{"id":148312,"date":"2020-10-13T09:00:59","date_gmt":"2020-10-13T13:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=148312"},"modified":"2020-10-13T14:49:52","modified_gmt":"2020-10-13T18:49:52","slug":"the-second-mrs-de-winter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/13\/the-second-mrs-de-winter\/","title":{"rendered":"The Second Mrs. de Winter"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Illustration for a Rebecca paper doll by Jenny Kroik for The Paris Review<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe sexiness of [Rebecca] is maybe the most unsettling part, since it centers on the narrator\u2019s being simultaneously attracted to and repulsed by the memory and the mystery of her new husband\u2019s dead wife.\u201d \u2014<\/em>Emily Alford, Jezebel<\/em><\/p>\n

NB: This essay contains all of the spoilers for <\/em>Rebecca.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rebecca had good taste\u2014or maybe she just had the same taste as me, and that\u2019s why I thought it was good. She loved a particular shade of vintage minty turquoise. The kitchen cabinets were all this color. As were the plates inside. The cups and bowls were white with dainty black dots on them. Not polka dots\u2014a smaller, more charming print.<\/p>\n

I loved them. I might have picked them out myself. It made me feel sick that I loved them.<\/p>\n

I imagined Rebecca had picked out these cups and plates when she moved into this house, but the cupboards I was investigating, and the very lovely dishes inside them, now belonged to her ex-husband, my boyfriend. Rebecca lived fifteen minutes away.<\/p>\n

Of course, her name wasn\u2019t really Rebecca. But grant me a theme. We\u2019ll call him Maxim.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Every once in a while, a book will pass through my writers\u2019 group, all of us swept up in reading the same novel. In the early days of my dating Maxim, that book was Daphne du Maurier\u2019s Rebecca<\/em>. My friend Emily was rereading it to write an essay for Jezebel called \u201cThe Nihilistic Horniness of a Good Gothic Read: Ranking the Genre\u2019s Sexiest and Scariest Secrets<\/a>.\u201d Rebecca<\/em> ranks number one. Emily\u2019s love for the novel was so persuasive the rest of us soon joined in.<\/p>\n

The basic premise of Rebecca<\/em> is that our narrator, a naive young woman, marries an older, brooding widower and goes to live in his strange and beautiful house, where it rapidly becomes clear that the legacy of his dead wife, the titular Rebecca, is \u2026 potent. The narrator constantly worries over whether she can run the house as well as Rebecca did.<\/p>\n

At one point, Emily was in the bathtub with a scotch and the novel and somehow still had enough hands to text us:\u00a0 THIS WOMAN\u2019S ONLY PROBLEM IS THAT THE SERVANTS ARE MEAN TO HER AND I WANT THAT LIFE. <\/small><\/p>\n

The servants do not like the narrator for the very good reason that she is not Rebecca. Beyond the servants, of course, the narrator is also concerned that she\u2019ll never live up to Rebecca in Maxim\u2019s heart, that in the wake of his great and tragic love, she stands no chance.<\/p>\n

Again, from Emily\u2019s bath: EVEN THE DOGS DON\u2019T LIKE HER. <\/small><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I had never read Rebecca<\/em> before. About fifty pages in I felt stupid because I hadn\u2019t retained the narrator\u2019s name. I flipped back through the opening and still couldn\u2019t find it. Maxim was the husband. Rebecca was his dead wife. Mrs. Danvers was the housekeeper. Jasper was the dog.<\/p>\n

WTF, <\/small> I texted Emily, THE DOG HAS A NAME BUT NOT THE NARRATOR? <\/small><\/p>\n

HE\u2019S A VERY GOOD DOG, <\/small> Emily said.<\/p>\n

For 410 pages, the narrator of Rebecca<\/em> is only ever known as The Second Mrs. de Winter\u2014and isn\u2019t that just the whole story?<\/p>\n

CAN I TELL YOU SOMETHING HORRIBLE? <\/small> I asked Emily.<\/p>\n

OF COURSE <\/small><\/p>\n

I\u2019VE BEEN FEELING A LOT LIKE THE SMDW LATELY <\/small><\/p>\n

OH GIRL <\/small><\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The little white house in New York where my Maxim lived was no Manderley, but like Manderley, the house was an issue. The house with Rebecca\u2019s lovely dishes in the cupboard. The house with art on the walls no man would ever pick. The red, floral, calico curtains, which Maxim eventually took down because, despite having sewn them himself, he had never liked the print Rebecca picked (I did) and after that there were no curtains at all. The kitchen where I cooked us dinner and accidentally used a special salt Rebecca had favored but left behind, which made Maxim look up from his meal and ask, What did you put in here?<\/p>\n

