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The multi‑million‑copy bestseller that has enthralled generations of readers. A haunting tale of obsessive love. A mesmerizing psychological thriller.
In Monte Carlo, our heroine is swept off her feet by the dashing widower Maxim de Winter and his sudden proposal of marriage. Orphaned and working as a lady’s maid, she can barely believe her luck. It is only when they arrive at Manderley, her husband’s cavernous estate on the Cornish coast, that she realizes how vast a shadow his late wife, Rebecca, will cast over their lives—introducing a lingering evil that threatens to destroy their love from beyond the grave. This universally acclaimed novel has remained consistently in print since its original publication in 1938 and has frequently been adapted—for television, radio, the theater, and film—most notably in 1940 by Alfred Hitchcock, whose Rebecca received the Academy Award for Best Picture, and in the 2020 Netflix film starring Lily James and Armie Hammer.
“Excellent entertainment...Du Maurier created a scale by which modern women can measure their feelings.” —Stephen King
“One of the most influential novels of the twentieth century, Rebecca has woven its way into the fabric of our culture with all the troubling power of myth or dream.” —Sarah Waters
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ISBN-10
0380730405
ISBN-13
978-0380730407
Print length
416 pages
Language
English
Publisher
William Morrow Paperbacks
Publication date
October 31, 1997
Dimensions
5.31 x 0.94 x 8 inches
Item weight
10.8 ounces
ASIN :
B0DCPNV119
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2828 KB
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1
Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.
No smoke came from the chimney, and the little lattice windows gaped forlorn. Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it; it was narrow and unkept, not the drive that we had known. At first I was puzzled and did not understand, and it was only when I bent my head to avoid the low swinging branch of a tree that I realized what had happened. Nature had come into her own again and, little by little, in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive. The beeches with white, naked limbs leaned close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above my head like the archway of a church. And there were other trees as well, trees that I did not recognize, squat oaks and tortured elms that straggled cheek by jowl with the beeches, and had thrust themselves out of the quiet earth, along with monster shrubs and plants, none of which I remembered.
The drive was a ribbon now, a thread of its former self, with gravel surface gone, and choked with grass and moss. The trees had thrown out low branches, making an impediment to progress; the gnarled roots looked like skeleton claws. Scattered here and again among this jungle growth I would recognize shrubs that had been landmarks in our time, things of culture and grace, hydrangeas whose blue heads had been famous. No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites that grew beside them.
On and on, now east now west, wound the poor thread that once had been our drive. Sometimes I thought it lost, but it appeared again, beneath a fallen tree perhaps, or struggling on the other side of a muddied ditch created by the winter rains. I had not thought the way so long. Surely the miles had multiplied, even as the trees had done, and this path led but to a labyrinth, some choked wilderness, and not to the house at all. I came upon it suddenly; the approach masked by the unnatural growth of a vast shrub that spread in all directions, and I stood, my heart thumping in my breast, the strange prick of tears behind my eyes.
There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.
The terrace sloped to the lawns, and the lawns stretched to the sea, and turning I could see the sheet of silver placid under the moon, like a lake undisturbed by wind or storm. No waves would come to ruffle this dream water, and no bulk of cloud, wind-driven from the west, obscure the clarity of this pale sky. I turned again to the house, and though it stood inviolate, untouched, as though we ourselves had left but yesterday, I saw that the garden had obeyed the jungle law, even as the woods had done. The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard things that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin. A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners. Ivy held prior place in this lost garden, the long strands crept across the lawns, and soon would encroach upon the house itself. There was another plant too, some half-breed from the woods, whose seed had been scattered long ago beneath the trees and then forgotten, and now, marching in unison with the ivy, thrust its ugly form like a giant rhubarb towards the soft grass where the daffodils had blown.
Nettles were everywhere, the vanguard of the army. They choked the terrace, they sprawled about the paths, they leaned, vulgar and lanky, against the very windows of the house. They made indifferent sentinels, for in many places their ranks had been broken by the rhubarb plant, and they lay with crumpled heads and listless stems, making a pathway for the rabbits. I left the drive and went onto the terrace, for the nettles were no barrier to me, a dreamer. I walked enchanted, and nothing held me back.
Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a dreamer’s fancy. As I stood there, hushed and still, I could swear that the house was not an empty shell but lived and breathed as it had lived before.
Light came from the windows, the curtains blew softly in the night air, and there, in the library, the door would stand half open as we had left it, with my handkerchief on the table beside the bowl of autumn roses.
The room would bear witness to our presence. The little heap of library books marked ready to return, and the discarded copy of The Times. Ashtrays, with the stub of a cigarette; cushions, with the imprint of our heads upon them, lolling in the chairs; the charred embers of our log fire still smoldering against the morning. And Jasper, dear Jasper, with his soulful eyes and great, sagging jowl, would be stretched upon the floor, his tail a-thump when he heard his master’s footsteps.
A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face. The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.
The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. When I thought of Manderley in my waking hours I would not be bitter. I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear. I should remember the rose garden in summer, and the birds that sang at dawn. Tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up to us from the lawns below.
I would think of the blown lilac, and the Happy Valley. These things were permanent, they could not be dissolved. They were memories that cannot hurt. All this I resolved in my dream, while the clouds lay across the face of the moon, for like most sleepers I knew that I dreamed. In reality I lay many hundred miles away in an alien land, and would wake, before many seconds had passed, in the bare little hotel bedroom, comforting in its very lack of atmosphere. I would sigh a moment, stretch myself and turn, and opening my eyes, be bewildered at that glittering sun, that hard, clean sky, so different from the soft moonlight of my dream. The day would lie before us both, long no doubt, and uneventful, but fraught with a certain stillness, a dear tranquility we had not known before. We would not talk of Manderley, I would not tell my dream. For Manderley was ours no longer. Manderley was no more.
2
We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic—now mercifully stilled, thank God—might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion, as it had been before.
He is wonderfully patient and never complains, not even when he remembers… which happens, I think, rather more often than he would have me know.
I can tell by the way he will look lost and puzzled suddenly, all expression dying away from his dear face as though swept clean by an unseen hand, and in its place a mask will form, a sculptured thing, formal and cold, beautiful still but lifeless. He will fall to smoking cigarette after cigarette, not bothering to extinguish them, and the glowing stubs will lie around on the ground like petals. He will talk quickly and eagerly about nothing at all, snatching at any subject as a panacea to pain. I believe there is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance in this or any world we must endure ordeal by fire. This we have done in full measure, ironic though it seems. We have both known fear, and loneliness, and very great distress. I suppose sooner or later in the life of everyone comes a moment of trial. We all of us have our particular devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end. We have conquered ours, or so we believe.
The devil does not ride us anymore. We have come through our crisis, not unscathed of course. His premonition of disaster was correct from the beginning; and like a ranting actress in an indifferent play, I might say that we have paid for freedom. But I have had enough melodrama in this life, and would willingly give my five senses if they could ensure us our present peace and security. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, unmeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and, catching his smile, I know we are together, we march in unison, no clash of thought or of opinion makes a barrier between us.
We have no secrets now from one another. All things are shared. Granted that our little hotel is dull, and the food indifferent, and that day after day dawns very much the same, yet we would not have it otherwise. We should meet too many of the people he knows in any of the big hotels. We both appreciate simplicity, and we are sometimes bored—well, boredom is a pleasing antidote to fear. We live very much by routine, and I—I have developed a genius for reading aloud. The only time I have known him show impatience is when the postman lags, for it means we must wait another day before the arrival of our English mail. We have tried wireless, but the noise is such an irritant, and we prefer to store up our excitement; the result of a cricket match played many days ago means much to us.
Oh, the Test matches that have saved us from ennui, the boxing bouts, even the billiard scores. Finals of schoolboy sports, dog racing, strange little competitions in the remoter counties, all these are grist to our hungry mill. Sometimes old copies of the Field come my way, and I am transported from this indifferent island to the realities of an English spring. I read of chalk streams, of the mayfly, of sorrel growing in green meadows, of rooks circling above the woods as they used to do at Manderley. The smell of wet earth comes to me from those thumbed and tattered pages, the sour tang of moorland peat, the feel of soggy moss spattered white in places by a heron’s droppings.
