The Bookery Book Club Reads Rebecca

Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderley again. 

There's just something about that famous first line of Daphne Du Maurier's most successful novel that draws you in and leaves you wanting to know more. What's Manderley? Why is it place that you can only go to in dreams? What is this novel about?

The plot is almost deceptively simple: a young, guileless woman is working as a paid companion to Mrs. Van Hopper, a brash American traveling through Europe. In Monte Carlo, the pair runs into English widower Maxim De Winter seemingly mourning the death of his wife, Rebecca. After a short courtship, Maxim asks the narrator to marry him. After a brief honeymoon, the couple heads back to Maxim's Cornwall estate, Manderley, which the new Mrs. De Winter soon realizes is haunted by the memory and impact of Rebecca.

Feeling like she can never compare to her beautiful predecessor, the new Mrs. De Winter soon begins to wonder if Maxim regrets their marriage and believes that she can never live up to Rebecca's memory. Then, a sunken boat is found in the bay with a body inside — and it soon becomes clear that the body Maxim identified as Rebecca's about a year earlier wasn't her. The discovery sets in motion a chain of events that highlight dark realities about Rebecca, her marriage to Maxim and her death, all of which drastically shift the narrator's understanding of her marriage and transform her relationship with Maxim.

For me, Rebecca has been one of my favorite books since I was in high school. It's probably Du Maurier's most well-known novel, and it's a captivating read for first-time readers and longtime lovers of Du Maurier's work.

Rebecca was first published in 1938 and has never gone out of print since then, making it Du Maurier's most successful work, but she was actually a fairly prolific author. Some of her other novels include Frenchman’s Creek, Jamaica Inn and My Cousin Rachel, and Du Maurier was also the author of three plays. One of her short stories, "The Birds," is actually the basis for Alfred Hitchcock's terrifying movie of the same name.

Du Maurier herself called Rebecca “a study in jealousy,” and it’s believed that a real-life experience planted the seed for the novel. Before their marriage, Du Maurier’s husband had previously been engaged to another woman (a dark-haired beauty, like Rebecca), and Du Maurier found that her marriage was haunted by the suspicion that Browning still loved his ex-fiance.

Some scholars see echoes of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre in Rebecca, for good reason. Both feature young, inexperienced narrators who yearn to be loved, and both novels also feature older, somewhat aloof male protagonists who fall in love with them. Then, of course, there’s the whole secret about their first wives, which both men seemingly fell out of love with almost as soon as the wedding was over and they realized they didn't really know the women they married. In Mr. Rochester’s case in Jane Eyre, his first wife is crazy and lives in the attic , and in Maxim’s his first wife, Rebecca, was beloved by the community, but they only knew the persona she created for them. In reality, she may have been beautiful, but she was also cunning, manipulative and evil, using people and bending their will to hers. 

If you're a fan of moody, suspenseful but not gory or terrifying mysteries, this book is definitely one you should check out. And, if you'd like to try a movie version of it, there are several adaptations to choose from, including an Alfred Hitchcock classic, a 1997 BBC version that's very faithful to the novel and a 2020 Netflix version starring Lily James and Armie Hammer.

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Want to know more about Rebecca? Don't miss the next episode of The Bookery Podcast, which releases tomorrow and focuses entirely on Rebecca, our October selection.

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