Last week, Netflix dropped the trailer for its new adaptation of Rebecca, starring Armie Hammer, Lily James and Kristin Scott Thomas. The film will hit the streaming service in October. I decided to reread Rebecca this weekend; I read it once in eighth grade and found the whole thing horribly romantic. I made it about halfway through before sitting down to write this.
I won’t talk at length about the movie, since it hasn’t come out yet, but I will say that based on the trailer I think the director, Ben Wheatley, misunderstands the nature of the nameless protagonist’s fears. Reading the book, it feels like a Xanax prescription and a good therapist would have helped her greatly. But I’m getting away from what I want to write about.
When I was a kid, Beauty & The Beast ranked close to, if not at, the top of my list of favorite movies. I loved the castle, the funny servants, the songs. I loved Belle, with her nose always stuck in a book. And I felt the siren song of the Beast, who was weirdly hot and whose transformation into a human is always kind of disappointing. My favorite song is “Something There,” which sets to music the moment when two people who’ve previously disliked each other slowly realize they’re falling for each other. That’s romance.
[ID: Belle and the Beast in “Beauty & The Beast” crouched together during “Something There.”]
So many of the most iconic love stories in western culture follow this same archetype. A naive, young, beautiful woman is trapped in the company of a “beastly” man. Maybe he’s physically ugly, or has a dark secret, or is just an enormous asshole. The naive, young, beautiful woman probably ought to run from him, but she never does, and he’s transformed in the light of her love.
This is the plot of Jane Eyre, where Rochester is unfortunately sexy but also a total dick who has his wife locked in the attic. This is The Sound Of Music, where Captain Von Trapp is ridiculously sexy but a huge grouch until Maria fills his life with music and adorable children. This is Twilight, though Edward is the one who warns Bella to stay away from, and I’m pretty sure this is 50 Shades of Grey, though I don’t have any first hand knowledge of it.
Rebecca belongs to the strain of these stories that deconstructs the trope in some way. Maxim is unchanged by his nameless wife’s affections, and it all ends in tragedy. In Crimson Peak, the implied horrors of Jane Eyre (his wife! is locked! in the attic!) become quite literal. In Paul Thomas Anderson’s Phantom Thread both husband and wife are monstrous in their own way, and they thrive in the masochistic world they make together.
I feel guilty. When I read Rebecca the first time, I didn’t realize how terrible the husband was; I just wanted them to be together and happy. I still love Beauty & The Beast (though I refuse to watch the Emma Watson version), The Sound of Music and any story where the man changes his terrible ways and slowly falls in love. There’s something so sexy about watching these men’s walls crumble; it’s why the erotic power of the Captain and Maria dancing the Laendler is unmatched. And there’s something so enticing about these women’s ability to perfectly perform the demands of womanhood: They’re beautiful, sweet, loving, kind. Belle is so tiny compared to the Beast, the embodiment of every feminine ideal that no real human can live up to.
I read once that the original Beauty & The Beast fairy tale was meant to give hope to young girls who were married off to terrible husbands. “He might change,” the story says. “He might treat you terribly now, but maybe if you love him enough, he’ll learn to love you.” I hate that so much. It’s sad to think about generations of women handed over to terrible men and how this story was propaganda to help everyone feel a little better about it. It might still be propaganda.
I’ve been trying to imagine a gender-flipped version of the fairy tale. An ugly woman, who’s an enormous asshole, redeemed by the love of a beautiful and kind man. Why would that man stay around a woman like that? I ask. I don’t have the answer.