Once there was an article on wood pigeons, and as I read it aloud it seemed to me that once again I was in the deep woods at Manderley, with pigeons fluttering above my head. I heard their soft, complacent call, so comfortable and cool on a hot summer’s afternoon, and there would be no disturbing of their peace until Jasper came loping through the undergrowth to find me, his damp muzzle questing the ground. Like old ladies caught at their ablutions, the pigeons would flutter from their hiding place, shocked into silly agitation, and, making a monstrous to-do with their wings, streak away from us above the treetops, and so out of sight and sound. When they were gone a new silence would come upon the place, and I—uneasy for no known reason—would realize that the sun no longer wove a pattern on the rustling leaves, that the branches had grown darker, the shadows longer; and back at the house there would be fresh raspberries for tea. I would rise from my bed of bracken then, shaking the feathery dust of last year’s leaves from my skirt, and whistling to Jasper, set off towards the house, despising myself even as I walked for my hurrying feet, my one swift glance behind.
How strange that an article on wood pigeons could so recall the past and make me falter as I read aloud. It was the gray look on his face that made me stop abruptly, and turn the pages until I found a paragraph on cricket, very practical and dull—Middlesex batting on a dry wicket at the Oval and piling up interminable dreary runs. How I blessed those solid, flannelled figures, for in a few minutes his face had settled back into repose, the color had returned, and he was deriding the Surrey bowling in healthy irritation.
We were saved a retreat into the past, and I had learned my lesson. Read English news, yes, and English sport, politics, and pomposity, but in future keep the things that hurt to myself alone. They can be my secret indulgence. Color and scent and sound, rain and the lapping of water, even the mists of autumn and the smell of the flood tide, these are memories of Manderley that will not be denied. Some people have a vice of reading Bradshaws. They plan innumerable journeys across country for the fun of linking up impossible connections. My hobby is less tedious, if as strange. I am a mine of information on the English countryside. I know the name of every owner of every British moor, yes—and their tenants too. I know how many grouse are killed, how many partridge, how many head of deer. I know where trout are rising, and where the salmon leap. I attend all meets, I follow every run. Even the names of those who walk hound puppies are familiar to me. The state of the crops, the price of fat cattle, the mysterious ailments of swine, I relish them all. A poor pastime, perhaps, and not a very intellectual one, but I breathe the air of England as I read, and can face this glittering sky with greater courage.
The scrubby vineyards and the crumbling stones become things of no account, for if I wish I can give rein to my imagination, and pick foxgloves and pale campions from a wet, streaking hedge.
Poor whims of fancy, tender and un-harsh. They are the enemy to bitterness and regret, and sweeten this exile we have brought upon ourselves.
Because of them I can enjoy my afternoon, and return, smiling and refreshed, to face the little ritual of our tea. The order never varies. Two slices of bread and butter each, and China tea. What a hidebound couple we must seem, clinging to custom because we did so in England. Here, on this clean balcony, white and impersonal with centuries of sun, I think of half past four at Manderley, and the table drawn before the library fire. The door flung open, punctual to the minute, and the performance, never varying, of the laying of the tea, the silver tray, the kettle, the snowy cloth. While Jasper, his spaniel ears a-droop, feigns indifference to the arrival of the cakes. That feast was laid before us always, and yet we ate so little.
Those dripping crumpets, I can see them now. Tiny crisp wedges of toast, and piping-hot, floury scones. Sandwiches of unknown nature, mysteriously flavored and quite delectable, and that very special gingerbread. Angel cake, that melted in the mouth, and his rather stodgier companion, bursting with peel and raisins. There was enough food there to keep a starving family for a week. I never knew what happened to it all, and the waste used to worry me sometimes.
But I never dared ask Mrs. Danvers what she did about it. She would have looked at me in scorn, smiling that freezing, superior smile of hers, and I can imagine her saying: “There were never any complaints when Mrs. de Winter was alive.” Mrs. Danvers. I wonder what she is doing now. She and Favell. I think it was the expression on her face that gave me my first feeling of unrest. Instinctively I thought, “She is comparing me to Rebecca”; and sharp as a sword the shadow came between us…
Well, it is over now, finished and done with. I ride no more tormented, and both of us are free. Even my faithful Jasper has gone to the happy hunting grounds, and Manderley is no more. It lies like an empty shell amid the tangle of the deep woods, even as I saw it in my dream. A multitude of weeds, a colony of birds. Sometimes perhaps a tramp will wander there, seeking shelter from a sudden shower of rain and, if he is stouthearted, he may walk there with impunity. But your timid fellow, your nervous poacher—the woods of Manderley are not for him. He might stumble upon the little cottage in the cove and he would not be happy beneath its tumbled roof, the thin rain beating a tattoo. There might linger there still a certain atmosphere of stress… That corner in the drive, too, where the trees encroach upon the gravel, is not a place in which to pause, not after the sun has set. When the leaves rustle, they sound very much like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and when they shiver suddenly, and fall, and scatter away along the ground, they might be the patter, patter, of a woman’s hurrying footstep, and the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe.
It is when I remember these things that I return with relief to the prospect from our balcony. No shadows steal upon this hard glare, the stony vineyards shimmer in the sun and the bougainvillea is white with dust. I may one day look upon it with affection. At the moment it inspires me, if not with love, at least with confidence. And confidence is a quality I prize, although it has come to me a little late in the day. I suppose it is his dependence upon me that has made me bold at last. At any rate I have lost my diffidence, my timidity, my shyness with strangers. I am very different from that self who drove to Manderley for the first time, hopeful and eager, handicapped by a rather desperate gaucherie and filled with an intense desire to please. It was my lack of poise of course that made such a bad impression on people like Mrs. Danvers. What must I have seemed like after Rebecca? I can see myself now, memory spanning the years like a bridge, with straight, bobbed hair and youthful, unpowdered face, dressed in an ill-fitting coat and skirt and a jumper of my own creation, trailing in the wake of Mrs. Van Hopper like a shy, uneasy colt. She would precede me in to lunch, her short body ill-balanced upon tottering, high heels, her fussy, frilly blouse a complement to her large bosom and swinging hips, her new hat pierced with a monster quill aslant upon her head, exposing a wide expanse of forehead bare as a schoolboy’s knee. One hand carried a gigantic bag, the kind that holds passports, engagement diaries, and bridge scores, while the other hand toyed with that inevitable lorgnette, the enemy to other people’s privacy.
She would make for her usual table in the corner of the restaurant, close to the window, and lifting her lorgnette to her small pig’s eyes survey the scene to right and left of her, then she would let the lorgnette fall at length upon its black ribbon and utter a little exclamation of disgust: “Not a single well-known personality, I shall tell the management they must make a reduction on my bill. What do they think I come here for? To look at the page boys?” And she would summon the waiter to her side, her voice sharp and staccato, cutting the air like a saw.
How different the little restaurant where we are today to that vast dining room, ornate and ostentatious, the Hôtel Côte d’Azur at Monte Carlo; and how different my present companion, his steady, well-shaped hands peeling a mandarin in quiet, methodical fashion, looking up now and again from his task to smile at me, compared to Mrs. Van Hopper, her fat, bejeweled fingers questing a plate heaped high with ravioli, her eyes darting suspiciously from her plate to mine for fear I should have made the better choice. She need not have disturbed herself, for the waiter, with the uncanny swiftness of his kind, had long sensed my position as inferior and subservient to hers, and had placed before me a plate of ham and tongue that somebody had sent back to the cold buffet half an hour before as badly carved. Odd, that resentment of servants, and their obvious impatience. I remember staying once with Mrs. Van Hopper in a country house, and the maid never answered my timid bell, or brought up my shoes, and early morning tea, stone cold, was dumped outside my bedroom door. It was the same at the Côte d’Azur, though to a lesser degree, and sometimes the studied indifference turned to familiarity, smirking and offensive, which made buying stamps from the reception clerk an ordeal I would avoid. How young and inexperienced I must have seemed, and how I felt it, too. One was too sensitive, too raw, there were thorns and pinpricks in so many words that in reality fell lightly on the air.
I remember well that plate of ham and tongue. It was dry, unappetizing, cut in a wedge from the outside, but I had not the courage to refuse it. We ate in silence, for Mrs. Van Hopper liked to concentrate on food, and I could tell by the way the sauce ran down her chin that her dish of ravioli pleased her.