One afternoon I was working at a desk in the office and, playing with the drawer, found inside Rebecca\u2019s birth certificate. I\u2019d already known we were born a week apart because on our second date Maxim had asked my birthday and blanched when I\u2019d said October.<\/p>\n

More than once Maxim returned an article of women\u2019s clothing to me that was not mine.<\/p>\n

There were notes in Rebecca\u2019s handwriting on the fridge and photos of her in the house, and this was right and good, because she and Maxim had a daughter, an eight-year-old girl who was funny and sweet and who I was very lucky to know for those nearly two years. I must leave her out of this\u2014she is a still-becoming person\u2014but of course she remains an invisible source of gravity in this story. There were photos of them at Disney World. Photos of them holding their daughter the day she was born.<\/p>\n

All of which is to say that Rebecca was everywhere. In the house, and beyond it as well.<\/p>\n

Once, playing music in the car, I put on one of my favorite albums, and Maxim grabbed for the dial to turn it off. I had accidentally played the song to which he and Rebecca had walked down the aisle at their wedding. We had eerily similar taste in music.<\/p>\n

None of this was Maxim\u2019s fault. I must have felt like a haunting to him. It must have been uncomfortable. I came to recognize and dread the look and silence that came over him in those moments when I accidentally assumed a Rebecca-like posture. I felt guilty, though didn\u2019t know precisely for what.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In the most excruciating scene in Rebecca<\/em>, TSMdW throws a costume ball in an effort to be the kind of hostess and charmer Rebecca once was. She decides she will dress like a relative of Maxim\u2019s, Caroline de Winter, whose portrait hangs prominently in the house and who TSMdW refers to as \u201cthe girl in white.\u201d She prattles\u2014extensively, tediously\u2014about what a big secret her costume is and how bowled over everyone will be when they see it. She orders a wig that will curl just so. She orders a white dress. She means this to be a surprise for Maxim.<\/p>\n

TSMdW waits til the party is underway to make her entrance and then appears at the top of the stairs, completely transformed into the woman in the painting. \u201cThey all stared at me like dumb things,\u201d she says. \u201cBeatrice uttered a little cry and put her hand to her mouth. I went on smiling, I put one hand on the banister.\u201d<\/p>\n

And then: \u201cMaxim had not moved. He stared up at me, his glass in his hand. There was no colour in his face. It was ashen white \u2026 \u2018What the hell do you think you\u2019re doing?\u2019 he said\u2026\u2018What is it?\u2019 I said, \u2018What have I done?\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

We come to understand that Rebecca once had this very same idea for a costume. \u201cIt was just what Rebecca did at the last fancy dress ball at Manderley. Identical,\u201d Beatrice says.<\/p>\n

Seeing her at the top of the stairs, Maxim believes TSMdW to be the ghost of Rebecca. He believes this to be a haunting.<\/p>\n

The bit that sickens and thrills me most is when, just as everyone else sees she has blundered into a pantomime of Rebecca, TSMdW remains ignorant and continues smiling<\/em>. She still thinks she is herself. She still believes she is unique.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t last for long. As the novel goes on, TSMdW becomes desperate and horrible as she tries to outpace her predecessor\u2019s shadow\u2014but readers have little reason to believe she will succeed. The Second Mrs. de Winter believes she is narrating the story of her own life, but little does she know, the book in our hands is called Rebecca<\/em>.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Often, when we went to restaurants, or on hikes, or to concerts, this would prompt stories of past times Maxim had been to those places. He had lived his whole life in this part of the country and so of course many of those stories had Rebecca in them or around the margins. Still, I came to feel like a verdict had already been passed on every song I might sing, every dish I might cook, every date we might go on\u2014because Rebecca had already made them and sung them and been to these places before. I felt trapped in a rerun of someone else\u2019s life, and I didn\u2019t know how to fix it.<\/p>\n

Of course, the only way Maxim could tell me about his life was with these stories and I couldn\u2019t know and love him if I censored his past. So why did it hurt so much to move through these recently vacated spaces? Why did I feel like every date we went on had been used up because he had been here for the first time with someone else? Why could I not get over the feeling that this made our experiences somehow redundant, lesser?<\/p>\n

