Rebecca

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Rebecca

Daphne Du Maurier (1938)

The most famous opening of any novel, "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again" the novel follows the interior monologue of Mrs De Winter, the second wife of Maxim De Winter. Maxim owns Manderley, the great gothic house in which the novel is set as Mrs De Winter naively attempts to unravel the mystery of Rebecca, Maxim's previous wife who haunts every crevice of the great house and its tenants. 

The House

Manderley represents the transformation of British Aristocracy; at the beginning we are introduced to it as a building tortured by nature "beeches with white naked limbs" " monster shrubs and plants" "chocked with grass and moss". Britain at the time in post WW1 England, the disintegration solid class structure and frivolous lives of Britain's elite began to crumble. This is represented metaphorically in Rebecca with Manderley in flames in the last paragraph of the novel "It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea" The blood reflects the death of Manderley and all it represents; stifiling sturctures of high society, secrets and Rebecca's spirit that lived on through the house. It represents the death of aristocratic way of life. The destruction of Manderley  too reflects this movement in relationships: Maxim marries a girl of little social importance after the death of his previous wife, a socially competent woman of "good breeding". It becomes clear throughout the text that although Rebecca was a woman of high social standing and admiration, much like the house of Manderley Mrs.De Winter once admires on a postcard, Rebecca's relationship with her husband was not a true one; in fact it becomes evident she was incapable of loving anyone. "She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together. Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency." Much like Manderley, Rebecca and her marriage represents something admired by many but, in something reality false and superficial. Manderley is the epitome of isolation; it’s a house cut off from civilisation through the drive “twisted and turned as a serpent” “penetrating even deeper to the very heart surely of the forest itself”. The separations too of the East and West wings split the house internally and isolate the protagonist not only from the physical areas of the house, but from the “dark” past it represents “I came to a long corridor that I had not seen before, similar in some ways to the one in the east wing, but broader and darker”. Rebecca's cultivation of Manderley - ironically "Happy Valley" again represents a front, beauty and show does not necessarily mean there's happiness "the spell of the happy valley was upon me". 

 

Marriage

Rebecca presents the conflicts of marriage that Du Maurier, a woman of society in 1930s Britain experienced herself; choosing to hide away in Cornwall than marry into London society. Although she did marry, biographers have noted her marriage was often cold and distant and there are suspicions of homosexuality. The novel reflects this and seems to demonise the general social conventions of marriage. Although Maxim marries the protagonist out of love, it isn't clear from the beginning. His marriage proposal is widely unconventional "no I'm asking you to to marry me you little fool", yet his marriage to the second Mrs. De Winter is far happier than his marriage to Rebecca which was a much more "conventional" affair. It was a marriage of social convenience and "Not in white, with bridesmaids and bells and choir boys? What about your relations, and all your friends?" "You forget[...] I had that sort of wedding before." Du Maurier infers that social gestures like marriage are just frivolities that don't mean as much as the companionship they bring "do you mind how soon you marry me? [...] Because the whole thing can be so easily arranged in a few days. Over a desk, with a license and then off in the car to Venice or anywhere you fancy". One the one hand, this could be interpreted as Maxim's lack of romance - he doesn't love the protagonist and wants a cold, informal union. However, it also signifies the hatred and the unnecessary romantic frivolities that Rebecca and he made such a show of "our marriage was a farce from the first".

Female Power

Writing strong female characters is no new theme to Du Maurier's work; My Cousin Rachel and Jamaica Inn too have very headstrong, enigmatic women as forefront figures in the texts. The novel is a quintessential showcase for the power of female manipulation. Rebecca is a female villain who uses her womanly image, her womanly powers and her beauty to forge the life she wants for herself. Her lack of trusted female friends, other than devoted Mrs Danvers, and her omniscient presence even in death presents her as a dark force of strength and a puppeteer. Our protagonist lives in her suffocating shadow which reflects female nature - always comparing oneself to other women "You thought you could be Mrs. de Winter, live in her house, walk in her steps, take the things that were hers! But she's too strong for you. You can't fight her - no one ever got the better of her. Never, never."

Sexually too Rebecca is dominating. She manipulates the men in her life by way of her female power and beauty. The cottage is the stage for Rebecca's affairs; set apart from the main house, hidden in a cove and never entered by Maxim it represents the secrets hidden from society. She seduces man after man there. She's presented almost as a mystical predator; "then she started on frank" "I could tell by Giles's rather hearty jovial  manner and by the look in Rebecca's eye that she had started on him, as she had done with Frank". "All the while Rebecca sitting there at the head of the table, looking like an angel" This presents Rebecca in a eerily dominant position and infers she has a pious position of overlooking and orchestrating the situation though this is obviously an ironic comparison. 

Although it could be argued, Rebecca's female power is horribly undermined and thwarted by "“the malformation of [her] uterus” symbolising the punishment of her femininity for her promiscuous ways. And how she can be so successful as a woman in manipulating situations but nature breaks her in an ugly, gender stripping manner. Much like the plants that suffocate Manderley in the first chapter, nature has a profound role in the novel as the overarching force "She was beaten in the end, but it wasn't a man, it wasn't a woman. It was the sea!"  

The protagonist often tries to wish herself into a body of another woman; a woman that's more glamorous and beautiful as she believes it is the root to power and admiration " I wish I were a woman of 36, dressed in black satin with a string of pearls!"