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“A sucessora [The successor]” is a novel
published in 1934, the work of the Brazilian writer Maria Carolina Nabuco de
Araújo (1890-1981), who descended from a family of grand landowners and notable
participants in political life in Brazil. When a girl she stayed in Europe and
lived in the USA. To these he dedicated his monograph, published in 1967,
entitled “Retrato dos Estados Unidos à luz da sua literatura”, regarding which I
take the opportunity to report appropriate brief elements in view of my
analysis, illuminating elements regarding the forma mentis of Carolina Nabuco.
She has an intense appreciation for the American society that grew from the
linguistic, ideological, and practical seeds sown by early English colonizers
and the Puritan Christian religion, a society that stood up to the Marxist
danger. The story of “A sucessora” revolves around the character of Marina. She
is a twenty-year-old woman who has green eyes and brown hair. She has a large
passion for reading humanistic books, which have placed her a step higher in
her young life than her frivolous peers. If on the one hand she felt
uncomfortable adapting to light and worldly female company, on the other in a
male context of committed and demanding discussion she achieved success. It is
not the stuff of all girls, even nowadays, to display similar intellectual
qualities, nor even to adopt a personal ex libris: “semper fidelis”, that of
Marina, chosen due to the fact that she considered her own serious constancy to
be the key aspect of his character. “Semper fidelis” has been the official
motto of the US Navy (“United States Marine Corps”) since 1883. In Portuguese
there is the adjective “marino/marinho” (from the Latin “marinus”), the
feminine noun “marinha” also indicates a naval fleet. In “A sucessora” the
protagonist meets, by chance, the recent widower Roberto Steen, a 35-year-old
man, in the country house of her wealthy family. The two fall in love at first
sight and get married immediately. He comes out of a marriage that lasted 14
years, without children. His first wife, Alice, passed away prematurely
following illness. The events narrated in the novel take place in the peaceful
years between the two twentieth-century world wars. In the house of Roberto,
who represents the exponent of one of the richest families in Brazil, the house
where the newlyweds reside, there is an appreciated painting of the figure of
Alice, portrayed in her splendor. Alice, in her short life, had been a much
admired leading lady. Her ways of saying and doing, her being, aroused lively
and profound applause, consensus and admiration from the planetary system of
people that revolved around her. All this group of friends and relatives of the
old Steen family puts Marina under scrutiny, with curiosity and the intention
to see and evaluate whether the new bride is up to the task of her
disappearance.This situation throws Marina into a competitive clash with Alice.
For this reason, the latter’s painting becomes a literal nightmare. Marina is
appreciated for her beauty, but she discovers that those who frequent the Steen
House, including her sister-in-law Germana (Roberto’s sister), are made up of
people who do not like conversations that are not of a worldly and light tone.
These love the cult of hedonism, aesthetics, divertissement. And Marina, coming
from the world of large estates with its tradition, finds herself disoriented
in the face of urban bourgeois life. These two worlds are measured in “A
sucessora”: the first in an advanced state of decadence after the Brazilian
abolition of slavery in 1888, the second in its unstoppable phase of
technological and industrial expansive growth. The attempt to mediate between
the two can be perceived in the novel. Here is praised the character of Miguel,
Marina’s cousin, in love with her, with whom he was engaged before she broke
off this engagement in order to marry Roberto. Miguel is a journalist who
rejects the rationalist inclination, a lover of the sentimental and passionate
connotation typical of a model of Latin American man that is not entirely gone
today. He would prefer to act as a stimulator of the instincts of the masses
rather than as an educator and modeller. His story, culminating in the decision
to place himself on the margins in a society now requiring better doses of
order, is presented by the Brazilian author of the analyzed text as a failure.
