Horribly let down by Rebecca

Manderley is burnt, certainly, but why can’t they live in England — the land is still there, he’s still rich, they could restore/rebuild, or settle elsewhere etc. He can’t surely be at risk from the law with Rebecca’s suicide motive ‘proven’?

I wondered that. Also since he still owns the land presumably he is kept informed about what’s happening on the estate and he’d have to make some decisions about farming etc. Unless he sold it.

They were also happy when they met abroad then unhappy in England, I interpreted it like that as well

I think being abroad could be seen as a type of limbo. They're not in hell but they are also not allowed to enjoy a heaven either. They are destined to roam forever!

I think fleeing abroad is Max's way of punishing himself.

Reading Rebecca through the lens of reading the biography of Daphne did Maurier is fascinating. Her love of Cornwall and her passion and obsession with Menabilly drove Daphne, as well as her confusion about her sexuality and gender. For her the biggest punishment of all would be to be removed from Cornwall, hence this is the punishment she drives Max in the novel.

Oh no I love it, I've read it many times and love the various film adaptions. I like flawed characters, I mean the protagonist doesn't even have a name which adds to the insipidness.

Though what do other people make of the ‘aftermath’ in the present? Manderley is burnt, certainly, but why can’t they live in England — the land is still there, he’s still rich, they could restore/rebuild, or settle elsewhere etc. He can’t surely be at risk from the law with Rebecca’s suicide motive ‘proven’?

That's always puzzled me. It's the 1930s, isn't it? what's the need to flee abroad? presumably not all his money is tied up in the house, even if they decide to live abroad they could have a villa or a decent hotel suite. And with it being the 30s and a lot happening politically, pretty much any scandal would soon be old news. Favell might make trouble but I get the feeling he's not of the social class that would be listened to - alcoholic ex-lover as opposed to rich man whose wife committed suicide. The boatbuilder might - he raised the issues of the boat being seaworthy at the inquest - but ditto about him having no power. It would all be rumour.

I think Maxim is a very self-confident arrogant type - he's admitted to murder to his wife so she, should she feel like it, could ruin him and yet he must be confident enough to know she won't. And yet they flee abroad to avoid the pointing fingers. It's an odd paradox.

Absolutely. Look how many Mrs de Winters are in the novel — as well as Maxim’s two wives (the second of whom doesn’t even get a first name, so she’s literally named purely by her role), there’s his dead mother and his living grandmother, who confuses the second Mrs de Winter with the first, and the ancestor, Caroline de Winter that both Rebecca and the narrator dress up as.

The name and the house continue, as does the importance of the heir (hence Max’s murder of what he believes to be he cuckoo in the nest, as well as his unfaithful wife), the individual women come and go. The role outlasts its occupants.

The first morning, when the second Mrs De Winter answers the house phone to Mrs Danvers and, not realising she’s being addressed, actually denies her own existence by saying ‘Mrs De Winter is dead’.

Max infantilises her throughout, patting her like a dog, correcting her manners and telling her she’s acting like an applicant after a housemaid’s job rather than the lady of the house, suggesting she dresses up as Alice in Wonderland for the ball.

Only after he tells her he murdered Rebecca does the narrative actually tell us they sleep together (I mean, we assume they do on honeymoon, but now we’re told they share a bed all night), and the narrator start taking control of the house, giving her own orders, changing menus. But Max likes her for being so unsexual, childish, disempowered, meek — because she’s the opposite of the entrancing, strong, charismatic, sexual Rebecca, who flouts patriarchal norms and heterosexuality alike (well, probably — strongly suggested in Max’s disgusted ‘she was not even normal’).

Of course, in the ‘now’, she’s the adult taking care of a childlike/prematurely aged Max.

Though what do other people make of the ‘aftermath’ in the present? Manderley is burnt, certainly, but why can’t they live in England — the land is still there, he’s still rich, they could restore/rebuild, or settle elsewhere etc. He can’t surely be at risk from the law with Rebecca’s suicide motive ‘proven’? Or why not make a home in France — there’s no need to live in a series of hotels. And why don’t they have children, as they planned? Is Max now impotent without his house, even if the land is still there to pass on?

I don't blame the narrator - from the hints you get early on she's come down a bit in the world and is broke so has to work and can't be choosy about it - and she admits she has no qualifications to be anything other than a companion. She doesn't sum up her acceptance of DeW in such mercenary terms, (she is in love with him, after all) but he represents lifelong security, a very nice life in county society and she'll get to see Manderley for real. So she's in thrall to the house like he is.

What does make me 🙄with the benefit of age and being on MN for a while 😉 is the total acceptance of the fact that she's married to a murderer and his narrative of Rebecca as this bitch who made his life unbearable - the 'my ex is a psycho' narrative. She has no vision but his. Plus he's pretty controlling - she gets no say over her bedroom, for a start.

I didn’t root for the narrator as such - I thought she was naive and gullible, but also a victim of the whole situation - marrying someone like Maxim is a chance for a life she couldn’t have otherwise (because patriarchy), so on a cynical level it makes sense. I didn’t like it when she accepts his story and stays with him. But I think the book is partly about how all three women, the narrator, Rebecca and Mrs Danvers, react to the patriarchal hand they’re dealt. How they can claim or find some power or agency, within or outside the role they’re in.

I think part of the coup a PP mentioned is the way Maxim says he murdered a pregnant woman and it’s all set up so that it’s justified and he gets away with it, after all she was bitch. It’s a bit like Trump saying he could shoot someone (besides talking about sexually assaulting women) and it would make no difference to his popularity. And that’s who the narrator is dealing with.

The Bluebeard story really fascinates me and has so many meanings but one of them for me is about men letting women know they’re dispensable.

Such a lot of reading and rereading to be done, now!

So do people root for the girl, the second Mrs DeWinter? I like the fact that one feels ambivalent about her and her "growth" and that it's complicated. I think we're programmed (most of us?) to believe in the person narrator of a book. I'm always thinking "what would I do?" If I were the girl. First saw the Joanna David/Jeremy Brett version and/or the Hitchcock film when I was very young so easier to imagine than!

Which of course flags up the key point of the novel, in which most readers most of the time are egging on the mousy heroine to aid and abet a murderer who killed his vivid, independent first wife, not because she was unfaithful, which he’d known about since the honeymoon, but because she threatens his beloved house (in that she pretends it will be inherited by a child that is not his)

You know what, this has never occurred to me before, but Maxim actually admits to killing a pregnant woman. He doesn't even hesitate when she tells him she's pregnant, and it's only later on that he finds that she isn't. And yet he hates her so much that there's not a word of contrition - just how much blood there was and that he's forgotten. So he has actually killed before (in WW1, presumably).

(R is so powerful she needs to be triple-killed by the narrative— shot, drowned, cancer. Quadruple if you count the burning of the house her spirit still haunts.)

Like Rasputin, Rebecca is so powerful one death isn't enough.

How dare you..

Jane Eyre is also one of my favourite books and I hadn’t even thought about that clear parallel! The house burning down as well. I love books about houses where the house is like a character/key to the narrative(/and of course symbolises the patriarchy!)

Re descriptive passages, I do have a very strong “mind’s eye” and visual “film” in my head, but I can still be bored by too much description and scene-setting. I do like it in Hardy, but I was surprised when I read the odyssey in full (translation not the Greek!) how much excruciatingly dull description there is. And it often puts me off newly published novels unless it’s done really well.

Hitchcock’s film had to be different, because in 1940 the Hollywood production code (Hays Code) was in action, and stated that a the murder of a spouse in a film could not go unpunished, all criminal action had to be punished, and neither the crime nor the criminal could elicit sympathy from the audience. Hence Hitchcock’s Max doesn’t kill R. She falls and hits her head during their argument.

Which of course flags up the key point of the novel, in which most readers most of the time are egging on the mousy heroine to aid and abet a murderer who killed his vivid, independent first wife, not because she was unfaithful, which he’d known about since the honeymoon, but because she threatens his beloved house (in that she pretends it will be inherited by a child that is not his).

It’s a brilliant narrative coup. And yes, a rewriting of Jane Eyre in its most Bluebeardish aspect, where the plain, poor orphan triumphs and ends the novel in a somewhat dubious ‘happy ever after’, married to a weakened, disempowered Bluebeard. But with a hefty dose of British Empire nostalgia (DdM wrote it in Egypt) for traditional aristocratic/feudal ways of life. And the rebellious, free-spirited, unfaithful first wife killed off. (R is so powerful she needs to be triple-killed by the narrative— shot, drowned, cancer. Quadruple if you count the burning of the house her spirit still haunts.).

That's really interesting. I've never thought about that being why I might find very descriptive books boring, or why I skip over long passages describing scenery.
I tried to visualise the red star and literally all I see is blackness. I can't even see my family's faces.

I'm going to be in Yorkshire next week and am hoping to visit the Brief Enounter station.

Agreed, although I don't think she's actively unhappy until she meets Trevor Howard and gets a sudden glimpse of new possibilities. She ends up settling for what she already has, dull and predictable though it is, because she can't bear to hurt her husband and children, but also she would lose her reputation. I also think she's thinking of Trevor Howard's wife and, even more so, his children. And the status quo is safe. I wonder how things would have turned out in the end. I think her husband had more than an inkling of what might have been happening.

(I love this film and have seen it many, many times, hence the overthinking!)

Gosh, no. She stays in a marriage she's not happy in at the end. She goes to the friends flat to have sex and it starts to feel sordid and wrong.

She's yearning for something she can't have because society says she should be a good mother. Something Daphne Du Maurier understood and explores in Frenchman's Creek

I did too 😊

Has anyone read “Rebecca’s Tale” ( a supposed prequel to “Rebecca “. ) Obviously it’s not as good as Rebecca but I quite enjoyed it!

Brief Encounter is not romantic? I find it unbearably so.

According to Joan Fontaine, Olivier was horrible to her during the filming because he'd wanted his wife, Vivian Leigh, as the girl (hard to imagine VL as the girl). Also the divorced Jeremy Brett and Anna Massey - she didn't talk to JB throughout the filming because he'd gone against her wishes re their son apparently!

I've read that too about Olivier. Vivien Leigh is almost the image of Rebecca in my mind's eye, not suitable for the role of the second Mrs De Winter at all!

Yes I see what you mean @SirChenjins. As all the memories and anecdotes of Rebecca are from people who love or hate her it's not a reliable picture. I still think she is a psychopath - especially when I'm actually in the middle of the book!

I like the fact that the characters are all flawed and the girl has moved on and grown up but is still beguiled by Max. She's not grown up in a way that is satisfactory. Much more interesting than a lovely ending.

Going against Miss Prism: The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what Fiction means.