It was not a sight that engendered into me great appetite for my own cold choice, and looking away from her I saw that the table next to ours, left vacant for three days, was to be occupied once more. The maître d’hôtel, with the particular bow reserved for his more special patrons, was ushering the new arrival to his place.
Mrs. Van Hopper put down her fork, and reached for her lorgnette. I blushed for her while she stared, and the newcomer, unconscious of her interest, cast a wandering eye over the menu. Then Mrs. Van Hopper folded her lorgnette with a snap, and leaned across the table to me, her small eyes bright with excitement, her voice a shade too loud.
“It’s Max de Winter,” she said, “the man who owns Manderley. You’ve heard of it, of course. He looks ill, doesn’t he? They say he can’t get over his wife’s death…”
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Daphne Du Maurier
Daphne du Maurier was born in 1906 and educated at home and in Paris. She began writing in 1928, and many of her bestselling novels were set in Cornwall, where she lived for most of her life. She was made a DBE in 1969 and died in 1989.
Customer reviews
4.5 out of 5
26,424 global ratings
Ann Brennan
5
I read this years ago
Reviewed in the United States on September 5, 2024
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and then it was recently presented to me again. I knew I’d loved it then but couldn’t recall details. As I read it now I couldn't put it down. What a fantastic story! I know I’ll reread it again one day.
Drwo
5
The Girl With No Name Writes a Classic
Reviewed in the United States on January 25, 2013
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Having read this book many times, I'm hoping a new generation of readers will discover an intriguing mystery without a single vampire, serial killer or one set in some apocalyptic future. Rebecca is dark and strange and almost impossible to put down, especially with the central character dead and the storyteller being a shadow.
The book begins with a dream about a house named Manderley perched on a knoll above the sea. The dream is told by the book's narrator and we learn that she once lived at Manderley but can never return.
The story really begins in a hotel in Monte Carlo in the 1930's where a young girl is the paid companion to a crass, social climbing older woman, Mrs. Van Topper. The older woman will sink to almost any depth to appear well connected and prominent and plants herself in the hotel lobby daily in an attempt to ingratiate herself with someone she deems important. She spots a man she recognizes as a wealthy,prominent Englishman, Maxim de Winter and forces him to have tea with her.
The young girl, whose diary is open to the reader, is horrified by Mrs. Van Topper's obvious attempts to extract personal information from de Winter by giving him the impression that they have friends in common. Although de Winter is not fooled by Mrs. Van Topper, sensing the young girl's anguish, he is kind to her.
The flu confines Mrs. Van Topper to her room, allowing the girl more time and she and de Winter begin to spend most afternoons together, something she records faithfully but does not share with Mrs. Van Topper. The diary records the girl's fascination with the handsome, older man who is often brooding and distant. She falls in love with the enigmatic and dashing de Winter, but realizes how unrealistic she is. The narrator knows that de Winter recently "lost his wife," Rebecca, but knows nothing beyond what Mrs. Van Topper has told her: that de Winter's wife drowned near Manderley and he never speaks of it.
Quite suddenly, Mrs. Van Topper decides to leave Monte Carlo and the girl is ordered to pack and prepare to leave. In a panic, she feels she must seek out Mr. de Winter to say goodbye and when she does, he proposes to her in an awkward way and she accepts. Mrs. Van Topper is angry and points out how unsuited the young girl is to become "mistress of Manderley."
When the girl arrives at Manderley after a rapturous honeymoon, she is awestruck and intimidated by the size of the house and has no idea how to assume her role as Mrs. de Winter. Maxim is off and about the estate seeing to affairs he has neglected and, since the girl is afraid to make errors in social judgment, she leaves all decisions to others, most especially to the head housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who reinforces the girl's insecurities by continually pointing out the former Mrs. de Winter's beauty, social skills and legions of admirers and friends. The reminders of Rebecca are everywhere; her personalized notecards still in her desk, closets filled with beautiful clothes, fur coats, monogrammed towels and robes with giant R's in script, and the girl becomes convinced that de Winter married her on a whim and remains hopelessly in love with the perfect Rebecca. Rather than learning her role as lady of the house, the girl is terrified that her husband will come to his senses and realize what a mistake he has made and she will lose him. Consequently, she is slow to pay attention to nuances in behavior and speech that would provide clues to what is happening around her.
