do it,” Oggie protested. 

“No, he can’t,” Maxim muttered. 

“Vun basic braid,” Jenka insisted. 

Maxim hummed agreement and started plaiting her hair. 

“Hyu beck vit us?” Oggie asked. 

“Yah.”

“Dot vas pritty bad,” Dimo said, looking up from the breakfast porridge he was seasoning liberally with paprika. 

Jenka nodded and was grateful that they waited for her to decide.  

“Vinter,” she finally said. “Hy tink ve should spend de vinters together, de four uf us.” 

Maxim’s hands flattered in their rhythm, and he reached out to squeeze her shoulder. Dimo looked satisfied, and Oggie delighted. 

Relaxing further, Jenka began to outline just what this would mean for their searches and the logistics of meeting up each fall. It was simple details, the work of half an hour to decide, even as at the back of her mind, the part of her that had once been a woodsman’s daughter planned. Food and drink and all the little luxuries would be worth stockpiling for the winter if there would be four of them. 

And she bet cuddling would be even better if it wasn’t on the ground. 

Thinking of the future, Jenka leaned into the touch of her brothers, and finally felt like they could find a Heterodyne, if they only looked hard enough. 

[shadowofthemoth]

for the Musical Ask Meme!: "Count Orlov" & "Elisabeth" with 7-10 (Which show has a better aesthetic/setting?) // "Romeo et Juliet" & "Rebecca" with 5 : How would the main character of one react to being in the position of the main character of the other? So I guess between Juliet and Ich x)

Hi! ^^

~

Ok, starting with 7) Which show has a better aesthetic? + 10) Favorite set between the two? - for “Count Orlov” & “Elisabeth”, but I’ll go from 10 to 7.

I confess I’m not entirely sure how to interpret the word “set” in 10, so I’ll take it as “the way things are arranged on stage, decorations and all that”. I guess you meant that when you said “setting”?.. ^^

Well, in terms of setting, I prefer CO because I love how they manage to show Livorno, St Petersburg, Moscow, Orlov’s ship, Elisabeth’s house, the Empress’s palace, the prison etc using just one single mulifunctional decoration (or no decorations at all - e.g. the chat between Orlov and Ivan when they receive Elisabeth’s letter). And that huge imperial crown at the end of the show!.. I mean, I love “Elisabeth” tenderly, and the way things are arranged there works perfectly; but the setting of CO gives me a lot of aesthetic pleasure AND corresponds with my expectations from a musical based on that period of Russian history. The setting they used renders the atmosphere wonderfully, so… the winner of question 10 is “Count Orlov”. ^^

 And so we move on to aesthetic… ohhhhhh. The dark atmosphere and aesthetic of “Elisabeth” is a very unique feature of that musical; I’d say, it’s among my top 3 gloomiest musicals ever (the other two being “Starmania” and the Hungarian RetJ because, duh, színház be like: we take the ultimate tragedy and make it DARKER, also, let’s add fire). “Count Orlov” doesn’t, as far as I can see, possess this unique, wholesome, captivating aesthetic… it is a great musical, that’s for sure, it’s beautiful and captivating, but its aesthetic is generally the same as that of the Russian “Monte Cristo” or, say, “Anna Karenina”. I don’t mean to say it is a bad thing; I only mean to say it doesn’t stand out that much and doesn’t hypnotize me the way “Elisabeth” does in all its numerous versions. So for question 7, “Elisabeth” gets the cup. ^^

~

5) How would the main character of one react to being in the position of the main character of the other? - for “Rebecca” and RetJ. 

Uhhh. This is a difficult one… Do I imagine Ich in Juliet’s position?.. or Juliet in Ich’s position?.. (Or do I send Maxim to replace Romeo? Or shall we make the delightful acquaintance of Romeo de Winter? What do I doooo, send help)

Okay, getting a grip on myself, and now we have young Juliet de Winter, nee Capulet, recently married to a rich widower whom she loves (Ich does, so Juliet should, too, I imagine) but who seems to be deep in the throes of his recent loss. Also, her kind nurse is left at home, and here she meets a strict, frightening Mrs Danvers who doesn’t seem to like the new mistress at all. On top of that, Juliet is now the lady of the house and has to manage a whole household, which, let me tell you, is not an easy task at all.

But. Here we come across a big, large, huge BUT. 

