Rebecca Daphne Du Maurier

In the novel Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier tells the story of a gothic estate through the memory of an unnamed heroine. The unnamed narrator speaks of her time at Manderly and how she came to be there. She gets asked to become Maximilian de Winter’s wife while she's out on a job in Monte Carlo. Little did she know that in becoming his wife was she about to be made to live in the shadow of her new husband’s late wife Rebecca. Through Maxim’s secrecy in regards to Rebecca, and the head housekeeper Mrs. Danvers’ fondness of her, she begins to doubt her potential to be Maxim de Winter’s wife. Through the character Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier emphasizes an importance on how people, places, and events are romanticized through memory.

Through the character

The unnamed heroin comes from a background without money, so when a rich man like Maxim de Winter asks for her hand in marriage and opens his estate Manderly to her, her whole world flips upside down. Despite the beautiful tale of a rich man marrying a poor girl, Maxim’s motives revolve around the event of his late wife’s death. He mentions to the narrator, "All memories are bitter, and I prefer to ignore them. Something happened a year ago that altered my whole life, and I want to forget every phase in my existence up to that time. Those days are finished. They are blotted out. I must begin living all over again"(5.30). He expresses that he wishes to restart, and he does this by marrying the main character: a girl who is the opposite of his late wife, Rebecca. The narrative of the novel is told through the main character looking back on what happened to her at Manderley. She tells of how she was haunted by the idea that she would never live up to be like Rebecca. But when she hears about how Rebecca really died her outlook changes. When Maxim revealed that he was the one who killed her because he thought she was carrying another man’s child, a huge weight was lifted off her shoulders. Suddenly Rebecca wasn’t so perfect, suddenly the narrator had a genuine reason to despise this person that everyone so seemingly loved. In her eyes, Rebecca was the villain and Maxim is the victim. Despite the fact that Maxim had no honest reason to murder Rebecca, in her memory this is what saved their marriage. After they seemingly had gotten away with murder, Maxim said to the heroine, “We've got so much to do together, haven't we? We've got to begin all over again. I've been the worst sort of husband for you.” Rebecca’s death in the narrator’s mind had gone from something that was tearing her whole life apart, to something that helped her find herself