The second Mrs de Winter

[Literaryseed]

Anyone want to have a guess what her name is? In the book it's described as lovely and unusual and often spelt wrong. Anyone got any good ideas what it could have been?

I ordered the book after watching the film yesterday, so I will find out later today, but I'll guess... Sally?

Sarah?

Some critics and du Maurier biographers hypothesise that it’s Daphne. The biographical root of the novel had its origins in a previous relationship Du Maurier’s husband ’Boy’ Browning had.

Yep, it's got to be Daphne.

I’ve just read the bit where she and Max first have lunch in Monte Carlo and he says “it becomes you as well as it became your father”, so I thought it was a unisex name, something like Robyn or Sydney or Vivian.

I did wonder about Daphne as well (obviously not unisex!)

I looked her up, because I’d forgotten a lot of detail. Boy Browning’s previous fiancée was called Jan Ricardo, and she killed herself by jumping in front of a train. She was beautiful, lively and dark-haired (her family had Sephardic Jewish origins), and du M found her letters after her marriage, and became obsessively jealous, having possibly never met her.

Unless he's referring to her surname? I noticed the same line in the film, but couldn't remember if it had been in the original book.

It is in the novel, @BitOfFun, it seems as if Max may be talking less about the name being the heroine’s father’s name than in being the choice of a ‘lovely and unusual’ man. Nowhere does the heroine say that her first name was also her father’s name, only that her father, ‘a lovely and unusual person’, chose it, and his choice seems to be what Max is complimenting (and also the heroine herself, who is much more awkward and schoolgirlish than in the new film).

Sorry, missed out a ‘but’. I don’t think it can be the surname, as her father wouldn’t have ‘chosen’ it.

Interesting! I'd never thought about it being Daphne.

I saw someone somewhere suggest Lesley/ie.

I wondered whether it might have been Evelyn. It's unisex and was popular at that time.