Here I disagree about the values assigned to the parts of the problem. The
impulsive, old-fashioned Latino man, to me, is not a positive role model. Macho
and machismo, the predominant action on reflection and ratio by virtue of an
exclusive emotional conduction, in my eyes, represent derailments. I am a
rationalist, and I consider it inappropriate to leave the driving of the
Platonic chariot to the horses. There are elements of this rural world of which
Carolina Nabuco laments the decline that I don’t like. The first is the
suprematism of white descendants of the Portuguese colonizers, which has not
been fully archived. An atmosphere of forced cohabitation is perceived with the
parallel descendants of the natives and other emigrants of various ethnic
groups. In some passages of the novel, few but significant, these are despised
because of their backwardness and ignorance, even behaviors are attributed to
them (in an unjustified and unclear way) which portray them (with forced
objectivity) as negative characters. This does not happen with civilized
whites, who are still surrounded by an aura of superiority. Carolina Nabuco was
the daughter of a liberal-conservative politician, an abolitionist of slavery
in Brazil in her time, fearful, according to what is handed down from the
past,of the danger of an Africanization of the Brazilian nation. Her novel
records shadows and contradictions. These can be traced back to a not so
disguised apologia of the Portuguese white Catholic tradition. It is worth not
overlooking that a “Catecismo historiado (Doutrina cristã para a primeira
comunhão)” by this author was published in her homeland in 1940, and reprinted
in three other editions until 1957. Marina can be appreciated in “A sucessora”
for his “clean” line of descent. Of this connotation of the ultimately
victorious protagonist, what remains is more the apologue than the
condemnation. When the Brazilian writer addressed the theme of multi-ethnic
coexistence in Brazil in the novel, showing a sharp feeling of displeasure
towards the phenomenon («An endless parade. Race without beauty [...] curiously
mixed. Opposite types, which intersected with indifference, without realizing
the contrasts they presented, united, in the new world, only by the national
spirit, slowly and solidly formed»), among other things he spoke of the «big
noses of the Jews». This detail inserted in the text together with the concept
of «raça» in the 1930s, the years of rise of German Nazism, does not appear
delicate to us in the long run nor can it go unnoticed or escape us. Talking
about «narizes grandes de judeu» is equivalent to showing a topos deriving from
the input of the original traditional anti-Semitism of Christianity. This echo
of Catholicism no shows the conditioning of a religious tradition, which is
more honored than criticized. Marina and her mother come out of a rigid
Catholic educational formation, however (in the face of their closure) in the
novel they always shine towards the final destination. Roberto is also a
practicing Catholic. He seems to find us in “I promessi sposi”, with Agnese,
Lucia and Renzo. Of questionable Catholicism, not only Brazilian Catholicism,
alongside that anti-Semitic stain just mentioned, in the novel we can observe a
religious festival where happens the
slaughter of a puppet representing a
witch. Which constitutes a clear indication, albeit in a climate of
divertissement, of tragic memories of past persecutions, which Enlightenment
modernity itself has forced to no longer be practiced with a bloody
continuation to the detriment of real women. This Brazil of Carolina Nabuco
(who remained unmarried in her life) to be founded, according to a popular
Manzoni perspective in “A sucessora”, on a Christian tradition made better
suited to contemporary circumstances, but not much on a less suffocating
normative level, I do not like it. I remind the praise of machismo mentioned
above, but there is also an anti-feminist spirit opposed to that new historical
society better open to secularism. It is said in the novel: «Today no one wants
to know anything that could hinder freedom. Beautiful women want to be able to
show their ignorance without constraint». This is stated in contrast to the
Catholic Marina, the champion, uncensured, of the text in question, who prays
regularly and walks with the rosary. Carolina Nabuco’s antipathy towards a
freer world less subservient to Christian doctrine is revealed to be palpable
within a narrative framework that proposes to abandon only the unfeasible of
the ancestral Brazilian Catholic tradition: slavery, practical religious
persecution. But otherwise the Brazilian writer seems to tell us that white
supremacism and Catholic primacy remain values that should not be set aside:
indigenous people, Jews and blacks still remain beings to be kept at a distance
in the ranks of the new bourgeois Brazil. Even if the macho Catholic latifundia
declines, rightly or wrongly. The author of the book seems to tell us, not in a
very veiled way, that the renewed Brazilian society must continue within the
values imposed by the Church, whose I remind in Latin America previous long diffusion
of the obsolete racist instrument of the
estatutos de limpieza de sangre. Proto-Nazi rules
coming from fifteenth-century Catholic Spain, where they targeted, with a
discriminatory objective, on the basis of an (unjustifiable!) biological
parameter based on the
purity of blood in the Christian family
hereditary line, primarily Jews followed by blacks and Muslims (all judged
to be of dangerously unhealthy blood), also took root in Brazil, a large South
American Portuguese colony. Here they found application within colonial society
and remained in force until 1773. The Catholic Inquisition was operational for
centuries throughout the entire territory of Latin America following Spanish
and Portuguese influence. In Brazil it was active between the 16th and 18th
centuries: in Belo Horizonte the Museum of the Brazilian Inquisition has
existed since 2012, and every March 31st the victims of unreasonable
persecutions are commemorated. The Catholic Church has never dissolved its
investigative institute, but rather changed its name several times: since 1965
that institution which was the Inquisition has been called the Congregation for
the doctrine of the faith. The Portuguese Inquisition was abolished by state
law in 1821. Brazil proclaimed itself independent from the motherland in 1822,
in 1889 it transformed from a monarchy with a Catholic State religion into a
federal republic projected towards a healthier secularism. In Portugal, the
National day of remembrance for the victims of the Inquisition was established
in 2020 (March 31). The Brazilian 1930s were a restless era in which the newly
formed dictatorial and conservative regime of Getúlio Vargas stemmed the
political pressures emerging from the right and left (like the Church already
in conflict with liberals and Marxists). In 1931 the monumental “Christ the
Redeemer” of Rio de Janeiro (then the federal capital) was completed. It is in
this climate that “A sucessora” comes out with its Catholic pervasion.
