Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca is the story of two women, one man, and a house. Of the four, as Hitchcock once observed, the house, Manderley, is the dominant presence. Although never precisely located (the word ‘Cornwall’ is never actually used in the novel), its minutely detailed setting is clearly that of an actual house, Menabilly. Du Maurier discovered Menabilly, on its isolated headland near Fowey, as a young woman, when she first went to live in Cornwall; she wrote a magical account of the first time she saw it.

The plot hinges upon secrets; the novel’s milieu is that of an era and social class that, in the name of good manners, rarely allowed the truth to be expressed; and suppression coupled with a fearful secretiveness are its female narrator’s most marked characteristics.

I think this is my personal problem with the book. Even though it creates tension, I was annoyed that no one speaks openly, so a character of Favell was a breath of fresh air, however unpleasant he was.

The second wife, the drab shadowy creature who narrates this story, remains nameless. We learn that she has a ‘lovely and unusual’ name, and that it was her father who gave it her. The only other identity she has, was also bestowed by a man – she is a wife, she is Mrs de Winter. That a narrator perceived as a heroine should be nameless was a source of continuing fascination to du Maurier’s readers.

Without hesitation, Mrs de Winter then gives her husband her full support – her one concern from then onwards is to conceal the truth and protect her husband. Thus, she becomes, in legal terms, an accessory after the fact: more importantly, she makes a moral choice. This is the crux of du Maurier’s novel: de Winter has confessed, after all, to a double murder. He believes he has killed not only Rebecca, but also the child she was carrying – a heinous crime, by any standards.

Another reason why I dislike the narrator

This woman, not surprisingly, views Rebecca as a rival; what she refuses to perceive is that Rebecca is also her twin, and ultimately her alter ego. The two wives have actually suffered very similar fates. Both were taken as brides to Manderley – a male preserve, as the first syllable of its name (like Menabilly’s) suggests. Both were marginalised within the confines of the house – Rebecca in the west wing with its view of her symbol, the sea, and the second wife in the east wing, overlooking the confines of a rose garden. The difference between them lies in their reactions: the second wife gladly submits, allowing her identity to be determined by her husband, and by the class attitudes and value systems he embraces.

Rebecca has dared to be an unchaste wife; she has broken the ‘rules of conduct’ Maxim lives by. Her ultimate sin is to threaten the system of primogeniture. That sin, undermining the entire patriarchal edifice that is Manderley, cannot be forgiven – and Rebecca dies for it.

There is a final twist to Rebecca and it is a covert one. Maxim de Winter kills not one wife, but two. He murders the first with a gun, and the second by slower, more insidious methods. The second Mrs de Winter’s fate, for which she prepares herself throughout the novel, is to be subsumed by her husband. Following him into that hellish exile glimpsed in the opening chapters, she becomes again what she was when she first met him – the paid companion to a petty tyrant. For humouring his whims, and obeying his every behest, her recompense is not money, but ‘love’ – and the cost is her identity.

Brilliant afterword