..to ask what you think Mrs De Winter's first name is?

[poblwcymru]

We know it's "lovely and unusual".

my favourite book in the world. The Hitchcock film is pretty special too.

I think she was a Naomi

Tanith

Apparently Lily James/her character was informally called Adeline on the set of the new film.

I always thought she was Miranda, no reason why, I just pictured her as that!

I reckon Juliet or Frances - though Imogen does feel quite likely.

@RustyBear

Sybil. And she has a sister called Clio.

You beat me to it, Rusty. :)

Lesley. Unusually Maxim knew how to spell it ie the female version

Emmeline

Or Thalia.

I love the Vivian explanation but I thought it was her surname that referred to

Isn't the 'lovely and unusual' in reference to her (maiden) surname? He says that when they first meet - in those days, a lady's companion would be addressed as 'Miss X' by a gentleman such as Max. & she says (something like - it's a while since I read it) 'My father was a lovely and unusual person' - meaning he also bore the surname - though I see it could also be taken to mean he named her.

I agree it's her father's surname she shares, not his first name.

I think a lot of these are too exotic, and she would have been called something simple and traditional- Jane, Anne, Diana, Elizabeth. Rebecca is a great suggestion, psychologically, though!

Alice makes a lot of sense.

I was thinking something like Camille/Camilla. Or Claire/Clare.

Zelda

Summer

@TartanTexan I misread and thought you were suggesting honeylulu for the name 😂😂

@Bainne

Maxim says her name is ‘beautiful and unusual’, and Nameless Heroine says her father was a ‘beautiful and unusual person’.

Mind, you, even Rebecca was an averagely unusual name then, and various critics have pointed out that it would have had connotations of Jewishness it doesn’t have today. Not suggesting R was actually Jewish, just that the name goes some way to characterising her as ‘other’ and a bit exotic. The character was partly based on Du Maurier’s husband’s previous fiancée, a dark-haired glamorous woman called Jan Ricardo who killed herself during WWII, and partly on Daphne du M herself — bisexual, non-gender-conforming, boaty, unfaithful, independent-minded.

Yes I had read this also. Didn’t the first fiancée throw herself in front of a train?

Doesnt she say shes named after her father. Something about the name and the man being lovely and unusual.
I always assumed it was a slightly quirky unisex name like Lindsay.

Ah didn't RTFT
Still think I'm right though

I've no idea why but I always thought of her as an Emma.

That’s right, @Yumyumdindins. I mean, it’s not any kind of direct copy — the engagement had been broken off a few years before Daphne married ‘Boy’ Browning, so there’s no suggestion of any overlap, Jan married another man before Rebecca was published, and the novel had been out six years before J killed herself aged 39 and leaving a young daughter. She was dark, glamorous and sociable, and in a cache of love letters Daphne found, she wrote her surname with a towering R, like Rebecca, and D became obsessively jealous, like the second Mrs de Winter. These days she’d pore obsessively over her on social media.

And while Rebecca’s origins are mysterious — Max’s grandmother describes her as having ‘breeding, brains and beauty’, but all we know about her family is her caddish, lowlife cousin Jack Favell, who doesn’t suggest top drawer stuff — Jan was straightforwardly an upper-class Catholic debutante (though her family had Sephardic Jewish origins.)

Her real name was Jeanette, but I’m not sure that would fit Max’s sense of ‘beautiful and unusual’.

There are apparently no photos of Jan, but this is her daughter at her own debutante ball.

@lifeturnsonadime

I've no idea why but I always thought of her as an Emma.

That's not unusual and surely impossible to misspell?

It's also unlikely to have been her dad's name!

For some reason I've always thought of her as having a name like Yve (as opposed to Eve), so French rather than English, and her dad could also have been called Yves.

I don't think Du Maurier forgot to give her a name, I think its very deliberate.

This thread has made me want to reread the book!

*I've no idea why but I always thought of her as an Emma.

That's not unusual and surely impossible to misspell?*

Do we know whether it was her first name or surname which was unusual and difficult to spell? In those times she would have been introduced to Maxim as Miss (insert) name, not necessarily by her first name.

@Incrediblehulky

The follow up was written by Susan Hill in 1993 and it's called Mrs de Winter. It really does read as if it's written by Daphne du Maurier and it's brill...if you love Rebecca you must read it!

There’s also “Rebecca’s Tale” by Sally Beauman.

I always called her Barbary in my head. I love that book, I'd read and reread it endlessly while DC enjoyed spent ages on the toilet when she was first training.