Let’s not forget who Juliet is. She is the only daughter of a very prominent, wealthy family. She was certainly doted upon back at home, but I’m sure she was taught how to do her duty. And what is her duty? Correct, to get married and become the mistress of a household (and also a mother in the long run). So, however romantic and unexperienced Juliet may be, she has a fair idea of what is expected from her and she knows what she must do. Look at her mother. Look at her nurse. Look at the Juliet from the original play! She is not afrai\d of marriage - she wants it; she gets married secretly; she goes against her family; she ends her life - for heaven’s sake, all these actions require balls of steel! This girl won’t be intimidated by Mrs. Danvers that easily. 

She will probably take some time to think - she is pragmatic, Juliet, even if it may not seem to be so; Mrs. Danvers may try to take advantage of that. She will probably be unsure whether Max loves her - marriages of convenience are a common thing, after all, and she’s a beauty, he doesn’t even need to love her as a person to want to marry her; but she does love him (yes, she does, because I say so and also because Ich loves him) and will certainly want to ensure that he returns that love. 

And she will manage that. Despite all the doubts and all the pressure, she will. Juliet is gentle and caring, just as Ich; she has more confidence, that’s certain; she is strong; and I maintain that she is ready to take on her new responsibilities, which makes her married life easier for her than it was for Ich in the very beginning. 

God, this is getting out of hand, the text is sooo long already - I hope I didn’t tire you out! xD Anyway, I think Juliet would be at first surprised and maybe overwhelmed by all the changes, (self-)doubts and pressure, but she would recover soon and start working towards solving the situation in her favour. Beware, Mrs. Danvers, Juliet de Winter is the boss now! xD

Hope you liked this. xDDD

[howardschatzphotography]

On Seeing: A Journal - #259 June 12th, 2018

"Above & Beyond with Adam Gopnik”

Adam Gopnik is a Renaissance Man’s Renaissance Man. A long-time staff writer at The New Yorker, he is an essayist, a critic, a playwright, a novelist, an author of children’s books…in short, the epitome of the enlightened human. I read his writing avidly, and, a few weeks ago, invited him to our studio to participate in my project “ABOVE and BEYOND.” A three-time winner of the National Magazine Award, Gopnik has amazingly broad knowledge of many areas, including: Art and art history, culture, politics, music, even sports. His first essay in The New Yorker, "Quattrocento Baseball," appeared in May of 1986, and he served as the magazine’s art critic from 1987 to 1995. During our interview, he spoke in perfectly structured, literate English, as clear and precise as his written words. Here are some of Gopnik’s thoughts that I found especially compelling from our interview: HS: So prolific, I wonder how you organize your life. When do you write? When do you read? When do you think? When do you go to museums, see friends, have a life? You must have some efficiently organized method in order to produce as much as you do. AG: I have a very standard routine. I start drinking strong coffee early in the morning. I go off to my little study and I write for four hours. I have many sisters, one of them a distinguished psychologist, and she says that you can only do creative work intently for four hours at a stretch. So, I do four hours from nine til one, every day. I try not to do anything else. I’m just there to write. I do it in a way that makes it maximally uncomfortable for anyone else who intrudes on me, because I can only write if I’m playing extremely loud rock music from my high school years: Jethro Tull; Eric Clapton with Derek & The Dominos, that great Layla album; Jimi Hendrix; all of that music. HS:  You play this music, and loudly, as you write? AG: I can’t think if I don’t have the music, that’s the funny thing. I also overheat terribly as I’m writing, so I have to keep the windows open in the middle of winter. I’ve had a series of wonderful assistants just coming out of college, and they’re sort of excited about the job. You know, “I’m going to be a writer’s assistant and see the elegance of a New Yorker writer’s life," and instead it’s just a little man, four hours a day, in a brutally cold room with incredibly loud music playing, and that’s their experience. So, they’d retreat into the hallway and spend the time talking with my wife.

