Rebecca: Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic Epic

The Book Club

This episode of 'The Book Club' explores Daphne du Maurier's classic gothic novel 'Rebecca,' a tale of romance, psychological suspense, and

Key takeaways

• The novel masterfully uses an unreliable narrator to build suspense and reveal truths gradually.
• Mrs. Danvers embodies psychological terror through passive-aggressive control and ritualistic preservation of Rebecca's memory.

Main topics

• Gothic literature and suspense
• Unreliable narration

Notable quotes

I heard a step behind me and turning round I saw Mrs Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face. Triumphant, gloating, excited in a strange, unhealthy way.

You've been touching it, haven't you? This was the nightdress she was wearing for the last time before she died.

Conclusion

Rebecca stands as a timeless masterpiece of gothic fiction, blending romance with

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:10) I heard a step behind me and turning round I saw Mrs Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face. Triumphant, gloating, excited in a strange, unhealthy way. I felt very frightened. Speaker 1 (0:24) Is anything the matter, madam? Speaker 2 (0:26) I'm alright, Mrs Danvers. I did not expect to see you. Speaker 1 (0:30) You wanted to see the room. Why have you never asked me to show it to you before? I was ready to show it to you every day. You had only to ask me. I Speaker 2 (0:39) wanted to run away, but I could not move. I went on watching her eyes. Now you're here, let me show you everything. She said, her voice ingratiating and sweet as honey. Horrible. False. I Speaker 1 (0:52) know you want to see it all. You've wanted to for a long time and you were too shy to ask. It's a lovely room, isn't it? The loveliest room you've ever seen. That was her bed. It's a beautiful bed, isn't it? Here is her nightdress inside the case. You've been touching it, haven't you? This was the nightdress she was wearing for the last time before she died. Speaker 2 (1:17) Would you like to touch it again? She took the nightdress from the case and held it before me. Speaker 1 (1:23) Feel it. Hold it, she said. How soft and light it is, isn't it? I haven't washed it since she wore it for the last time. I put it out like this and the dressing gown and slippers just as I put them out for her the night she never came back. She was wearing slacks, of course, and a shirt when she died. They were torn from her body in the water, though. There was nothing on the body when it was found all those weeks afterwards. Speaker 2 (1:51) Hello, everybody. That terrifying reading was from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. published in 1938 to widespread popularity. It is a gothic novel that tells the story of a young girl who falls in love with a much older, very wealthy widower. She discovers that he and his magnificent, eerie house, Manderley, are haunted, not literally. but haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife, Rebecca, the titular Rebecca. And this impression of mystery and haunting and secrets is heightened by the vampiric housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, played there exceptionally, I think, by Dame Sandbrook Danvers herself. And this sends the new wife, the character played by me, into a psychological spiral that sends her to the brink of despair and actually close to suicide. Speaker 1 (2:46) This episode is brought to you by Klarna. Speaker 2 (2:49) I for one know that I would much rather join a dystopian uprising or attend one of Jay Gatsby's fantastic parties than look at my bank statements. Speaker 1 (2:59) Yes, I want to use my brain power to focus on the really big questions. Was Heathcliff born evil? Was it the Moors who made them that way? And crucially, who is going to be the next fairy love interest? in a court of thorns and roses. But Speaker 2 (3:15) alas, because we do eventually have to look up from our books, Klarna is there to handle the real world money admin. So Speaker 1 (3:22) Klarna gathers your spending in one place. So that way, monitoring your payments doesn't feel like a psychological thriller. You can pay in a way that suits you. You can track your deliveries, get instant refunds, and you can even earn cash back on things that you were going to buy anyway. And Speaker 2 (3:38) there's buyer protection built in so you actually feel secure when you shop. Speaker 1 (3:42) Download the Klarna app to stay on top of your money so that you can think about, well, anything else. Klarna balance account required to receive cashback points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. Speaker 2 (3:54) And the book is thrilling. It's tense. It is eerie. So you can easily see why this is one of the books that Alfred Hitchcock. chose to adapt for the big screen in his famous movie, which won the Oscar in 1940. Speaker 1 (4:10) It's a wonderful book, actually. I hadn't read it before doing this show. You and Nicole, our producer, were very keen to do it. And I loved it. I'm going to come straight out and spoil it. You know, if people are waiting with bated breath for my verdict, I'll give it right away. I really enjoyed this. I read it. Sandbrook speaks. Speaker 2 (4:27) Sandbrook speaks. Speaker 1 (4:28) In two days, absolutely riveted. It's one of the great kind of gothic 20th century novels. It's a wonderful mystery story. It's quite surprising, I think. So if you think it's all a ghost story, you will be mistaken because it turns into something, I think, much darker and more intriguing. And the tricks that Daphne du Maurier plays with her narrator, with her characterization, with her control of information, how much we know and how much we don't. They are worthy of a great master. So, for example, we did Kazuo Ishiguro very early on in this series. Yes. Never Let Me Go. And I think there are definitely some similarities there. But Tabby, you have always been a fan of this book, haven't you? Speaker 2 (5:15) I have, but I kept thinking when I was reading it this time, I wish I could read it all over again as though I'd never read it. Yeah. For the suspense, because the big twist at the end, which we'll be coming to after the break. Speaker 1 (5:28) You Speaker 2 (5:28) just don't see it coming. Nevertheless, even though I knew what happened, I still felt the thrill of it, this kind of tug that pulls you page to page. And I love the pacing. It starts quite slowly. You could almost be lured into thinking that you're reading a romance at one point. But actually, you know, it gets darker and darker. More and more keeps happening. And you just want these questions answered. You want to know. Who was Rebecca? What was she like? What happened at Manderley? I just think Daphne du Maurier, she is the mistress of suspense. I love her other book, Jamaica Inn. Oh, yeah. And she has the same kind of haunting atmosphere there and the same questions that you don't really get answered until the last third of the book. But the interesting thing is that this time rereading it, I had a far more critical view of our narrator who we'll be meeting and also Maxim. the man that I mentioned, the older widower who she marries. But on that note, should we get into the plot and just explain who all these characters are? Because essentially, it is a book of three parts. So in the first part, our childish, awkward narrator is in France, Cote d'Azur. She is a companion for a wealthy, dreadful American woman who's fascinated by the English aristocracy and who's who. There she meets and falls in love with Maxim de Winter. He's distinguished, he's well-known, and he's famous for this house that he has in Cornwall, this estate, Manderley. But the other thing that we know about him that The Awful American tells us is that his wife, Rebecca, died a year earlier and he's just torn apart by grief. And then the young narrator gets to know him. He seems fond of her, but we're never entirely sure. And unexpectedly, he asks her to marry him and she agrees. Speaker 1 (7:15) Yeah, so she's, as you say, she's very awkward and she's young and she appears to be innocent and naive. She has become completely infatuated with him, hasn't she? Obsessed with him. Yeah, Speaker 2 (7:26) shamelessly so. Speaker 1 (7:27) She's stunned when he asks her to marry him. Back they go to Manderley. this house that she has heard so much about, that clearly is the sort of talk of Europe. And far from being sort of intoxicated with excitement at her newlywed status and her status as the mistress of this house, she is overwhelmed by it. Everything seems imbued with the presence of her predecessor, this woman, Rebecca. Yeah. The servants are still in thrall to Rebecca. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who basically rules the roost at Manderley. She seems to have taken a violent dislike to our narrator from the very beginning. It's Speaker 2 (8:08) brilliantly done because if you imagine Jeeves or something like that, or a butler, your classic housekeeper, it's incredibly restrained, which means it's very chilly. And somehow that is far more daunting. Speaker 1 (8:20) Exactly. This sort of passive-aggressive politeness of Mrs. Danvers is what intimidates our narrator. She discovers, as we found in that reading, that there's a whole wing of the house that has basically been shut up. That was Rebecca and Maxim's old, it was where they lived, basically. Her old bedroom, all her old stuff. We had them referenced there to her nightdress, her slippers, her dressing gown. Unwashed, which strikes me as Speaker 2 (8:46) sinister in the extreme. Speaker 1 (8:48) It is very sinister. Maxim has become, her husband, her new husband, has become very distant. and clipped and aloof. There is a sort of great set piece, which is they are persuaded to throw a costume ball, basically a fancy dress party. And a narrator, a spoiler alert for those of you who haven't read the book. So just be careful. We are going to have to spoil it, obviously, in different ways. Yeah, the Speaker 2 (9:14) twist is central, really, to Speaker 1 (9:16) this Speaker 2 (9:16) book. Speaker 1 (9:16) Yeah, but we'll leave that till after the break, I think. But anyway, she is persuaded to wear a costume that... Turns out to be the same costume that Rebecca wore a year or a couple of years earlier. And she's persuaded to do this by Mrs. Danvers as a horrible trick, as a way to humiliate her. And our narrator sinks into this. I mean, she has this absolute crisis moment. It feels like her husband has turned against her, all the servants are against her. She doesn't fit. She is riddled with guilt, with disappointment, with inadequacy and all of this. And then there is a third act. And the third act starts with the discovery, which completely turns on its head everything that we believe about the relationship between the three main characters, Maxim, the narrator, and Rebecca, the dead Rebecca. And the Gothic book then starts to turn to something a little bit more like, I think, a 1930s whodunit, don't you? Speaker 2 (10:13) Yeah, I agree. I agree. So Daphne du Maurier said of this point in the novel, kind of this turning point, she said, crash, bang, then something happens. And she's not wrong. All Speaker 1 (10:24) through the book. I mean, one of the things I think people love about it. I mean, I have lots of friends who love Rebecca, especially female friends. Speaker 2 (10:29) And Speaker 1 (10:30) they like the house, the love triangle, but above all, I think the atmosphere. Speaker 2 (10:37) Yeah, that's what does it for me. The sense Speaker 1 (10:39) of foreboding, the sea crashing at the cliffs, the Cornish cliffs just below the house, the sense that great elemental forces are gathering that are going to sweep you away. But Speaker 2 (10:49) the sea in so many of Daphne du Maurier's books, because she loved Cornwall so much, it's kind of, it's the uncanny soundtrack to the setting. And it comes to haunt you as it does the characters. Speaker 1 (11:02) Agreed. So Daphne du Maurier, let's talk about Daphne du Maurier. Yeah. Rebecca is born out of her own remarkable kind of psychology. And the observation of the relationships between men and women and the jealousies and insecurity, they reflect her own background and her own life to some extent, don't they, Tabby? Speaker 2 (11:21) Lots has been written about the extent to which Rebecca is a product of her own life, her own relationships, her own family, etc. So let's dig into that. Speaker 1 (11:30) So she's born in May 1907. She's from a very celebrated theatrical family. So her grandfather basically inadvertently invented the Trilby hat. Speaker 2 (11:38) Yeah. I Speaker 1 (11:39) was telling you about this great fact the other day. I see how thrilled you were by it. I actually so Speaker 2 (11:45) thrilled was I by it that I actually omitted it from my notes. It's Speaker 1 (11:48) the single most important thing anyone needs to know about Rebecca. Speaker 2 (11:50) I don't approve of trilby hats, so. Speaker 1 (11:52) No, I don't. I think they're performative, aren't they? Yeah, Speaker 2 (11:54) they are. They Speaker 1 (11:54) insist upon themselves. Yeah, completely. Anyway, her grandfather wrote a play called Trilby in which Svengali, the character of Svengali, was born. Speaker 2 (12:02) Yeah. Speaker 1 (12:03) Anyway, people wore these hats in the play. Hence, they were called trilby hats because the play was called Trilby. And, you know, a legend was born. Anyway, let's put that on one side. Speaker 2 (12:14) In fact. Never mind Rebecca, let's just talk more about Trilby Hats, I think. Surely. That's what you're really, that's your real passion. Speaker 1 (12:20) Well, it's Speaker 2 (12:21) a Speaker 1 (12:21) play. We could do a whole episode about the play Trilby. Speaker 2 (12:23) Please spare me. Speaker 1 (12:24) So, her father Gerald, Daphne's father Gerald, was this distinguished actor manager. They were extremely close and some of her biographers suggest that the unusual closeness of the father-daughter relationship finds its way into her books and actually the relationship between Maxim and Anna Raita has Speaker 2 (12:43) a Speaker 1 (12:43) very father-daughter side to it. A Speaker 2 (12:46) lot of people think that he may have been an inspiration for Maxim. Speaker 1 (12:50) Yeah, I can absolutely see that. So she sort of wrestles with her own identity a bit, doesn't she? She Speaker 2 (12:56) does. Speaker 1 (12:56) She has a sort of alter ego for herself who she calls the boy in the box. And she imagines herself as a boy. And she gives the boy a name, Eric Avon. She's taught by governess and she has a finishing school in Paris. She's a massive reader. She loves the Brontes and there is tons of the Brontes, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, in this book. She loves Robert Louis Stevenson. She loves Joseph Conrad. And she loves Cornwall. And there's tons of Cornwall in this book. She goes to Cornwall. She loves the sort of isolation. She loves the fact that it's a sort of, it feels like going back in time. So for people, I know we have like American listeners and whatnot. Cornwall, it's in the southwest corner of England. It feels like a place of part. It's got kind of Celtic traditions, incredibly beautiful, rugged, sort of rural landscape. So she goes to Cornwall and she finds this house called Menabilly. Speaker 2 (13:47) I think this is so romantic and I totally get this. There's a building where I live, near where I live, and every time I walk past it, I think, oh God, you know, I've got to write a book about this or something one day because it's kind of gothic and mysterious and crumbling. So I understand why it is that this ruin, this great, beautiful ruin covered in ivy, hidden, dilapidated, takes such a hold of her imagination. Speaker 1 (14:12) And she ends up... leasing it doesn't she from the owners who are the rashley family and she restores it and she lives in it but she can never own it because it belongs to this other family though Speaker 2 (14:24) she loved it she said she kissed the stones of it she loves it so much so the Speaker 1 (14:29) funny thing is that actually she is like rebecca yeah she inhabits and defines this house that is not hers just as rebecca haunts Manderley, which is the house of the de Winter family. So that's the house and then her own life and the book. So in 1932, she marries this guy who ends up becoming Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, who she calls Tommy. And lots of people think that their troubled relationship or their very colourful relationship finds its way into her fiction, don't they? Speaker 2 (15:00) Yeah, definitely. So he had a fiancé before. they were married. She was supposed to be very glamorous. She had long black hair. And there are theories that Daphne du Maurier is sort of projecting her jealousy over that relationship into the relationship between the narrator and Maxim in this. But I think they were fond of each other. I mean, they remained married for the rest of his life. They had three children. But she was far from maternal. You know, she struggled with her identity as a woman throughout her life. And I think this probably applies to her maternal instincts. She wrote at one point, I'm not one of those mothers who live for having their brats with them all the time. She didn't like conventional domestic life. She preferred her world of solitary writing. And so with Tommy's long periods away with the army, it suited them both quite well. And they both encouraged each other to have a great deal of personal freedom. And that seems to have applied to their extramarital love lives because they both were unfaithful. She had a well-documented affair with a guy called Christopher Puxley, who was some... Landowner. Herefordshire landowner. And then Tommy had several mistresses during the latter half of their marriage. And then in 1957, there's one particularly bad incident because following a nervous breakdown, it came out that he'd been having two affairs concurrently. Which, I mean, exhausting, surely. A Speaker 1 (16:25) lot of pressure on the diary. A lot of Speaker 2 (16:26) pressure on the diary. I think it would break anyone. But this devastated Daphne du Maurier. So she obviously wasn't at ease with all these, you know, liberties, these affairs. Yeah, yeah. Again, that surely, surely seeps into Rebecca in some way. The complexity of this marriage, the jealousy. I mean, that's pop psychology, but I don't see how it couldn't have really. Speaker 1 (16:47) Of course. And there's a question about her sexuality, isn't there, that some people think she might actually have been gay. So Speaker 2 (16:53) certainly she was very emotionally attached to lots of women, but I think probably also physically. So she became infatuated with this woman called Ellen Doubleday, who's the wife of her strange name, the wife of her American publisher. This was unrequited, though. But then she almost definitely had a sexual relationship with an actor called Gertrude Lawrence. Her biographer, Margaret Forster, wrote that based on her personal writings, her letters to very close friends, she referred to her heterosexual relationships with the code name Cairo and then her homosexual relationships with the code name Venice. Wow. I think that's quite classy.