Therefore Marina and Roberto echo Renzo and Lucia, and on the other hand Alice’s
death can be compared to that of Don Rodrigo despite their respective narrative
chronological locations. The disappearance of Roberto’s first wife is very
questionably presented as “providential” like that of Manzoni’s antagonist. “A
sucessora” is influenced by the author’s Catholic readings. When Miguel kisses
Marina, a married woman, a Dantesque suggestion comes from Paolo and Francesca.
With the exception of her, Marina, who was condescending at the time, then
immediately closed the matter dismissing it as a “sin” and confessing to a
priest, also permanently distancing her cousin. Here is the “saving” power of
Catholicism, in an episode of which Roberto will never have news. The figure of
such a husband appears to be quite evanescent in the text, and it is no
coincidence that Marina especially appreciates the external vir side of her
husband: Roberto does not possess, or is not shown, a depth of homo, which
despite everything , possesses the sentimental Miguel a little better. The
Catholic Marina is pathologically obsessed with Alice and the painting of her
that represents her. In the motif of the painting, an expression of
monstrosity, of something terrifying, a Wildean suggestion appears.The novel
indicates psychoanalytic coordinates towards the clinical classification of
Marina’s personality in an explicit manner, but does not complete them. He
leaves this confrontation between the two women, the dead and the living,
shrouded in trouble. As if there were truly a challenge, a continuation of the
charm of Alice’s action from beyond the grave. For almost the entire novel,
Roberto Steen’s family system plots against his new wife and has at its
symbolic head, Alice’s vicar, Germana, the main apologist of the previous sister-in-law.
Alice becomes a heavy persecutory neurotic complex for Marina. Carolina Nabuco
highlights the effects, not the causes of the phenomenon. Marina is very
disturbed by the Catholic education received because it imposed a closed
mindset on her, beyond of what her merits may be. The reason for her suffering
is therefore placed on the “diabolical” Alice, the «courageous [destemida]» woman thirsty for entertainment, targeted even
when she puts herself in danger in a successful attempt to save a child. An act
that is in itself worthy and valuable is subjected to an incomprehensible rebuke
in the text on the basis of recklessness. Carolina Nabuco contests an inversion
of roles between men and women, where the latter take on masculine
characteristics (courage, in the case mentioned) while the former become
effeminate. Another exemplum of this last case study is another passage in
which Miguel reproaches himself: «A man must not have sensitivity
[sensibilidade]». The figure of Alice takes on the role of symbol of the
emancipated modern woman, she represents the new witch, the door to Hell. The
accident at home in which Marina is causing, no one knows how involuntarily,
the burning of her rival’s portrait constitutes, outside the surface narrative
schemes, an attempt to kill, to burn, the witch (it is a theme already
previously reported elsewhere, a passage in which the evidence was clearer).
Roberto’s new wife aims to bring the rhythm of life around the couple back
within the iron confines of Catholic morality since she keeps in mind that it
is «the duty of Christian women to fight against the paganization of the times
in its manifest symptoms». Unmarried friends in church pay the costs, banned
likewise to events in the home swimming pool as dressing in modern costumes is
considered scandalous and immoral. Let us not forget that the Constitution of
Brazil issued in 1891, which remained in force until 1930, recognized only
civil marriage as valid («A Republica só reconhece o casamento civil, cuja
celebração será gratuita»). In the Vargasian era, religious marriage assumed
the possibility of civil validity. This is Marina marching through the
narrative advancing towards the final triumph: a young neurotic Catholic in
relation to whom the Brazilian writer points out that it is the wrong world
around Marina,and not the contrary (where one could instead, with appropriate
balance, point out the defects of a modernity which should however not be
demonised, much less completely). That the young woman prefers the company of
books and that of mature people is one of the few things I admire about Marina:
I don’t like surrounding myself with mountebanks either. At the end of the
1970s, a television stage transposition of “A sucessora” was made in Brazil
(Carolina Nabuco still alive). It was among the first telenovelas to arrive in
Italy in 1983. I remember it very well, even though I was little at the time,
and I remember following it until the last episode, which remained in my mind. More
than forty years on, I don’t remember anything in detail about the over one
hundred previous episodes, but regarding the last episode I remember staying at
home for the specific purpose of seeing it. Above I talked about the painting
reproducing Alice which in the novel was about to end up burned. In the soap
opera, in the final episode, it is discovered that Alice had, without Roberto’s
knowledge, a child from a lover before she died early. Marina’s desire in the