HS:  Where and how do you think your work has had greatest impact given the political and cultural bias of The New Yorker? AG: Writing for The New Yorker, which is a traditionally liberal magazine, of course you ask yourself a question, "what am I really affecting here?" because I’m writing to people who agree with me in advance. But, if you look at the greatest political editorialists who have ever lived, Albert Camus, for instance, they were writing themed journals that were directed to people who were inclined to agree with them in the first place. What we do, I think, as citizens, writing, is not so much to change minds as to bear witness. What you want to say is not, “here’s an argument that will convince you of the opposite of what you believe already, but here’s the kind of argument you ought to be making to the people who don’t agree with you." HS: We live in a time with a bully in the White House. And, yet, despite the mean-spirited and hypocritical behavior, there are still thirty to forty percent of Americans… AG: Who love him. HS: And my question on changing people’s minds comes from something you wrote in your wonderful book, "At the Strangers’ Gate," that was astounding. I’d like to read it and perhaps you can comment on it: "No one really surrenders an illusion in the face of a fact. We prefer the illusion to the fact. The more  facts you invoke, in fact, the stronger the illusion becomes. All faith is immune to all facts to the contrary, or else we would not have such hearty faiths and such oft-resisted facts. If your faith is in life’s poetry, as ours was, a tiny room inadequate by any human standard and designed to make life borderline impossible looks appealing. The less possible it becomes the more beautiful the illusion looks. Such illusions – call them delusions; I won’t argue now – grow under the pressure of absurdity, as champagne grapes sweeten under the stress of cold ground." AG: Yes, I think that’s true. I mean, I was writing specifically there about the reality that when Martha, my then girlfriend, now wife for many years, and I moved to New York, we were enraptured with an idea of poetry, a kind of metropolitan poetry. And, the apartment we moved into was 9x11 basement room overrun by cockroaches in which there was about as little poetry as you could expect to find in the world. But, we weren’t disillusioned by it. We simply doubled-down on the myths that we were self-creating, and I think that’s generally true. You know, no one is ever argued out of a religious faith by contrary facts. No one is every argued out of a political ideology. That’s the problem we’re faced with: You can’t resist a figure like Trump by appealing to the facts, by saying he lies all the time, because the people who admire him like the fact that he lies all the time. The lies, in a certain way, are appealing to them because it gives them license to indulge their own fantasies. In other words, if somebody tells you three million people voted illegally in California, it’s an outright, absurd lie. But, that an authority figure says it gives you a right to believe in it. If your question is what do you do then, when you have a leader who is completely allergic to facts and who appeals to an audience that’s resistant to facts, I think the answer is that you can’t fantasize that you’re going to convert those folks. What happens is that you get new generations who just don’t buy it. If you think about the great social changes, the great positive social changes of our time, they tend not to happen because you have people who are entrenched in a bigoted or old-fashioned reactionary position who are converted. What tends to happen, is the young generations who come along simply don’t enlist in the bigotry.

HS: I’d like to talk about the natural history of creativity, its life-cycle. There’s sort of an apex, a fertile period of creativity, then a downturn. Recently, I heard Dylan say when asked about his seminal work of 50 years ago, "Who writes like that?!" Probably everybody’s curve is different and maybe some people have a second curve. Do you have any thoughts about that? AG: I think that any honest, creative person is bound to confess that when one looks at other artists and creative people, you tend to see that they have a high period and then a falling off period. Bob Dylan is a remarkable character, but there’s no question that the Dylan between 1966 and 1974, between Blonde on Blonde and Blood on the Tracks is the Dylan who we’ll remember. Paul McCartney is a musician of limitless melodic invention, but the McCartney we’ll remember is between 1965 and 1969. So, there’s a lot be said for the idea that artists ought to retire in a way that fighters ought to retire before they get punch-drunk and lazy-legged and all the rest of it. However, what I do think is true is that even if you accept that all creativity is cyclical and has a falling off point, there’s still an enormous value in artists persisting, because artists don’t just give us the gift of their products, they give us the gift of their example. Dylan 2018 is not writing songs the way Dylan 1968 did, but it’s wonderful to see him continuing to stand up there with his croaky voice and his little mustache bearing witness to what it is to have been Bob Dylan. HS: Do some artists have two periods of great work? AG: Yes, I think they do. Matisse did unimaginably beautiful work between 1905 and 1920; went on doing interesting, not nearly as profound work and then, suddenly, as an old man changed his medium, started using scissors instead of a paint brush and, once again, did utterly sublime work. De Kooning, another artist who had a great late blooming. Philip Roth, to take a name that doesn’t seem to sit with de Kooning and Matisse, maybe, at first, through sheer dint and intelligence continued to blaze new kinds of witness, new kinds of writing, in part, because he had the enormously smart idea that he should write about what it was like when he was young again. Instead of trying to bear witness again and again to the new world, he wrote very much about New York in the 1940s. I don’t think silence is a good answer for an artist, even if an artist is aware that it’s a general rule that you do your best work at a particular moment; the work that people will remember most. HS: What are your thoughts on the larger issues of the day, especially fake news and how, in a way, it threatens our democracy? AG: Fake news is one of those things that has managed, through the mendacious spin of a very mendacious man, to totally reverse meaning. When fake news was first talked about people meant actually manufactured fraudulent stories that were being passed around on the internet, very often to the benefit of Donald Trump. He turned it around to make it an accusation at people who were actually doing real news: CNN, The New York Times and so on, who do their work in the same flawed and imperfect way that we all do our work, but who genuinely are trying to report the world as it is. It’s Trump, the man who speaks loudest about fake news, who is the most culpable of spreading fake news… “three million people voted illegally, I had the biggest crowd," and on and on and on. So, I don’t feel fake news is as big a problem as the people crying about fake news. In other words, it’s when the governing class decides to demoralize the population by telling them they can’t believe anything that they’re being told. That’s when you get the crisis. I’m not worried about fake news. I’m worried about fake politicians.

