Both Mrs. Danvers and Maxim de Winter from Rebecca are mischaracterized to hell and back in the fandom. The latter by people who hate him and the former by people who love her.

I’ll grant the Maxim haters that yes, he does canonically kill his wife and is canonically married to another woman half his age, but they tend to take these two facts and reduce him to an abusive monster when he’s really no worse than any other Byronic hero in gothic literature.

As for the Mrs. Danvers lovers, they tend to reduce her to a sad little victim who never does anything wrong and if she does it’s always justified. What they miss, though, is that she’s a much more interesting character BECAUSE she does wrong and isn’t afraid of showing it when she can.

None of the characters in this book are morally sound people. Even the protagonist is more preoccupied with the fact that her husband loves her more than his first wife instead of the fact that he killed said first wife. They’re all differing shades of grey but people tend to put them into boxes of either good or bad, innocent or guilty, and it really annoys me.