t de Winter's neck, like a noose.
Mrs. de Winter dreams vividly twice in the novel, once at the beginning and once at the end: each time, the dream conveys a truth to her that her conscious mind cannot, or will not, accept. She prefers the sketchy and cliche-ridden visions she summons up when she daydreams--and she daydreams incessantly. The vision she has just had, of Rebecca and herself united, of first and second wives merged into one dangerous female avatar, she instantly rejects. Her husband halts the car on a crest near their home; the night sky beyond is lit with a red glow. (The color red is linked with Rebecca throughout the novel.) His wife assumes it is the dawn, but de Winter understands at once: Manderley, his ancestral home, is burning. This destruction was prefigured in the dream with which the novel opened, and the literal agent of the destruction (possibly Mrs. Danvers) is far less important than the poetic agent, which is Rebecca. Like some avenging angel, Rebecca has marshaled the elements: she has risen from the sea to wreak revenge by fire--thus echoing, and not for the first time, her literary ancestress, that madwoman in the attic, the first Mrs. Rochester.
In this way, and very abruptly, the novel ends; it has come full circle. It is melodramatic in places, of course (even Jane Eyre cannot entirely escape that criticism). But it is remarkable, given the plot, how consistently and skillfully du Maurier skirts melodrama. What interested her as a novelist can be summarized by the distinction that Charlotte Bronte drew between writing that was "real" and writing that was "true." There is realism in Rebecca; the mores, snobberies and speech patterns of the class and era du Maurier is describing are, for instance, sharply observed. The elements that give Rebecca its force, however, owe nothing to realism: its power lies in its imagery, its symmetry, its poetry--and that poetry is intensely female. The plot of Rebecca may be as unlikely as the plot of a fairytale, but that does not alter the novel's mythic resonance and psychological truth.
One way of reading Rebecca is as a convention-ridden love story, in which the good woman triumphs over the bad by winning a man's love: this version is the one our nameless narrator would have us accept, and it is undoubtedly the reading that made Rebecca a bestseller. Another approach is to see the novel's imaginative links, not just with the work of earlier female novelists, such as Charlotte Bronte, but also with later work, in particular Sylvia Plath's late poems. Rebecca is narrated by a masochistic woman, who is desperate for the validation provided by a man's love--a woman seeking an authoritarian father surrogate, or, as Plath expressed it, a "man in black with a Meinkampf look." Her search for this man involves both self-effacement and abnegation, as it does for any woman who "adores a Fascist." She duly finds her ideal in de Winter, whose last name indicates sterility, coldness, an unfruitful season, and whose Christian name--Maxim, as she always abbreviates it--is a synonym for a rule of conduct. It is also the name of a weapon--a machine gun.
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 marginalized 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.
The response of Mrs. de Winter to Rebecca's rebellion is deeply ambivalent, and it is this ambivalence that fuels the novel. Her apparent reaction is that of a conventional woman of her time: abhorrence. Yet there are indications throughout the text that the second Mrs. de Winter would like to emulate Rebecca, even to be her--and these continue, even when she knows Rebecca has broken every male-determined rule as to a woman's behavior. Although Rebecca is dead, is never seen, and has in theory been forever silenced, Mrs. de Winter's obsession with her insures that Rebecca will triumph over anonymity and effacement. Even a bullet through the heart, and burial at sea cannot quench her vampiric power. Again, one is reminded of Plath's embodiment of amoral, anarchic female force--I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air. Within the conventions of a story, Rebecca's pallid successor is able to do what she dare not do in life: celebrate her predecessor.
She does so with cunning and with power (du Maurier, of course, is pulling the strings here). Long after the book has been closed, which character reverberates in the memory? Rebecca. And which of the two women are readers drawn to, which of these polar opposites fascinates and attracts? Rebecca, again, I would say--certainly for modern readers. But I think that was probably true for readers in 1938 too: thanks to the cunning of du Maurier's narrative structure, they were able to condemn Rebecca (a promiscuous woman--what other option did they have?); but secretly respond to the anger, rebellion and vengefulness she embodies.
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 humoring his whims, and obeying his every behest, her recompense is not money, but "love"--and the cost is her identity. This is the final bitter irony of this novel, and the last of its many reversals. A story that ostensibly attempts to bury Rebecca, in fact resurrects her, and renders her unforgettable, whereas Mrs. de Winter, our pale, ghostly and timid narrator, fades from our view; it is she who is the dying woman in this novel. By extension--and this is daring on du Maurier's part--her obedient beliefs, her unquestioning subservience to the male, are dying with her.
The themes of Rebecca--identity, doubling, the intimate linkage between love and murder--recur again and again in du Maurier's work. That the circumstances of her own life were the source of many of those themes is, I think, unquestionable. That she often chose to explore those themes within the confines of a story about love and marriage is perhaps not accidental either; there had always been duality in her life--her bisexuality ensured that; after her marriage, that sense of a dual identity deepened, and was to feed all her fiction.
