Rebecca

Last time, I announced I’d be talking about Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca, and many people stopped me on the street to say “Rebecca? Seriously? No one reads Rebecca anymore. Get a real job.”

And I was left grinning too broadly and trying to explain.

Somebody reads Rebecca; it’s been in print continuously since its publication—an unusual distinction for a book from the 30s. Two film adaptations have been made: the famous 1940 version with Laurence Olivier and Joan Fontaine, and a 2020 remake with Lily James. The book is popularly regarded as a masterpiece of Gothic Romance, but I say, “Not so fast, Raisin Bran!” (Silver Linings Playbook reference). I think to call it that is an attempt to pigeon-hole a much more sophisticated work, perhaps because of when it was written and because of the gender of the author.

Here's the famous first line:

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” (Please imagine this with an upper-class British accent).

Here we have a complex statement about time; later I’ll get into how the book deals with time—a major issue. A narrator, speaking as “I,” states that she dreamed last night that she had gone somewhere again. Consider the difference if she said, “I dreamt that I went to Manderley.” In the text, the narrator is looking back from a present, which is a major theme of the book, and describing going somewhere again. A repetition, which is again a major theme.

Here's the narrator on repetition:

“I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky, casting another shadow, , and the peasant girl would trudge past us along the road in a different way, not waving this time, perhaps not even seeing us. There was something chilling in the thought, something a little melancholy, and looking at the clock, I saw that five more minutes had gone by. Soon, we would have reached our time limit and must return to the hotel.”

Darn it, the whole book is encapsulated in that passage—the melancholy, the trying to hold on to the past, and the realization that one cannot. And the book’s first line too—the past is a dream, to experience the past again is only a dream. Brilliant, and please not the shimmering prose.

Rebecca is narrated by a first-person protagonist who remains unnamed throughout the book. She is not Rebecca, best B. She is the “I” in the famous first line. We are not provided much background information on her. The story’s present is a place from which this narrator looks back at the events of the story. She exists in the shadow of the past. Her existence in the present consists in trying to cheer her husband Maxim up when he gets mopish while the couple travels around Europe staying in swanky hotels. This sounds rather fun, but the narrator presents herself as unhappy and obsessed. There’s a sense that the narrator’s present is somehow less important and vivid than is, or was, the past. And in a similar way, the narrator feels less important than Rebecca.

Of course, we are dealing with a fiction here. The narrator must focus on the past because that’s what the story is about. In fact, we can detect an interesting phenomenon.

Ooh!

The novel attempts to seduce the reader with romance and suspense, and, on a different level, the unnamed narrator is seduced, both by Maxim (although things remain very chaste in the book) and by Manderley itself. Perhaps, she is also seduced by Rebecca’s memory.

Ah!

The story is, briefly, that the narrator meets Maxim de Winter while working as a lady’s companion. Max is a wealthy widower who has had, it’s rumored, a tragic past. He pursues and marries the narrator, who learns that Max’s first wife, Rebecca, died under mysterious circumstances. Max owns a marvelous estate in Cornwall, England called Manderley and takes his bride there to live.

As said, a theme is that the narrator, who is twenty years younger than Maxim, feels inadequate to be the lady of a grand estate. Although, also as said, we don’t know much about her, we are confronted with her self-doubt.

In the story’s present, she says:

“I am very different from the 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.”

The narrator is an outsider who is alienated from Maxim’s world, a world she desperately wants to join. An outsider desiring to be let in. The book seduces the reader into identifying with her, loving her, imagining oneself taking her part in the story’s dramatic scenes.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a mise en abyme with the story of Mrs. Van Hopper, who the narrator is the companion of when she meets Max. Mrs. Van Hopper is unpleasant and arrogant and constantly demeans the narrator, treating her like the naïve fool she believes herself to be. The narrator carries this dynamic to Manderley where she feels inferior to Rebecca and to the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers.

After moving into Manderley, the narrator learns much more about her predecessor, Rebecca, and the story’s intensity deepens after Rebecca’s body is discovered. Eventually, the narrator transforms into someone older and wiser who must support her husband through a difficult time.

‘Kay.  Let’s stop here and resume next time.

Till then.

#Rebecca #DaphneDuMaurier #AlanBray