Episode 74: Rebecca Book (Daphne du Maurier)

REBECCA - Daphne du Maurier (All About Manderley and the Hitchcock Rebecca film) - Tea Tonic & Toxin Podcast and Bookclub

EPISODE 74: Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Rebecca Book, 1938)

“Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again …” A young bride is haunted by the lingering shadow of her husband’s first wife at the eerie Manderley estate. Secrets, jealousy, and suspense converge in a chilling tale of love and deception. REBECCA (1938) by Daphne du Maurier won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century. Special guest Shana Kelly joins us to discuss the Rebecca book. 

Learn More: Check out our starter questions.

Get Excited: Check out the 2024 book list and weigh in!

TRANSCRIPT: REBECCA BY DAPHNE DU MAURIER (Rebecca Book)

Sarah Harrison: Welcome to Tea Tonic & Toxin, a book club and podcast for anyone who wants to explore the best mysteries and thrillers ever written. I’m your host, Sarah Harrison.

Carolyn Daughters: And I’m your host Carolyn Daughters. Pour yourself a cup of tea, a gin and tonic …

Sarah Harrison: … but not a toxin …

Carolyn Daughters: And join us on a journey through 19th and 20th century mysteries and thrillers, every one of them a game changer.

OUR SPONSOR
Before we jump in to our exciting episode about Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca book (vs. film), we have an even more exciting sponsor. It’s Carolyn Daughters. Carolyn runs game-changing corporate brand therapy workshops, teaches Online Marketing Boot Camp courses and leads persuasive writing workshops, Carolyn empowers startups, small businesses, enterprise organizations and government agencies to win hearts, minds, deals, and dollars. You can learn more at carolyndaughters.com.

Carolyn Daughters 1:35
We have an amazing listener of the episode. His name is Steve Cullum from Lebanon, Ohio, and he shared some information about a trip he made to Longmire Days in Buffalo, Wyoming. It was an amazing 5,000 mile journey, I think, and it was wonderful. And we shared that detail, of course, with Craig Johnson.

Sarah Harrison 2:02
In Buffalo, Wyoming.

Carolyn Daughters 2:09
For our listeners who want one of the best interviews we’ve done, it’s with Craig Johnson, and that interview is live, and that guy is amazing. We could have talked to him for days on end, except he would have kicked us out.

Sarah Harrison 2:22
No, because he’s so nice. He probably would have let us.

Carolyn Daughters 2:25
He would not have kicked us out of his cabin. He would have just said, Okay, let’s just extend it another few more hours. Nicest guy in the world and the most interesting guy. You could just listen to him forever. So, so good. So our listener award, Steve is gonna get a, you cool Longmire Days bookmark and a couple stickers in there. So thank you!

Sarah Harrison 2:50
We love hearing from our listeners. We love hearing your stories, your thoughts about the Rebecca book, your time at Longmire Days, just anything like, it’s hard to describe how much we like hearing from our listeners, but it’s a lot. It’s very high, okay, as well. And I get the exciting job of introducing our book. Today, we have our wonderful guest Shana Kelly, who’s back. We’re discussing Rebecca. I’m gonna read the book description from my book. We have four different editions of Rebecca on the table with us today. I’ll hold up mine. Here it is with that big swoopy R. Shana should hold up her copy.

Carolyn Daughters 3:31
There’s the blood red rhododendron.

Sarah Harrison 3:33
That’s been showing up in our social media. 1952, Carolyn’s version, which is gorgeous.

Carolyn Daughters 3:41
There’s one more. It is a classic romance cover. Romance novel. This one I like to call “red.”

Sarah Harrison 3:48
It’s the anti-romance novel. It’s very tricky. Yes, the way they put that there, yes. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated, greens, gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew, for in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten, a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, a sweet, immaculate and untouched clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great houses current occupants with an eerie presentment of evil tightening her heart the second Mrs. De Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim’s first wife, the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca,

Carolyn Daughters 4:56
Joining us in our second episode to talk about Rebecca and Manderley is our special guest, Shana Kelly. Shana began her career as a literary agent at the William Morris Agency in New York and London for 10 years, that’s a pretty good gig, I’m going to tell you. She currently works as a documentary screenwriter, book editor, writer and publishing consultant. She also teaches at Denver-based Lighthouse Writers Workshop in 2024 Shana won an Emmy for writing a towering task, the story of the Peace Corps. You can find more information about that at Peace Corps documentary.com now it’s a historical documentary that aired on PBS in 2023 and she’s currently writing a historical documentary or about the League of Women Voters. We are so happy to have you here. I’ve known you for many years, and so so thrilled to have you as part of our discussion of Rebecca. And I think before we even dive too deep into Rebecca, I want to hear a little bit about the story of the Peace Corps. I want to hear a little bit about your documentary that you’re working on about the League of Women Voters.

