Essay On Rebecca Manderley

We’ve all been there: the dreaded moving day. The day you leave everything familiar behind for a great unknown. For most, moving just means relocating from one house to another. Unfortunately for the narrator in Rebecca, moving means leaving everything she’s ever known for man she’s known for just over a week. She cannot prepare herself for the change that’s about to come: a completely new lifestyle, unlike anything she’s experienced before. Her life is turned upside down when she goes from being a companion and servant of an elder woman to the mistress of one of the most adored estates in England. This estate isn’t just any other mansion, it’s the beautiful and prized Manderley. Manderley plays as large a role as many of the main characters

in Rebecca; it serves multiple other roles besides simply the setting. Three functions of Manderly are to create a mysterious and suspenseful atmosphere, to emphasize the narrator’s unfamiliarity with the lifestyle at Manderley, and to keep Rebecca relevant throughout the whole book.
Manderley plays a large role in creating the atmosphere in Rebecca. As a whole, Manderley is dark and secretive, this creates a mysterious atmosphere that is perfect for suspenseful events. Of all the areas in Manderley, the West Wing contributes the most to the eerie feeling we get in Manderly. Just like graveyards give off a dangerous feel because of the emptiness, the West Wing gives off a sense of danger because no one ever wanders up there. Because of the eerie feeling specifically in the West Wing, it is a popular spot for suspenseful events to take place. The narrator first introduces us to the eeriness when she finds herself lost in the West Wing while looking for her bedroom. She uses words such as “close”, “stale”, and “dead” when describing what she sees in the West Wing which all help set the mood. She even admits to feeling a level of uncertainty while walking down the hallway in the West Wing. Following her accidental encounter with the West Wing, you are left to wonder why it is shut down until a surprising and suspenseful change in events. One afternoon the narrator spots Mrs. Danvers watching her from the West Wing. She goes up to the room Mrs. Danvers is in to find that Mrs. Danvers has a side she’s never seen before. She begins throwing a complete fit claiming that the narrator tried taking Rebecca’s spot and we learn that she has an unusual attachment to Rebecca and all of the items she once owned. It is no coincidence that this episode occurred in the West Wing; it took place here to answer the lingering question: Why is the West Wing no longer in use? This episode explains that it is shut down because it’s a constant reminder of Rebecca to Mrs. Danvers and the staff in Manderley. The fact that Mrs. Danvers is found in the West Wing, a place that most people avoid, displays her mysterious personality.
The West Wing is not the only place that contributes to the mysterious atmosphere of Manderley. The mystery can also be credited to the boat-house and the bay. Just like the West Wing, the boat-house and bay are two locations that are rarely, if ever, visited by staff. It raises mysteries as to why so many functional places have just been abandoned. One afternoon, after Beatrice and Giles leave Manderly, Mr. and Mrs. De Winter decide to go on a walk through the gardens and down to the bay with Jasper. During their walk near the bay, Jasper runs behind the rocks and the narrator insists on bringing him back against Mr. De Winter’s wishes. She walks into the boat-house to find fishing line to use as a leash for Jasper and describes the her uneasiness in the boat-house here: I went to it, and opened it, a little fearful now, a little afraid, for I had the odd, uneasy feeling that I might come upon something unawares, that I had no wish to see,” (Maurier 113). The setting of the boat-house, old and abandon, creates the mysterious mood that we can see here through the narrator.
The size of Manderly emphasize Mrs. De Winter’s unfamiliarity with the high-class lifestyle. The large house makes it very easy for easy the narrator to get lost. The maids and housekeepers know their way around the house better than the mistress, which makes her feel like she doesn’t belong. Her first time getting lost was on her way to the morning room. Giles tells her that the fire is always lit in the mornings in the morning room, unfortunately, she has no idea how to get to the morning room. Instead of simply asking him for directions, she pretends to know the way and ends up getting lost and going to a storage room. Embarrassingly, Giles is still standing there watching her. She ends up embarrassing herself more so than if she had just asked for directions in the first place. She finds herself lost again when she “runs away” from Beatrice and Giles and ends up in the West Wing instead of her room. We can see from these examples that the narrator is physically lost when it comes to Manderley, but this also emphasizes how she is mentally lost. Her inability to navigate suggests that she is not fit for this lifestyle.
Not only does the size of Manderly emphasize how out of place she is at Manderley, but her misunderstanding of uses for rooms and certain objects emphasize her unfamiliarity with living in a high-class.

