Rebecca

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Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

THE LITERARY WORK

A novel set primarily in England during the late 1930s; published in 1938.

SYNOPSIS

A young bride lives under the shadow of her husband’s former wife and uncovers a mystery surrounding the wife’s death.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

The Novel in Focus

For More Information

Married to a man who had previously been engaged to a beautiful socialite, Daphne du Maurier was acquainted with the feelings of jealousy aroused by a mate’s former love. Although her own marriage did not include the darker aspects of her novel Rebecca’s haunting plot, the author did identify with the psychology of her narrator. She too created in her mind the image of another woman who had shared a past with her husband. And like her narrator, du Maurier often wondered what had kept her husband and his former fiancée from enjoying a blissful wedded life together.

Events in History at the Time of the Novel

Raising women of the social elite

Throughout Rebecca, the narrator (the second Mrs. de Winter) comments on the social disparity between her husband, Maxim de Winter, and herself. Not having been brought up for a lifestyle of grandeur, the narrator acts shy and embarrassed when introduced to the friends and family members of her husband’s class. She constantly compares herself to Maxim’s former wife, the beautiful debutante, Rebecca, who had assuredly socialized with England’s gentry. This feeling of awkwardness is understandable in light of the fact that upper-class British women of the 1930s were brought up simply to expect to fulfill a future role as the wife of a wealthy man.

The London Times would announce the arrival of children born into well-to-do families. Listed under the Court Circular section, these notices would detail the lineage of the baby, its parents, and its godparents. News of the christening followed, with references to the christening gown and the quality of lace used. After their heralded arrival into the world, most upper-class children were handed over to the care of nannies. Britishers employed some 250,000 to 500,000 nannies from the years 1921 to 1939.

Once beyond the toddler age, young girls enjoyed the privilege of attending school. The idea of sending daughters away to school became standard practice only during the twentieth century. Prior to this era, most girls had been educated at home by tutors or governesses. Although the more public setting allowed for somewhat greater social and academic freedom, young girls still had to learn and maintain the accomplishments of traditional ladies. In addition to academic subjects, the young women were schooled in activities such as riding, hunting, tennis, and dancing. With this being the type of education common to women of this milieu, it is hardly surprising that most of Maxim’s friends cannot believe that his second wife is a novice in all of the mentioned arenas.

Most importantly, all girls from the “right” families underwent the process known as “coming out.” In fact, they had little choice about this formal presentation to society. During the Debutante Season, young women, sponsored by their mothers or other female relatives, would attend a whirlwind of parties and dances. The sole purpose for these gatherings was the arrangement of marriages.

With the advent of the industrial society, a new class had emerged in England, the nouveaux riches. These families, having acquired their wealth and property through work rather than lineage, did not have the heritage necessary for arranged matches between their daughters and sons and those of the upper classes. Nonetheless, these newcomers did represent a large portion of England’s economic wealth. The best manner, therefore, by which to ensure that the nation’s money would remain in the hands of its established upper class was to intermarry the new and old monied families. Debutante balls provided the opportunity for young men and women of similar economic backgrounds to socialize with one another. Should the season prove a success, a young woman from the right family might land an outstanding husband.

These matches between old and new monied families helped relax strictures against marriage between members of different classes. Without the aid of an upper-crust upbringing or debutante ball, the second Mrs. de Winter nonetheless manages to marry a man of an elite socioeconomic status. While rigid social standards still held fast throughout England, the interwar period, and especially the 1930s, marked an era of change. The cinema, a popular leisure activity for European youth, provided Hollywood stars to idolize. In response, young factory workers could adopt the guise of wealth by wearing smart clothes and tilting their hats like Greta Garbo, the Swedish-born American actress. This image, however, when put to the test, would not withstand the rigors of the elite’s social protocol. In the novel, the presence of the narrator at Maxim’s Manderley estate causes quite a stir among the neighboring busybodies. When they learn of her nondescript background, they wonder how Maxim de Winter could have married such a no-body, a girl “so different to Rebecca” (du Maurier, Rebecca, p. 121).