written narrative to find a flaw, a fault, in Alice, venerated by other
surviving acquaintances, finds satisfaction in the soap opera in this memorable
last episode, of which I have not forgotten that Roberto, cornered by the
evidence of an unknown Alice faithless, takes a kind of torch and sets fire to
the painting of his first wife, destroying it forever. The telenovela consumed
(in effigy) the stake of the witch, Ianua Diaboli, which was not completed in
the novel, in which however Marina asked in prayer that the house where she
lived with her husband be completely devoured by the flames with the feared
portrait inside (again once we notice a Christian theme, that of punishing and
purifying fire). Marina’s escape to her original maternal home (she no longer
has her father for some time) represents Carolina Nabuco’s desire for a return
to a bygone era in which she dominated the agricultural economy of the large
estate managed by the descendants of the Portuguese settlers. In the pages of
this section there is an event linked to the favorite tree during the
protagonist’s childhood, during which it is cut down for wood by a servant
unaware of Marina’s attachment. She thinks to herself about the man who had
left her displeased: «It’s not worth getting angry with this near stupid». The
felling of this tree constitutes an allegory of the end of the regime of large
estates with forced servile labour. The Brazilian author is aware that she
cannot turn back the clock of History. She therefore projects her disgusted
protagonist of the world offered to her by her husband not towards radical
reaction, but towards a synthesis in the dialectic between Marina and the urban
bourgeoisie,following the overcoming of the protracted negative critical phase.
Marina becomes pregnant. The idea of paternity erases all Roberto’s doubts in
the face of his wife’s strange behavior aimed at distancing herself from Alice’s
disturbing portrait. The two had come close to an irreparable breakup, but now
her motherhood takes them far away on a journey to celebrate the event. In its
course, Marina learns, through an old acquaintance of Alice’s, that this de
facto she was never truly happy in her existence due to the fact that she was
unable to have children. The information deactivates the neurosis centered on
Roberto’s first wife. The firm perfection venerated in Alice by others
collapses before the gaze of Marina, who perceives a questionable dimension of
incompleteness in it. The Brazilian author of the novel allowed her protagonist
to remove the siege of Alice’s neurotic complex in a way that I considered
unclear. Marina’s motherhood here is in fact configured as the destiny of
Christian women, not as the biological possibility of each woman. Carolina
Nabuco is presenting us with a religious principle: the main female task lies in
having children and taking care of them until adolescence; in replacement a
sober, monastic life (the writer wrote a biography, published in 1957, of
Catherine of Siena, a saint nowadays scientifically considered to have a
disturbed anorexic personality). I don’t like it for this reason, not because
of the other principle that I contrasted in the antithesis. Because we clearly
notice that Alice ultimately emerges defeated due to the failure to satisfy a
religious expectation in the divertissement. Would the conclusion of “A
sucessora” be acceptable that non-puritan women who have not carried out
pregnancy are not accomplished women? Certainly not. And I don’t think there’s
any point in going on about it. If Marina has overcome her neurosis - and I
agree that she has overcome it - it is by virtue of another, Jungian mechanism.
Alice’s neurotic complex, to which Marina had opened the doors, moves away as
the latter follows the archetype of Mother Nature, which gives her the energy
to look elsewhere and forward. The religious scheme offers a pseudo-solution.
However, Marina manages to talk to Roberto about her problems, and the painting
ends up in a museum due to the latter’s decision. I prefer the ending of the
book to that of the telenovela. “A sucessora” is a novel known beyond its
literary value because together with another more well-known work by another
author it was at the center of a critical controversy in which was suspected,
and even accused, of plagiarism, without that nevertheless it ended up in
judicial proceedings, Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) in relation to her famous
novel “Rebecca” (released in 1938, four years after “A sucessora”).I read and
examined the second text by this English writer, which made an excellent
impression on me. Regarding the vexata quaestio, I would absolutely not speak
of plagiarism, not even if Daphne du Maurier had read the previous work of the
Brazilian writer, indicated by some critics as the basis of inspiration for the
creation of “Rebecca”. The conclusion of my analysis on this last text leads me
to believe that its creator actually read “A sucessora”, however, contrary to
the statements of these controversial critics mentioned, she developed a new
work, original and of high literary value , which in relation to the previous
one constitutes a sort of “dialectical sequel”, a response, a reply, an
objection to the ideal heritage highlighted and valorised by Carolina Nabuco.
