Hudson Warm
Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. Virago, 2018, 448pp., $20
Rebecca’s eightieth anniversary edition book cover, published by Virago, is its own work of art: a chef d’œuvre in itself. The dust jacket features a rendering of white fabric, embroidered with a loopy iron-gate pattern and a cursive ‘R,’ enlivening the titular character through her famous “tall and sloping” lettering. Upon first glance, the white, gold-threaded cover is beautiful, but post-read, the image becomes haunting. The ghost of the late Rebecca de Winter is a chilling presence throughout the pages of du Maurier’s masterful work, and is further revived in this image, which refers to a monogrammed, azalea-scented handkerchief found by the protagonist.
Though Rebecca was initially published in 1938, it has never been out of print. In 2000, the book was awarded the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century. Taylor Swift cited Rebecca as the inspiration behind her popular 2020 song “Tolerate It.” Rebecca has been adapted for screen several times, the most popular of which being the Alfred Hitchcock 1940 adaptation and the 2020 Netflix film, directed by Ben Wheatley and starring Lily James and Armie Hammer. New iterations of Rebecca continue to be produced, nearly a century after publication; the book evidently maintains a contemporary cultural relevance.
Rebecca is a novel I come back to again and again, though I hesitate to call it a comfort book; it is anything but comforting. What is it about Rebecca, then, that makes the novel so seminal and enduring?
Working as a lady’s companion in Monte Carlo, Rebecca’s protagonist chances a meeting with Maxim de Winter, the wealthy widowed owner of Manderley, a famed estate on the Cornish coast of England. Through illicit outings and car-ride conversations, their romance is swift, and the two soon marry. The book skims over their marriage, and Maxim invites the second Mrs. de Winter to the stately Manderley, but she is not welcomed—not by the eerie housekeeper Mrs. Danvers or by the specter of Maxim’s late first wife, Rebecca, which seems to linger in unaltered rooms and between the bedsheets. Rebecca was adored by all and wielded a sharp wit and elegant beauty. Following her death, news of the tragedy pervaded the polite society of England. The narrator is unnamed, mirroring her sense of invisibility. She is defined only by her husband—as Mrs. de Winter—and she simply cannot compare to Rebecca.
While it has occasionally been dismissed as a commercial romance, Rebecca is a suspense novel, perhaps even a horror. The novel winds, quiet, then penetrates. It is a gripping gothic and an exploration of gender and place, marriage and convention. These themes assert their presence now as they always have; they are not going anywhere, and neither is Rebecca nor Rebecca, despite her notable absence from the plot. As in several classic eponymous literary works, the named character is not the narrator, but rather a character the narrator idolizes, worships, and fears. The difference, however, between Rebecca and, say, The Great Gatsby, is that unlike Jay Gatsby, Rebecca de Winter never appears on the page—at least, not tangibly. She lurks, beguiles, and torments, but she is only a memory.
Out of the two most prominent adaptations, the 2020 film—although it employs more modern cinematographic techniques—pales in comparison with Hitchcock’s 1940 version, which comes closer to capturing the book’s delicate suspense. Still, both are no match for the source text. This must be, in part, due to the intimacy the narrator forges with the reader through a work that largely comprises internal dialogue. The book is slow, but it does not feel sluggish; we are so enmeshed in the narrator’s volatile mind that the slightest happenings—a china statue breaking, a male guest at the house, eye contact that lasts too long—mean something much more. As the book goes on and these small-scale events give way to larger and graver ones, the book’s masterful subtlety is not lost.
Herein lies one reason for its enduring appeal: Rebecca is simply an enthralling read. In many ways, the novel is characteristic of Gothic literature; the dark, disturbing exploration of psychological states is the quintessence of the genre. What is somewhat novel about du Maurier’s most popular title, however, is the role of the imagination. The anxiety and suspense the work evokes is due to the agony of invented pasts: an imagined epic love story, a conjured image of perfection. What is most observable about Rebecca is the legacy she left behind, the most important character of the book—not a person, but a place—Manderley. Though Maxim is the estate’s owner and patriarch, Rebecca tended to it, making it something to exalt and celebrate. Filled with heirlooms, priceless portraits, and a large staff, to the second Mrs. de Winter, Manderley is only damned, haunted. As sinister events unfold and new truths emerge about Rebecca and her fate, the novel becomes breathless, and an artful sense of foreboding persists and crescendos.
