The wealthy and mysterious Maximilian de Winter saves a shy and young woman from her life as the paid companion of a ghastly European woman by the offer of marriage. In Monte Carlo the young bride is in bliss, but when the newlyweds arrive at the ancient mansion that is Manderlay and home of Mr. de Winter, her happiness is drained away like water through a sieve. The house, the staff, and indeed Maxim are all oppressed and haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca, who drowned one year ago. With the sinister housemaid Mrs. Danvers keeping Rebecca’s memory alive, Maxim’s new bride faces emotional horrors that she could never have imagined.
Rebecca I think has a great canonicity because it is a work that can not only be adapted and modernised, but even in its entirety it holds appeal to a multitude of readers with no generational divide. Daphne de Maurier’s blending of genres as well as a few other clever little ploys and reflections of Jane Eyre make Rebecca a work that stands out from other gothic novels and romances. For a start, there is wonderful cleverness and irony in our central character of Maxim’s shy young bride. The story is told in the first person register from her point of view, which makes the tale very intimate because the reader is treated to the deepest workings of the narrator’s mind and heart. We feel what she feels and we see what she sees. Although the first person focalisation can sometimes blind readers to the happenings of the book because they are limited in their scope, du Maurier’s largely intimate and sometimes fantasy-esque account of events from the view of the young bride provides the work with its substance as well as all the emotional drama and terror.
By the same token, the first person register used in Rebecca not only makes the story more intimately indulgent; it also brings a little comedy into the mix. The fact that the bride is never provided with a name is a huge and delicious serving of irony as the reader becomes to intimately knowledgeable of this character and blithely follow her and root for her to prevail and for all this we don’t even learn her name: the first basis on which to start a relationship. du Maurier’s ambiguity in this respect sets the ball rolling along one path and then brings about the real shock value when the true horror of the story begins to unfold. At this point, you don’t want to put the book down.
The mismatched blend of characters that somehow all work harmoniously together is also something worth noting. Our bride and heroine is this sweet, unrefined, and shy young thing, completely unsuited to the upstanding form and routines of Manderlay. We than have Maxim who, for the majority of the book, is a blend of sternness and vacancy showing affection to his wife as though she were a dog or a child, only to have true romantic passion burst forth when the truth becomes known in the climax. Mrs. Danvers the housemaid is the sinister, skulking character that you don’t like right from the off, however she ends up being the most tragic of all the characters (though this is only really shown in Hitchcock’s 1940 film). Frank Crawley is a fine, upstanding, and loyal gentleman and then on the other end of the spectrum we have Favell, Rebecca’s cousin, who is sleazy, mischievous, but somehow charming (George Sanders played him in the film was superb).
Filled with romance, drama, haunting, and a little bit of horror, Rebecca is a beautifully crafted book that is well worth the wait and perseverance. Like, The Shining, once you get to the meat of the story, you won’t want to put it down.
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