Oppression And Rebellion

Daphne du Maurier(1907-1989) is a famous English novelist in the twentiethcentury. As her works are full of mystery, romance and suspense, she won MysteryWriters of America Grad Master Award in 1977. Published in 1938, her masterpieceRebecca made a splash in literary circles and was the bestseller at that time but didn’treceive enough attention among the literary critics. In recent years, with theflourishing of feminism, criticism on Daphne du Maurier’s works especially thefemale characters comes into the fore. In the meantime, since the late 20 th century,influenced by the turn to the issue of space in the humanities and social science area,the critics are paying increasing attention on the spatial theory. Thus this thesisattempts to combine spatial theory with feminism and analyze the author’s feministthoughts expressed in Rebecca from the perspective of Henry Lefebvre’s spatialtheory.Firstly, the geographical space in Rebecca can be divided into two categories:the accessible space and the inaccessible space, the open space and the closed space.As the mistress of Manderley, Manderley and the inside world of Mr. de Winter,which are supposed to be the accessible space for Mrs. de Winter, actually are thesymbol of the inaccessible patriarchal society. In the different geographical spacesystems, the heroines’ psychological state changes correspondingly. Both of thesereflect the oppression on women at that time.Secondly, in terms of the psychological space, the narrator “I” changes frombeing dominated by space and men to dominating them, and all the dissipatedbehavior of Rebecca are trying to escape from the patriarchal society and pursuefemale freedom and independence, both of which reflect the awakening of femaleconsciousness.At last, the narrator “I” turns into a counterpart of man instead of a subordinateof her husband and gains the respect and independence, and Rebecca breaks throughthe restrictions imposed on women and subverts the traditional image of women. Bymeans of all the struggles of the two heroines, they achieve certain social space andbreak away from the conventional social constraint, which establishes a new femaleimage.The thesis comes to the conclusion that the protagonists break through thegeographical space, then achieve the psychological growth and finally realize therecognition and promotion of their social status, which embodies women’s pursuit offreedom and equality.