Damn the Rain

It has been said by the wise that music resides between the notes. In fact, I actually quote this on the main page of this site. Today, let’s apply this idea to Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, looking at two scenes and the way what isn’t written is as important as what is. This is a key skill of writing, the ability to tell a coherent story without  re-counting possibly tedious moment-to-moment experience.

In Chapter Ten, the unnamed narrator and her husband Maxim go for a walk after the visit of Maxim’s sister, Beatrice, and her husband. Here's the first paragraph:

“We watched the car disappear around the sweep of the drive and then Maxim took my arm and said, ‘Thank God, that’s that. Get a coat quickly and come out. Damn the rain, I want a walk. I can’t stand this sitting about.’ He looked white and strained, and I wondered why the entertaining of Beatrice and Giles, his own sister and brother-in-law, should have tired him so.”

The first leap or gap in time is in that first sentence. They watch the car disappear and the next thing is that Maxim grabs her by the arm and speaks. What happened between watching the car and Maxim grabbing her? Nothing judged very valuable to the story, apparently. Was this transition immediate in the narrator’s experience? —As I watch the car disappear, Maxim grabs my arm and speaks. The author made a decision here: let’s go right to the action of arm-grabbing and speaking. This is not the place for more showing of what it was like watching the car disappear.

Continuing, while Maxim is speaking, issuing commands like a tyrant, the narrator notes he looks white and strained, and, during his speech, she wonders why his sister’s visit would cause this. In other words, she attributes his pallor to the visit—an important connection to the story as it unfolds. Maxim is stressed seeing his sister and brother-in-law because they are reminders of what became of Rebecca. They knew Rebecca, and we can infer that, throughout the luncheon, Maxim worried that the subject of Rebecca and her fate might arise. Of course, the narrator doesn’t know that; we the readers can infer it. (Only, however, upon re-reading).

So Maxim’s “tired” demeanor is attributed to the visit, instead of something more benign and less relevant to the story—say because the fish he ate was spoiled.

How much time elapsed in this scene? Two minutes, three? Perhaps less, perhaps it all happened quickly. The car disappears, Maxim grabs her arm and speaks, and she notes his appearance and attributes it to a particular thing.

Then, we have the narrator speaking:

“’Wait while I run upstairs for my coat,’ I said.”

How much time passed here? Maxim says he can’t stand sitting around—is there any pause before the narrator speaks? Does she stare at him in annoyance? We don’t know because the text doesn’t say. And then why do we get a new paragraph with quoted speech by the narrator? She’s remembering all this; it happened in the past. Why use quoted speech instead of narrative summary? (I said, I’d run upstairs for my coat). What it does is makes her utterance more of an event. It’s set off from the previous paragraph. In a sense, the action stops as we can imagine her pulling away from him, preparing to head up stairs. Perhaps she finds him annoying but doesn’t say. In any case it’s more dramatic. In effect, it shifts the narration from the protagonist to the hidden narrator of the story who quotes her.

Ooh!

But Maxim continues to direct his wife, telling her not to go upstairs, that there are raincoats in a nearby room. He sends Robert the servant to get one. “He was already standing in the drive and calling to Jaspar (the dog). Jaspar barks. ‘Shut up, you idiot,’ said Maxim; ‘what on earth is Robert doing?’”

‘Kay, There a number of time-leaps here, best B. Has the protagonist pulled away from her husband’s grasp when he directs her to stay? Or not? Where did Robert come from? How much time passes after Robert goes to get the coat and when Maxim frets about how much time he’s taking? Maxim has evidently moved from the house’s front entrance out into the driveway. His movements and his speech convey a sense of urgency and upset. The man wants to walk and doesn’t mind irritating his wife, Robert, and the dog in order to get going.

It's notable that if this were a scene in a play, we would see the action in all these leaps and pauses. But we are in a book and must contend with the compression and contraction of time. We must imagine.

Let’s consider a different scene.

In Chapter Seven, Maxim takes the narrator to Manderley for the first time, and she meets the housekeeper, Mr. Danvers. After a somewhat spooky arrival, we have:

“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…Someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheekbones and great hollow eyes gave her a skull’s face, parchment white, set on a skeleton’s frame.

She came towards me, and I held out my hand, envying her for her dignity and her composure, but when she took my hand hers was limp and heavy, deathly cold, and it lay in mine like a lifeless thing.

‘This is Mrs. Danvers,’ said Maxim, and she began to speak, still leaving that dead hand in mine, her hollow eyes never leaving my eyes, so that my own wavered and would not meet hers, and as they did so her hand moved in mine, the life returned to it, and I was aware of a sensation of discomfort and of shame.”

This passage differs from the first in that it is less action and more reaction, if you will. Whatever else is going on in the scene, the narrator is focused on Mrs. Danvers, who is her nemesis, and the scene is focused on the narrator—not Maxim or Robert. It is focused on her reaction to Mrs. Danvers.. There are all kinds of compressions and ignoring of what else is happening—Mrs. Danvers has all the narrator’s attention, and the scene is all about the narrator. She describes Mrs. Danvers in a poetic way, saying that she is like a death’s head. This certainly foreshadows later developments, but it also goes to characterization: the narrator is fearful and timid.  

Oh dear, looking at the length of this post, I’m afraid I’ve overstayed my welcome. Let’s stop here and resume next time.

But before I go, I do want to say, damn it all, that I wish the unnamed protagonist was named. I know I could refer to her as Mrs. De Winter, but couldn’t her first name be given? Edith or Brittany or Kendra? Daisy?

Till then.

#Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray