The image of the ideal woman is different in the eyes of Maxim, Frank, Mrs. Danvers, and the narrator
-What makes the qualities of Rebecca better than the narrator's? Why is Rebecca considered more like the ideal woman when she herself has flaws?
- Rebecca "should have been a boy" because she had "spirit", courage, strength, control and was "uncaring"
- the narrator describes herself as a boy (but based on appearance, not personality traits)
- Why does the narrator describe herself as a boy physically, when Mrs. Danvers describes Rebecca a boy based on her qualities?
- Does the ideal woman exist? In a character or if at all
- we talked about how the ideal man needs an ideal woman, which don't exist, so they make one up
- How could Du Maurier fulfill the two female characters to make them whole? Why is the narrator passive and Rebecca aggressive? Why couldn't the two characters have been combined? What point was Du Maurier trying to prove about the ideal woman?
What defines the ideal woman? What kinds of qualities?
ReplyDeleteHow is the narrator described by others?
Be very careful, Jess, not to make judgements...instead, let the characters do that themselves. Identify who defines what a woman should be and how those definitions vary pretty dramatically: Frank, Beatrice, the narrator, Maxim, even Col Julyen weigh in. Then start asking questions of the data they offer you--what do those definitions do to the women in the novel: narrator, Rebecca, Beatrice, even Mrs. Danvers? What is the impact of societal gender expectations on the female? What choices does she seem to have? Is there anyway she can "escape" those confines that seem to define her? What does self-identification for a woman look like in this novel? STICK entirely to Mt Text.
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