Rebecca

REBECCA

Elizabeth Von Armin and Charlotte Brontë

The Gothic

The sinister housekeeper

A real story of jealousy

Menabilly and Manderley

Alexandria and homesickness

the origins

Past haunting the presentANDA twisted Cinderella story

THE PLOT

Colonel Julyan

Jack Favel

Beatrice and Giles

Frank Crawly

Mrs Danvers

Maxim De Winter

Rebecca

The new Mrs De Winter

CHARACTERS

Class

The Past

Dreams and Day-dreaming

themes

jelousy

the fire and forbidden books

Doubling and Mirroring

Ghosts

the sea

symbols

manderley

• “’I never saw her’, she said holding the glass away to see the effect, ‘but I believe she was very lovely. Exquisitely turned out, and brilliant in every way. They used to give tremendous parties at Manderley. It was all very sudden and tragic, and I believe he adored her.’ “ (Chapter 5, p. 46) • “I was following a phantom in my mind, whose shadowy form had taken shape at last. Her features were blurred, her colouring indistinct, the setting of her eyes and the texture of her hair was still uncertain, still to be revealed.” (Chapter 5, p. 47) • “He did not belong to me at all, he belonged to Rebecca. He still thought about Rebecca. He would never love me because of Rebecca. She was in the house still (…) Her footsteps sounded in the corridors, her scent lingered on the stairs. (…) Her clothes were in the wardrobes in her room, her brushes were on the table, her shoes beneath the chair, her nightdress on her bed. Rebecca was still mistress of Manderley, Rebecca was still Mrs de Winter. I had no business here at all: I had come blundering like a poor fool on ground that was preserved.” (Chapter 18, p. 261) • “Back again into the moving unquiet depths. I was writing letters in the morning-room. I was sending out invitations. I wrote them all myself with a thick black pen. But when I looked down to see what I had written it was not my small square handwriting at all, it was long, and slanting, with curious pointed strokes. I pushed the cards away from the blotter and hid them. I got up and went to the looking-glass. A face stared back at me that was not my own. It was very pale, very lovely, framed in a cloud of dark hair. The eyes narrowed and smiled. The lips parted. The face in the glass stared back at me and laughed. And I saw then that she was sitting on a chair before the dressing-table in her bedroom, and Maxim was brushing her hair. He held her hair in his hands, and as he brushed it he wound it slowly into a thick rope. It twisted like a snake, and he took hold of it with both hands and smiled at Rebecca and put it round his neck.” (Chapter 27, p. 426) • “the things we have tried to forget and leave behind” (Chapter 2, p.5) • “The past can’t hurt us if we are together” (Chapter 23, p.359) • “To be perfectly frank, my dear, I simply can’t see you doing it…You haven’t the experience…you don’t know that milieu.” (Chapter 6, p. 66)

Quotations

• “It was going to be very different in the future….” (Chapter 27, p.422) • “‘If I had a child, Max,’ she said,’ neither you, nor anyone in the world, would ever prove that it was not yours. It would grow up here in Manderley, bearing your name. There would be nothing you could do. And when you died Manderley would be his. You could not prevent it. The property’s entailed. You would like an heir, wouldn’t you, for your beloved Manderley? You would enjoy it, wouldn’t you, seeing my son lying in his pram under the chestnut tree, playing leap-frog, on the lawn, catching butterflies in the Happy Valley? It would give you the biggest thrill of your life, wouldn’t it, Max, to watch my son grow bigger day by day, and to know that when you die, all this would be his?” (Chapter 20, p. 313) • ”and the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.” (Chapter 27, p. 428) • “aware of that sick, unhealthy feeling I had experienced as a child when turning the pages of a forbidden book” (Chapter 4, p. 28) • “of a visit to a friend’s house, as a child, when the daughter of the house, older than me, took my arm and whispered in my ear, ‘I know where there is a book, locked in a cupboard, in my mother’s bedroom. Shall we go and look at it?’” (Chapter 9, p. 102) • “even forbidden to read certain books, and did your father put these books under lock and key?” (Chaper16, p. 226) • “’What do you think of Monte Carlo, or don’t you think of it at all?’ he said. This including of me in the conversation found me at my worst, the raw ex-schoolgirl, red-elbowed and lanky-haired, and I said something obvious and idiotic about the place being artificial, but before I could finish my halting sentence Mrs Van Hooper interrupted. ‘She’s spoilt, Mr de Winter, that’s her trouble. Most girls would give their eyes for the chance of seeing Monte.’ ‘Wouldn’t that rather defeat the purpose? He said, smiling.” (Chapter3, p.17) • “’Your valet has unpacked for you, I suppose?’ This familiarity was excesive, even for her, and I caught a glimpse of his expression. ‘I don’t poses one,’ he said quietly; ‘perhaps you would like to do it for me?’” (Chapter3, p.18) Bibliography Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. London: Virago Press, 2003.

Quotations