Female friendships

For the second Mrs. de Winter, no character proves more of an obstacle to happiness than Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers. The housekeeper seems unwilling to accept the new face in the household, and takes no pains to hide her displeasure. Originally the second Mrs. de Winter assumes that Mrs. Danvers’ attitude derives from a fear of replacement by the new mistress of the estate. She soon learns otherwise. One character informs the second Mrs. de Winter, “She [Mrs. Danvers] resents your being here at all, that’s the trouble. … She simply adored Rebecca” (Rebecca, p. 100). Within time, the narrator learns that the friendship shared by Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers constituted no ordinary bond between master and servant. Rather, the two women were closer to one another than to any other persons in their lives.

Daphne du Maurier had knowledge about this type of relationship. While attending finishing school in Paris, France, she too engaged in an intense friendship with an older woman who occupied a somewhat subservient position. As an adolescent daughter of a socially elite family, Daphne attended a school abroad that cultivated such tastes as art appreciation and knowledge of the French language. There she grew uncommonly close with one teacher, Mademoiselle Fernande Yvon. Upon her initial introduction to the French headmistress, du Maurier wrote to her cousin, stating, “I’ve quite fallen for that woman I told you about, Mile. Yvon. She has a fatal attraction ... she’s absolutely kind of lured me on and now I’m coiled in the net” (du Maurier in Forster, p. 28). Her bond with Mile. Yvon grew rapidly. Originally du Maurier had planned to stay at the school for only one term. Because of her growing affection for and dependence on Mile. Yvon, she instead remained for three terms. The women treated each other as equals rather than as teacher and student. Just as Rebecca calls Mrs. Danvers “Danny” in the novel, du Maurier gave Mile. Yvon the affectionate nickname, “Ferdy.” This relationship worried du Maurier.

She told her cousin that she feared having “Venetian” (her own term for lesbian) tendencies. Like the fictional Rebecca, du Maurier somewhat resented being a girl. In the novel, Mrs. Danvers tells the narrator, “She [Rebecca] had all the courage and the spirit of a boy.... She ought to have been a boy” (Rebecca, p. 243). Likewise Daphne envied the greater freedoms and advantages enjoyed by the male population. During puberty, du Maurier convinced herself that, in fact, she was a boy. She wore boy’s shorts, shirts, and ties at a time when women never wore trousers. She also cultivated the spirit and ambition admired as masculine traits. In a gesture that fostered this attitude, du Maurier’s father composed a poem for her that shows an appreciation for her boyish tendencies. Two of the lines read, ”And, if I’d had my way, / She would have been, a boy” (Gerald du Maurier in Forster, p. 13).

Although du Maurier decided, at the onset of menstruation, to ignore the boy she saw inside of herself, her friendship with Mile. Yvon caused her to reconsider. She worried that a woman who loved and was attracted to another woman must be a man at heart. While she struggled with these questions, she never acted on what she feared were her lesbian tendencies. Du Maurier felt that lesbianism was “a feeble substitute for married life, and something to get over in youth” (du Maurier in Shallcross, p. 63). When a critic suggested that the relationship between Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers seemed to have lesbian undertones, the author acknowledged only that “Mrs. Danvers … could quite possibly have enjoyed a lesbian relationship with her beloved Rebecca, and that this would have deeply affected her attitude towards the new Mrs. de Winter” (Shallcross, p. 63). In fiction as in her own life, du Maurier neither confirms nor denies the level of intimacy shared between female friends.

Psychology and the crime novel

Rebecca belongs to a literary genre known as the “psychological thriller.” While the characteristics of the novel seem commonplace by today’s standards, at the time they represented a somewhat revolutionary shift in crime and detective fiction. This genre finds its roots in the Gothic novels popular during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. With his book The Castle of Otranto, Ho-race Walpole gave birth to the popular Gothic novel in 1764. Later works such as Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Lord Byron’s Vampyre helped to shape the characteristics of this branch of sinister literature. Within time, common Gothic elements emerged. These included: castle-like settings, supernatural occurrences, elaborate descriptions, heroines in distress, and brooding heroes, all bound together inside a web of mystery. The psychological thriller combines these characteristics with those of the traditional crime novel.

The twentieth century brought with it a heightened interest in crime stories. Amid the clamor of the new scientific age, these works encouraged methodic observation and formulation of conclusions. They also brought readers out of the mundaneness of their own lives and into the world of high adventure. The “thriller” uses, but is not limited to, the characteristics of the crime novel. While it generally presents a mystery, the purpose of the work does not focus so much on a piece-by-piece unraveling of events. Rather, it shrouds the mystery in fear, creating the atmosphere or the psychology of dread. The psychological thriller furthermore attempts to explain, throughout the book, the emotional motivations of the guilty party. This corresponds to a broader attempt by the scientific community of the early 1900s to understand and treat people with psychological or mental problems rather than simply ignoring them or confining them in an institution that isolate them from society.