Manderley is famous for its annual costume ball, a tradition de Winter loathes but agrees to suffer through as it is regarded as the height of the social season. The girl worries about how she will possibly live up to Rebecca's skills as a hostess and has no idea what costume to wear. Mrs. Danvers cleverly suggests a costume to replicate one of the many family portraits of long deceased family members lining the walls of Manderley, failing to disclose that her suggestion is for the girl to wear the exact costume worn by Rebecca at the previous ball.
On the night of the ball, as a drum signals, she descends the grand staircase to be met with silence, expressions of disbelief and gasps of horror. Maxim yells at her and orders her to go and change. She is humiliated and defeated and refuses to go back downstairs. Then she hears voices outside discussing her. "Guess they had a row and she is refusing to come out." "No one has seen her. Rebecca would have been here there and everywhere." Shaken, she suddenly realizes that as Mrs. de Winter, she has certain obligations and one is to overcome her fear and face the music. She makes it through the ball in misery.
The diary is the only information provided, so one never learns the girl's name, nor what she looks like, except for several remarks de Winter makes to her, saying that with a big ribbon in her hair, she would look like Alice in Wonderland Wretched though she is, the girl's despairing self-absorption is shelved by a dramatic event. A ship wrecks close to the shore and divers searching the wreck discover Rebecca's lost sailboat, an event which eventually turns the timid girl into a formidable force.
To reveal more might detract from the reader's experience. Written in another time, the lengths to which certain families went to preserve reputations and hide any unpleasantness may seem absurd. The anxiety felt by the girl, afraid to fail but having no idea how to go about gaining skills she is certain she lacks may seem naive to modern women but, in the end, Rebecca is a book about how imagination clouds the ability to see, or even seek, the truth and how living a lie erodes the soul. It is a story about how fear of the truth stops us from finding joy rather than misery and how what we imagine can be far different from reality. The narrative reveals how behind facades there can be nothing more than a cardboard theater set which has been continually propped up by the flimsiest of supports and if one support post fails, the entire structure collapses.
This psychological melodrama overlays a deeper message.
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Ella Mc
5
Du Maurier writes very melodramatic plot without ever tipping into sentimental
Reviewed in the United States on July 5, 2018
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I'd never read this before, nor have I seen the movie I was missing so much. A wonderfully dark and deceptively told tale. I could feel the ambiance coming off the screen. I was shocked at all the psychological twisty, rather deep and dark Freudian/Jungian stuff found in this novel.It really affected me more than most dark and twisty psychological thrillers do.
Rebecca seems a fierce response or callback for lack of a better word to Jane Eyre. Both novels stand very firmly on their own. Rebecca need not be seen in light of other novels, but it's interesting to see how she responds to some of the material in the earlier classic.
Normally a simpering woman who is dying for a man to just sweep her away from it all (no matter when it was written) would turn me off. The fact that she's afraid to trouble him or speak up to him makes sense, but also made me very sad for her at first. The genius is though I kept thinking "pack it up. Leave him," I felt connected to the nameless narrator through the novel as if I was the one in her position. I felt stuck. I felt nervous. I cringed along with her. I found my pulse quickening every time Mrs. Danvers came near. I was scared - literally scared while reading this in the middle of the day.
The dreams that begin and end the book are stunning in the way they set the mood and tell the truth when our narrator can't seem to tell herself the truth. Her daydreams are full of fanciful, childish nattering, but the dreams are the real thing. The juxtaposition of the truth in her dreams v the silliness of her daydreams is very telling and full of foreboding. Du Maurier writes very melodramatic plot without ever tipping into sentimental or soggy language so well that it's almost easy to miss how melodramatic the plot actually is. She's also a master of class and all those games people play, which is a callback to Jane Eyre, but so much of this is in the narrator's fearful mind that it's wildly different from the actual scenes in Jane Eyre.
