Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
By The Criticess
Rebecca has been many things to many people. To the reading public, it is a gothic romance and ferocious tale of jealousy, betrayal, and suspense. To academics it is ripe with Freudian subtext – the younger second wife (daughter) longing for the affections of her husband (father), but envious of and intimidated by the first wife (mother). To biographers of du Maurier, it is a playing out of her own difficult relationship with her parents, loving her father but being less enamoured of her mother or her jealousy of the beautiful woman to whom her husband, Tommy, had been engaged before he met her. Neville Chamberlain is said to have read Rebecca on the flight to meet with Adolf Hitler and sign the entirely unsuccessful Munich Agreement. Unless Chamberlain picked up on some subliminal pro-appeasement of dictators message I didn’t notice and du Maurier presumably didn’t intend, I don’t think Rebecca – with whatever subtext the book may or may not have – can be blamed for his monumentally poor diplomatic judgement. That said, though it was never put into practice, the book was used by the Germans in World War II for devising code; constructing sentences from single words in the book, referenced by page number, line and position.
Du Maurier began writing Rebecca in the late summer of 1937 in Egypt where her husband was posted as a commanding office of the Grenadier Guards and where she sat out her duty as a military wife, bored and homesick, longing for her life back in Cornwall “like a pain under the heart continually”. Completed on her return, it became a bestseller, largely dismissed by critics, but bought by thousands on the promise of love and tumultuous passion.
Beginning with a dream of a return to her once stately home, Manderley, from which she and her husband have been exiled in infamy, the narrator’s tale is one of romance and adoration, sabotaged by hatred, fervent devotion, jealousy and, finally, murder. Naïve and cowed by her employer, Mrs Van Hopper, to whom she is a paid companion, the narrator is entranced by the charms of wealthy widower, Max de Winter. She is whisked into a hasty marriage – she remains unnamed until she becomes Mrs de Winter – and a life she expects to be filled with wealth, happiness, and romance.
However, the reality of life with her betrothed is far removed from her fantasy of happily married life. On arrival at Manderley, Max’s home, he becomes maddeningly moody and uncommunicative, veering between apparently unprovoked violent outbursts and sedate evenings in the drawing room by the fire. She attempts, in a plaintive sort of way, to ingratiate herself with him, playing the part of the dutiful, adoring wife in the hope that he’ll reveal the source of his angst. Intermittently successful in her earnest endeavor with Max, she fails entirely in any attempt to win over the indomitable housekeeper, Mrs Danvers. Zealous in her devotion to Max’s first wife, Rebecca, Mrs Danvers attempts – and succeeds – in destroying whatever happiness she might have hoped for, eventually burning down their home. Conspiring to make Mrs de Winter feel inadequate and pathetic in comparison to her predecessor, she convinces her that Max still loves and longs for Rebecca. It turns out that he hated and murdered Rebecca, shooting her, concealing her body in their boat and sinking it in an attempt to make it look like suicide or a sailing accident. It is an act Mrs de Winter, in her dogged devotion to him, seems to find almost endearing and preferable to any evidence of him still loving her. The body is discovered and the ensuing investigation forces the couple into exile where they live out a life of quietude and seamless routine.
Much of the novel’s complex, volatile dynamics could quite possibly have been resolved without such great drama by couples’ therapy, but a homely counselor – notepad in hand and a kindly, if smug, disposition – asking them to share just one thing they liked about each other would have detracted rather from the tumult and tension that drives the plot.
Du Maurier could never understand the popularity of her novel: to her it was simply a study in jealousy. Though academics may have tried to draw out of her some subtext – Freudian or otherwise – she resisted. Despite attempts to give some psychological significance to it, she was no more forthcoming on the question of an unnamed narrator, saying she couldn’t think of a name and then it became a challenge to write an entire story without giving one to her. But the novel doesn’t need to be dissected in order for its full effect to be felt. Its female characters – harpy, duteous wife, and maligned seductress – revile, smilingly pander to, and toy with Max in the home he so wishes to be his ordered domain. It seems du Maurier enjoyed toying with her readers’ expectations and the fates of her characters. Mrs de Winter, against all reasonable judgment, decides that murder is no insurmountable object in her love for Max; Mrs Danvers, shrewdly subversive until her desire to avenge Rebecca’s murder drives her to burn down the house; and Rebecca, in her wildness, flaunting the freedoms tradition reserves only for the men with whom she surrounds herself. If you’re looking to immerse yourself in romance, Mills and Boon it isn’t, but for the madness of love and passion, since its publication in 1938, it hasn’t been bettered.
About the author:
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The Criticess was born out of a desire to steal female writers, labelled classics and consigned to the doldrums of academia, and to explore them in all their unhinged, electrifying, mischievous, eloquent, mistressful glory. For a time, she wrote for the Edinburgh literary publication, The One O'Clock Gun, and now she is here, bringing to The Fine Line those women and works too vital to grow old on dusty bookshelves. |
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