How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #4
"She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs. de Winter. She ought to have been a boy, I often told her that. I had the care of her as a child. You knew that, didn't you?" (18.118)
Mrs. Danvers is talking about Rebecca, of course, who is described as excelling in female roles, but taking on roles more socially acceptable for males as well. This includes, perhaps, her seeming willingness to have affairs, while Maxim (who maybe takes on the more traditionally female role?) broods and is powerless to stop her.
Quote #5
"'We could make you look very foolish, Danny and I,' [Rebecca] said softly. 'We could make you look so foolish that no one would believe you, Max, nobody at all.'" (20.75)
This supposed quote from Rebecca is interesting to us because it suggests that in a divorce proceeding, powerful women like Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers might have an advantage over a man like Maxim. Nobody will believe that she is capable of having wild sexual affairs, and that he is powerless to stop her.
Quote #6
"Maxim," I said, "can't we start all over again? Can't we begin from today, and face things together? I don't want you to love me, I won't ask impossible things. I'll be your friend and your companion, a sort of boy. I don't ever want more than that." (19.200)
This all goes down before Mrs. de Winter knows that Maxim killed Rebecca, when she's still worried that her bad costume choice has created an impossible rift between them. This time she very explicitly casts herself in a male. She goes as far as to suggest a platonic friendship with Maxim as a substitute for the passionate heterosexual love which she can't quite imagine them having.