[sincerelybluevase]

Careful, Madam Chapter Seven

A/N: Here it is, the final chapter! Thank everyone for being so patient with this one (the first chapter was published in June 2020, insane how time flies) and for the lovely comments; they mean a lot to me! For a gorgeous preview made by @thegirlisuedtobe, click here. Tagging @alice1nwond3rland, @need-not, @mlletina, @msmaryadmitrievna, @solattea, @halewynslady.

Maxim was the first to speak. “Steady, Mrs Danvers. You wouldn’t want to shoot me.”

Mrs Danvers did not waver. She held the gun steady. Not a muscle in her face moved so that she seemed hard and resolute to me, marble-made. “Let go of Mrs de Winter, sir.”

He released my arm with a theatrical motion, raising splayed hands in mock surrender.

“Come to me, Madam.”

I went so quickly I nearly stumbled. I wished to clutch her arm, to feel the reassuring solidness of her long lean limbs, but I was afraid of what might happen; I didn’t want to set off the gun by accident.

Maxim looked at us with hatred. His face had turned cold and masklike with it. “Now what?” he asked. “You’ll shoot me, Mrs Danvers?”

“I will if you force me, sir,” she said.

“And then what, Mrs Danvers? What happens then? Have you thought about that? Should you kill me, you will hang; the law won’t take pity on you for being a woman. They’ll string you up by that thin neck of yours until you are dead.”

“They won’t if they know what you are, sir.”

“And what am I?”

She glanced at me, at my reddening cheek. “A murderer and a wife-beater.”

He laughed coldly. “That’s no reason to shoot me, now is it, Mrs Danvers? I think you and I and the law can all agree on that.”

“It is if you provoked me, if you threatened your wife and unborn child, sir.”

The laughter petered out. Still he smiled, showing his sharp canines. “You’d have to aim well then, Mrs Danvers, and kill me with one shot, because if you leave me well enough to talk, you’ll be done for. Who do you think the police and lawmen will believe: me, a gentleman with an impeccable reputation, or you, a mad, old, sexually-frustrated maid with unnatural tendencies?”

I wished to speak so I could defend her, but fear held me in its grip, petrifying and silencing me.

Mrs Danvers set her jaw and tightened her grip around the gun. “I’m a good marksman, sir. If I aim to kill, I shall.”

“Perhaps,” Maxim jeered, “but are you certain? And are you absolutely certain that, even if you kill me, you won’t go to prison? They’re harsh places, prisons. Do you want to spend the rest of your life in a cold, damp room, with only a strip of sky to remind you of what lies outside?”

Still Mrs Danvers held the gun steady, her joints seemingly locked into place. “Here’s what men like you don’t understand,” she said softly, “I gave the best years of my life to your first wife; I’m willing to lay down what years remain to me for your second.”

My love for her made a pain rise in my throat. I swallowed against the tears. I looked at Maxim, thinking he would refute her or curse at her. He did no such thing. Instead, he began to yawn, making a great show of it, his mouth opened so wide I could see the fillings in his molars. When he was done, his eyes watered. He brushed the tears away with a fingertip, then turned to me. “You shall stop this nonsense right now,” he said. He spoke as if I was a naughty child.

I shook my head. I could not speak.

