Tadiana ✩Night Owl☽'s Reviews > Rebecca

Manderley and I had a much more successful visit this time around, as compared to the first time I read this book several years ago. Here's the key: This is not a romance novel. It's a psychological suspense novel. As I reread Rebecca with this in mind, I had a much greater appreciation for its artistry, the way Daphne du Maurier skillfully used words to create a mood and increase the suspense.

We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still close to us. The things we have tried to forget and put behind us would stir again, and that sense of fear, of furtive unrest, struggling at length to blind unreasoning panic - now mercifully stilled, thank God - might in some manner unforeseen become a living companion as it had before.

The narrator, a young and painfully self-conscious girl, is a paid companion to Mrs. Van Hopper, a snobbish social climber. While they are in Monte Carlo, Mrs. Van Hopper bulldozes her way into an acquaintance with a quiet widower, Maxim de Winter. Despite our heroine's lack of status and social graces, Maxim begins spending time with her and soon asks her to marry him.



Desperately in love with him, she does so, despite the vast differences in their ages, wealth, status ... just about everything. And despite his frequent rudeness and mockery of her.



After a too-brief honeymoon, they return to England and Maxim's lovely country estate, Manderley, presided over by the skeletal housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who instantly takes a dislike to the new Mrs. de Winter. Mrs. Danvers does her best to undercut the main character's lack of confidence in every way possible, but mostly by holding up Maxim's first wife, Rebecca, as an impossibly high standard of beauty, taste and accomplishment, a standard that the second wife can never hope to reach.



The second wife becomes more and more haunted by this paragon, Rebecca, even though there are clues in the things Maxim, his sister and others say - and don't say - that maybe there was more to Rebecca's character than the second wife realizes.

I found it fascinating how du Maurier tells you the end in the beginning, in such a way that it doesn't spoil the story at all, but adds to the underlying tension and sense of oppression. The second Mrs. de Winter thinks they are contented, and perhaps they are, but they are deeply damaged as well, living a sort of half-life.

Mrs. Danvers is quite the character: one wonders how much her presence in Rebecca's childhood influenced the person Rebecca became. And Rebecca herself ... well, without getting into spoiler territory, she has an amazing presence in this novel for someone who's dead before it even starts.

I have to say that the second Mrs. de Winter's paralyzing lack of self-confidence and her gaucherie, even though integral to the plot, was really irksome to me at first. Every time she'd start off into another daydream, which she did All. The. Time., imagining conversations and events out of whole cloth, I would mentally roll my eyes at her. But once I realized that this is not to be read as a romance novel (really, the relationship here is pretty unhealthy on both sides), I was free to appreciate the characters' shortcomings instead of being frustrated by them, and to see how those shortcomings and their past experiences combine to bring them together, but pull them apart at the same time. It's a fascinating psychological study.

My rating has gone from 3, to 4, to 5 stars. It's a book that has really stuck with me.



Between the well-drawn, seriously flawed characters, the brooding atmosphere, with a feeling that disaster is just waiting for the right moment to strike, and the great plot twists, Rebecca is deservedly a classic in its genre.

Initial comments:
I read Rebecca maybe 15 years ago and didn't really care for it back then. I'm not entirely sure now of the reasons why, but I think it may have been that I was expecting more of a romance with some nice happy feels at the end? So now that my expectations have been adjusted, we're going to give this another shot.