In my opinion, Daphne du Maurier has done something very intelligent, very well
thought out, not within everyone’s reach, but not outside the realm of
comprehensibility either. I judge, naturally hypothetically, in the way in
which I will explain below, that between “A sucessora” and “Rebecca” there is
an organic link in which analogies by consonance and contrast are not the
result of coincidences, much less of plagiarism, but rather key pieces to
decode in the entire mosaic of the English writer. At the beginning of my
examination of “Rebecca, in comparing the two texts in question, I soon had the
impression that there was a thread between them, and not long after a
dialectical relationship appeared to me, in the way already mentioned. In the
following analysis I relied on the ideal orientation and mindset of Daphne du
Maurier, who was a woman of secular and progressive inclination, not linked to
religious traditionalism (she was the daughter of a Freemason). This, combined
with the fact that when she created “Rebecca” she was around thirty years old (namely
a young woman in the flower of the energies invested in youthful vocations),
leads me to believe that the aforementioned stages a reversal of Carolina Nabuco’s
traditionalist preferences and that therefore the two works de facto must
necessarily have tangencies. I consider it plausible that the purpose of “Rebecca”
in the mind of its author was to respond to the religious traditionalism
exalted by the Brazilian writer. I think, due to dialectical connection
channels which I will illustrate better shortly, that Daphne du Maurier saw “A
sucessora”, she did not like the reactionary ideological content, and that in
her youthful enthusiasm she constructed a subtle sequel as reply: something
comparable to a dispute between two philosophical works in which the second
replies and responds. I read “Rebecca” so since I wondered what its creative
input was, also wanting to verify whether there were more or less random
coincidences or even plagiarism.I clearly reject everything that other critics
my predecessors have connected with the hypothesis of plagiarism. I feel like
breaking a spear in favor of the English writer, therefore I reject the
conclusions to her detriment which lead to the accusation of undue imitation. I
don’t see cloning: “A sucessora” and “Rebecca” are two different novels, a
pro-Catholic work and a black-and-yellow response. In my modest way of
evaluating it, we cannot speak of plagiarism in any way: in this wake, in
extremis and absurdly, all those who have included a time machine and a time
traveler in their papers could be accused of having plagiarized H. G. Wells. At
most, in other people’s shoes, referring to our case, I would have spoken of “ancestry”
and not “plagiarism”. Obviously I don’t deny that there are possibilities of
literary plagiarism, but this does not seem to me to be the exemplum. I will
point out, with the best possible clarity, how the relationship between the two
works I am examining is one of “thesis and antithesis” and not of “copy and
paste”. Dynamic analogies, whether consonant or contrasting, necessarily have
their legitimate reason for being in a punctual and dialectical exposition of
ideal comparison: one cannot reply to another’s illustration if one does not
demolish it by retracing it. Daphne du Maurier, in my opinion, produced in “Rebecca”
a demolition and overturning of the religious traditionalism of Carolina
Nabuco, and she implemented it in such a refined form that perhaps it was
missed, or if understood, it was not very welcome. Let us therefore proceed to
see this novel by the English author and highlight the key points of the
construction. There is a passage that in my outlined analytical perspective
struck me a lot and that seemed to me to be the key to everything: «Men are
simpler than you imagine […] but what goes on in the twisted tortuous minds of
women would baffle anyone».That is to say in general about the novel: go beyond
a misleading sensation of plagiarism, dig deep. This is what I did, accepting
the invitation towards a perspective that I had already assumed earlier in my
reading. This passage seemed like a permit to me. The first thing to clarify
now in my examination journey concerns the anonymous protagonist of “Rebecca”.
Everyone would be pushed to compare her to Marina from the other novel. I think
this is wrong: the anonymous one is Alice, Alice reincarnated in search of
justice for the previous way she was treated; Marina the Catholic, she’s
Rebecca. How, it may be said, could the saintly Marina be represented by the no
good Rebecca? I say: but didn’t Marina kiss her cousin Miguel when she was
married, then saving her facade and appearances? One of the things that “Rebecca”
wants us to understand - I hypothesize - is that behind the boast of Christian
virtues there may be much more: Rebecca and her cousin represent Marina and her
cousin, not in a context of plagiarism, but of heavy criticism of Christian
religious hypocrisy. Who knows how many adulterous relationships are hidden by
conventional religious ordinariness? Like that of Marina... Here is a passage
by Daphne du Maurier expressed in the dialectical form: intelligentbus pauca.
The anonymous protagonist, around whom the servants Alice and Robert (!)
revolve, is not anonymous by chance: we must understand that she is Carolina
Nabuco’s Alice revived. “Rebecca” stages a nemesis for the benefit of Roberto
Stein’s deceased wife Alice. Daphne du Maurier’s Alice II is a 21 year old girl
without much experience, simple and sensitive; Maxim de Winter (Roberto Stein’s
alter ego) is 42 years old and at the beginning of the novel has lost his wife
Rebecca for a few months. He meets the anonymous woman, falls in love with her reciprocated,
the two get married and go to live in an elegant English home. It would seem
like a plagiarism of “A sucessora”, but in my opinion it isn’t. History repeats
itself in order to make us understand what the first term of the general
antithesis is. Let’s say that it is a prompt, not plagiarism at all. Then, as
mentioned, the styles and substances of the two novels are very different
despite everything. “Rebecca” has approximately double the length and a
descriptive set that projects it towards an easy concrete stage transposition.