The world of psychology, during the mid-1900s, promised new and exciting breakthroughs for the mental health profession. For the first time in history, doctors began treating patients with techniques of psychoanalysis. One of the more prominent names in this field was that of Carl Gustav Jung. Born in 1875, Jung made a name for himself early in his career. At the age of thirtyone, he published his first text, Psychology of Dementia Praecox, a psychoanalytic study of schizophrenia. In 1907 Jung traveled to Vienna to meet with Sigmund Freud, remaining some six years with the famous psychiatrist. Working with Freud, Jung became one of the first in the mental health profession to apply techniques of psychoanalysis to the study of insanity.

Because of increasing differences of opinion, the two men split in 1913. Shortly before this divergence, Jung published his work Psychology of the Unconscious, which revealed his own particular philosophy. The mind, according to this philosophy, was divided into separate parts that people could personify. There was also, according to Jung’s philosophy, a collective consciousness that existed in the minds of people, making them common to one another and resulting in the development of mythologies. This personification and mythology, argued the philosophy, provided meaning in peoples’ lives.

In any case, along with the focus on psychology in the early to mid-1900s came an explosion of psychological thrillers. The New Zealand writer Ngaio Marsh first combined psychological observation with the crime novel’s traditional uncovering of clues and facts. Through her several works in this genre, Marsh introduced elaborate and bizarre methods of murder that the literary world had not yet encountered. In Overture to Death (1939), Marsh’s victim meets his fate by a handgun cleverly disguised in a piano. Psychology provides the motive for the evil deed. Similarly, Rebecca involves a psychologically motivated and rather involved murder. Its focus remains not so much on the solution of the mystery as on the emotional states of the characters involved. Moreover, du Maurier offers no punishment for the crime committed—only the psychological explanation of events.

The advent of the radio and cinema only increased the popularity of the thriller. Its plots provided excellent entertainment for audiences through adaptations into radio plays and film scripts, and many authors began to enjoy unheard-of economic success when they sold their novels to these mediums. Rebecca proved no exception. Following the U.S. printing of the novel, Selznick Studios purchased Rebecca’s film rights. In 1940 du Maurier’s novel came to the silver screen under the direction of Alfred Hitchcock and won an Academy Award that year for best film.

The Novel in Focus

The plot

Rebecca’s unnamed narrator relates her first-person tale through an extended flashback. While the opening of the novel finds the narrator and her husband, Maxim de Winter, safely secluded in a hotel room abroad, the chilling events that drove them from home are recalled throughout the book’s subsequent pages. Known only to the reader as “the second Mrs. de Winter,” the narrator begins her story with her introduction to her future husband.

While acting as a companion to a wealthy but obnoxious American dowager, Mrs. Van Hopper, the narrator mingled with Europe’s social elite in the resort regions of southern France. Since she herself hailed from a nondescript, working-class background, the narrator often felt awkward and clumsy as she performed the duties of her occupation. She neither liked her job nor her patron, but with little alternative for earning a living, she showed determination for excelling at her work. During an afternoon lunch, Mrs. Van Hopper noted a fellow diner, stating, “It’s Max de Winter … the man who owns Manderley. You’ve heard of it, of course. He looks ill, doesn’t he? They say he can’t get over his wife’s death” (Rebecca, p. 11). From that moment on, the narrator’s future became intricately woven together with the brooding man and his English country estate, Manderley.

When Mrs. Van Hopper took ill, the narrator had occasion to lunch with Mr. de Winter. Their meetings became routine engagements, and lunches soon stretched into afternoon outings together. By the end of two weeks, the couple had fallen in love. When Mrs. Van Hopper announced that she would soon sail for New York, the narrator and her beau disclosed their affection for each other. Without the blessing of her former employer, the narrator married Mr. de Winter and embarked on a honeymoon tour of Italy.

