..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

I love the Sally Beauman book, Rebecca's tale. I just googled it and was sad to see the author died a few years back.

Name wise I assumed the father reference was to her surname and that her christian name would be something quite unassuming and unpretentious- Eve, Emma, Lucy, Jane, Ann

I guess we'll never know

@Counsellortroi

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

That's brilliant, I've never heard of this so going to look it up now!

I'd love it if her name was Angela!
Though I do think it's something much prettier such as Ophelia, Estelle, Lilian or Juliet.

I'd quite like to see a modern telling of the story, on the condition that the writer who adapted it for Netflix wasn't allowed in a million miles of the production.

Eustasia

@thecatsthecats

I'd quite like to see a modern telling of the story, on the condition that the writer who adapted it for Netflix wasn't allowed in a million miles of the production.

I think that's fair, although in fairness I only got to the arrival at Manderley it seemed to me that the writer had fundamentally misunderstood the initial relationship between Nameless Heroine and Maxim, and had decided to make it normal and sexy, when it's more like a schoolgirl crush on someone who treats her like a cute child and as though she's not properly adult. Far from having had sex, they haven't even kissed, and there's no impression Max is attracted to her, or even sees her as a woman, so that when he proposes, the heroine thinks he's offering her a secretarial job and the heroine is disgusted when, after they tell Mrs Van Hopper, she laughs knowingly and says 'Have you been doing something you shouldn't?'

Whereas the film depicted it as a normal sexual relationship so we weren't surprised when he proposed.

It should have been Gullible for getting involved with that dodgy Max.

when it's more like a schoolgirl crush on someone who treats her like a cute child and as though she's not properly adult

More than that, I think it's crucial for Max that the narrator isn't a woman in his eyes. Depending on whether you believe his version of events, this is either because he has been so damaged by Rebecca that he can't cope with another relationship, or because he is a raging misogynist, which is why his relationship with Rebecca ends as it does (trying to avoid major spoilers).

The narrator shows awareness of Max's need for her not to be a wife in the normal sense by offering to 'be his boy' (meant in a non-sexual way, I assume ) towards the end of the novel.

And I think a contemporary version of Rebecca would have a hard time being sufficiently claustrophobic -- even if we assume the heroine thinks Max has cleared all portraits or photographs of Rebecca from the house out of grief, surely the obsessive Mrs Danvers would have some on hand, as would family and the other people who knew the couple, and Rebecca would have been all over in past issues of Tatler or equivalent, but there are none, which makes it all more powerful.

Now the heroine would be able, from the first moment she hears about Rebecca, to look her up online, and discover all kinds of things about her, who she knew, what she did, besides what she looked like. There would be far more concrete things to fuel the obsession, not just her handwriting, the way she arranged the house, other people's memories etc.

Anne or Jane.
I would have loved to hear her AIBU.

PS. I enjoyed Rebecca's Tale but it does colour how you think about 'Rebecca'. I can't quite remember what's original and what came from that if you see what I mean.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

when it's more like a schoolgirl crush on someone who treats her like a cute child and as though she's not properly adult

More than that, I think it's crucial for Max that the narrator isn't a woman in his eyes. Depending on whether you believe his version of events, this is either because he has been so damaged by Rebecca that he can't cope with another relationship, or because he is a raging misogynist, which is why his relationship with Rebecca ends as it does (trying to avoid major spoilers).

The narrator shows awareness of Max's need for her not to be a wife in the normal sense by offering to 'be his boy' (meant in a non-sexual way, I assume ) towards the end of the novel.

Absolutely. His disgust when the heroine says she wishes she were a woman of around 36 in a black satin dress shows that!

I tend to the standard-issue raving misogynist interpretation, myself, in a class-specific version whereby liberated women = threat to inheritance. Note that what drives him over the edge also trying to avoid spoilers, though I think myself that an extremely well-known novel published in 1938 should be beyond that is the threat to Manderley and who will inherit it. And the fact that there are a whole line of Mrs de Winters at Manderley not just the second Mrs de Winter and Rebecca, but also the references to Max's dead mother, and his living grandmother, and I suppose the ancestress Caroline de Winter suggests that women are semi-anonymous placeholders whose role is to beautiful the house, be faithful and produce legitimate offspring to pass Manderley onto. The estate is more important than them. Rebecca threatened that.

