I'm going to start off with an imaginary person, Rebecca, from one of the most entertaining British novels ever... Rebecca.
Rebecca is portrayed as a charming dirty whore. Max is a murderer.
So how is it that we're supposed to be sympathetic towards Max's plight? He's moody and magisterial. He can't take a joke, and is impervious to his wife's social anxiety. "Suck it up, baby, and serve me some more tea!" I assume he's also fucking her all the while she's callously treated as his inferior (there are many references made as to how the narrator relates more to Jasper, the dog, than to her own husband). ... The whole time I first read that book, btw, I kept rooting for her and Frank to get it on.
Max is also a violent man (i.e. him punching a drunk guy, wow, that takes skills, his sister talking about his blow-ups, and of course him kinda sorta killing his wife), and is rather selfish... he most certainly doesn't think of others. When Frank Crawley and his wife tried to reason with him during the scene where Jack was offering to keep his mouth quiet for a quite affordable sum, does he sensibly heed their advice and calm their fears? Nope! He rather stubbornly calls up the Colonel and almost ends up at the end of the noose. Very hot-headed and inconsiderate of him.
Why does he hate his first wife, Rebecca, to begin with? He married her for her looks and brains, she still had that (until he splattered it in her little boat cabin, that is). So she is a sex-addict, big deal. Most guys would think "SCORE!" in this situation. Not Max. No, this revelation makes him want to push her off a fucking waterfall. Overreact much?
Really, how wrong is it that he cares more about what other people think of him and his good name, as opposed to -- oh, I don't know -- killing a woman?
Rebecca is portrayed as a charming dirty whore. Max is a murderer.
So how is it that we're supposed to be sympathetic towards Max's plight? He's moody and magisterial. He can't take a joke, and is impervious to his wife's social anxiety. "Suck it up, baby, and serve me some more tea!" I assume he's also fucking her all the while she's callously treated as his inferior (there are many references made as to how the narrator relates more to Jasper, the dog, than to her own husband). ... The whole time I first read that book, btw, I kept rooting for her and Frank to get it on.
Max is also a violent man (i.e. him punching a drunk guy, wow, that takes skills, his sister talking about his blow-ups, and of course him kinda sorta killing his wife), and is rather selfish... he most certainly doesn't think of others. When Frank Crawley and his wife tried to reason with him during the scene where Jack was offering to keep his mouth quiet for a quite affordable sum, does he sensibly heed their advice and calm their fears? Nope! He rather stubbornly calls up the Colonel and almost ends up at the end of the noose. Very hot-headed and inconsiderate of him.
Why does he hate his first wife, Rebecca, to begin with? He married her for her looks and brains, she still had that (until he splattered it in her little boat cabin, that is). So she is a sex-addict, big deal. Most guys would think "SCORE!" in this situation. Not Max. No, this revelation makes him want to push her off a fucking waterfall. Overreact much?
Really, how wrong is it that he cares more about what other people think of him and his good name, as opposed to -- oh, I don't know -- killing a woman?
