Identity can be defined as, the set of characteristics by which a person or thing is definitively recognisable or known. People remember us by certain aspects that make up who we are individually as a human, and we are perceived to have a soul identity, not one the same. However, some individuals don’t fully understand themselves and what aspects make up who they are. This confusion and insecurity can lead to society influencing these characters, and forcing them to abide by societal expectations, instead of allowing them to be who they want to be. This issue of suppressed identity is explored in both Daphne du Maurier’s: Rebecca, and Richard Yates’: Revolutionary Road, it does not matter whether you are in 1950’s America or 1920’s England, the individuality of undiscovered identity is a common occurrence, and an ever more daunting presence in our characters’ lives.
Throughout Du Maurier’s life, she admired authority and self-control in others, as if she didn’t have any herself. This is very apparent in her marriage to Lieutenant Frederick Browning, due to his senior position in the British Army she acknowledged his power and confidence that he carried over the lower ranks. This could relate to Rebecca’s unnamed narrator. She is portrayed as an unsophisticated and timid girl, who is too young to even understand herself yet, let alone the world around her, explored in the description ‘straight, bobbed hair and youthful face/ ill-fitting coat and dress/ a shy uneasy colt’ the effect of these mundane words make the audience possess a lack of interest in her, for the dullness that Du Maurier presents does not draw the reader’s attention. This description also shows how the narrator's naivety drags her into a life that she is not prepared for. Her anonymity throughout the novel shows she herself doesn’t know who she is yet, and she is searching for a label in life as if it is her name, but being taken to Manderley represses her chance as a young woman to really experience life. Just as with Mrs Van Hopper, she is expected to be someone she’s not, she’s to be like the previous Mrs De Winter, clearly demonstrated when Beatrice meets her for the first time exclaiming ‘Quite different from what I expected’ obviously this short statement is comparing her to Rebecca, and the lack of specification of the difference offers the readers a negative connotation. This constant comparison and belittling of the narrator leads to an inner turmoil where she repeatedly thinks about Rebecca in every situation ‘touch the pen she held between her fingers, stare at her writing on the pigeon holes, look at the candlesticks, the clock the vase, that belonged to her, not mine’. She is constantly overshadowed by Rebecca’s presence, as if she is still alive, battling with someone that is not there but still has power, and tries to live up to the expectations of what Rebecca was like, living her identity through someone else.
Similarly, throughout Revolutionary Road, we depict the falsifiability that the American Dream upholds, creating an image of what the ultimate goal is in life and that all members of this desperate population have a role to play to reach complete satisfaction. The Wheeler’s are just one more family that have deceitfully bought into this fake pinnacle of hope, but believe that they are different to everyone else ’I don’t happen to fit the role of dumb, insensitive suburban husband’, believe they are not living a lie ‘Our whole damn culture is geared to this tacit agreement of cute little winding roads, and cute little houses’. Specifically, April Wheeler demonstrates on the outside how she is the perfect wife, fitting the characteristics, she doesn’t know herself and feels closed up in a fake world where she is expected to be something and do certain things, without her actually having a say in it. Her desperation into finding out who she is takes her through her life process, having kids, getting married, trying to be an actor. Being an actor is like she was trying out the life of other people, one that she could never have ‘You see I don’t know who I am, either’ This statement and the use of ‘either’ allows us to believe that she knows that others are it the same situation as her, but she has acknowledged her issue, unlike others. She lives to serve others, so it is very apparent that all her counterintuitive actions are attempts to assert a little independence and control in her life of containment that she experiences both as a member of American suburbia and as a 1950s housewife, which is exemplified in her abortion and suicide, which is a defying movement against society ‘If you wanted to do something absolutely honest, something true, it always turned out to be a thing that had to be done alone’. Concreting the idea of a loss of identity in the Wheelers lives is their friendship with their neighbours, the Campbells. Getting together for a weekly dinner, having a routine to keep their appearance up ‘Then came the handshaking, the stately puckered kissing’s, the sighs’ this extravagant language: ‘Stately puckering’ issues an undertone of amusement as if they are aware that this ritual is foolish, but this perfectly practiced action follows a set plan of the evening which is needed to keep their friendship at its perfect peak, it is what is commonly done in all suburban lives, you become an image of perfection, what everyone else wants, and pretends to have.
