A Meditation on Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca | blog

As the self-proclaimed #1 Jane Eyre fan, I was, of course, immediately drawn to a book billed as reminiscent of Charlotte Brontë’s ultimate gothic classic. I was even more intrigued upon hearing that the book inspired Taylor Swift to write the song ‘Tolerate It” (I believe the performance of this song on The Eras Tour should have won her an immediate EGOT, but that is besides the point). A few friends and I picked Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca as our next book club read, and after a slow start, I won the prize for fastest finish. As I anxiously wait for real, live people to discuss the book with, I will happily record some of my thoughts here. 

The first 50-ish pages describe our unnamed protagonist (antagonist? We’ll get there) wasting away as a paid companion to the absolutely incorrigible Mrs. Van Hopper in Monte Carlo. I took to calling our narrator Jane, an ode to her Jane Doe unnamed-ness and nod to the book’s foremothers. Here she meets the recently widowed Maxim de Winter, and she, inexplicably yet inevitably, falls in love with him. 

When they return to Maxim’s estate, Manderley, after their whirlwind marriage, Jane is haunted by Maxim’s late wife, Rebecca. Jane is nothing compared to the gregarious, beautiful, adventurous Rebecca, who she learns lost her life in an accident during an overnight solo boating expedition (an activity Rebecca apparently frequently did, which, for some reason, no one found alarming or perhaps indicative of a failing marriage). The house manager, Mrs. Danvers, is seemingly also haunted by Rebecca, but in a weird, obsessive way that frankly really creeped me out. Eventually, we find out that Rebecca was not, in fact, the love of Maxim’s life, but actually a (spoiler alert) manipulative sociopath whom Maxim loathed and (SPOILER ALERT) murdered. After a very close call and an act of arson committed by Mrs. Danvers, Maxim narrowly escapes being exposed as Rebecca’s murderer, and he and Jane live happily ever after. Cute!!

So, who can we truly call the protagonist of this story? Rebecca certainly looms larger than Jane and, even after we find out she’s a sociopath, remains the most compelling character to the end. I spent much of the book waiting for Jane to stop describing her agony over choosing the lunch menu that day or whatever she was up to and uncover more of the juicy details surrounding Rebecca’s life and death. That’s not to say I disliked Jane as a character or found the book boring, just that I felt it was more Rebecca’s story than Jane’s. This is a departure from the Jane Eyre of it all, wherein the reveal of the existence of the first wife is the climax rather than the introduction. Just as Maxim feared she would be, Rebecca was victorious in the end. She took Maxim’s beloved Manderley away from him by way of Mrs. Danvers’s arson. I suppose Manderley was the price he had to pay for Jane, but this begs the question, why her? 

Did Maxim really love Jane? I can’t see how he would. It seems like she was just the first thing that came along after Rebecca. He truly set her up for failure, bringing her to Manderley and into his world, one he knew full well you had to be born into to succeed in. For these reasons, Maxim irked me throughout. I felt his anxiety viscerally, his feeling of being first trapped in his marriage and then in his lie about how it ended. Du Maurier’s descriptions of anxiety were almost too good, at times forcing me to take a break from reading to recover from them. I didn’t feel, though, that all this agita made Maxim sympathetic enough for me to really care how he ended up. 

Because neither Maxim nor Jane was a particularly compelling character, it’s incredible that what is ostensibly “their” story could be so captivating. My hunger for just a little more detail at every turn made this book such a page turner. It was an excellent fall read; mysterious and atmospheric, and all-around enthralling. While it does not de-throne Jane Eyre in my gothic romance novel power ranking, it has earned a spot in the top 5. This was the first I have read from Du Maurier, and it certainly has motivated me to explore her work further. I plan to spend my next free 90 minutes watching the Netflix movie adaptation and will certainly report back with my findings.