Was it written with the desire that one could, as has been done several times,
make an animated visual version of it? I don’t know, but I wouldn’t rule it
out. Maxim de Winter, unlike Roberto Stein, is not a character who evaporates
immediately. He has a homo personality, he nourishes emotions, he experiences
internal conflicts, he is not the integral vir/macho celebrated by Carolina
Nabuco, the man in one piece, good for all occasions. This other comparison
brings out a new dialectical point of ideological detachment from “A sucessora”.
Here it is argued that viri should not be sensitive, in “Rebecca” instead about
the servant Robert it is said that he was «sensitive». If Miguel lives again in
that grotesque parody of Jack Favell, a pathetic degradation of the South
American macho, the male protagonist in Daphne du Maurier acquires considerable
interior and psychological depth: idest, to play him in the cinema you need a
Laurence Olivier, someone who played the role of Hamlet, to give you an idea. I
find it very difficult to argue plagiarism in the face of such considerations.
That Alice II, the girl unsuited to discussing with Mrs Van Hopper’s company
(unlike Marina, the interlocutor who reads books), represents Nabuco’s Alice is
also suggested by their shared artistic talents. A detail worth highlighting
comes from the civil marriage of du Maurier’s literary couple in conflict with
the religious marriage of Nabuco’s couple: here is another dialectical point,
analogy by contrast; the English writer did not really appreciate the formal
institution of marriage. A new piece of the mosaic of “Rebecca” placing its
creator in opposition, always dialectical, derives from the character of this
American Mrs Van Hopper. We have seen Carolina Nabuco’s sympathies towards the
USA, inside and outside “A sucessora”. Daphne du Maurier seems to attack them
through this figure of a mature American woman (symbolizing the United States)
who at the beginning of the novel supervises the destiny of Alice II, like an
oppressive cloak, a cloak that has become a cage, from which she will go out
and escape “providentially “ joining Maxim. The “Mrs Van Hopper / Alice II”
dichotomy is full of political implications for me. When Alice II originally
explains to Maxim that she performs companion duties, he compares “buying companionship
“ to “a primitive idea”, to the “oriental slave market”. Which could indicate a
social mentality that has at times still remained discriminatory in its
sectors. The moment “Rebecca” came out, the pot of History was boiling, and it
is not strange that a sharp and refined mind such as that of its creator inserted
cryptic elements of symbolic and concrete historical reference into it. Similar
criticism of Carolina Nabuco’s Stars and Stripes Americanism, witnessed by her
SEMPER FIDELIS, then returns in Rebecca’s death. She, representing MARINA,
sinks dead inside a boat: a dynamic which does not seem casual to me but rather
full of meanings of political criticism. I note that Daphne du Maurier attacked
the axis of pan-American conservative traditionalism, an axis aimed at stemming
progressive social pressures for the reactionary protection of the power of
land and industrial wealth. On the other hand, the English author’s text
defends the emancipation of the modern woman from all the burdens of the past:
Alice II in fact undertakes a process of growth which will lead the
inexperienced girl to a degree of solid maturity. Even in her uncertainties,
she however personifies an authentic and genuine woman, devoid of neurotic
religious ornaments. Her uncontaminated simplicity pushes her to appreciate the
“pleasure of remembrance” (theorized in works by Mary Shelley, even before
Leopardi). The literary couple of du Maurier reside in the famous residence of
Manderley, alter locus of the luxury home of Roberto Stein and Marina. If we
thought we would find Rebecca’s vicar in Manderley in Maxim’s sister on a par
with Germana and Alice, we would be wrong. Here the task of keeping alive the
disturbing memory of the previous missing wife is entrusted to the housekeeper,
Mrs Danvers. She, she holds that vicarious role; she is effectively acting as
Marina’s (alias Rebecca) mother. If Mrs Danvers defends the cult of Rebecca’s
memory it is because their dynamic bond reproduces the mother-daughter one in
the case of Marina in “A sucessora”: hence the vengeful incitement to suicide
aimed at Alice II. The character of the latter immediately developed in
Manderley, in the narrative, a sense of unease in front of Rebecca’s shadow, an
uneasiness that is however understandable and does not rise to the level of
obsessive neurosis. There is a studied persecution set up by Mrs Danvers to the
detriment of the protagonist: in the novel by the English writer, all the sense
of inadequacy of the latter is not shown to be entirely of her own making, the
aforementioned housekeeper puts a lot of her own into it . In any case, Alice
II experiences that climate of confrontation brought about by others between
her and Rebecca/Marina. And here arises yet another dialectical point in the
construction of Daphne du Maurier. While Marina relies on the Catholic sacrament
of her confession following her fall with her cousin Miguel, Alice II does not fall
