REBECCA by
Daphne du Maurier

Check out these conversation starters about Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and share your thoughts below!

Reader Response: Did you enjoy Rebecca? Had you read it before, or was this your first time?

Gothic Setting

• Gothic fiction is characterized by an environment of fear, the threat of supernatural events, and the intrusion of the past upon the present (Je Reviens). Reminders of the past, like ruined buildings, signify a previously thriving world that’s decaying.
• In the narrator’s dream, Manderley is overtaken by unnatural growth: “Nature had come into her own again and … in her stealthy, insidious way had encroached upon the drive with long, tenacious fingers. The woods, always a menace even in the past, had triumphed in the end. They crowded, dark and uncontrolled, to the borders of the drive.”
• In the dream, she sees plants, once cultured. “No hand had checked their progress, and they had gone native now, rearing to monster height without a bloom.”
• Daphne du Maurier uses the weather to signal and even drive the events in the novel. The wind is often a friendly presence, and stillness brings with it a sense of doom. The fog plays a role in the shipwreck that exposes Rebecca’s boat and corpse. Many characters hope for rain throughout the book. There are repeated references to fire as well, which seems connected to Rebecca (as well at the color red, see below).
• They enter Manderley up a serpent drive (it reminds her of the forest path in a Grimm’s fairy tale, surrounded by bloodred rhododendrons (powerful monsters). There is no sense of beauty in this jungle growth. “That tangle of shrubs there should be cut down to bring light to the path. It was dark, much too dark. … The birds did not sing here.”
• How is Daphne du Maurier using Gothic tropes in the book? What are your thoughts about the sense of loss and physical/spiritual exile in the opening pages?

Superficial Snobbery

• Mrs. Van Hopper, the ultimate snob, used the narrator “as a bait to draw her prey.” “I resented the part that I must play in her schemes.”
• Her parents died of pneumonia. Her father had a “scorn of superficial snobbery.”
• She spends two weeks with Mr. de Winter in the “superficial froth” of Monte Carlo.

Who Exactly Is This Guy Maxim?

• He makes the narrator feel like “a person of importance. I was grown up at last.”
• But then “The friend had gone, with his kindliness and his easy camaraderie, and the brother too, who had mocked me for nibbling at my nails. This man was a stranger.”
• But all’s well again! He tells her, “You have blotted out the past for me, you know, far more effectively than all the bright lights of Monte Carlo.”
• He proposes to her, but she realizes he hasn’t said that he’s happy or that he loves her.
• She tears the signature page (“Max from Rebecca”) from the book of poetry he lent her.
• She knows almost nothing about him or his life.

The Narrator’s Perspective

• Daphne Du Maurier called this book a “study in jealousy.”
• They honeymoon in Europe. In Ch. 7, “I dreaded this arrival at Manderley as much as I had longed for it.” Maxim seems “careless and at ease” and doesn’t give her a thought. 
• “I could not help it if I felt like a guest in Manderley, my home, … I was like a guest … waiting for the return of the hostess.”
• Max eats a small piece of fish. “I took a boiled egg. And I wondered what happened to the rest, all those scrambled eggs, that crisp bacon, the porridge, the remains of the fish. Were there menials … waiting behind kitchen doors for the gift of our breakfast? Or was it all thrown away …? I would never know, of course, I would never dare to ask.
• After Maxim heads to London, she’s sure he’ll die. When he arrives safely, she secretly eats six biscuits, goes into the fields, and feels free, happy, and guilty for feeling happy.
• The narrator is obsessed with what people think of her. She’s living in a dream state, building gothic castles in her head. Were you able to step outside her perspective?
• In what way does Rebecca exert power over Manderley? Are you sympathetic toward the narrator or impatient with her? Or are you confused and frightened along with her?
• Why do you think Daphne du Maurier chose not to name the narrator? Does her lack of a name affect your perception of her personhood? Does she come into her own identity?

What We Know About Rebecca …

• Beatrice tells the narrator, “You are so very different from Rebecca.”
• We start to piece together her physical description and even her smell by what she has left behind. For instance, the raincoat tells us she was tall and slim with broad shoulders. Her The Bishop’s Wife describes her dark hair and pale skin.
• Frank Crawley says Rebecca was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
• Gran asks about Rebecca. She had what matters in a wife: breeding, brains, beauty.
• Beatrice says she had a gift “of being attractive to … men, women, children, dogs.”
• Ben says the narrator has “angel’s eyes” and she’s “not like the other one.”
• The narrator tells Frank: “I lack, confidence, grace, beauty, intelligence, wit— all the qualities that mean most in a woman— she possessed.” He says, “You have qualities that are just as important, far more so. … [K]indliness, and sincerity, and … modesty—are worth far more … to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world.”

Anatomy of a Man – and a Marriage

• The narrator’s father was a “lovely and unusual person,” her “secret property.” 
• After the China cupid incident, Maxim and Mrs. Danvers talk about the narrator as if she isn’t present. He refers to her as a “sweet child” and tells her not to be a “little idiot.”
• She comes upon a cottage/boathouse and meets Ben. Maxim is angry. She says she could tell he didn’t want to cross to the other beach. He defiantly denies it. She asks more questions, then gives up, saying, “let’s have an end to it. I’m sick to death of the subject.” He says, “All women say that when they’ve lost an argument.” He’s dishonest and passive-aggressive. She has to run to keep up with him on the walk back.
• He says, “what a fool I was to come back.” (Not, what a fool I was to bring you here.)
• At home, he calms down. “It was over then. The episode was finished. We must not speak of it again. He smiled at me over his cup of tea … The smile was my reward. Like a pat on the head to Jasper. Good dog then, lie down, don’t worry me any more.”
• “I wished [Maxim] would not always treat me as a child, rather spoiled, rather irresponsible, someone to be petted from time to time when the mood came upon him but more often forgotten.” “Would we never be together, he a man and I a woman, standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, with no gulf between us? I did not want to be a child. I wanted to be his wife, his mother. I wanted to be old.”
• He jokingly threatens to put her in a corner, and tells her not to eat with her mouth full.
• “I wonder if I did a very selfish thing in marrying you,” Maxim finally says. When gran asks about Rebecca, Beatrice says, “I was a fool not to expect something like this,” Beatrice says. Was Maxim not a fool to expect the “welcome” the narrator receives?
• Maxim married a girl half his, someone he can control, who won’t ask too many questions. He chides her for her shyness, but it’s her shyness he’s banking on. Anytime she speaks up, he gets angry. She’s naive, silent, and codependent. She internalizes her feelings and blames herself for everything. Is he more of a villain than Mrs. Danvers?

Worst Party Ever

• Several people ask if the narrator in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier will revive the Manderley fancy dress ball. She becomes almost obsessed with saying Rebecca’s name.
• She obsesses about Rebecca and almost embodies her to the point that Maxim notices. He says she has “not the right sort of knowledge” in her eyes.
• She orders a dress from London and feels different wearing it, “no longer hampered by my appearance. My own dull personality was submerged at last.”
• She makes a grand entrance. Everyone is astonished into silence. Max uses an icy cold voice, “not a voice I knew,” and tells her to change.
• She runs up the stairs and sees Mrs. Danvers. “I shall never forget the expression on her face, loathsome, triumphant. The face of an exulting devil.”
• Maxim thinks she chose her costume deliberately. She concludes that she has been “badly bred.” For the rest of the evening, Maxim won’t look at her or talk to her. That night, he doesn’t come to bed. She determines her marriage has failed.

Let’s Talk About Mrs. Danvers …

• In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the de Winters stay in the east wing, overlooking the rose garden. The glorious west wing room that looked down to the sea was Mrs. de Winter’s. Mrs. Danvers implies the east wing rooms are inferior “second-rate room[s] … for a second-rate person.”
• The narrator hides the fact that she broke a China cupid. Mrs. Danvers accuses Robert of breaking it. The narrator fesses up. Mrs. Danvers is acts shocked (shocked!).
• Mrs. Danvers catches the narrator in Rebecca’s room and tells her about Rebecca’s beauty, clothes, routines. “Her voice ingratiating and sweet as honey, horrible, false.” Maxim “was always laughing and gay then.”
• She blames herself for Rebecca’s death because she didn’t prevent her from going out.
• She dusts the rooms daily. “I feel her everywhere,” she says. “Sometimes I wonder if she comes back here to Manderley and watches you and Mr. de Winter together.”
• “I knew it was not just me personally that [Mrs. Danvers] hated, but what I represented.”
• Jack Favell, Danvers’ partner in crime, arrives while Maxim is in London. It’s Frith’s day off, Robert was off at the post, and the narrator was out walking. He’s rude and drunk.
• She suggests that the narrator wear a gown shown in a painting to the fancy dress ball.
• “Nobody wanted you at Manderley.” She says she tried to take Mrs. de Winter’s place.
• “She had the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs. de Winter. She cared for nothing and no one.” “I shall live as I please, Danny, and the whole world won’t stop me.”
• “It’s you who ought to be dead, not Mrs. de Winter,” she says to the narrator. She says there’s nothing for her to live for and suggests that she jump through the open window. She almost jumps (!), but they hear explosions indicating a ship in distress in the bay.
• Mrs. Danvers is an unusual villain in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. What’s her deal? Do you sympathize with her at all?

The Narrator Changes … Grows Up?