A vein at his temple began to throb. I could see it jump around under the skin, writhing like a worm. “Oh, but you shall. You shall stay here, with me, and we shall forget this moment of madness. Mrs Danvers shall have to go, of course, no sane man would keep a housekeeper who pulled a gun on him, but I shan’t press charges. I’ll even give her a good reference. A woman with her qualities can work for any fine family in England. But you, my little darling, shall remain here, by my side, as my wife and the mother of my children.”

“No,” I whispered.

“No? What do you mean, ‘no’?”

“I don’t want to stay.”

He laughed in disbelief. “You don’t want to stay? Do you understand what you’re saying? Before you met me, you had no friends or kin, money, no prospects. You were an old lady’s plaything, her little whipping boy. I raised you up out of darkness. I gave you a name, a house, a reputation to uphold. Without me you have nothing and you are no one, just a grubby little schoolgirl with bad nails and a name no one can spell. Do you hear me? You are nothing!”

“She won’t be nothing. She’ll be my mine,” Mrs Danvers said.

With a roar, Maxim lunged at her. She pulled the trigger, but he knocked the gun out of her hand. The shot went wild, the bullet damaging one of the plaster leaves on the ceiling, causing crumbs to rain down dryly. The gun fell to the floor, skidded, came to rest not a step away from me.

Maxim punched Mrs Danvers in the face, once, twice, thrice. Her head snapped back. She staggered. Blood poured down her mouth and chin. She made a soft choking sound, coughed. Drops of blood flew from between her lips.

“Stop!” I meant to scream it, but it came out as a whisper.

Again Maxim struck her. This time she stumbled and fell, her skirts billowing around her like black sails. He bent over her and continued to beat her. His fists came down on her face and throat again and again and again, dull slaps of flesh against flesh.

“Maxim! Maxim, stop! You’ll kill her!” I screamed. The sound carried, though for all the good it did, I might well have kept my tongue; Maxim continued to brutally, systematically beat Mrs Danvers. She tried to sit up to fend him off, but he pushed her down. Again she rose, again he beat her down.

As a child, I had witnessed our cat playing with a mouse. It would let it run, only to smack it down with its paw before it could get away. The mouse didn’t stand a chance, yet it persisted hopelessly, just as Mrs Danvers would persist in trying to sit up until she could rise no more.  

There was only one thing to do. I bent down and took hold of the gun. It was still cool despite Mrs Danvers’ grip. I raised it and found it surprisingly heavy for its size; it almost slipped out of my clammy hand. With one eye closed I aimed the gun at Maxim, but I was shaking and dared not fire for fear of hurting Mrs Danvers.

I brought the gun to my temple instead. “Maxim, look at me,” I shouted. “I’ll kill myself! I’ll kill myself and your unborn child if you don’t stop!”

He looked over his shoulder. His face was spattered with blood, his lip curled into a snarl. He let go of Mrs Danvers’ dress, causing her to thud to the ground, and came to his feet. “Don’t!” he said. “Don’t you dare!” He stumbled to me, his hands outstretched to wrest the gun from me.

I pointed the gun at him, closed my eyes, and shot.

*

All of this happened many years ago. My life now is very different from the one I led at Manderley. I’ve said goodbye to England and now have no estate to call my home, no husband to lord over me. Here, my name means nothing, and my face, once plastered over every English newspaper, is just another face, easily forgotten. No one need know that I once was the second Mrs de Winter, the one who everyone knows because she killed her husband. An act in which she was justified, of course, since he had murdered his first wife and now wished to kill her, too, before putting a bullet through his own brain, but that never made the case any less sensational. Whenever I think of it – which, when I am honest, is seldom but still too often for my taste – I can’t help but smile wryly. After all, there is a cruel sort of irony to the whole affair; Maxim killed Rebecca to safeguard Manderley’s reputation, but her murder proved to be the first link in a chain of events that would lead to a nationwide scandal. If I close my eyes, I can still see the reporters pressed against the gates, pen and notepad in hand, clamouring to see me.

There are no reporters in my new life. They do not know where I am, and to the local ones I am of no interest. I live in a cool little cottage, painstakingly paid for with the money I earn with my drawing lessons; I have given away everything I inherited upon Maxim’s death, for I never desired his money even before it became tainted with murder and madness.

Every day is much the same, but that I don’t mind. There’s comfort in familiarity, safety in routine, and after all that we’ve lived through, Danny and I have a certain hankering for comfort. Besides, raising a child together provides plenty of challenges and excitement, we’ve found.

