Are Maxim's actions consistent or inconsistent with his character?

I see Maxim’s actions as completely consistent with his
character. Any inconsistencies we perceive early in the text are due to a lack of
understanding of the complex relationship Maxim had with Rebecca and
Manderley.

Maxim is clear from the beginning that the
narrator brings a refreshing and welcome change from his sombre mood. When they lunch
together for the first time, he tells her of the effect she has
had-

I’ve
enjoyed this hour with you more than I have enjoyed anything for a very long
time.

The reader, and the
narrator, believes this to mean since his wife’s death. It is only when we realise that
he was never happy while she lived that we understand fully what Maxim is trying to
communicate.

He feels he has to uphold the values of
upper-class English society, which is why he allows Rebecca to torture him. It would be,
he believes, more painful to sully the family name with divorce and lose Manderley than
to bear Rebecca’s taunting infidelity.