• “It was as though I had entered into a new phase of my life and nothing would be quite the same again. The girl [at] the fancy dress ball the night before had been left behind.”
• “The moment of crisis had come, and I must face it. My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now and thrust aside. If I failed now I should fail for ever. There would never be another chance.”
• She sees she’s been “selfish and hypersensitive, a martyr to [her] inferiority complex.”
• She asks him to forgive her. He doesn’t ask her to forgive him.
• He says it’s too late. “We’ve lost our little chance of happiness. … Rebecca has won.” He kisses her passionately, says “’I love you so much.’” It’s the first time he has said it.
• She says, “‘We’ve got to be together always, with no secrets, no shadows.’”
• She tells him: “‘How could I come to you when I knew you were thinking about Rebecca? How could I ask you to love me when I knew you loved Rebecca still?’”
• He says he killed Rebecca. She thinks, “What did it matter whether I understood him or not? My heart was light like a feather floating in the air. He had never loved Rebecca.”
• Rebecca’s power had dissolved … She would never haunt me again. … I was not young any more. I was not shy. I was not afraid. I would fight for Maxim. I would lie and perjure and swear, I would blaspheme and pray. Rebecca had not won. Rebecca had lost.
• “I wondered how many people [suffered] because they could not break out from their own web of shyness and reserve, and in their blindness and folly built up a great distorted wall in front of them that hid the truth. … I had built up false pictures in my mind …. I had never had the courage to demand the truth. Had I made one step forward out of my own shyness, Maxim would have told me these things … months ago.” So … it’s her fault?
• In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the narrator changes after Maxim’s confession of murder. Let’s discuss …

Was Rebecca a Sociopath?

• Antisocial Personality Disorder results in what is commonly known as a sociopath. Examples include reckless disregard for the safety of themselves or others, failure to conform to social norms, manipulation and deceit, gaining pleasure from finding exploiting people’s weaknesses, and lack of remorse for actions that hurt other people.
• People can appear charming. Their relationships (and marriages) are without depth.
• They need constant change. They live for the moment, not thinking ahead what consequences their actions will have. They want immediate rewards and gratification.
• How does it influence our understanding of her if we classify Rebecca as a sociopath?

Was It Murder or a Case of Justifiable Homicide?

• In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, Maxim carries with him The Hound of Heaven, a book of poetry (Francis Thompson). The soul seeks happiness in the world, but it’s inevitably disillusioned. The hound of heaven pursues the soul until it realizes there’s nowhere to go except back to God.
• Rebecca tells Maxim that if she had a child he would never be able to prove it wasn’t his. It would bear his name, and the entailed property would eventually be his.
• “‘I believe that Rebecca lied to me on purpose. The last supreme bluff. She wanted me to kill her. She foresaw the whole thing. … That’s why she stood there laughing when she died. It was her last practical joke …. I’m not sure if she hasn’t won, even now.’”
• ‘You thought I killed her, loving her? I hated her … Our marriage was a farce from the very first. She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together. Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal.’
• “‘She was clever … No one would guess meeting her that she was not the kindest, most generous, most gifted person in the world. She knew exactly what to say to different people, how to match her mood to theirs. Had she met you … you would have been taken in, like the rest. You would have sat at her feet and worshipped her.’”
• Mrs. Danvers: “She was afraid of nothing and no one. There was only one thing ever worried her, and that was the idea of getting old, of illness, of dying in her bed. She said … ‘When I go, Danny, I want to go quickly, like the snuffing out of a candle.’”
• Rebecca had cancer. Was it murder? Did she goad him? Did he kill a monster? Was his the hand that “checks the progress of unnatural growth” and snuffs out the candle?
• Did you think Maxim was still in love with Rebecca? Did you expect him to be a murderer? Should he have gone to prison?

The Ending – Ordeal by Fire Will Set You Free?

• In Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, the narrator and Maxim live in exile, no more secrets between them. Now they share all. They live a life of simple boredom, a “pleasant antidote to fear.” She keeps things that hurt to herself.
• “There is a theory that men and women emerge finer and stronger after suffering, and that to advance … we must endure ordeal by fire. … We have both known fear, and loneliness, and very great distress. … We all [have a] devil who rides us and torments us, and we must give battle in the end. We have conquered ours, or so we believe.”
• “Confidence is a quality I prize, although it has come to me a little late in the day. I suppose it is his dependence upon me that has made me bold at last. … I have lost my diffidence, my timidity, my shyness with strangers. I am very different from that self who drove to Manderley for the first time, hopeful and eager, handicapped … and filled with an intense desire to please. … What must I have seemed like after Rebecca?”
• “The house was a sepulcher, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection.”
• She plans a lovely future in a dream-like state. He feels they must get home. In the car, she dreams Manderley is gone. As they near, they see Manderley afire.
• Rebecca (titled after the dead wife) is often compared to Jane Eyre (titled after the protagonist). A young, inexperienced girl marries an older man tortured by a dark secret (for Maxim, the murder of his sociopath wife: for Rochester, the guilt of locking up his mad wife). The only way to rid themselves of her presence or memory and find true happiness is the cathartic, cleansing fire in the end.
• The story ends with a bang. How do you view the destruction of Manderley? Horrific? Freeing? (Justified) vengeance on Rebecca’s part? How do you feel about the ending?

The Hitchcock Film

The 1940 film was made in the Hays Code era (self-censorship of “unacceptable” content). Rebecca’s death is accidental, not murder. How does this change affect the story being told in Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier?