“You have a lovely and unusual name.” Mrs de Winter from Daphne du Maurier’s ”Rebecca” – a Gothic Heroine in Search of Identity

• Authors: Anna Kędra-Kardela
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Mrs de Winter, one of the main characters from Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, as an example of a Gothic figure. The analysis traces the stages in the development of the heroine by demonstrating how she first becomes, through the process of gothicisation, “the Gothic damsel in distress.” Vulnerable and easily threatened, she is defined solely in relation to Mr de Winter, her aristocratic husband, whose status she is unable to match. As a result of her growth as an individual, Mrs de Winter is degothicised.We witness a change in her attitude toward her tormentors: she no longer feels intimidated; she starts developing in what we view as an identity-building process her public and personal sense of a mature and independent individual.

DE

Der Artikel enthält Zusammenfassungen nur in Englisch.

FR

L'article contient uniquement les résumés en anglais.

Keywords

EN

Daphne du Maurier, <em>Rebecca</em>, Gothic novel, damsel in distress, degothicisation

DE

FR

• Publisher: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Marii Curie-Skłodowskiej
• Journal: Lublin Studies in Modern Languages and Literature
• Year: 2019
• Volume: 43
• Issue: 2

Dates

published

2019

online

2019-07-03

Contributors

author

Anna Kędra-Kardela

References

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Identifiers

DOI

10.17951/lsmll.2019.43.2.75-85