That I felt this way betrays deep insecurity and narcissism in the same instance. Worse, it betrays a belief that to be a first love, or a great love, is the only way to be.<\/p>\n

When I confessed to my boyfriend that I felt this way, he said a smart and beautiful thing.<\/p>\n

He said, \u201cWho says the first time is always the best time?\u201d<\/p>\n

I loved him so much when he said that. And I promised myself I\u2019d stop seeing his past as an intrusion on our present. But knowing you\u2019re being stupid seldom alleviates the stupidity\u2014it only adds a blanketing layer of shame.<\/p>\n

Why was<\/em> I so obsessed with being first?<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

Have you ever watched one of those ensemble shows where they try to introduce new characters several seasons in? Chachi on Happy Days<\/em>\u00a0is the most famous example and I am still not over Joss Whedon\u2019s cheeky Dawn Summers retcon. But because I am a child of the nineties, the most memorably painful of these late-stage introductions was Tori Scott on Saved by the Bell<\/em>. After five seasons of one stable gang, Kelly and Jessie were disappeared from Bayside High without comment. The sixth season opened with an episode called \u201cThe New Girl\u201d in which new-to-the-school motorcycle chick Tori takes Zach\u2019s parking spot resulting in a presexual squabble. When Tori agrees to help Lisa organize the Fall Ball, Lisa, full of gratitude, exclaims, \u201cYou\u2019re my new best friend!\u201d She starts to walk away, and then, in a strangely meta moment, as if remembering the existence of Jessie and Kelly, turns back to Tori with a face of absolute horror: \u201cYou\u2019re \u2026 my only<\/em> best friend?\u201d The show seemed to hope we would forget about Jessie and Kelly, forget about the past, and while there was nothing implicitly wrong with Tori, I felt like, Let\u2019s not pretend we don\u2019t know who the main characters of this show really are. Let\u2019s not pretend we don\u2019t know who counts. I was terrified I would never have enough gravitas to earn a permanent place in Maxim\u2019s life, because I was afraid I had arrived too late to count. I was obsessed with being first because I didn\u2019t want to be a Tori or TSMdW. Because, in my mind, the original cast are always the main characters\u2014everyone else is expendable. I found the very existence of Rebecca threatening because of who it implied I was in this love story. And for more reasons than that besides.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

I have a low threshold for surprises. Life is mostly surprises, to be fair, but I specifically mean the \u201cyou didn\u2019t know this new large feeling was scheduled for today\u201d sort. The \u201ctoday is the day you are meeting my ex-wife she\u2019ll be here in an hour is that okay\u201d kind of surprise. The \u201cOh, these five people you are currently shaking hands with at a dance recital are my former in-laws\u201d kind of surprise. All of which is to say, eventually I met Rebecca. In most ways it was uneventful. I found her beautiful. Blonde where I was dark. Quiet where I rambled. Remarkably little passed between us.<\/p>\n

On this occasion, I behaved fine on the outside, but on the inside, I thought, \u201cI am not good at this.\u201d It was stupid, but I felt I hadn\u2019t prepared adequately for our meeting.<\/p>\n

I suspect you\u2019ll make the same, understandable mistake Maxim made: he thought I was anxious about these meetings because of the usual bouts of awkwardness entailed in meeting a person\u2019s ex, even if (especially if?) that person is the mother of your boyfriend\u2019s child. And sure, it was a little bit that. But that\u2019s not what I wished I\u2019d prepared for.<\/p>\n

I had to prepare myself not to understand Rebecca too much.<\/p>\n

I am a person who always chooses women. Prefers the company of a woman. I suffer from a myopia that prevents me, in all but the most extreme circumstances, from seeing any hetero breakup as the fault of a woman.<\/p>\n

I was very afraid that I was going to like Rebecca.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ll think I\u2019m a misandrist or humble-bragging, and both are probably true. But what I\u2019m trying to tell you is this: in my warped mind, the flip side of the coin that read liking Rebecca<\/em> was disliking my boyfriend<\/em>. I couldn\u2019t conceive of any gray area.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t want to meet Rebecca, because if I did, I might see a glimpse of another version of the story of her and Maxim\u2019s marriage, and I was unprepared to know anything at all that might make me doubt the way he had treated a woman.<\/p>\n

