Horribly let down by Rebecca

[MsAmerica]

I love the Hitchcock movie of Rebecca, my second or third favorite Hitchcock, and I've always heard that the book was good, so when I recently came across a cheap copy, I bought it.

What a disappointment! Hated all the excessive description of greenery. Impatient at the overkill. But, worst, while the character of Max is slightly pleasanter than Olivier in the movie, the unnamed narrator is unbearable - a whiny, insecure bore.

Ugh!

What would happen to them when war broke out? Would Switzerland be the only safe European country for them to live in?

Or Sweden, Spain or Portugal. All neutral during WW2. Or they could have crossed the Atlantic and gone to the US or Canada, as some British people did. Far more likely, though, that Maxim would have wanted to join up or contribute to the war effort in any way he could (noblesse oblige) and so they would have gone back home.

(Ireland was neutral too, but not a very welcoming place for the British at the time, I believe.)

By the way, Rebecca seems to be on special offer for Kindle at the moment if anyone fancies rereading it off the back of this thread!

It's my favourite book. Especially the beginning, with the awful American woman and "the girl' being taken out for the day by Maxim. All the embarrassing comments by the AW, etc. There is such clever dialogue, the little put-downs, and the girl's insecurities... I love the bit where he asks her to marry him (sort of!). I've read it about half a dozen times and still find new things in it. Love some of the peripheral characters - they are so well described you really feel you know them. But I think DDM's skill in having the second Mrs DW writing at the beginning from the glittering Greek(?) sunshine making you want to be in rainy Cornwall is just wonderful.

@Sockdolager thanks - no one's ever explained the novel fully to me.

The film was so disappointing - Armie Hammer was completely wooden and unthreatening.

Armie Hammer wooden? With him you have no feeling of 'old blood and breeding' and of being a tortured soul. With Jeremy Brett you had that in spades. Plus Lily Cole was far too pretty. Joanna David was excellent in giving you the feeling of a gauche, not particularly pretty young woman down on her luck, for whom de Winter must have been a godsend.

No she did not commit suicide. De Winter and the girl get lucky when they go to see Dr Baker who says about the visit from Rebecca and says he had told her she had cancer. Thus giving Col Julian a reason to think Rebecca had committed suicide. When Favel and Mrs Danvers thought she wouldn't ever have done.

I think De Winter was feeling fatalistic at this time on the trip to see Dr Baker.

I absolutely love Rebecca, it’s one of my favourite books. I think it’s a really subversive novel that gets under your skin and I love how Rebecca cannot be contained even in death - the red in the sky at the end - she’s not going anywhere! It’s like a romance novel that is actually a horror story because all isn’t as it seems. (And I say that as somebody who loves romance novels, but Rebecca is almost a deconstruction of sexist attitudes at the time it was written).

The second Mrs DeWinter doesn’t even get a first name because she is essentially subsumed by her husband. At the end she is almost living a nightmare but I don’t blame her for it as she is incredibly insecure and lonely - a perfect victim for someone like Maxim.

a perfect victim for someone like Maxim.

But if she loved him and they made each other happy - which appears to be the case - was she a victim?

Yes I think there are more layers than just a 21st century lens reading. It's a great book for trying to look at it in lots of different ways. It's possible to have Rebecca as your hero. But, ultimately we don't know the truth of her. Because she's dead. Everyone has a different opinion of her in the book. Who says Mrs Danvers view of her is the right one? Or Max? Or Crawley? Or the grandmother? It's written in the first person of the girl and she has to unravel the mystery of Rebecca from everyone's biases, including her own. Even then it's not conclusive at the end of the book.

Also I think it's easy to misremember that where De Winter and the girl end up is at the beginning of the book. And the end of the book is not the last we know of them.

I’m not so sure they are happy at the end of the story though - their life in the hotel does not sound much fun. They keep a very rigid schedule and still seem haunted. Also, I do feel Maxim somewhat preyed on her when she was very young and inexperienced in Monte Carlo. She went along with everything because she didn’t know any better and of course was flattered by his interest and worldliness.

Augh. The greenery was the worst part for me. If I wanted to read about greenery, I wouldn't be reading a novel!

Yes, @QueenofallIsee, of course she's meant to be insecure - in fact, in the movie, Joan Fontaine was praised for the sweet way she conveyed that - but there are other insecure heroines in novels who aren't such a pain.

I forgot to add that after my suffering through all that, it was adding insult to injury not to have a more satisfying ended that hinted at future happiness. Because she's already told us in the beginning that her life is a bore now.

She's become a servant - reading his papers and gauging his mood so as not to upset him by reading out the wrong thing and following him as they traipse around the continent from one dreary hotel to the next. Much as she was doing before they met.

Well, given that large sections of the Anglo-Irish landowning population had been burned out in the early 1920s, I doubt Ireland was the obvious destination for an English couple who’d just had their house burned!

Incidentally, who exactly does everyone here think burned it? Obviously symbolically the force of the undead Rebecca (who lives up to the name of her boat, Je Reviens), but who actually set the fire? Jack Favelll, Mrs Danvers or both acting together (given that he thought Rebecca had been in love with him and Mrs Danvers thought that was nonsense, so their loyalties to her do t coincide)? Can of petrol in Rebecca’s old bedroom?

I would have said their problem would be to let it get a proper hold without any of the huge numbers of servants seeing or smelling something and quenching it … Once it had got a proper hold, the closest fire brigade wouldn’t have a hope.

Jack Favell is always a slight puzzle for me — he’s a common-looking, non-U Jack the lad, yet he’s Rebecca’s cousin, Rebecca who had, the three things the de Winters thought were important in a woman, ‘beauty, brains and breeding’. Assuming Rebecca’s ‘breeding’ made a suitable match for Maxim, how does she have a cousin (and one she’s clearly known since childhood) who is coded as ‘non U’ by the novel?

Incidentally, who exactly does everyone here think burned it?

I think Mrs Danvers burned it - maybe, as you say, with the help of Jack Favell. You make a very good point about the other servants realising the house was on fire (incidentally what about the other servants at Thornfield Hall when Bertha Rochester set it on fire?).
Maybe she waited until the butler had a night off and arranged an outing for the other staff?
Im sure she would’ve been very thorough about dousing the house in petrol before she struck the match!

Off topic , but have any of you read a novel called The Death of the Heart by Elizabeth Bowen which was published in 1938, the same year as Rebecca?
The 16 year old girl who goes to live with her half brother and sister-in-law also spent part of her life living in unfashionable hotels in Europe, much like the de Winters.
It’s a masterpiece of a novel.

I've never heard of this but feel like I must give it a read!

This reminds me that it's probably time to re-read it 😉

Persephone - EB wrote some excellent fiction.
I’ve noticed in novels written before the turn of this century often have male characters who are controlling and arrogant by today’s standards - Uncle Matthew for example, and Maxim de Winter. Heathcliff is on a whole other level.
However the men in EB’s novels are more nuanced.

I much prefer the book to the Hitchcock version of Rebecca.
Films are always different from the book. I always try to read the book before seeing a film based on a novel because once you see a film you can't help but see the actors as the characters and I think it's always better to have your own idea about them before seeing someone else's interpretation

Heard of it but i didn't know the plot. Another one for my list!

I am so enjoying this thread - especially all the really good points that I’d never thought of - eg, did anyone try and put the fire out and if not why not;
The difference in background between Rebecca & Jack Favell despite them being cousins;
Forever roaming abroad in limbo (though the war would’ve put an end to that - as a poster upthread says, Maxim would’ve wanted to help the war effort).
All throwing interesting new light on the novel.