into betrayal. She remains intact and more virtuous than Marina, the hypocrite
who will throw a faithless kiss behind her. Alice II finds a “confessor”, and a
sincere friend, in Frank Crowley, an employee of Maxim. We note a new dichotomy
of strong contrast between sacramental confession and open confidence with a
friend. A traditional institution and a freer model collide. “Rebecca” does not
constitute, in my opinion, a plagiarism of “A sucessora” at all, instead it
represents the critical reversal of her. In the novel by the English author, a
painting of Rebecca is mentioned that was taken away from the house before the
second marriage: transposing, that is to say that Roberto Stein, after having
had the painting that terrified Marina removed, commissioned one which
portrayed the latter , the hypocritical saint, and then similarly had it
removed, since Rebecca/Marina was no saint. In the central part of “Rebecca” there
is a key passage on the occasion of the masquerade ball party in Manderley,
parallel to the carnival celebration in Brazil experienced by Marina with the
Lenten spirit of killjoy, a spirit which will fatally fall on Manderley. Maxim
invites the second wife to dress up asWe note a new dichotomy of strong
contrast between sacramental confession and open confidence with a friend. A
traditional institution and a freer model collide. “Rebecca” does not
constitute, in my opinion, a plagiarism of “A sucessora” at all, instead it
represents its critical reversal. In the novel by the English author, a
painting of Rebecca is mentioned that was taken away from the house before her
second marriage: transposing, that is to say that Roberto Stein, after having
had the painting that terrified Marina removed, commissioned one which
portrayed the latter , the hypocritical saint, and then similarly had it
removed, since Rebecca/Marina was no saint. In the central part of “Rebecca”
there is a key passage on the occasion of the masquerade ball party in
Manderley, parallel to the carnival celebration in Brazil experienced by Marina
with the Lenten spirit of killjoy, a spirit which will fatally fall on
Manderley. Maxim invites the second wife to dress up as
Alice-in-Wonderland:
the suggested name does not seem marginal to me, I actually believe that it is
suggested to identify the protagonist as Alice, reincarnated, revived, Roberto
Stein’s first wife. Alice II’s party goes badly as Mrs Danvers (Marina’s
mother) induces her to wear a costume identical to the one used last time by
Rebecca. This further sends the anonymous protagonist into a tailspin, but in
this renewed disturbing and disquieting scenery she tells us illuminating words
about her relationship with Rebecca: «Wherever I walked in Manderley, wherever
I sat, even in my thoughts and in my dreams, I met Rebecca. […] Perhaps I
haunted her as she haunted me […]. Did she resent me and fear me as I resented
her?». We are talking about a relationship of “mutual obsession” between the
living and the deceased, as if life and death no longer had value, and the two
personal poles had been abstract. This is what I believe in comparing the two
novels which I have subjected to analysis. In each of the two, the Catholic Marina
and the free Alice are measured and compared; in Daphne du Maurier the roles
are reversed, and Marina becomes Rebecca, the dead woman obsessed with the
living woman. Here is revealed the secret, in my humble opinion, of those
rather strange words on the surface. That Rebecca represents Marina is
confirmed to us by Mrs Danvers, alias the latter’s mother, when she declares
that she has taken care of Rebecca since she was a child. And she also adds
that she had speech skills, equal to that of Marina, I specify. A stinging dig
at Danvers puts a cherry on the cake of anti-traditionalist criticism: «A weird
gaunt figure in her black dress, the skirt just sweeping the ground like the
full, wide skirts of thirty years ago». A delicate section of my exam concerns
Maxim’s revelation of Rebecca’s femicide. Absolutely, firmly, something that
cannot be tolerated or justified. My task as a literary critic is to explain
symbols and dynamics: I cannot, and much less would I, in a spirit of defense
of the analyzed work of Daphne du Maurier, legitimize a killing, even if it is
literary. Murder constitutes a very serious crime, in reality and also in
fiction: in both contexts only “legitimate defense” can be accepted. However,
this does not lend itself to the benefit of Maxim’s circumstance,
unfortunately: he turns out to be a murderer, and his second wife, aware of the
truth, becomes his accomplice. Reminding the role play, it is Roberto Stein who
kills Marina/Rebecca: that is, another impulsive and passionate “macho” Catholic
hypocritical saint commits the feminicide of his spouse. At the moment of the
murder, Maxim transubstantiates into Roberto Stein: his criminal act has
Christian anti-feminist ancestry. In this limited tragic event the Jungian
Shadow prevails,staining the person responsible indelibly. The fact that
Rebecca was a no-good doesn’t justify Maxim/Roberto. This further revelation to
Alice II frees her mind from the uneasiness she had previously felt, as in the
parallel case of Marina. Maxim does not express regret regarding the very
serious gesture made with Old Testament logic, and this worsens his situation.