I also think the nameless narrator is a perfect way to add one more layer of her personality -- added to her hair, the way she dresses, all of her hiding, acquiescing, nail biting, her class and the way they met -- this is a well-built and very believable character. The daydreaming tops it off for me. She can't deal with her life and shunts all of her wishes and fears into fantasy.
One more thought is that these women - the two Mrs. de Winters - are like two sides of the same person, and in the end de Winter manages to kill them both (and they're both willing to let him.) Sure, the narrator is technically still alive, but it's just a slower/different form of death. There's a lot to say about that from the world of psychobabble, but I'll spare us all.
My final thought was "did Sylvia Plath love this novel?" I don't know, but in her late (mostly Ariel-era) poems, there's a lot that has the feel (and some of the imagery) of this novel. I tried to do a quick search, but all I learned is that Agatha Christie wrote to du Maurier about the nameless narrator.
I loved it. It moved me. If I'd gotten a degree in psychoanalysis, I would have wanted to use this as some part of my dissertation: especially in the responses of women to the women in the novel.
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26 people found this helpful
Elle G
5
It will keep you on the edge of your seat
Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2024
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I read this book again today after 40 years. Though I have seen two different versions of the movie, I still couldn't put it down. It will keep you on the edge of your seat. There are some differences between the book and the movie so hold on!
Sydney Williams
5
"Rebecca," Daphne Du Maurier
Reviewed in the United States on November 28, 2020
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Sydney M. Williams
“Rebecca,” Daphne Du Maurier November 28, 2020
“I can close my eyes now, and look back on it, and see myself as I must have been, standing on the threshold of the house, a slim awkward figure in my stockinette dress, clutching in my sticky hands a pair of gauntlet gloves.” The narrator thinks back on her arrival at Manderley Rebecca, 1938 Daphne Du Maurier (1907-1989)
Rebecca, among the most famous book titles, opens with one of fiction’s most recognized sentences: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Two years after publication, Alfred Hitchcock directed the Academy Award film starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. In 2020, Ben Wheatley directed a new version, with Lily James and Arnie Hammer. While Hitchcock does a better job in portraying the dark mood of the story, neither, in my opinion, captures the novel’s full range.
Daphne Du Maurier wrote historical novels. She was a master of creating an atmosphere of dark moods and mysterious characters. Born in London, she spent much of her life in Cornwall. Novels like Jamaica Inn, Frenchman’s Creek, The King’s General and My Cousin Rachel were set in England’s west country. Manderley, Max de Winter’s home, is a large estate on the rocky coast of Cornwall; the time is the 1920s.
The story is told through a narrator, whose name we are never told, though Max de Winter tells her, “You have a very lovely and unusual name.” When we meet her, she is a paid companion to a wealthy, overbearing American, Mrs. Van Hopper – “…her short body ill-balanced upon tottering high heels, her fussy, frilly blouse a complement to her large bosom and swinging hips…”. They are staying in Monte Carlo in late winter. While the narrator is never described, we are led to understand she is English, about twenty years old, comely not beautiful, innocent not worldly – the antithesis of Rebecca, which is what attracts Mr. de Winter. He is a widower; his wife Rebecca having died the previous May. He is “tall and slim, with dark hair,” wealthy, aristocratic, in his early forties.
The dead Rebecca hovers over the novel, like a dark cloud. She obsesses the narrator who has become the new Mrs. De Winter. Rebecca was tall, clever, fond of sport, “a very lovely creature…full of life.” Mrs. Danvers, formerly her childhood nurse, is now housekeeper at Manderley. We first meet her through the eyes of the narrator: “Someone advanced through the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great hollow eyes gave her a skull’s face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton’s frame.” The ghost of Rebecca, a deceitful phantasm, hovers over the large, isolated estate, made real through the devious intrigues of Mrs. Danvers.
Neither movie ends as does the book. Movies are a visual, but passive, art form, where the eye works and the mind can nap. Books require concentration and are most effective when the reader employs his or her imagination, guided by the author. Rebecca’s last sentence, as Max and the narrator drive home to Manderley: “And the ashes blew toward us with the salt wind from the sea.” Not the end a movie requires, but perfect for this story; you will be captivated by Ms. Du Maurier’s creative genius. I will say no more.
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37 people found this helpful
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