Joan Fontaine as Mrs de Winter and Judith Anderson
as Mrs Danvers in Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940) [a]
I.
As a provocateur, I'm naturally interested in the concept of incitement, which is usually seen negatively and in contradistinction to the more seductive-sounding idea of enticement.
Those with a background in the law will be quick to point out that to incite is, in legal terms, to actively encourage another person to commit a criminal act, whether or not that person carries such out.
Interestingly, incitement now seems to be taken more seriously - to be seen as more sinful - than the deed itself [b]. In other words, it's as if thinking and communicating evil thoughts were more grievous than actually doing bad things. After all, sticks and stones may break our bones, but it's hurty words that cause emotional damage.
Such moral logic explains the current obsession with so-called hate speech and why some people are now investigated by the police for non-crime hate incidents when actual criminals are being let out of jail early or not being prosecuted at all.
The rationale seems to be if the police intervene before a criminal act has taken place and actual harm caused, then that has to be a good thing. But if in practice that means curtailing free speech and locking people us for what they post online, that's highly debatable.
Having said that, speech is a type of action, of course, and I'm not denying that incitement can be malevolent and trolls who encourage others - particularly individuals in a vulnerable state - to serious self-harm or suicide probably deserve to have their speech curtailed (if not to be branked, indeed).
And that includes Mrs Danvers, the head housekeeper at Manderley and a woman morbidly devoted to the memory of her adored mistress Rebecca ...
II.
Arguably, the most disturbing scene in Daphne de Maurier's brilliant novel Rebecca comes in chapter eighteen on the morning after the costume ball, when Mrs de Winter decides to confront Mrs Danvers.
At first, the former, having overcome her fear of the latter, has the advantage. But that soon changes, as the angry colour returns to the dead white face of Mrs Danvers and she begins to rant and rave like a mad woman; "her long fingers twisting and tearing the black stuff of her long dress" [c].
There's nothing Mrs de Winter can do but watch with fascinated horror; the sight of Mrs Danvers dry sobbing with mouth open making her shudder and feel physically ill. Growing increasingly insane, the latter advances towards the former, backing her towards the open window, and gripping her arm.
"'It's you that ought to be lying there in the church crypt [...] It's you who ought to be dead [...]'", she hisses. [276]
The young Mrs de Winter recalls and narrates the scene of incitement for us:
"She pushed me towards the open window. I could see the terrace below me grey and indistinct in the white wall of fog. 'Look down there,' she said. 'It's easy, isn't it? Why don't you jump? It wouldn't hurt, not to break your neck. It's a quick, kind way. It's not like drowning. Why don't you try it? Why don't you go?'
The fog filled the open windows, damp and clammy, it stung my eyes, it clung to my nostrils. I held on to the window-sill with my hands.
'Don't be afraid,' said Mrs Danvers. 'I won't push you. I won't stand by you. You can jump of your own accord. What's the use of your staying here at Manderley? You're not happy. Mr de Winter doesn't love you. There's not much for you to live for, is there? Why don't you jump now and have done with it? Then you won't be unhappy any more.'" [276]
III,
That's certainly incitement to suicide; cleverly expressed as a series of rhetorical questions. Fortunately, however, Mrs de Winter doesn't jump (she's not so much saved by the bell as by a flare or rocket sent up by a ship in distress).
And interestingly, not only does she not want to get the rozzers involved and wish to press legal charges against Mrs Danvers, she doesn't even ask her husband to sack her, having decided that the latter has lost her power over her: "Whatever she said or did now it could not matter to me or hurt me. I knew she was my enemy and I did not mind." [327]
I'm not sure if that's Christian forgiveness born of a spirit of love, or if this refusal to take her enemy seriously and not only forgive but forget wrongs done to her is a sign of a more aristocratic nature [d]. Either way, it's admirable and I wish more people were like this in a world in which there is a growing tendency to criminalise conduct in the name of legal moralism.
Notes
[a] To watch this scene on YouTube, click here.
[b] Incitement falls into that category of crimes known as inchoate; i.e., ones that prepare the way for, further, or encourage a crime. Just as one can be convicted of conspiracy, so too can one be convicted of incitement (for example, using words and images to stir up hatred against others that may lead to violence against them).
In the UK, incitement was abolished as an offence under the common law of England in 2008, but was replaced with three new statutory offences of encouraging or assisting crime under the Serious Crime Act (2007).
[c] Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (Virago Press, 2003), p. 271. Future page references given in the post are to this edition of the novel.
[d] In the first essay (§10) of his Genealogy of Morals (1887), Nietzsche writes that to be incapable of taking one's enemies seriously for very long is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to forget.
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