Improbabilies of plot may be inevitable in a gothic romance - like Rebecca

Spoilers: The more you think about it the more absurd Maxim's confession becomes. Let's take it one at a time. So he loathed his late wife, Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier's 1938 novel) as she was a horrible and spiteful person who was leading a double life, involved in some kind of unspecified set of kinky relationships that she carried on in London, and Maxim at least tolerated that for a time but forbid her to bring her London friends to his estate, Manderley. Ok, first of all, the presupposition here is that everyone else in the Manderley household, all the servants, and everyone in Maxim's family, and everyone in the nearby community was so dumb and unobservant as to think that R was a lovely and wonderful person and that her marriage to Maxim was ideal. That's absurd on the face of it and completely condescending to the townsfolk who are so easily duped. Second, even if we accept that he secretly loathed his wife, is the normal human response to kill her and dispose of the body? He says he could not have withstood the humiliation of a divorce procedure - but he's willing to risk a murder procedure? At best, this tells us that Maxim is not a normal person and that his current wife, the unnamed narrator, should be wary of him at best. She should probably get the hell out of that relationship. Well, having confessed the murder to his wife, he makes matters worse. He thinks that by admitting that his early ID of a body washed to shore as that of R was incorrect, but he doesn't realize that the inquiry into R's drowning would bring out the fact that her yacht was obviously scuttled (I think that's the word), which comes out right away at the inquest. So where does he go from here? There are 2 strands of this novel that haven't been played out: First, Ben, the "idiot" who spied on R in he seaside cottage and was threatened by her assertion that she'd commit him to an asylum: What role will he play? Will Maxim put off onto Ben the blame for the sinking of the yacht? Or did Ben see something that may exculpate Maxim? Second, R's "cousin" Jake (Jack?) - a crude and nasty mean who's been sneaking around the estate and vaguely threatening Maxim. He's got to be tied in some way into the murder as well, I think - though I'm not sure how. It would seem that Maxim does not survive - maybe he gets into some kind of fatal brawl w/ J? Despite improbabilities (inevitable in a gothic romance?), du Maurier does a good job keeping the plot moving and keeping us guessing.

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