Marriage is a key driver of The America dream. This common event is a step into mature adulthood for most people of that society, and in today’s independent world it is a recognised evolvement in someone’s life to create their own traditions and style of life, however, the American dream drove people into a very specific type of life, depicting how and what a marriage is supposed to be like: Fully detached house, 2 cars, 2.5 kids, little white picket fence, husband that has a job in the city, and wife that stays at home cooking and cleaning, looking after the kids. This prompted statement from Chris Tavares, a modern day American, shows how little what we idealised has changed.
‘Our whole damn culture is geared to it, it’s the new religion’. ‘The preliminary moment on the sidewalk was the high point of the day’ this foreshadows that peak of the Wheelers lives was buying the house, and from then on it was a downhill fall into misery. It is an invisible law that the government of this originally powerful country have sent out to control their struggling and poverty ridden people of America to manage it and to build it up again, giving them the belief of freedom ‘We got committed to this enormous delusion/ The great lie of the suburbs’. The punishment for not copying this norm could be seen as even harsher than a usual law enforced punishment, social embarrassment and humility. This ‘law’ created set expectations of the married life, however, like most nations they do not want to believe that they are not in control of how they live their lives, so they all pretend that they are not part of this compliance to domestic life in the new suburban trenches ‘everything you said was based on this great premise of ours that we’re somehow very special and superior to the whole thing’. In reality they all clandestinely agree and have a set picture of what each role in marriage should encompass: what the wife should be like, what she should do, how she should act, and in reality this idea of perfection and contentment is a lie, just like the stability that America tried to project was crumbling under the pressure of the Civil Rights Act. Though both Frank and April Wheeler believe they are immune to this trap of social demand, Frank still expects April to attend to his needs as a caring housewife and be a simple average woman: ‘Stand waiting for him in the carport’ when he gets home from work, ‘Hand him an old-fashioned glass full of ice and whiskey’, and because she fulfils theses expectations, she is allowing him and society to consistently expect it. However, we can see that this perfect mould is fake and that a wife is not a silent puppet. “The problem that has no name,” Writer Betty Friedan discusses in the light of April’s circumstance the sense of containment pertaining specifically to women of this era, the unfulfilling lives they lead, ‘The suburban housewife suffocated by social expectations and trapped by her white picket fence’. This is presented in April’s revelation that in fact she never really wanted children ‘I got pregnant. Then we had another child to prove the first one wasn’t a mistake’ This proves that she originally didn’t have any intention of getting pregnant. She hates the simplicity of her life, which is presented when she admits to enjoying going to the city to organise their move to France ‘She had driven to New York, undergone an interview, obtained three travel brochures and the schedule of half a dozen steamships’. This is one of the most modernised statements of the novel because though some women, Maureen, had started working in office jobs, it had not become the norm for women to really start working in industry. This revelation from April presents a whole new generation of women, independent work driven women. However, this goes against the social acceptance, so it is to no surprise that everyone the Wheeler's tell their plan to about moving, are shocked more about the fact that April will be the bread winner of the family, rather than the fact that they are even moving to France.
Similarly, this coming of independence from women had become the norm in Europe. The 1920s period is sometimes referred to as the ‘Golden Age’ or ‘The Roaring Twenties’ due to the economic boom after the war, and it had reached the age that women started to feel more confident and empowered, a new independence reflecting throughout the nation: Marrying later, younger voting age, wages rising. However, none of this is apparent in any stage of Rebecca, apart from when the narrator dresses up for the ball expecting to be gushed over, but her dream is thwarted once again by Rebecca ‘It was what Rebecca did at the last fancy dress ball’. Though fashion seems to have expanded, and more is on offer from London, the narrator’s confidence is in no way apparent to how the society around her is acting ‘I used to sneak my nightgowns out of my drawer, mend them myself’. Due to this lack of cultural change from outside of Manderley, it is as if she is still living in the pre-war era, where women got married young and were silent presences in a marriage. However, aside for what society expected, Manderley created a time capsule and used Rebecca as its ruler, and model for that aspect and moment of life, of a set history ‘this is his routine’. Everyone expects the narrator to act just like Rebecca because she is exactly what everyone thought a wife should be like. Cultured, artistic, friendly ‘She was certainly gifted’. All that knew her thought she was a perfect human being, she could never do anything wrong, she was the essence of the perfect. The narrator is the opposite of this, and what she does do, like her drawing and painting or walking is never good enough, and is seen as a let-down compared to Rebecca’s achievements ‘Do you not ride or shoot?’. Just like in Revolutionary Road, we see what the average wife should be like, and that in reality all that is a miserable lie, that will lead to devastation. This is mirrored in Rebecca, as the ghost of Manderley apparently did it all, and with grace ‘I’m so fond of Rebecca’, but in reality she was a cruel evil woman, lying to the people around her for her own satisfaction, proving that supposed ‘perfection’ is not real. Rebecca’s disloyalty and manipulation of Maxim also proves that the perfect marriage is a façade created by the members of that joining, it was a business deal of deceit ‘Haven’t we acted the parts of loving husband and wife rather too well?’, and just like in the modern world of our politics, poverty and economic problems, people only see what they want to see ‘Tall and dark, she gave you the feeling of a snake’.