But besides the propellant nature of du Maurier’s novel, Rebecca endures eighty-five years later because its themes transcend temporal boundaries. The concept of femininity as performance is particularly timeless. The second Mrs. de Winter is observed and critiqued by all those around her, constantly compared to Rebecca. Yet the two central women of Rebecca stand for extreme female archetypes. Rebecca herself was a cultivated, graceful picture of ideal womanhood, while the new Mrs. de Winter is clumsy and self-conscious. She is the antithesis of her predecessor: timid where Rebecca was commanding, gauche where Rebecca was “the most beautiful creature.” Though as we learn more about Rebecca, we realize that perhaps this is not the whole truth.
Our understanding of the second Mrs. de Winter changes, too. Halfway through the novel, Maxim reveals a central truth to his wife. A day later, he notices that her lovable, childish personality has matured into something more dark and knowing. He says, “It’s gone forever, that funny, young, lost look that I loved. It won’t come back again.” He continues, “It’s gone, in twenty-four hours. You are so much older…”
I recently watched Yorgos Lanthimos’s Oscar-winning Poor Things and noticed some striking echoes. In the novel, like in the movie, the principal character’s appeal comes—disturbingly—from her youth and naïvety. The events of the novel dislodge the narrator from her persona, and Maxim seems to lose love for her, or for his prescriptive notion of who she should be and how she should act. His efforts to control his wife are not unlike the manners in which male characters in Poor Things villainize Bella Baxter as she departs from the chaste, monogamous identity they have confined her to when she becomes a prostitute. The two works share a disconcerting trope of male attraction to infantile women, a theme more pronounced in Poor Things but undoubtedly a looming presence in Rebecca.
In addition to her appeal to the male gaze, much of the novel concerns the second Mrs. de Winter’s exploration of her own womanhood: how she chooses to present herself, what she chooses to wear, and how she chooses to act. In one scene, the second Mrs. de Winter ambles down the staircase done up for a costume party. After the suggestion of Mrs. Danvers, the narrator is clad in “a dress fit for the Queen of England” and a rich wig to cover her “mousy hair.” Her new, temporary, invented identity is met, however, with a silent, ashen white Maxim. Rebecca had worn an identical costume when she had been alive. She and others constantly measure her against Rebecca’s ghost. The concept of comparison with a significant other’s ex-lover is something to which most can relate today.
Take “obsessed” by Olivia Rodrigo, the Guts bonus track released on March 22 that garnered an influx of internet attention. She sings, “I'm so obsessed with your ex. I know she's been asleep on my side of your bed, and I can feel it.” Like the second Mrs. de Winter, she senses the specter of her predecessor. Our chronically online population has social media to thank for this contemporary resonance; now especially, we experience the constant pressure of comparison to idealized users.
There is much to wonder about du Maurier’s own beliefs and the commentary she delivers in Rebecca. The second Mrs. de Winter’s narration and Maxim’s own beliefs, which he reveals through dialogue and action, are stained with sexism and misogyny. At the end, the reader cannot help but wonder who the villain is: Rebecca, provocative and duplicitous, or Maxim, callous and cold-blooded. Good and evil become obscured, and it is difficult to know whether du Maurier’s novel is critiquing or condoning. To me, however, the morals of fictitious characters need not be equated with those of the author; I all but absolve du Maurier.
Interestingly, she herself seemed confused by her book’s massive popularity. In 1971, she said in a BBC interview that Rebecca just “happened” to be her most popular work, but is not her most mature or skillful novel.
After being utterly entranced by Rebecca, I picked up three titles off du Maurier’s backlist to test: Is Rebecca’s comparative popularity truly earned? I read My Cousin Rachel, a dramatic, twisty novel of suspense; Jamaica Inn, an unsettling tale of darkness and corruption; and Frenchman’s Creek, her most romantic novel—a love story between a high society English woman and a pirate. While I found myself immersed in these stories, they failed to affect me in the intense, propulsive manner of Rebecca.
My fondness for My Cousin Rachel comes the closest to that for Rebecca; the book shares a similar suspenseful Gothic atmosphere and profound exploration of good versus evil. Jamaica Inn intends a different purpose: the danger was more tangible and disconcerting. Du Maurier succeeded in vividness, and perhaps excessively so, as what stayed was an unpleasant sense of grime and torment. Frenchman’s Creek is completely different, presenting du Maurier at her most genre-bound and conventional. In all of these novels, du Maurier’s ability to immerse is consistent and unfailing, but none are as singular as Rebecca.
The book is many things: a complex portrait of obsession, a study in gender and jealousy, a romantic and tantalizing journey. Daphne du Maurier seduced me into her world of shadows. She birthed something immortal—a novel often deemed the classic tale of romantic suspense, and it merits that title. Today, its blend of technical prowess, character complexity, and timeless resonances render the book something of an institution, and one that fails any effort at replication. Rebecca, like its titular character, lives forever.