Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.
Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
I remember sitting in my room, all dressed and ready at 9:30 on a cold Friday morning. I had my phone in my hand and kept manically refreshing the music app. I was waiting for Taylor Swift’s 9th studio album ‘evermore’. I have loved her music since I first heard Love Story on the radio. I have lived and experienced such different phases with her music; from the young girl with big dreams, mean friends and teenage crushes to a depressed housewife who’s been through two divorces, she completely changed how I saw music and storytelling.
Evermore and Folklore are albums that I could forever listen to on repeat. They somehow never lose their magic. Whether I listen to them in my room alone at night or while heading for college on a busy morning, I am somehow suddenly a lady in a delicate feathery robe moving through the woods with a candlestick in her hand. Every time I listen to these songs, I think about all the characters and stories that live within them. I think of Betty, James, Augustine, Dorothea and Rebekah. I think about the woman who left her high school sweetheart at the altar, Dorothea’s old flame, Este, and the person who kept trying.
Tolerate It is the fifth track of Taylor Swift’s eleventh studio album, Evermore. I was scared of this one, so very scared. How could I not be, knowing the lore about track fives?
I vividly remember hearing that melancholic piano while pressing play on one of the most devastating track fives ever. I kept looking at my phone, my heart breaking with every subsequent lyric. I was so invested, I couldn’t wait to hear what happened next and what would become of the woman in the song. I kept looking at the screen until it became a blur and I realised I was crying.
Oh, what I wouldn’t give to listen to this song again for the first time.
Tolerate It as Swift explained in an interview was inspired by the book Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. The book was first published in 1938 and has not gone out of print since. It follows the story of the narrator, a rather young woman who gets involved with Maxim De Winters, a wealthy middle-aged man. They both meet in Monte Carlo, fall in love and impetuously elope. The story is set around Maxim’s beloved mansion Manderley. She goes to live there with him right after their honeymoon. This is where we learn about Rebecca.
Someone else had sat in my chair. Someone else had poured coffee and stroked the dog. I was sitting in Rebecca’s chair. I was leaning against Rebecca’s cushion. The dog, Jasper, came to me because in the past he had come to Rebecca.
Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
Rebecca sounds, well, perfect.
She is worshipped by everyone in the house, she is gentle but firm, kind but clever, and she is polite yet honest. She is everything one could dream of in a partner. She is unbelievably beautiful and she is on top of everything. Rebecca has impeccable taste, be it jewellery, cutlery, clothes or husbands. She was Maxim’s first wife and had been dead for the last nine months.
From the staff and the townsfolk to Maxim, she is all anyone can talk about. As time passes the narrator realises that everyone in Manderley still loves Rebecca and does not want to accept her as the new Mrs De Winters. She is deemed unfit and burdensome by the staff. She realises that she is nothing more than a replacement to Maxim, a rebound through whom he can forget all about Rebecca (or so it seems). Their relationship starts suffering and the dynamic shared between them during this part of the novel was what Taylor took inspiration from.
The narrator remains nameless till the end of the book, we never get to know her name because the only name that ever mattered was Rebecca’s.
The song itself, written from a first-person perspective, details the woman’s maladies in her relationship with someone much older than her.
I thought of all those heroines of fiction who looked pretty when they cried, and what a contrast I must make with a blotched and swollen face, and red rims to my eyes.
Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
The first verse talks about the narrator’s entrance and fascination with her partner. She watches him while he sleeps, noticing the pattern of his breathing. He reads his books while she tries her best to read him. She tries to memorise every single detail of him at any given moment while he never seems to even take notice of her presence.
In the chorus, she compares herself to a kid as she stands by the door waiting for him to come home. She centres her whole life around her spouse, walking on eggshells around him and trying her best to get his attention or any sense of acknowledgement. She uses her best colours for his portrait, trying to paint him in the best light and construe him in such a way that she can somehow convince herself to look past his flaws and his impertinence.
I wait by the door like I’m just a kid
Taylor Swift, tolerate it
Use my best colors for your portrait
Lay the table with the fancy shit
And watch you tolerate it
One of the most heartbreaking things about this song is that at no point is she unaware of how she is being treated. She knows that her love should be celebrated, that she doesn’t deserve someone who has to put up with her for the sake of being together. She is painfully self-aware at all times.
They never communicate any of their concerns. He never has anything to say to her, other than, well, a few taunts here and there whenever she gets something wrong. Since she never gets assurance of any kind, it is hard for her to convince herself that all this is not some self-victimising narrative that she has built up in her head, but rather something very real that is happening in their relationship. She gets nothing from his side. So, as a response, she over-analyzes every interaction and meticulously studies his reactions. She does all this just to have something to interpret and get some sort of clarity.
The second verse talks about how she puts him up on a pedestal, how she idolises him and makes a big deal off of every small accomplishment. She welcomes him like a war hero when he comes back home from work and takes all his mean jokes and jabs in good fun.
She trails off in the chorus again, kind of like getting lost in her own thoughts.
If it’s all in my head tell me now
Taylor Swift, tolerate it
Tell me I’ve got it wrong somehow
I know my love should be celebrated
But you tolerate it
We build up to the bridge of the song where she lashes out in a fit of rage. She questions him on why she was left stranded in a world that they made for the both of them. She questions him on his temerity to give all his time to other relationships and vain pursuits in his life, to place his own partner at the bottom of his list. She asks him where the man she had fallen in love with has disappeared.
He was a safe space and she made him her temple. She made him her mural. She made him her sky, something that earlier illuminated her but now is a graveyard full of dull and miserable clouds. She now begs for footnotes (which are usually written when we need more information than the amount we are given in the actual text) to understand what is going on in her partner’s life as she is never included in any conversation and is not part of his plans anymore.
And in all this her partner very conveniently assumes (he can only make assumptions as he is not bothered to know how she actually feels) that she would be fine with this arrangement. She knows that she isn’t a part of his story or his life anymore yet she can’t help but draw hearts around his name in the bylines. She asks him what he would do if she left. If she removes the dagger of his “love” from her heart, If she loses all the weight of this relationship off of her by ending it all, what would he do then? But she contrasts this in the last verse which pictures her as the burden instead of him.
You assume I’m fine
But what would you do if IBreak free and leave us in ruins
Taylor Swift, tolerate it
Took this dagger in me and removed it
Gain the weight of you then lose it
Believe me, I could do it
She ends this chorus with the line ‘Believe me I could do it’. She delivers this line with a certain hesitancy as she knows that she does not have it in her to leave him and even in her fantasy she is still hopelessly trying to prove herself to him.
The first few haunting notes on the piano keep replaying till the very end, much like a broken record player that knows nothing else but just to keep repeating itself over and over and over again.
She knows that she won’t do anything. She won’t rally against him or communicate her concerns. She won’t stop him when he makes fun of her or belittles her. She won’t stop worshipping him, she won’t leave, she will not stop tolerating his tolerance. She will clean the dishes and polish the glasses. She will paint all the canvases, she will draw hearts around his name and keep out of his way.
Most importantly, she will sit quietly and watch him tolerate all of it.
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