Psychiatry
The milieu in which this book is set is the anti-psychiatry movement among 1960s mental health professionals. This movement already had a built-in advantage thanks to the way the average person thought about psychoanalysis. “I should say that, prior to this, my knowledge of psychiatry was exclusively derived from those scenes in films in which a patient reclines on a settee and recounts her dreams to a bearded physician with a Germanic accent.” Even at the time of publication, more than half a century after the book takes place, this remains the dominant imagery in the psychiatric industry.
Dr. Braithwaite
The anti-psychiatry character at the center of the story is the controversial Dr. Braithwaite. His first physical description is in the form of imagery provided by the first-person accounts in the notebook of a mysterious person calling herself “Rebecca.” “Braithwaite’s appearance was no more attractive than his voice. He wore an open-necked shirt and no jacket. His hair, which reached to his collar, was disheveled, and he smoked constantly. His features were large as if they had been exaggerated by a caricaturist, but there was something, even on television, that drew one’s eyes to him.” The unattractive voice refers to the drawl which is native to the northern parts of England. Therefore, this imagery also hints at certain prejudices in the writer as well as describing the doctor. Pointing out that one’s eyes are automatically drawn to caricaturist exaggeration hardly needs to be pointed out which is also a detail that reveals something psychological about “Rebecca” as well as the physicality of Braithwaite. Since this is a novel all about psychology, the imagery of the doctor is presented in a way that can be interpreted as a subconscious revelation.
Becoming Rebecca
The writer of the notebooks which make up the bulk of the narrative is never identified by her real name. She writes under the pseudonym Rebecca, which she takes from the title of the classic Daphne du Maurier novel. Imagery is utilized to reveal how she decides upon the last name. “A van was parked on the opposite side of the street with the words James Smith & Sons, Central Heating Engineers painted on the side. ‘Smith’ was exactly the sort of innocuous name that one would never think to choose as an alias, and was thus ideal for my purpose. Then, when I decided to alter the spelling, I felt I had the beginnings of a convincing persona. ‘Smyth with a Y,’ I would say in an offhand manner, as if I had grown weary of repeating it all my life.” This imagery is a portrait of the creative mind at work, beginning with a need that lands upon a concrete inspiration, gets tweaked in the mind, and ends with a rehearsal before the performance. More importantly, however, it is imagery that foreshadows the ease with which the narrator can assume—and eventually be taken over by—her adopted persona.
