Lust For Power In Daphne Du Maurier's Rebecca De Winter

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In Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, Rebecca de Winter, the first wife of Maxim de Winter, imposes her presence posthumously into Manderley. Rebecca’s power over the de Winters is compared to an ivy “held place in [the] lost garden…and would soon encroach upon the house itself”, who had “thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners” (Du Maurier 3). Although the reader never sees Rebecca as a living character, her lust for power over Maxim is ever present. Rebecca’s power over the narrator and Manderley is well represented by Mrs. Danvers, a ghastly housemaid who remains loyal to the original Mrs. de Winter. Mrs. Danvers, who is like a puppet for Rebecca, states, “sometimes, when I walk along the corridor here, I fancy I hear her just

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