Dear Danny. She’s wonderfully patient with me. I fear I am not always easy to live with. For all my efforts, I’ve not been able to banish the past completely. It still inhabits and possesses a part of me, one that I can fight when awake but must succumb to in slumber, so that, at night, I walk the grounds of Manderley once more. In my dreams, the house and grounds have fallen victim to rot and ruin. The lawn has gone to seed, sickness has turned the chestnut tree into a bleached husk, and the rhododendrons have reared to the fantastic heights of fairy-tale briars. The house itself sags to the side, its walls pockmarked by sour rain, the windows dirty and broken.

But for all its neglect, it is not uninhabited. I do not talk of the birds and bats roosting in the rafters, nor of the mice living underneath the floorboards and the silverfish who slowly eat away the wallpaper.

The library, with its masculine smell of leather and smoke and newspaper ink, is his domain in death as it was in life. There, he paces up and down, up and down. All that pacing has worn the carpet to threads. Each night I must go to him. It does not matter that I am unwilling; my mind and feet betray me, and take me to him. He knows that I am coming and awaits me with impatience, smoking cigarettes in quick succession, littering the ground with ash and butts. His face, once so handsome in a peculiar, medieval way, is ruined by the shot that killed him. It turned his left eye to pulp and smashed the orbital bones to pieces so that the area around the eye is curiously dented.

There must have been no time for Maxim to realise my betrayal; the bullet bored itself into his brain, killing him instantly. The Maxim of my dreams, though, gives me an amused, cruel little smile. Then – just as my life has become routine, my dreams have, too, and so this next moment never varies – he opens his arms to me. I don’t want to, but I must step into his embrace. He pulls me close to him until my head rests against his chest, against the fabric of his tweed jacket turned sodden by blood and the jelly leaking from his burst eye.

“My little love,” he murmurs as he strokes my hair, his breath stinking of the grave, “you didn’t think you’d ever be free of me, now did you? I shall never let you go.”

It is then I wake, gasping and sobbing.

Danny aims to soothe me, kissing my face and folding her long arms around me. I cling to her so tightly it must hurt. She’s no longer as strong as she used to be. No one would be after what Maxim did to her. He damaged her left eye to the point of blindness. During the years, it has turned milky white. She has taken to wearing a velvet eyepatch over it to keep out the light, for even the flame of a candle upon her left eye can trigger a mighty headache. Even covered up it pains her, but she never complains.

She holds me well after the shaking has subsided, kissing my hair. I kiss her throat in return, her chin, her cool sweet mouth. I always hesitate when I reach the scars Maxim left on her face. He embossed her cheek with his signet ring, the M and W intertwined. Yet whenever I hesitate, she brings her mouth to my ear. “No need to be careful, Madam,” she whispers, and then I know.

I have someone in this world to call my own.

I have someone to love.

[expensiveowl]

Rebecca — Wrestling with the Ghosts of Past

[ Originally posted on October 26, 2020 ]

I’ll preface this by saying that hammering a film out of a beloved, timeless masterpiece of a novel is a doggedly difficult feat, and bound to leave book fans in the dust if done wrong. Director Ben Wheatley has said as much himself, having Daphne du Maurier’s book to contend with rather than any previous film adaptations. And that is no easy feat.

For starters, I’ll list what I felt went wrong with this particular adaptation. A chief problem I found was in the film’s pacing. Many modern adaptations suffer this curse (Gerwig’s Little Women, anyone?), where they try to stay uber-faithful to the source material, cram as much of it into the movie as possible, and then it feels like you’re watching a highlights reel at 1.2x speed. Rebecca suffered from this at points, making me feel like I was watching a season recap of a long-running show.

The Monte Carlo segment felt all too brief, yet clocked in at a solid half an hour by the time the characters depart for Manderley. Rebecca is the sort of novel where time plays tricks with you, things move far too slowly for too long, and then a lot happens all at once. This pacing could not be felt here, at no point could the characters catch a breath or simply be in the moment. It feels like a train rushing from plot point to plot point to make sure you don’t miss any. One could argue that not many would be willing to sit through a 3 hour, 46 minute Gone with the Wind affair (though, personally, I would have been delighted), but even so, its two-hour runtime is enough that it should not have felt like most of it whizzed by.