We are all of us flawed, we have all of us behaved badly\u2014and to expect someone in their thirties to have an immaculate history is unreasonable, I know this. But this was the first time I\u2019d fallen in love with someone who used to be married. Who\u2019d gone through a painful divorce. And in my desire to think of my boyfriend in the particular rosy way love encourages, in the story of his past, I wanted to see him as the good guy and her as the bad. I thought this was the only way I could be a good partner to a person who\u2019d gone through a divorce. I thought this was the only way I could trust him.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

A readerly confession: during every scene of Rebecca<\/em> where TSMdW and Maxim hash out their relationship and life at Manderley, I found myself impatient, wondering, But could you say more about Rebecca? Because TSMdW is a drag and Rebecca is fascinating. Rebecca kept up a nautical sex-cabin in which to have affairs. Rebecca took the sailboat out to sea, even in storms. Rebecca organized inspired dinners and parties. She was loud, unruly, sexual, powerful, and charming. Rebecca wasn\u2019t a \u201cgood person,\u201d per se, but who cares! She was deeply fucking interesting in ways TSMdW could never be and, more importantly, she got there first.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

On Valentine\u2019s Day, in an effort to avoid celebrating someplace Maxim had once gone with Rebecca, and to avoid too many grand expectations of romance, I suggested we get drunk at the mall and visit the Mirror Maze, a curtained storefront with a glittering proscenium.<\/p>\n

The mall, I swear to god, is called Destiny.<\/p>\n

The Mirror Maze was janky but beautiful. We were given loose, crinkly plastic gloves to wear, so when we inevitably touched a mirror, mistaking it for a doorway, we would not smudge the glass. The mirrors were widely framed, slivers of neon color around their edges. Inside there were zones of multicolored lights and zones of black lights. We were reflected everywhere, ridiculous and clinical-looking in our gloves. It was a bit like a carnival\u2019s hall of mirrors, except it was a back-channel mall outlet, swaddled in black cloth. Ambient mall noise trickled in despite the canned pop they played, echoing weirdly through the passages.<\/p>\n

We\u2019d had a beer or two before entering and were laughing a lot as we traveled the maze. We held hands until it became clear we\u2019d hurt ourselves if we kept it up. We separated. I went down a hallway, which dead-ended, and then tried to get back to where I\u2019d been. I saw Maxim, walked toward him, and banged into a mirror.<\/p>\n

I was legitimately shocked. It\u2019s the sort of thing that you think won\u2019t happen if you know the trick. We were adults, and the maze was a game, but the maze could still fool us. At first, I felt delighted. Then, Maxim\u2019s reflection disappeared. I tried to find a way out of the hallway I\u2019d walked down but clunked into pane after pane of glass. Be reasonable, I thought, even as I panicked. Maxim was nowhere to be seen and I was multiplied everywhere. I willed my own reflection to open up for me, to transform into a door.<\/p>\n

In the fourth grade, I used to sneak away with other girls to do Bloody Mary in a small mirror that hung in the teacher\u2019s supply closet. The room smelled of construction paper and tempera paint. The lighting was dim and the mirror very smudged. We chanted and chanted at that supply closet mirror, and I was scared, but I also really wanted to see something. But it was only ever my own scrawny face I saw in the mirror, overfull with desire, wishing something remarkable would happen. I frightened myself.<\/p>\n

Eventually Maxim called out to me that he\u2019d found the exit to the maze. I followed his voice and left behind the tunnel of my own reflections.<\/p>\n

We went back to the beer hall and had another drink and soon were in the middle of an enormous fight that was mostly my fault.<\/p>\n

We had found out earlier that week that Rebecca was going to have a baby with her new boyfriend. I\u2019d asked Maxim if he wanted to talk about this, and he\u2019d said no. I\u2019d pressed, and he\u2019d demurred and so I\u2019d left it. But now, four beers deep, still a little dizzy from the hall of mirrors, still inside the Destiny mall, on Valentine\u2019s Day, he brought it up. Suddenly he was talking about how our plans to move in together would need to be indefinitely postponed until Rebecca had the baby, until Rebecca decided where to live with the baby. We didn\u2019t know, couldn\u2019t know, the how or when of any of this. We would just have to wait until Rebecca had made her choices about where to live, Maxim said, and then we could make our own, in response to hers.<\/p>\n

