“Rebecca” (1938) is a Gothic romance novel by Daphne du Maurier. The Rebecca of the title dies before the story even begins but haunts it to the end. It was a bestseller in Britain and the US and has been in print ever since – for over 80 years now.
Alfred Hitchcock made it into a film of the same name in 1940, his only film to win an Oscar for Best Picture. The novel was so dark he had to water it down to meet the Hollywood Production Code. His films “The Birds” (1963) and “Jamaica Inn” (1939) were also based on her books. He knew her family.
Du Maurier said “Rebecca” was:
“a sinister tale about a woman who marries a widower …. Psychological and rather macabre”.
She thought it was “too gloomy” and the ending “too grim” to ever be a bestseller. The ending was grim, but it was also unexpected – and perfect.
Gothic romance novels are supposed to be gloomy and grim: they are love stories that are also horror stories. “Rebecca” takes the daydream of marrying a rich man and turns it into a living nightmare. Like many Gothic romances, it features a big house with a secret that threatens to bring everything down.
Self narration: Whenever I read a book I try to put myself in the hero’s shoes – Frodo, Kunta Kinte, Alice. It is part of the joy of reading. But this time I felt like I was reading about myself! Which made its events all the more horrifying.
My favourite lines:
- “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”
- “They are not brave the days when we are twenty-one.”
- “the sort of girl you expected to meet in those sort of places.”
- “the poor pomposity of youth”
- “content with the little glory of the living present”
- “he patted my cheek in his terrible absent way”
- “I can feel now the stiff, set smile on my face that did not match the misery in my eyes.”
- “a prop who wore a smile screwed to its face”
- “all the pent-up hatred and disgust and muck of the lost years.”
- “the cold wind blew in my face. The stars raced across the sky.”
- “And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.”
“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” – is the first line of the book and one I have heard my mother repeat down through the years. I thought she was talking about Mandalay, the royal city in the middle of Burma, that she was quoting Kipling or something. But she was talking about a mansion by the sea in England, the scene of one her favourite books. That I would like the book too was maybe over-determined.
In 1937, when du Maurier’s husband was stationed in Alexandria, Egypt, she was homesick for England. And so she began to write: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” Manderley was based on her own home by the sea in England – Menabilly.
– Abagond, 2020.
See also:
- Programming note #40 – this book was part of my British media diet in December 2019
- books
- English country houses
- Gothic romance
- Burma
- Alexandria
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Abagond 
I’ve stopped reading much relayed to this era in the Western Hemisphere but closest would be the Argentinian based House of Spirits?
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