[ SPOILERS BELOW! ]

Aside from pacing issues, there were liberties taken with the story I felt were for the worse. Mrs. de Winter becoming a take-charge personality, far more than she ever should have been, was in my eyes a mistake. In the novel, it is the townfolk who pressure Maxim into throwing the ball, and Mrs. de Winter goes along with it. She never fires Danny, nor grows more bold in her actions by the minute, in fact, staying a rather passive figure until the very last page.  If Mrs. de Winter was bold at any point, it was in feeling secure in her knowledge that Maxim loves her at last, and nothing more. The decision to have her drive solo down to Dr. Baker’s was another bold misstep, and the way the cancer plot twist revealed itself more like a cheap, predictable reveal than anything as anxiously nail-biting as the novel meant it to feel.

Now, the performances. I confess I am slightly biased by being totally and utterly in love with Lily James, and have been for as many years as I have watched her career blossom. Her performance was quite apt, her inner turmoil as the beleaguered Mrs. de Winter palpable and nuanced. Armie Hammer made a tolerable Maxim (though of course, no candle held to Laurence Olivier), and his accent did not bother me as much as I had expected upon watching the trailer. Ann Dowd turns in a respectable performance as the toady Mrs. Van Hopper, and Sam Riley does an excellent job of bringing greasy Jack Favell to life. But of course, the star jewel of the piece is Kristin Scott Thomas’s turn as the story’s antagonist, Mrs. Danvers.

It is clear that this adaptation took extra pains to humanise Mrs. Danvers to a point where we can feel deep empathy for her, regardless of her fanatically obsessive devotion to her deceased charge, Rebecca, and even when she’s being her most monstrous, driving Mrs. de Winter very near to the brink of suicide. Initially I felt that this could be to the film’s detriment, since one doesn’t want to cheer the film’s the villain on too much, but on deeper reflection, it made me realise that there is no villain in the film. There are merely people, and their sides of the story.

Hitchcock’s Rebecca was more black-and-white in this regard with its classic, gay coded villain of Mrs. Danvers (and very deserved Academy Award nom for Judith Anderson for her chilling performance). Here, Danny is seen as human, as every bit a person in her own right as Maxim and Mrs. de Winter, her faults all too human and her anguish real. In feeling for her this way, we’re pulled into one of the central moral dilemmas of the story: do we wish for justice to triumph, or are we cheering on a couple to get away with literal murder? If Daphne du Maurier made us an accomplice, Ben Wheatley shows us how in our rooting for the protagonists, we too are culpable of guilt.

In a terrifically effective scene near the end, Mrs. de Winter finds Danvers on the edge of the cliff. It is a gut-wrenching moment where for a second, we truly feel on behalf of Mrs. Danvers. In the novel, her fate is left unsaid, in Hitchcock’s version, she stays to perish inside the fires of Manderley. Here, she flings herself off of a cliff to face a watery death — a fitting and metaphoric parallel to the fate of her beloved Rebecca.

A few more positive points of note. The atmosphere of the film, punctuated by the brilliant score and eerie sound staging throughout, worked brilliantly to its favor. Any time that the story veered off course to depict a tangible, palpable feeling of dread that Mrs. de Winter experiences, we experience it, too. None so effective as that sultry, sumptuous ballroom scene, almost feeling like an acid trip that culminates in the guests cultishly chanting “Rebecca! Rebecca!”. The sleepwalking, the nightmares of being taken alive by ivy, all of it rising to a feverish pitch, masterful parts which bring the palpable feelings of unease and dread from the novel right to life. The end scene, especially the final speech rings a little bit cheesy, but I’ll take it just to see the de Winters finally at peace.

This film’s strengths lie where it dares to take creative liberties, the ballroom and nightmare/dream sequences, that deal in abstract and fantasy. I only wish it could have been more bold to step more into that experimental area, to fully go off the rails on some type of Belladonna of Sadness trip. For the novel itself is as much of a sustained feeling of dread as it is a linear story, and that dread is best deserved through the abstract, less so in its protagonists’ feverish declarations of love for each other. Alternately, certain parts could have benefitted from being more rigidly Downton Abbey-esque, for sometimes I was left feeling unsure whether this film was taking place in 1936 or in current modern times, with the way some of the pacing and dialogue went. Lastly, a good measure of a film is whether you ever wish to revisit it again, and I can certainly see myself watching it in the near future again, to luxuriate in its sumptuous colours and haunting atmosphere once more. “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” our protagonist laments, and now, thanks to Ben Wheatley’s skilful adaptation, we can too.

Verdict: ★★★½