Comparison Of Rebecca And Lady Audley's Secret

With their evocative settings, conflicting memories, and eerie atmospheres, the Gothic genre weaves a tale of the troubled relationship between the past and present. Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film Rebecca and Mary E. Braddon’s novel Lady Audley’s Secret both delve into the lingering effects of past transgressions. As their female protagonists grapple with the themes of identity, agency, and the past, they are ensnared by secrets that refuse to stay buried, creating a sense of intrigue and suspense. In fiction, settings and landscapes often reflect the psyche of their inhabitants. The Gothic genre epitomises this, with settings becoming characters in their own right. Frequently featuring vast and crumbling mansions with labyrinthine corridors

Time is both creator and destroyer of youth and is often viewed with contradiction; it is prized but looked down upon, celebrated but vilified, desired but despised. The dynamism of time lends itself to the Gothic genre, in which the superficiality of youth and beauty contrasts with the decaying grandeur of the past. While Lady Audley climbs the social ladder, Mrs. de Winter is thrust into its heights. She is self-conscious of her youth and meekness, wishing to be instead ‘a woman of 36, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls’ (00:16:51). In her naiveté, she is unaware that to the wily Maxim, her youth is her most appealing attribute. This is not only pronounced explicitly through the characters’ dynamics; the film’s camerawork and set design further emphasise it. As Tania Modleski observes, ‘the viewer receives a subliminal impression of her as a child peeking in on or intruding into an adult world that provokes both curiosity and dread’ (45). She’s young and inexperienced, insecure in her new relationship, and he meets her self-doubt with wry condescension; ’it’s a pity [she has] to grow up’

Danvers and Lady Audley, death is the only escape. Mrs. de Winter survives only by submitting to Maxim’s authority – a death in itself. The equating of beauty with innocence and youth with naiveté is the patriarchal shadow that looms large over the women of Lady Audley’s Secret and Rebecca. This dichotomy highlights one of the tensions between societal expectations of women and the realities of time and aging, a conflict Gothic lends itself to. The Gothic genre acts as a lens through which to examine the complexities of the past and present, unearthing the tension, trauma, and haunting legacies that persist across time. By exploring the natural entanglement of memory and truth, it challenges the notion that the past is the past. Through their eerie settings, enigmatic characters, and sinister plots, Lady Audley’s Secret and Rebecca underscore the timeless relevance of the unresolved tensions between tradition and modernity, the known and the unknown, and the past and the present.Word Count: 938 Works Cited: Braddon, Mary Elizabeth. Lady Audley’s Secret. 1862. The. Global Grey, 2018, pp. 113-117.