Maxim\u2019s timing was lousy, but that\u2019s no excuse for how upset I got. I cried. I shouted a stupidly elaborate metaphor about being the rattled caboose of a driverless train. I made all of my first-rush feelings known instead of understanding that this was hard for him and this was not the moment for my feelings. But I was too drunk to access fine motor skills of emotional control. On the cab ride back to his place I raked my nails along my forearms, leaving long trailing welts, as if to persuade myself the pain wasn\u2019t all inside my head.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ll let me explain without trying to excuse: I felt like I couldn\u2019t even have one night where I wasn\u2019t asked to stand behind her in line. Like all the important decisions about our life were being decided by Maxim and Rebecca, instead of Maxim and me. Like I was a mall-mirror reflection of a reflection of a girlfriend. A thing diluted beyond meaning. What was the point of me?<\/p>\n

I needed to get out of the maze, get out the mall, get out of this other woman\u2019s story. I didn\u2019t want to live inside a book named for someone else.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

The secret in du Maurier\u2019s novel is, of course, that Maxim has murdered Rebecca. A body washes up, two thirds of the way through the book, soon to be revealed as hers, and this is what prompts Maxim to come clean to his new wife. His confession comes as a surprise to very few readers, I am sure, seeing as Maxim behaves like petulant schoolboy sociopath for the entire first half of the book and always looks funny when people mention the cove<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What\u2019s interesting though, narratively, is that his confession is a misdirection.<\/p>\n

The real surprise is still two beats away, and this is du Maurier\u2019s genius.<\/p>\n

After Maxim confesses the murder to TSMdW the reader relaxes into his horrific but expected revelation \u2026 only to then be jump-scared by the thing they could not have seen coming, which is how gleefully TSMdW responds to the news that her husband is a murderer:<\/p>\n

I held his hands against my heart\u2026 I did not care about his shame. None of the things he had told me mattered at all. I clung to one thing only, and repeated it to myself, over and over again. Maxim did not love Rebecca. He had never loved her, never, never. They had never known one moment\u2019s happiness together. Maxim was talking, and I listened to him, but his words meant nothing to me. I did not really care.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

*<\/p>\n

TSMdW does \u201cnot really care\u201d that Maxim is a murderer. She is ecstatic, romantically aroused by the news. The Second Mrs. de Winter is relieved<\/em> Maxim murdered Rebecca because this means he did not love her. Never, never<\/em>. Which means that she, and not Rebecca (who let me remind you, is dead), comes first in Maxim\u2019s affections.<\/p>\n

She is preceded by no one.<\/p>\n

What a fucking takeaway.<\/p>\n

The murder as a literal act means nothing to TSMdW\u2014but the murder as a metaphor for erasing the past, for expunging her visions of Maxim and Rebecca\u2019s happy history together, means everything.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s so deliciously fucked up.<\/p>\n

And I kind of understood it.<\/p>\n

Because I<\/em> was trying to erase my boyfriend\u2019s Rebecca. I was afraid of her. Afraid of her primacy, and the sway she held over my life, sure. But more than that I was afraid of knowing her, liking her, allowing for the possibility that she was a good person who was part of a divorce that was, as is literally always the case, to do with two people and not one. I wanted to erase all that from the record. In a warped contradiction, I wanted to keep loving my wonderful, complicated boyfriend, who was who he was because<\/em> of his past, but I wanted to expunge that past, too. Pretend it had no power over us. I wanted to pretend we could have the kind of blank-slate love affair I was convinced lived at the top of the hierarchy of romance.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s only ever been you<\/em>.<\/p>\n

What a stupid thing to want.<\/p>\n

God, I wanted it so much.<\/p>\n

Most people read Rebecca<\/em> for the suspense. Probably only a very troubled person would learn things of a personal or moral nature from du Maurier. But I did. Du Maurier showed me that promising a new partner that they will eclipse your past is an act of violence against the meaningful loves that existed before. It\u2019s a fucking bloodbath, and we are the murderers, and we forgive ourselves for it, every time.<\/p>\n

When we love more than once in this life, this kind of murder can feel necessary, even virtuous. That\u2019s the idea The Second Mrs. de Winter embraces when Maxim confesses. She is all too happy to become complicit in Rebecca\u2019s murder. Helping Maxim get away with it is what bonds them as a couple. It\u2019s the whole last third of the book. But the thing is, once I got to that part, I wasn\u2019t rooting for them. I didn\u2019t want them to get away with it. I didn\u2019t want to believe in this kind of murder anymore. I recognized myself in TSMdW\u2019s relief, and it was horrible. I didn\u2019t want to be anything like her. And the way to do that, I realized, wasn\u2019t to insist on being first, on being Rebecca\u2014it was to find a way to live alongside her.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