If discovered - which however does not happen in the novel - he would have
received a capital punishment. Personally, as a rationalist, I am against any
death sentence, and the disturbing passage on the phenomenology of hanging in “Rebecca”
gives me renewed reason to do so. But we are inside not one, but two novels,
with their symbolic scaffolding, and we have to deal with figures released from
a reality strictly placed under the control of human justice. Rebecca’s
feminicide represents Alice’s revenge, the fact that the former was terminally
ill does not justify her killing in any way, not even on a literary level,
where for me the principles of justice and (Kantian) ethics. In “A sucessora”
it had been Marina’s dark desire to set fire to Roberto Stein’s house with
Alice’s disturbing portrait inside. In “Rebecca”, at the end, when Maxim and
Alice II are safe before the deceived eyes of the Law, Manderley goes up in
flames as in a sort of murky and twisted manifestation of Nemesis. And in my
opinion the circle connecting two works in a dialectical manner, foreign to the
concept of plagiarism, closes. If Carolina Nabuco, with a touch of elegance,
never brought Daphne du Maurier to court, an elderly American writer, Edwina
Levin MacDonald (1878-1944), did so in 1944 in New York, also suing the
publisher of novel “Rebecca” and the producers of the film adaptation (1940)
directed by Alfred Hitchcock. This American author from Louisiana (an old
separatist slave state in 1860), who died before the end of the judgment,
believed that a couple of her novels from the 1920s had been plagiarized. In
his 1948 ruling, the judge promptly clarified, in a fine example of analysis,
writing and objectivity of judgment, the unfoundedness of the accusation of
plagiarism. Francis Rugh Grant (1897-1993), intellectual and activist in support
of Stars and Stripes Pan-Americanism, founder of the “Pan American women’s
association” in 1930 and of the “Inter-American association for democracy and
freedom” in 1950, had written a so-called bombshell article in “The New York
times book review” in ‘41, where he targeted Daphne du Maurier to the advantage
of Carolina Nabuco. In this text he asks how accidental the coincidences could
be between the two novels examined here of these two writers, recently
published at the time. He admires the Nabuco family,appreciated in the USA due
to its political-administrative activity, and regarding the Brazilian author
she informs us that the English translation of “A sucessora”, in view of later
rejected publications, had reached the USA and England. Faced with rejections
motivated by the brevity of the text in relation to the preferences of
English-speaking readers, the unpleasant surprise for Carolina Nabuco was to
learn about “Rebecca” and its subsequent diffusion in Brazil from 1940, translated
in Portuguese. Here the similarities between the two works have animated a
lively reaction against the English author, a reaction that Grant traces in
highlighting the aforementioned analogies. With all due respect to another man
of scholarship attentive to social life, I do not share his judgments on
literary merit, in line with my critical reflections. I cannot say how “A
sucessora” could possibly have reached Daphne du Maurier; I can reiterate my
impression that she read it, in light of my parallel analysis of “Rebecca”: it
is not impossible that she saw it in Portuguese, perhaps a copy coming from
Portugal, and that then all the controversy and the a latere judicial
proceeding mentioned above have induced her, having seen herself misunderstood
(or attacked by Pan-American traditionalists), out of a sense of caution, not
to admit her possible reading of Carolina Nabuco’s novel, however published. A
heavy critical accuser of Daphne du Maurier was Álvaro de Barros Lins
(1912-1970), a multifaceted Brazilian intellectual who came out of a Salesian
college of studies before studying law. This man, who in his life was a highly
prominent personality in twentieth-century Brazil, repeated more or less the
same things as Grant, with increased caustic intensity, in a writing entitled “‘Rebecca’,
um plágio” and contained in one of his works which collects various texts
published in 1941. It was a man who at that time had received the appreciation
of George Bernanos (1888-1948; a notable exponent of Catholicism who lived in
Brazil between ‘38 and ‘45). I believe, in my intellectual modesty, that
supporting the thesis of plagiarism on the limited closed basis of the surface
comparison entails a premature blocking of the analysis, which prevents us from
going in depth where we can better observe the operating conceptual mechanisms
and that dialectical connection between “A sucessora” and “Rebecca” which I
described.
Daphne du Maurier’s passages come from
“Rebecca” (1938, publisher Gollancz).
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