Laura’s Favourite Book #1: Rebecca

And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea. – Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca

Why Rebecca?

Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier and Stephen King’s IT share a rare honour on my bookshelf: despite being hefty books, they both get re-read at least once a year. I am certainly not a slow reader, but I am a twitchy one and I need to be dragged kicking and screaming into a story until it won’t let me free even if I beg.

It’s all about the story, the characters, and the setting: the big twist holds up every time I read it, the protagonist’s anxieties become mine, and the atmosphere at Manderley is a heady mix of claustrophobia and lushness.

Story

Spoilers absolutely abound so beware, but there are three key components that make Rebecca’s story so compelling: the cyclical structure, the use of the hero’s journey, and the big twist. Together, they give a rigour to what is a pretty long novel (most estimates are between 135,000 and 150,000 words).

du Maurier’s framing of the novel is one of the most effective I’ve ever read. The opening line ‘Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again’ is iconic for a reason, drawing the reader into the unnamed protagonist’s dream as she explores the ruins of her former home and reveals that ‘Manderley was no more’. du Maurier spends another chapter outlining the protagonist’s present as she navigates her new life through the lens of Manderley, before she takes us back to when she first met Maxim de Winter, her future husband. This is where the hero’s journey (Joseph Campbell) comes in – I’ve just picked out the most salient points Rebecca matches up with:

Call to Adventure

The protagonist decides to embark on a journey – in this case, she accepts Maxim’s proposal of marriage (Maxim could also be classed as the mentor).

Crossing the Threshold

The protagonist (from now on known as Mrs de Winter) returns to Manderley with Maxim, entering this unfamiliar and intimidating new world.

Challenges and Temptations

Mrs de Winter has to deal with Mrs Danvers, the obsessive housekeeper determined to sabotage her, Jack Favell (Rebecca’s creep of a cousin), and generally finding her own place in Manderley, which feels impossible when everyone seems to compare her to the dead Rebecca.

Abyss (death and rebirth)

Now, this is the big twist – after months of feeling inadequate compared to Rebecca, Mrs de Winter discovers that not only did Maxim never love Rebecca, he killed her.

Transformation

Mrs de Winter vows to stay by Maxim’s side when Rebecca’s corpse and boat are dredged up, becoming more confident and calculating in the process.

Atonement

I would argue that this is a bit of an involuntary atonement. Once the de Winters get away with Rebecca’s murder, Mrs Danvers burns Manderley to the ground, leaving them without their beloved home as punishment.

Return

This works on both a chronological level and narrative level: As he did before when Rebecca died, Maxim flees the country – this time with Mrs de Winter (which we saw in the second chapter). In terms of the framing, we see Manderley burning, taking us back to the beginning of the novel when Mrs de Winter dreamt of her home’s remains.

Character

The length of the novel gives du Maurier time to really sketch out even the supporting characters and whole essays have been written about Mrs Danvers and Maxim de Winter. However, I’m going to focus on the obvious duo: the two Mrs de Winters.

Mrs de Winter

The second Mrs de Winter is notoriously unnamed, while her predecessor is the eponymous character, which tells us everything we need to know about how Rebecca casts her shadow over proceedings. We don’t get the slightest indication of the protagonist’s name, not even her maiden name, so the only identity we get to assign to her is that of Maxim’s wife – and his second one at that. For the majority of the novel, Mrs de Winter is naïve, neurotic, and never at ease at Manderley, what with Rebecca’s memory in every flower arrangement, menu choice, and an entire wing of the house.

We experience the unfolding of the mystery with her and the utter relief the truth brings: when Maxim reveals that he murdered Rebecca, we, like his new wife, don’t really care because now we know he truly loves her and has been trying to protect her the whole time. Thanks to the journey we’ve gone on with Mrs de Winter, we root for Maxim to very literally get away with murder.

Rebecca

Rebecca is notoriously inescapable. In life, she was the perfect hostess, highly accomplished and athletic, stunningly beautiful, and of course, the ideal match for someone like Maxim de Winter – who she and she alone called ‘Max’. We’re led to believe at the outset of the novel that her death has brought Maxim to a nervous breakdown, and why not, if she had truly been the love of his life?

Once the de Winters return to Manderley, Rebecca’s presence really makes itself known, with Maxim’s grandmother demanding to see her, visitors asking when there’ll be another ball like Rebecca’s, and, of course, the likes of Mrs Danvers and Jack Favell, who are still Rebecca’s closest allies despite her death. However, we also get a slow unravelling of Rebecca’s myth through hints dropped by Bea and Frank, who are two of the most trustworthy characters in the novel.

By the time Mrs Danvers lovingly regales Rebecca’s dysfunctional childhood, it’s clear that for all of her superficial charm and beauty, this woman idolised by almost everyone was actually a vindictive narcissist who wasn’t above threatening vulnerable people and beating innocent animals.

It turns out that although the two Mrs de Winters are truly opposites, the second Mrs de Winter is not the one lacking after all, and what she perceived to be a love triangle was actually, well, according to Maxim, simply not:

“You thought I loved Rebecca?” he said. “You thought I killed her, loving her? I hated her, I tell you. our marriage was a farce from the very first.”

Setting

Rebecca takes in a variety of locations, but we can divide them into primary and secondary. The secondary locations are rarely and briefly seen, such as Mrs de Winter’s visits to Maxim’s grandmother and various ‘well-wishers’, Rebecca’s inquest, and the trip to London, which all serve to enhance her disorientation and uncertainty: these environments are often a test for her, to either demonstrate that she can live up to Rebecca’s impossible legacy or to ‘prove’ Maxim’s innocence.

The primary settings are Monte Carlo and Manderley, the former of which acts as a framing device to help us define the de Winters’ life before and after the main events of the novel. Monte Carlo is depicted as a sun-drenched dream, where (until Maxim’s confession) we arguably see their relationship at its truest: no-one is really testing them or haunting them.

Manderley, however, is a different proposition altogether. We first experience it in its ruined, Gothic form:

There was Manderley, our Manderley, secretive and silent as it had always been, the gray stone shining in the moonlight of my dream, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Time could not wreck the perfect symmetry of those walls, nor the site itself, a jewel in the hollow of a hand.

The ivy is a malevolent enemy, the rhododendrons are twisted and alien, the nettles are vulgar and lanky, all encroaching on a ‘desolate shell’.

We actually only get to see Manderley in its former glory from Chapter 7 onwards, but when it comes, it’s vivid and immersive, saturated with sights, smells, and sounds, making its eventual loss even more tragic.

Rebecca and Coldharbour

First things first, I am not claiming to be anywhere near du Maurier’s level of writing talent, but I can’t deny how much it influences my own work. There are twists and turns, high emotions, and desolate landscapes, which I strive to make feel as immersive as Manderley.

Here's the opening of Coldharbour:

Before Alex knew it, she was staring at the sea.

That chill, churning sea, cloudier than the sky, blacker than the crows pecking at the scraps of crisp packet caught up in the rocks. She had always known those waves, she could name them, not aloud but in her soul, as sure and as certain as the water that clawed its way into shore and slunk back out like an alley cat on the prowl. She had let that sea embrace her up to her knees as a toddler, her ankles as a teenager, and the very tips of her fingers as a woman.

But there…

Where slivers of bright, salt-licked foil were trapped in the pebbles…

There was a glow.

The iridescent glow of Power.