Daphne Du Maurier's REBECCA

 

By Margaret S. Hamilton

 

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and a chain upon the gate. I called in my dream to the lodge-keeper, and had no answer, and peering closer through the rusted spokes of the gate I saw that the lodge was uninhabited.” (p.1)

 

The iconic opening dream sequence of Du Maurier’s Rebecca provides a cinematic entry into her 1938 gothic novel, which incorporates elements of mystery, romance, and psychological suspense. The novel is set at Manderley, a stone manor house on the Cornish coast. The sense of isolation and loss established in the first chapter pervades the novel.

 

I last read Rebecca when I was in high school. I remembered Mrs. Danvers, the frightening, man-hating housekeeper, and the ghostly presence of the deceased Rebecca, the beautiful, mercurial first wife of Maxim de Winter.

 

I haven’t watched the movies based on the novel for years. I know directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, changed the ending, usually to conform to societal expectations. I chose to experience the original plot and characters of Rebecca on the page.

 

In Rebecca, the unnamed narrator agrees to become Maxim’s second wife after a decorous two-week vacation fling. She’s barely out of her teens, timid, shy, and anxious to please. It’s never clear if the older, introverted Maxim loves her or is desperate for the companionship of a spouse, though he treats his new wife like a child. It’s also not clear if the narrator loves him, or simply seeks the security of marriage. Maxim’s true love is Manderley, his family estate. He admits that his first wife, Rebecca, didn’t love him, but acknowledges that she created a beautiful home and gardens at Manderley before her death.

 

Du Maurier, who lived in a similar mansion in Cornwall for many years, uses the house, its gardens, and seaside location to create a setting that assumes importance of a major character. She describes in exhaustive detail the blood-red rhododendrons encroaching on the driveway, the fragrant azaleas in Happy Valley, the formal rose garden next to the house, and the two small shingled beaches at the base of steep wooded cliffs.

 

Suspense builds in the novel until the narrator’s world is turned upside down when she learns the truth about Rebecca’s death. The narrator refuses to succumb to Mrs. Danver’s insidious suggestions and grows more assertive as she supports her husband. The second Mrs. de Winter realizes she will only return to Manderley in her dreams, where Rebecca’s presence still lingers.

 

With its isolated setting, aura of suspense, and spine-chilling presence of Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca is a forerunner to the modern domestic thriller. Du Maurier probably wrote the first chapters as an epilogue before she moved them to the beginning of the book, where they guide the reader back to the time to when the narrator first meets Maxim de Winter.

 

Readers and writers, do you enjoy gothic novels or domestic thrillers?

 

Margaret S. Hamilton’s debut novel, What the Artist Left Behind, is on submission.

Home - The Official Website of Margaret S. Hamilton