Du Maurier had been born into a rich, privileged but unconventional and bohemian family. Her father, Gerald, was notorious for his affairs--and for running back to his wife after them. She and her sisters grew up surrounded by the writers, actors and artists who were their parents' close friends. Before du Maurier was twenty-one, she had had several affairs with men and at least one with a woman. Yet she chose to marry a career soldier in one of England's most elite regiments, a man who was a traditionalist to his fingertips, a stickler for correct dress and behavior, a man who was deeply shocked when--prior to their marriage--she suggested they should sleep together. After a long and distinguished military career, "Boy" Browning, as he was nicknamed, was to go on to become a courtier, spending much of his time in London, while his wife remained at Menabilly. There can be no question of their love and loyalty for each other: long after he died, du Maurier remained fiercely defensive of her husband. But the differences between them were marked, and their expectations of marriage perhaps very different. Eventually that caused problems: there were infidelities on both sides, and later in life, Browning began to drink heavily. Meanwhile, du Maurier had two identities: she was a Lieutenant General's wife, and later, Lady Browning: she was also an internationally celebrated writer, and finally a Dame of the British Empire. That she found it difficult to reconcile the demands of two personae is apparent in her fiction, above all in Rebecca, but also in her often bitter, and shocking, short stories.
Throughout her life, she was torn between the need to be a wife and the necessity of being a writer--and she seems to have regarded those roles as irreconcilable. Half accepting society's (and her husband's) interpretation of ideal womanhood, yet rebelling against it and rejecting it, she came to regard herself as a "half-breed" who was "unnatural." To her, both her lesbianism and her art were a form of aberrance: they both sprang, she believed, from a force inside her that she referred to as the "boy in the box." Sometimes she fought against this incubus--and sometimes she gloried in him.
Given those beliefs, the dualism, the gender-blurring and the splitting that are so apparent in Rebecca become more understandable. Du Maurier was wrestling with her own demons here, and when she gave aspects of herself to the two women who are the pillars of her narrative she was entering into an area of deeply personal psychological struggle. She gave her own shyness and social awkwardness to Mrs. de Winter. She gave her independence, her love of the sea, her expertise as a sailor, her sexual fearlessness, and even her bisexuality (strongly hinted at in the novel, if not spelled out) to Rebecca. It is for readers to decide where their own sympathies lie--and du Maurier's.
I would say that ultimately it is with Rebecca, with the angry voice of female dissent, that du Maurier's instinctive sympathy lies. But it is possible to argue the opposite view--one of the factors that makes Rebecca such a rewarding novel to reread and re-examine. One thing is certain: Rebecca is a deeply subversive work, one that undermines the very genre to which critics consigned it. Far from being an "exquisite" love story, Rebecca raises questions about women's acquiescence to male values that are as pertinent today as they were sixty-four years ago. We may have moved on from the subservience of Mrs. de Winter, but our enfranchisement is scarcely complete. A glance at the current bestseller lists will only confirm that the sly suggestion underlying Rebecca remains valid after sixty-four years: both in life and in bookstores, women continue to buy romance.
Sally Beauman
London, 2002
About the Author
Daphne du Maurier (1907-1989) was born in London, the daughter of the actor Sir Gerald du Maurier and granddaughter of the author and artist George du Maurier. Her first novel, The Loving Spirit, was published in 1931, but it would be her fifth novel, Rebecca, that made her one of the most popular authors of her day. Besides novels, du Maurier wrote plays, biographies, and several collections of short fiction. Many of her works were made into films, including Rebecca, Jamaica Inn, My Cousin Rachel, "Don't Look Now," and "The Birds." She lived most of her life in Cornwall, and was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1969.
Books by Daphne du Maurier
Novels
The Loving Spirit
I'll Never Be Young Again
Julius
Jamaica Inn
Rebecca
Frenchman's Creek
Hungry Hill
The King's General
The Parasites
My Cousin Rachel
Mary Anne
The Scapegoat
Castle Dor
The GlassBlowers
The Flight of the Falcon
The House on the Strand
Rule Britannia
Short Stories
The Birds and Other Stories
The Breaking Point: Stories
Don't Look Now and Other Stories
Nonfiction
Gerald: A Portrait
The du Mauriers
The Infernal World of Branwell Bronte
Golden Lads: A Study of Anthony Bacon, Francis, and Their Friends
The Winding Stair: Francis Bacon, His Rise and Fall
Myself When Young
The Rebecca Notebook and Other Memories
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Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Afterword
About the Author
Books by Daphne du Maurier
Newsletters
Copyright
Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright (c) 1938 by The Estate of Daphne du Maurier Afterword copyright (c) 2003 by Sally Beauman Cover design by Susan Zucker
Cover photograph by Arcangel
Cover copyright (c) 2013 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at
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ISBN 978-0-316-32370-3
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Daphne Du Maurier, Rebecca
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