After traveling for six weeks, the de Winters returned to England to begin their life together at Manderley. The narrator’s initial introduction to the estate, while filled with a bride’s nervous trepidation, gave little indication of the events that would later occur on the Manderley grounds. As she grew to know the mansion and its staff, the narrator felt welcome by all the employees, save one. Mrs. Danvers, Manderley’s housekeeper, had resided with the de Winters for quite some time, and seemed rather set in her ways. Although others lauded her excellent traits, the housekeeper treated the new Mrs. de Winter with cold disdain. She seemed immediately to resent the new face at Manderley and took no pains to hide her emotions. The narrator nevertheless settled into her role as the mistress of the estate.

Within time she became acquainted with Maxim’s friends and family. Though constantly aware of her inferior social upbringing, the narrator strove to improve her social skills for the sake of her new status. Her efforts seemed hampered, however, by the ever-present shadow of Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife. Rebecca had accidentally drowned while sailing less than a year earlier, and her presence still permeated Manderley. Mrs. Danvers kept Rebecca’s private rooms as they had been on the day of her death. Even her dressing gown lay on the bed, awaiting an owner who would never return. It seemed as though every person with whom the narrator interacted commented on Rebecca’s outstanding beauty, grace, charm, and accomplishments. Subject to these comparisons, the second Mrs. de Winter began to feel as though she could never live up to the standards set by her predecessor. Coupled with this, Maxim’s mood grew so dark at the mere mention of his former wife that the narrator believed that he had not yet put Rebecca’s death behind him.

At the suggestion of several neighbors, the de Winters decided to revive the Manderley fancy dress ball that had been an annual event at the estate. Mrs. Danvers recommended a costume for the narrator so beautiful that she rushed to purchase that exact gown. She kept her attire a secret from her husband, hoping for once to startle him with her beauty and grace. When she descended the stairs on the eve of the party, however, his look was not one of affection, but rather of shock and horror. On what would be her last fancy dress ball, Rebecca, his former wife, had worn that exact outfit. Only then did the narrator realize the extent of Mrs. Danvers’ hatred for her.

Unable to clear up the confusion, the narrator and Maxim spent the duration of the party barely speaking to each other. While she had hoped to catch him early the next morning, her apologies had to wait, as a ship had run aground in the bay nearby. The narrator, like many other curious spectators, ran down to the shore to watch the spectacle. No one, it turned out, had suffered injury in the accident, so the excitement of the shipwreck seemed to wane in the late morning. However, when a diver went down to inspect a hole in the ship, he made a startling discovery. On the floor of the ocean he found Rebecca’s small sailboat, and peering inside, he discovered a body. Since Maxim had previously identified a different body as that of his former wife, a formal inquest began. The authorities raised the small craft and searched it thoroughly. When they noticed holes driven through the floor of the boat, they began to suspect foul play.

Ironically, these strange events drew the narrator and her husband closer together. Maxim confessed to her that he had killed his former wife. He told her that Rebecca “was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other.… Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal” (Rebecca, p. 271). Tired of her adultery and her lies, and trapped in a loveless marriage, he had shot Rebecca and then sunk her body in the boat. The narrator soothed Maxim, convincing him that their love for each other would see them through whatever lay ahead. Although the authorities did come close to discovering the truth, they ultimately listed suicide as the cause of Rebecca’s death. All parties seemed satisfied with this end—everyone, that is, except Mrs. Danvers. While the de Winters were away dealing with the inquest, Mrs. Danvers fled the estate, but not before she had set Manderley on fire.

A psychological novel

Du Maurier’s original intent in composing Rebecca was to fashion a psychological study whereby the character of the first wife would build in the mind of the second “until wife two is haunted day and night” (du Maurier in Forster, p. 132). Given the novel’s first-person perspective, all characters and events had to filter through the interpretation of the narrator. It is the character of Rebecca, however, who most vividly comes to life in the mind of the second Mrs. de Winter. From the moment that she stumbles across a sample of Rebecca’s

handwriting, the narrator creates a vision of the person Maxim’s first wife must have resembled. She notes, “that bold, slanting hand, stabbing the white paper, the symbol of herself, so certain, so assured” (Rebecca, p. 43). By contrast, the narrator sees herself as timid and mild, uncertain at every step. The novel continually contrasts their psychological profiles, creating two women who are not as unequal to each other as the reader originally suspects. By the close of the plot, the second Mrs. de Winter finds the strength to support her husband in his hour of need, while Rebecca diminishes to a faint memory. Most of the contemporary reviews of Rebecca overlooked its psychological components, and this neglect came both as a shock and a disappointment to du Maurier.

