When our narrator marries Max - against the advice of her boss - she must not only contend with a new life as a gentlewoman living in a style to which she is not accustomed, but she must also live in the shadow of Rebecca who represents all the things she is not: graceful, educated, confident and loved.Īnd from the very first (famous) line - “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again” - we know that events have not played out as Max and his new bride might have wished. He is in Monte Carlo trying to come to terms with the death of his wife, Rebecca, who was, by all accounts, a rather beautiful and popular woman prone to throwing lavish dinner parties.
Max is a handsome, well-regarded gentleman with a large manor house called Manderley in England. She meets him when she is living in Monte Carlo, as a companion to an older and quite trying American woman she does not particularly like. The basic story is about a young woman - tellingly she is nameless - who marries a much older man, Max de Winter, who is above her station. The tale of a young woman who marries an older man And yes, there are touches of the Gothic about it in the way the storyline is both scary and suspenseful.īut there are echoes of Jane Eyre, too, and of “country house” novels in which stately homes - and the people who run them - play a central role in the plot.Īccording to Sally Beauman, who wrote an afterword in the edition I read, du Maurier described the book as “a sinister tale about a woman who marries a widower … Psychological and macabre” - and that pretty much sums it up perfectly. Yes, it’s about women - or more importantly, the relationship between the sexes. Rebecca is a timeless story about a young woman caught up in circumstances seemingly beyond her control, and while some have labelled it as either “women’s fiction” or “Gothic romance” it doesn’t really fit in with either description.
I decided it was time to find out why so many people - friends and bloggers included - count this novel as one of their all-time favourite reads.
Fiction – paperback Virago 448 pages 2011.ĭaphne du Maurier’s Rebecca was first published in 1938 - and I may possibly be the last person on Earth to have read it.
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