No one likes being the second choice. This holds especially true for newly married Gothic heroines. You may think you’re marrying the man of your dreams, but if he’s been married once before that’s almost always a sign of trouble. Whether the first wife is dead or simply hidden away, she often manages to cast a shadow over her husband’s new lover and interfere with their relationship. The haunting figure of the first wife is one of my favorite Gothic character tropes!
An example of the first wife trope can be found in Edgar Allan Poe’s 1838 short story “Ligeia.” Unlike the other stories I’ll be discussing here, “Ligeia” is told not from the point of view of the second wife, but rather of the husband—and his experience of the haunting is just a little bit biased. In the story, the narrator describes how utterly smitten he was with his first love, Ligeia, who eventually grew ill and died. Though still obsessively devoted to his dead wife, the narrator decides to remarry. His new wife, the blond-haired, blue-eyed Lady Rowena, is drastically different in appearance from Ligeia, and the narrator finds himself loathing Rowena and wishing for Ligeia instead. Then Rowena falls ill, as well, and she speaks of experiencing ghostly sounds and movements in her chamber. The narrator dismisses Rowena’s claims, even when he himself witnesses an invisible presence dropping poison into Rowena’s drink. Rowena dies, but later that night her body revives and takes on the form of the dark-haired Ligeia. From the perspective of the narrator, this is the story of a joyful, if somewhat unsettling, reunion with his true love. But when considered from Rowena’s point of view, “Ligeia” is a terrifying tale of a haunting, in which the ghost of her husband’s first wife prowls her chamber, makes her sick, kills her, and ultimately possesses her body.
Usually, the first wife in these stories has already passed away and is doing her haunting from beyond the grave, but in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847) the first wife is still very much alive! Despite this hindrance, Bertha Mason still manages to give off an aura of the monstrous and supernatural. When Jane Eyre comes to live at Thornfield Hall, she is unaware of Bertha’s existence. Jane’s first encounter with her predecessor is a mysterious, “preternatural” laugh that she hears while exploring the upper levels of the house. She hears the “demoniac laugh” once again, just before rescuing Mr. Rochester from a fire. And on the eve before she and Mr. Rochester are to marry, Jane witnesses a terrifying specter reminiscent of a vampire enter her room and rip her wedding veil in two. But as creepy as Bertha’s laugh and appearance are, the biggest threat to Jane is the dark secret that Bertha represents—that Mr. Rochester already has a living wife and planned to commit bigamy by marrying Jane. Bertha Mason is described using the language of the supernatural, because although she is living, her presence “haunts” Jane and serves as an impediment to Jane’s relationship.
But perhaps the tale that best epitomizes this trope is Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938). Poignantly, the first wife’s presence so permeates the book that its title is named after her, while the second wife is given no name at all. At the beginning of the novel, this unnamed narrator marries the wealthy widower Mr. de Winter. When she moves in with him at Manderley, his estate, she finds herself surrounded by reminders of his first wife, Rebecca. The narrator—egged on by belittling comments from the old housekeeper—begins to feel like she can’t live up to Rebecca’s legacy and worries that Mr. de Winter still loves his first wife more than he loves her. The narrator becomes haunted—not by Rebecca’s ghost but by her own thoughts and anxieties, which soon create a rift between her and her new husband. But it turns out that Mr. de Winter is not at all like Edgar Allan Poe’s narrator, pining for his dead wife and regretting marrying the second. Instead, he actually hated Rebecca and resented the hold that she had over him, and which she still seems to have over the house. The narrator and Mr. de Winter only find themselves free from Rebecca’s influence after the estate has burned down, erasing all traces of her time there.
What other examples of the first wife trope can you think of? Have you read the books discussed here? Share your thoughts with me in the comments! And if you’d like to read more about Gothic tropes, you can click on “Tropes” under the categories listed in the left-hand menu.