My friend Emily\u2019s essay, the one ranking gothic novels\u2019 sexy secrets, turned out marvelously. And it taught me that the tension in so many gothic stories comes from the lingering of the past in a present space.<\/p>\n

Do you know what thrills me in so many of those gothic novels? When a woman sets fire to a house. Sometimes a house feels too<\/em> haunted, too<\/em> complicated, to live in anymore. Imagine the cleansing relief of burning the whole thing down. I\u2019ve been there. I get it.<\/p>\n

Burning a house down is powerful on the page because in real life it\u2019s almost never the answer. Eventually you need to find a new house to live in, and all houses have their ghosts. What I\u2019m trying to say is that I have the arsonist urge, but I\u2019m getting better at living in haunted houses. Letting the past hover next to the present without flicking its ears and getting a rise out of it. That\u2019s my work these days. I\u2019m not all the way good at it yet. Sometimes I still spin a lighter between my fingers all night, thumbing the wheel, sparking blue.<\/p>\n

But then I remind myself that Rebecca had also kissed my boyfriend, had also irritated him with a love of Americana songs, had also loved him, and that<\/em> was why, when I kept slipping into her postures, I got scared. Because she had also loved my boyfriend, and then she had stopped. Because I was there loving him, and I never wanted to stop.<\/p>\n

I used to think I saw Rebecca\u2019s ghost reflected everywhere, but of course it was only my own face, full of want. I\u2019d been frightened by the Mirror Maze\u2019s reflections, kept turning from what I saw in them and chasing Maxim\u2019s voice instead. As if it were him who could show me a way out, and not the woman I kept turning from, in whose reflection, somewhere, was an opening.<\/p>\n

*<\/p>\n

In October, Maxim took me to a Jenny Lewis concert for my birthday. Jenny Lewis has sung to me in ways I needed in every era of my life. If I am lucky, she will keep singing me through the rest of it. This was a magical gift.<\/p>\n

I should not have been surprised when it soon became clear Rebecca would also be at the concert. After all, our birthdays were a week apart. She also loved Jenny Lewis. Her mother had got her tickets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe probably won\u2019t even see each other,\u201d Maxim said.<\/p>\n

We saw each other when we first arrived, in the merch line.<\/p>\n

We saw each other again in the ladies\u2019 room.<\/p>\n

We saw each other again in the beer line.<\/p>\n

And honestly, it was fine.<\/p>\n

Maybe it was fine because I had by now finished reading Rebecca<\/em> and resolved to never let myself become TSMdW. Maybe it was because the idea of the two of us circling each other on our birthdays in a concert hall was the sort of thing that would make for a good Jenny Lewis song. Maybe it was because we were in an amphitheater of people who all loved the same music, and I\u2019d given up the teenage idea that other people loving the same band as me threatened my love of the band.<\/p>\n

Or maybe it was because Rebecca\u2019s mother came to say hello to me. She said she\u2019d read an essay I\u2019d written and related to it. So many of us had the same story, we agreed.<\/p>\n

So many of us are just spinning the radio dials, hoping to fall in love with a new song, wishing for something remarkable to happen. And who\u2019s to say the song you find can\u2019t be just for you even if it\u2019s also for absolutely everyone in the amphitheater? Why would the existence of other loves diminish our own? Diminish anything? Let them make us expansive.<\/p>\n

I went back to my seat. I brought my boyfriend an overpriced beer. I whispered that I\u2019d talked with Rebecca\u2019s mother and it was nice. He squeezed me. Jenny Lewis, in a golden gown, her hair unbelievably high, picked up a neon pink telephone, and answered a call that had been a long time ringing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Love <\/em>Rebecca? Print out your very own <\/em>Rebecca paper doll. <\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Read CJ Hauser\u2019s essay \u201cThe Crane Wife\u201d here.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

CJ<\/span>\u00a0Hauser<\/a>\u00a0teaches creative writing at Colgate University. Her novel,\u00a0<\/em>Family of Origin<\/a>, was published by Doubleday in 2019 and her first full-length work of non-fiction,\u00a0<\/em>The Crane Wife & Other Essays, will be published by Doubleday and Viking UK in Spring 2022.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How do you escape the shadow of your partner\u2019s last relationship?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1798,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[419],"tags":[67827],"class_list":["post-148312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-culture","tag-featured"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Second Mrs. de Winter by CJ Hauser<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How do you escape the shadow of your partner\u2019s last relationship?\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2020\/10\/13\/the-second-mrs-de-winter\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" 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