#manderley

There is something rather alluring about the age gap between Maxim and Mrs. de Winter; I suppose that it's because I relate so much to her that I can make a fairly good speculation as to the psychological drivers behind her decision to marry.

Maxim seems so glamorous and knowing because he is forty-two, and she can be no more than twenty-one, and really, perhaps I am old-fashioned, but what woman wouldn't want a rich, presumably handsome, man to take them under his wing and provide for them and tell them what to do, sparing them the anxieties and worries of self-sufficiency? Especially when one is so starved of love as our narrator.

And when that man is your first love, to boot, so unlike the stereotype of the pawing middle-aged lecher after a young bride, is it any wonder that you marry him right off?

He took her from her stuffy, close little life with Mrs. Van Hooper, and made her mistress of Manderley, a sprawling Cornish estate, in a matter of three months - and he paid attention to her, when no one else would, as far back as Monte Carlo.