We first see her unfamiliarity start to show when she goes to the library in the morning and expects a fire to be lit. She’s unaware that the fireplace is always lit in the morning room; in fact, she hadn’t even seen such room before. Her confusion in finding rooms suggest that she is very lost in this new lifestyle. It is not only rooms she is unsure of, but also objects and routines in Manderley. For example, when she goes to set down a number of books she received from Beatrice for her wedding, she accidently knocks over an expensive china cupid and it shatters on the floor. Instead of admitting to breaking it, she tries to cover up her accident. She says this about her initial reaction, “I glanced hurriedly at the door, like a guilty child,” (Maurier 139). This emphasizes that she is not prepared the lifestyle at Manderley because had Maxim or any owner of an estate broken it, they would have simply had the maids take care of it. The narrator acted as a maid or employee would have if they broke it, like a scared child that fears being yelled at. The cupid was placed there with the intention of proving that the narrator was too immature for the wealthy

lifestyle.
One of the most important and evident functions of Manderley is to keep Rebecca relevant. Rebecca, of course, can not be there to be significant in the story because she’s dead, so the setting does this for her. The west wing is like a shrine to Rebecca. Because this wing is blocked off, it makes the narrator feel like she’s not worthy of that side of the house. It’s a constant reminder to her that Maxim once loved someone else, and the constant reminders of her make it seem that Rebecca is still alive. What is especially threatening to the narrator is that her room looks practically untouched, she says, “For one desperate moment I thought that something had happened to my brain, that I was seeing back into Time, and looking upon the room as it used to be, before she died ... In a minute Rebecca herself would come back into the room,” (Maurier 165). The fact that the room is left completely the same, makes the narrator feel that Rebecca is still present at the house. We see the west wing brought up again when the narrator gets into a fight with Mr. DeWinter. She says that she’s not good enough for the west wing, and that that wing was reserved for Rebecca. She accused him of loving Rebecca more than her. Of course all this jealousy comes from the west wing being a shire to rebecca. All the narrator wants is for Maxim to love her, and the west wing stands in the way of this.
The walks into Manderly and immediately people began comparing her to rebecca. No matter what she does, she can’t seem to escape Rebecca because everything she touches has some connection to Rebecca. Not to mention, Rebecca designed most of the rooms in Manderley, almost all except the ones that were redone in the east wing. For example, the narrator breaks a china cupid, this also happens to be a gift that was given to Rebecca for her wedding. The paintings the narrator adores happen to be the dress Rebecca had previously worn to the ball. The morning room, which the narrator spends much of her time in was decorated by Rebecca and there is still stationary marked “R” for rebecca. These are only a few examples of setting that connects to Rebecca, but nearly everything does. Living amongst these things makes it impossible for the narrator to forget about Rebecca, as much as she may want to. These constant reminders in the setting help keep Rebecca relevant and constantly in the back of your brain until the boat is found and Rebecca becomes important to the plot.
Manderly holds as much importance in this novel as the main characters. It is responsible for setting the mood and atmosphere throughout the novel, emphasizing the narrator’s unfamiliarity with the lifestyle at Manderley, and keeping Rebecca relevant. Sometimes you have to put yourself in unfamiliar situations, weather that’s just moving schools, or moving clear across the country. Regardless, there will be challenges and bumps in the road that you will be faced with, but you can’t let these discourage you. For Mrs. DeWinter, her bumps in the road were more like mountains, but she stayed by Mr. DeWinter’s side the whole time. It will take time, and the road may not be easy, but life has a way of working things out.