Du Maurier, later on in her life, became an avid fan of the groundbreaking psychologist Carl Jung. Having wrestled in adolescence with the gender dichotomy inside of herself, she liked Jung’s notions of dual personalities in the mind. She did not, as she confessed to a friend, particularly enjoy this duality within herself. “The thing is, why must I always pretend to be someone else … it is what Jung calls ‘compensation’ and ‘fantasy’” (du Maurier in Forster, p. 278). However, du Maurier found solace in Jung’s explanations that everyone suffered such contrasts within the self. In Rebecca, the writer sought to bring these contrasts to light. While many critics saw the second Mrs. de Winter as an autobiographical personification of the author, du Maurier also possessed some of murdered Rebecca’s aggressive nature. Because of her psychological interests, du Maurier was disappointed to learn that her work was revered only as a great romance. She had hoped to convey a sense of the frustrations that she herself had sometimes felt. More exactly, du Maurier had hoped her readers would pick up on the battle between the sexes as displayed through the characters of Maxim and the second Mrs. de Winter. Throughout the novel, the narrator acts as a subordinate to her husband, her every action motivated by his wish. Not until the end, when Maxim’s precarious legal position comes into play, does the second Mrs. de Winter move onto more equal psychological ground with her husband.

Sources

While the majority of the inspiration for Rebecca came from the author’s own imagination, du Maurier did draw on autobiographical references for the creation of her novel. The Manderley estate, for instance, closely resembles Menabilly, a home that du Maurier rented and restored over a period of twenty-five years. Located in the Cornwall region of southern England, the home was situated near a holiday retreat owned by du Maurier’s parents. As an adolescent, she had spent summers in the region, sailing, swimming, and playing with her sisters and cousins. Although she first fell in love with Menabilly during these early years, she did not actually rent the home until she herself became a wife and mother. With its Tudor-style architecture and isolated location, Menabilly reminds the reader of the de Winters’ Manderley. In fact, although du Maurier originally began writing Rebecca while traveling with her husband in Egypt, during this period “she found herself fantasizing about Cornwall and in particular about Menabilly” (Forster, p. 133). The author would later return to the area to rent the estate, and at one point would confess how deep her feelings were for it: “It makes me a little ashamed to admit it, but I do believe I love Mena [billy] more than people” (du Maurier in Forster, p. 188).

Du Maurier’s life relates to her main character’s as well. As mentioned, like the narrator of Rebecca, du Maurier also married a man who had experienced a previous love. Tom Browning, or “Boy Browning,” immediately captured du Maurier’s heart with his good looks and charm. Eleven years her senior, however, Browning had been previously engaged. Although the decision to break off this earlier engagement had been his, du Maurier always harbored a certain jealousy toward her husband’s first love. In fact, one afternoon she stumbled upon a bundle of love letters tied together affectionately with a ribbon. Although guilt-ridden at her own brashness, she opened the letters and read each of them. They had been written by Jan Ricardo, the beautiful debutante whom Browning had almost married. The strong handwriting seemed to personify this woman from Browning’s past. By contrast, du Maurier herself “looked like a slip of a girl … someone who blushed easily and had no authority whatsoever” (Forster, p. 118). Du Maurier borrows this scene for Rebecca. Early in the novel, the narrator finds a book of Maxim’s with an inscription written by Rebecca. She notes that “the name Rebecca stood out black and strong, the tall and sloping R dwarfing the other letters” (Rebecca, p. 33). With this premise in mind, du Maurier began her novel. “Roughly,” say her original notes for it, “the book will be about the influence of a first wife on a second” (du Maurier in Forster, p. 132).

Reception of the novel

From the moment that du Maurier sent her novel to her publisher, Rebecca enjoyed success. The senior editor at Victor Gollancz announced that the novel “brilliantly creates a sense of atmosphere and suspense” (Collins in Forster, p. 136). Likewise, the critical accounts of Rebecca almost unanimously praised du Maurier’s achievement. London’s Observer commented that “the fearlessness with which Miss du Maurier works in material so strange … is magnificent” (Swinnerton in Forster, p. 139). Within a month of publication, Rebecca sold 45,000 copies.