Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier could possibly be one of my favorite books. It's set in the early 1900's and is about this paid aquaintance whose name is never revealed. Her story starts off with taking care of an awful woman and then she meets this man of the name of Maxim Du Winter and they both fall in love. Although he is much older than her, he proposes to her and she quits her job of being an aquaintance and travels with him to his mansion in Manderly. She constantly feels that she is filling the shoes of his deceased wife, Rebecca. She feels that she is being neglected by Max and has the want to conform to the life he once lived. Little did she know, his hatred for his deceased wife is the only reason he is somewhat distance withe his new wife. Smaller problems and conflicts come up in the novel, but when Rebecca's dead body is found in a sunken ship, controversy arises. He has to explain to his wife that he is the true murderer of Rebecca, and the wife feels closer to him and actually has the sense that she is married to is man. Through dramatic trials and hard evidence, Maxim fully claims "innocence" ans moved on his life with his wife, but on their way home they find that Manderly has been set on fire by the evil Ms. Danvers. The thing that strikes me the most is that the main character's name is never once revealed throughout the whole novel. I see this is because she didn't necessarily have a profound identity and could never be pinned as a certain character. She was always unsure of herself and willing to conform for the sake of her own well being. It's important that her name is unknown because then she would have been seen as a profound character with a big voice when in fact her opinion barely mattered at all to anyone. I can kind of connect this to Frankenstein in the sense that the creature was never given a name because his opinion didn't necessarily matter at all, because Victor was going to do whatever HE wanted to do. Although I wasn't technically supoosed to make a connection from Rebecca to Frankenstein I found a perfect comparison of the whole "no name" thing. If none of you have read Rebecca, I highly suggest you do so. It starts off slow but gradually crescendos into a dramatic piece of literature, just like Frankenstein.

Frankenstein Connection

So I am writing this on my iPad in attempt to be resourceful, so please be understanding if the format isn't perfectly correct (Apple problems). This blog is going to be about my general feelings toward Frankenstein and how I'm able to connect it to the daily life I live. Whenever I originally saw that we were going to be reading Frankenstein in AP Literature I wasn't too excited. I had never seen Frankenstein as an intriguing book and had my mind set that I wasn't going to like it. In all honesty, the first three letters bored me to death and my mind was made up about the book. Around  the 3 rd chapter I started to warm up to the subject and saw the book as something more than this crazy guy making a monster. Whenever Victor created Frankenstein, I started to develop a certain emotion towards the creature. My motherly instincts definitely kicked in and I've found myself rooting for Frankenstein and disliking Victor. It seems to me that Victor is like a mother with extreme post partum depression and I just can't wrap my head around the fact that he essentially abandoned his own child and was completely satisfied doing so. As a woman, teenage girl, young adult, whatever you want to call me, I could never anbandon my own child, ugly or not, the girl/boy would still be MY creation that I endured. So moving on...whenever Frankenstein murdered William I could only feel sympathy for the creature although I am still unaware of why Franky killed the poor boy. I imagine a kid in an adult body growing up without parents and trying to learn things in his/her own and this just enduces a certain compassion that I have for children both good and bad. I think I'll be able to connect this to my life, since I want to be a children's therapist, in that I should understand the background of the child before I can make any assumptions about their behavior. I should fully comprehend their background and have a firm grasp of where they come from and how they grew up before I can actually truly help them. Because what's the point of therapy if the therapist has no idea what your mindframe is like? I think this book, Frankenstein, will, in the long run, benefit me an help me in my goals to get a PhD in Psychology.