Naivety is the foundation of many issues and is the founder of deception. The belief that unrealistic events will turn out the way you want is an unrelenting theme throughout Rebecca. The narrator is flooded from the start with belief that her life will evolve into a fantasy of being an adored wife, and being the mistress of the house ‘We should grow old together, have other dogs/when our boys are young I will tell them…’ Her prevailing imagination is also fixed on the thought that as soon as Rebecca’s presence is gone, her and Maxim will become a couple of complete romance and admiration, living a whirlwind life of fun. It is apparent, however, that this dream, is exactly that, a dream. As the novel develops it is obvious that she believes that Maxim still loves Rebecca ‘Whenever you touched me I thought you were comparing me to Rebecca’, so uses these future imaginations to comfort herself and rid herself of insecurities that harbour her constantly. The narrator’s desperation for Maxim’s love is extremely immature and childish, her need to be a part of his life is clearly obvious ‘You don’t have to love me, I’ll be your friend, your companion, a sort of boy’. This is almost painful for the audience, as she is not drastically put off from Maxim at the revelation that he killed Rebecca. Her desperation to really be part of his life overshadows severity of the situation ‘It’s not too late/ I love you more than anything in the world’. Though there was a constant underlying sub-plot of what actually happened on the night of Rebecca’s death, the narrator’s insistence that Maxim’s act means little to her and she just wants Maxim to love her as his wife proves that she lives in a fairy-tale world that is only supported by how Maxim treats her. She is petted and spoken to like she is a young child ‘My sweet child forget it’, and her foolishness is ever prevalent at her constant irritation of this type of treatment, acting like an immature girl wanting to be treated like and adult.
Comparatively, Yates set up the Wheelers naivety in a cynical light from the start as if what they strive for is a joke and their failure is for our amusement. As readers, we can interpret that this plan of moving to Europe is going to fail because they are fooling themselves into thinking it is just a need for change, in fact, it’s a form of avoidance from their current life and the social and domestic issues that are appearing. In the same category as the supposed ideal American Dream, the belief that they can just pick and move to a new country with ease is broken down again and again by their barraging neighbours’, fellow workers and friends ‘I think this whole thing of theirs sounds like a pretty immature deal’. The falsifiability of the Wheelers plan quickly breakdowns down revealing that neither thought it would happen anyway, and it was a brief moment of delusion and of hope, happiness. This attitude to overlooking the real issues were taken to a more national effect as seen with the civil rights movement. This strong image of America was projected across the globe, a money fuelled nation that powered the world, however, the 1950’s was really a cowering century that was ignoring the plea for equality between the races, and instead parents withdrew their children from public schools and enrolled them in all-white “segregation academies”, therefore blocking out the ‘Brown Ruling’ from their lives. The deception that both the Wheelers live with constantly: April not wanting another child, the affairs, is a silent killer that has lead the other to believe that they are calm and collected in life and happy in the marriage. This is also the noticeable case with the Campbells. Shep’s secret obsession with April ‘Oh Jesus, to be there with April Wheeler’, and then the affair reveals that though they look like a happy couple with a satisfied life, it is breaking from the inside, just like everything else in life, and that if you have one secret, the foundation that all your life is built on will crumble.
The author’s message is that no matter what society you are living in, there are expectations and demands for who you are, who you should be and what others want from you. This pressure, as seen with Rebecca and Revolutionary Road, can destroy people’s lives and foregrounds the issues of society. Yates and Du Maurier use the confusion and insecurity of their characters to show how society controls their identity.