@thecatsthecats

I'd quite like to see a modern telling of the story, on the condition that the writer who adapted it for Netflix wasn't allowed in a million miles of the production.

There is New Girl by Paige Harbison which is a modern American YA retelling of the story, set in a boarding school. It's not bad, but doesn't have the atmosphere Rebecca does.

I think Rebecca, though popular, is a really underrated novel in terms of its plotting and perspective. A less subtle author would have used a Gone Girl-style plot of shifting perspectives: "Person A: This is what happened, Person B: no, this is what happened, Person C: no, THIS is what happened".

Du Maurier recruits the reader to accept Max's narrative, told though the medium of the narrator, without the reader being aware that they are being recruited. The narrator's sense of being an outsider is used really cleverly to suggest distance and objectivity as regards the Max/Rebecca relationship which, in fact, she doesn't have.

Maybe, "Rebecca" but with a different spelling, e.g. Rebekah?

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

I think Rebecca, though popular, is a really underrated novel in terms of its plotting and perspective. A less subtle author would have used a Gone Girl-style plot of shifting perspectives: "Person A: This is what happened, Person B: no, this is what happened, Person C: no, THIS is what happened".

Du Maurier recruits the reader to accept Max's narrative, told though the medium of the narrator, without the reader being aware that they are being recruited. The narrator's sense of being an outsider is used really cleverly to suggest distance and objectivity as regards the Max/Rebecca relationship which, in fact, she doesn't have.

It is a brilliant narrative switch, and it's so good to teach because there are so many possibilities, because there are no unmediated accounts of Rebecca at all -- we either hear of her from violently partial people, from people who knew her only distantly as 'lovely', or from someone who has everything to gain from making his hearer accept his unverified and unverifiable account of his marriage and the end of Rebecca's life.

There are so many things to think about -- who really 'wins' at the end? Rebecca or the heroine? Is the worldview of the insipid middle-class nice girl triumphant, or has the power of Rebecca continued to dominate, given the end of the novel? Do we in fact need to reconsider our sense of the narrator as middle-class nice girl given what she has in fact done by the end of the novel?

And all the unexplained things why do Maxim and the narrator appear to be almost on the run in a series of rather faded-sounding continental hotels, why don't they return to England and live elsewhere? Or settle someone permanent in Europe? Could legal proceedings not follow them anywhere, if there were any? Why don't they have children the heroine wants them earlier in the narrative, and surely there's still some inheritance, despite what happens at the end of the novel? How long is it since that happened? (How long were Rebecca and Maxim married, I've always wondered? Because surely inheritance-related stuff would have come up before, as a pressure?)

It just occurred to me that Mrs Danvers is also not named. As are all the other women, I think, apart from Rebecca herself, and one of Maxim's ancestors, who also seems to haunt the estate? Clever.

Why do Maxim and the narrator appear to be almost on the run in a series of rather faded-sounding continental hotels, why don't they return to England and live elsewhere?

There is also an interesting Jane Eyre vibe at the end (the whole novel is definitely influenced by Jane Eyre, as many readers have noted), with the narrator saying that she doesn't think Max remembers much about what happened. Why not? Has he become disabled in some way that affects memory? The narrator sounds more like a carer than wife, so does she now have the upper hand, like JE when Rochester becomes blind and disabled?

@Tureen

And I think a contemporary version of Rebecca would have a hard time being sufficiently claustrophobic -- even if we assume the heroine thinks Max has cleared all portraits or photographs of Rebecca from the house out of grief, surely the obsessive Mrs Danvers would have some on hand, as would family and the other people who knew the couple, and Rebecca would have been all over in past issues of Tatler or equivalent, but there are none, which makes it all more powerful.

Now the heroine would be able, from the first moment she hears about Rebecca, to look her up online, and discover all kinds of things about her, who she knew, what she did, besides what she looked like. There would be far more concrete things to fuel the obsession, not just her handwriting, the way she arranged the house, other people's memories etc.

