The Return Of "Rebecca": On Canonization Of Paradigmatic Romance

With the development of cultural studies, popular writing has witnessed a rising status in literary criticism. This paper studies the popular classic Rebecca and its two rewrites—Mrs. De Winter and The Other Rebecca. Embodying both inheritance and subversion of a female tradition dating back to Jane Eyre, the three novels not only maintain the popularity and appeal of romance fiction as a popular genre but demonstrate the rising status of women's writing.Within the theoretical framework of feminism and gender studies, this paper further explores the possible political effects of reading romance as a form of ideology. Writing by men and writing by women have confronted with each other with different gendered values, though male-female relationship has long been focus of both writings. Kosofsky Sedgwick's explicates on the fact that the male-female-male triangle is a canonical plot upholding male homosociality in patriarchal society. Based on this, Diana Wallace has advocated a female-identified triangle, i.e. a female-male-female triangle (Wallace 5). In the female-male-female pattern (or the second wife triangle in the three novels) here discussed, two women are fighting each other for one man's love and for an independent female identity. Exploring both female and male subjectivities within the female-identified triangle plot, Rebecca and its two rewrites negotiate with the male literary tradition for empowerment, advocating equal respects for both female and male subjectivity and tolerance towards a world of variety.Amid the climate of cultural studies, there comes into being two paralleled canons of literature and theory in curriculum of literature study, blurring conventional boundary between highbrow and lowbrow writing. Literary critics, as well as writers are conveying theoretical contemplations via the traditional fictional form. Women critics and writers are also creating "theoretical fictions", embodying in the fictions their understanding of feminism and gender studies. I therefore contend that Rebecca and its two rewrites can be reinterpreted from the perspective of "theoretical fictions". Considered as theoretical rewriting of the "paradigmatic romance", the three novels reflect a rising status of romance from a popular genre for entertainment to "a canon of their own" for women amid multi-canons in contemporary milieu of cultural studies.