Rebecca

I was invested in the story, but I can't say the twist took me by surprise — or maybe the plot has seeped out into other works so that its once-shocking elements are common now.

Many times, after marking a book "to read," it sits on my shelf so long that I forget why I tagged it, and so I start reading, cold. This was one of those times, and I was glad of it. Rebecca is a haunting story, all the more effective when the reader doesn't have a clue what is to come.

I love the opening paragraph. Manderley is a beautiful name, and a mysterious one. At this point, I thought the narrator was an old woman, looking back on a life that was once wonderful until something tragic happened...That would be my first surprise.

When the narrator, who is actually young, told her story, I was reminded of Jane Eyre's circumstances: another young woman, without family, who must make her way alone in the world. Jane Eyre was hired as a governess, while our narrator is a paid companion to an American woman. Both are unhappy. Oh, but this isn't 1830—it's more like 1930. Already, I take this as a feminist statement, that a woman's fate hasn't changed in a hundred years.

The narrator—she is never even given a name—finds herself with a choice between continuing on with her companion (who pays her well), or marrying a rich widower (twice her age) who she believes she loves, and chooses the latter. For awhile there, I thought this story was going to be a romance. That is, the story of how a young woman would come into her own, and help a man forget a past tragedy. Again, I was wrong. I did not perceive this story as romantic at all.

When The Narrator arrives at Manderley a married woman, she is called Mrs. de Winter by everyone, and immediately feels overshadowed and haunted by the presence of Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter. At this point, the story becomes a fascinating, spooky mystery. Obviously, husband Maxim de Winter has not enlightened the new Mrs. de Winter about anything, and so she is left to her own young, shy, paranoid thoughts. He leaves her alone with the scary housekeeper Mrs. Danvers. She finds more companionship with Jasper the dog than with her husband, to be sure.

As events unfold, and a clearer picture of Rebecca takes shape, she learns that Rebecca was unconventional in ways that her husband reviled and wanted, more than anything, to keep out of public knowledge. To someone in Maxim's class and position, appearances where very important. I felt that the reader was encouraged to view Rebecca with distaste, as not a very nice person. But then, Rebecca is dead, and so never gets to tell us her side of the story...

Despite the fact that certain revelations and confessions in this story were not surprising, I still found this novel to be a page turner; from romance to spooky mystery, to denouement, it's all riveting. And it's clear why it's still a relevant story!


The ending, another echo of Jane Eyre, with Manderley burning, was the biggest surprise to me—I wasn't expecting the novel to end that quickly, and with such a jolting event (a feature of ebooks: you can't tell how close you are to the end, sometimes). And another thing: I was very disturbed that The Narrator is more upset over the idea that Maxim might have loved Rebecca more than the fact that he'd murdered her! Narrator is depicted as a sweet, innocent soul, and yet she is willing to become an accessory to murder for a man who told her nothing, and only proclaimed his love for her after she'd proved her loyalty in the most stressful way. And then, it seems, she'd right back where she started: traveling with an older person, waiting on a husband instead of a companion, this time.

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, would make an excellent discussion topic. I'd recommend it to anyone I know.

If you're a fan of old-school romantic suspense, then you cannot go wrong at all with Daphne du Maurier. Especially if you pick up Rebecca, which I was very pleased to finally do. Many of the elements in this book are classically Gothic: the innocent young new bride, the brooding husband, the dead first wife, the remote mansion, the creepy housekeeper, and such. They are in fact Gothic enough that it took me a bit to realize that the novel was in fact set in a modern (as of the time it was written) time frame! In that respect, du Maurier reads a lot like Mary Stewart, and if you like Stewart you'll probably like du Maurier very much.

Our story starts off with a young woman working as a companion in Monte Carlo to the odious Mrs. Van Hopper. She's saved from exile to New York in Mrs. Van Hopper's company by falling in love with an older man, Maxim de Winter, who is said to be haunted by the recent death of his first wife. To our heroine's amazement, Maxim proposes to her, and she is whisked off to his mansion in Cornwall, Manderley, as the new Mrs. de Winter.

Once there, she discovers that Maxim, his housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, and the rest of the staff in the house are all still dominated by the memory of Rebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter--who, even after her death, is such a potent force that our shy young heroine is driven to despair. But as this is indeed a Gothic-style suspense novel, that is of course not all. For there are suspicious circumstances indeed about how Rebecca died!

It must be noted that our heroine is never actually given a name--which, it turns out, was a deliberate choice of the author. The edition I have includes a section at the end in which du Maurier explains to her readers that she never actually thought of a name for the character. It works wonderfully, though, as a symbol of how so thoroughly the second Mrs. de Winter is overwhelmed by the impact her predecessor had on Manderley even after her death.

There's an original version of the book's ending included with my edition, too, which is worth reading and comparing against the beginning of the finished story, since du Maurier moved a lot of that material into the initial chapter of the book. From a writer's perspective it's fun to see her explanations for why she did that, and from a reader's perspective and a writer's perspective alike, I can appreciate her choices. Without going into detail, I'll say that for me as a reader, it seemed that du Maurier absolutely made the right choice, since her original ending was way too reminiscent of Jane Eyre.

I won't say more for fear of spoilers, even though this novel's old enough that many of you out there who are my age or older may have already read it, or may have seen the Hitchcock film that was based on this work. (And if you're a Hitchcock fan, I can add too that I can absolutely see why Hitchcock made this into a movie; it's very much right up his alley.) As with Mary Stewart, the pacing is slower than a modern reader may expect. But if you don't mind taking your time, and in fact like to indulge in an author's rich and slowly building prose, Rebecca will reward you. Five stars.