Well, you'd have to do it quite cleverly - I'd like the Black Mirror writing team to take a shot at it. But I think the fundamentals of the story and the misogyny within it could be really well examined, in a way they fundamentally weren't in the glossy Netflix edition.

@MissLucyEyelesbarrow

I think Rebecca, though popular, is a really underrated novel in terms of its plotting and perspective. A less subtle author would have used a Gone Girl-style plot of shifting perspectives: "Person A: This is what happened, Person B: no, this is what happened, Person C: no, THIS is what happened".

Du Maurier recruits the reader to accept Max's narrative, told though the medium of the narrator, without the reader being aware that they are being recruited. The narrator's sense of being an outsider is used really cleverly to suggest distance and objectivity as regards the Max/Rebecca relationship which, in fact, she doesn't have.

Absolutely.

I've written my own book series using the perspectives method and that is hard enough doing that correctly, when the reader is fully aware of the differences in perspective. (I'm personally attempting to have three core character arcs that are told through six perspectives - trying to pull off that one character's story is told by two perspectives, another two told by each other etc)

My criticism of the Sally Beauman work is that it takes this approach, including a somewhat hard line view of the second Mrs De Winter in my opinion.

Especially if you're young, it's incredibly easy to get suckered into rooting for the second Mrs De Winter as she helps her husband cover up the crime, which is the depressing line Netflix took. No implication whatsoever that the viewer shouldn't be horrified that this mouse is stuck sexlessly placating a wife-murderer for the rest of her life. Nope, it was all worth it for the sexy sex they have.

I think My Cousin Rachel is underrated, and it does a similar thing - I always recommend it saying that I could tell you the entire plot, but you have to read it and make up your mind about Rachel yourself.

Milady? :-)

@Tureen

And I think a contemporary version of Rebecca would have a hard time being sufficiently claustrophobic -- even if we assume the heroine thinks Max has cleared all portraits or photographs of Rebecca from the house out of grief, surely the obsessive Mrs Danvers would have some on hand, as would family and the other people who knew the couple, and Rebecca would have been all over in past issues of Tatler or equivalent, but there are none, which makes it all more powerful.

Now the heroine would be able, from the first moment she hears about Rebecca, to look her up online, and discover all kinds of things about her, who she knew, what she did, besides what she looked like. There would be far more concrete things to fuel the obsession, not just her handwriting, the way she arranged the house, other people's memories etc.

"Last night I dreamt I went to Instagram again"

Everything you say is true, but don't you think it could add to the tension and ambiguity? We are all constructing false (or at least elaborately curated) narratives about ourselves on social media, all the time. Where is the line between acceptable social convention and actual lying? How do people's public and private personas compare, and to what extent do we create multiple selves to suit different audiences? At what stage does it become dishonest or pathological?

You could also pick up some of the less explored threads in the original and put a 21st century spin on them. For example, the narrator clearly views herself as Rebecca's social inferior, but is this actually true? Max and the narrator's father moved in the same social circles; the narrator is a lady companion at the outset, which is a job an impoverished gentlewoman could do; and, other than Mrs Van Hopper (who doesn't count because she is a vulgar American!), no one ever reacts to the narrator as if she is the wrong social class for Max, as opposed to gauche. Rebecca, on the other hand, has bounder of a cousin who doesn't seem particularly top drawer. You could play around with this in a contemporary setting where social signifiers are far more complex.

I imagined she had a Cornish name such as Loveday or Lamorna.

Yes, I thought a Cornish name, too. Perhaps Morwenna.

Everything you say is true, but don't you think it could add to the tension and ambiguity? We are all constructing false (or at least elaborately curated) narratives about ourselves on social media, all the time. Where is the line between acceptable social convention and actual lying?
This is a very interesting perspective. Rebecca as an online influencer with a carefully crafted online presence, which haunts the second Mrs de Winter. Mrs Danvers could be replaced with a FOMO- inspired faceless crowd of online followers, blindly in love with Rebecca's ghost and gutturally hating the second Mrs de Winter without even knowing anything about her. Maybe add a conspiracy theory that Rebecca wasn't dead at all.

Lesley..am sure in the book she mentions it is unusual...and think it could be used for man or woman.