Shana Kelly 6:06
Thank you. Well, thanks for having me back for the second episode about Rebecca. I’m excited to talk about Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca book and all about Manderley. I stumbled into the documentary world. I met a woman on the playground at my kids’ elementary school, and our kids were in the same class, and she had worked on a couple documentaries in the past, and she was a return Peace Corps volunteer, and knew there was no documentary on the Peace Corps, and so was starting this project, and this was easily 13 years ago, and asked me a couple questions, found out about my background in book publishing, and said, Huh, I wonder if you could help. Fine tune the story, because that’s the part she was concerned about. It’s a big story. It was founded in the 60s. I’d been around a long time, lots of countries and aspects of the Peace Corps to think about and talk about in this documentary. But I don’t think anyone else would have given me that opportunity. It was really just like a random conversation. And she saw something in me, and I as a lover of film in general, but also of documentaries in particular. I very much was a viewer of documentaries. I would go see them in movie theaters and things. So to me, it just sounded like something that could be in my wheelhouse. So I was like, why not, you know? And at first it just seemed hypothetical, but then, she did hundreds of interviews with return Peace Corps volunteers with the directors of the Peace Corps, with family members, people who had run the Peace Corps, who had passed away. And, bit by bit, I did figure out how to start putting a documentary together, but I definitely learned on the job.

Sarah Harrison 7:53
That’s awesome. And I wondered about that. Shana, I’ve known you exactly, like 45 minutes, and I want to get into the discussion about Rebecca book, but I was wondering, like, I never thought of a documentary as needing a writer. I was like, Well, you just film stuff, right? Because it’s a documentary. You’re documenting it, right? So what is your role like there?

Shana Kelly 8:14
I figured this out as I went along, but you start with all of these interviews. I had transcripts of 250-300 interviews, and all these people were talking about their own experiences and different aspects of the Peace Corps history. So somebody has to figure out who gets to tell which part of the story and in which order these sound bites actually go.

Sarah Harrison 8:37
So that kind of editing, I’m definitely editing that’s really cool.

Shana Kelly 8:41
The interview is together, but then also writing the narration. Annette Bening was our narrator. I wrote all the narration, and she did to work with her, spoke my words. I was there when she recorded it. It was incredible.

Sarah Harrison 8:54
Is she nice?

Shana Kelly 8:55
She was so nice. Most important thing I say on this whole podcast. She was unbelievable. Just so kind, so generous with her time, so down to earth and normal. She was talking about her dogs and showing us pictures. At the end, we asked if we could take a picture with her, and she was like, hold on, putting her lipstick on.

Carolyn Daughters 9:19
Like a regular person.

Shana Kelly 9:22
She was lovely. That was unbelievable that day. And then the part that I really enjoyed and didn’t anticipate was the archival stuff, so you’ve got a certain number of clips from the Peace Corps of John F Kennedy talking about the Peace Corps. I went through all the historical archival images and film that was available, and then had to decide where that went in the story. So in a way, it’s like you’re editing. It’s almost like a mix tape.

Carolyn Daughters 9:51
I think what maybe some people don’t understand is a documentary also has a story arc. So it has a beginning, a middle of it does. Not all documentaries do, but a good documentary has a story arc. Like all stories, it has a beginning and a middle and an end. And so it’s not just, Well, I cobbled together a bunch of clips and a little narration. So that’s a challenge with as much footage as you had and as big a story as you had to tell over this number of decades.

Shana Kelly 10:30
Sixty years, and we started in the pre-Peace Corps days. We started in the Cold War era, and talking about why the Peace Corps became important, because we were in a world where people weren’t talking to each other. I think we probably could have done an eight hour documentary, but our goal was to do 90 minutes to two hours. I think we ended up at about an hour 45 and we had to cut out so much stuff, and the structure changed so many times it was a lot to wrap our brains around. It was really just me and Alana de Joseph, who I should say her name, she was the Director of the Peace Corps documentary and an amazing creative partner to me. And she also lives in Denver, so just the process of building this movie together was so satisfying that I didn’t even really think about the end result. So to have we our premiere was in DC at the Kennedy Center in 2019 just before the pandemic.

Sarah Harrison 11:28
I will get to the Rebecca book, I swear. But first — did you get to wear a fancy premiere dress?

Shana Kelly 11:31
I wore a fancy premier blazer. I definitely picked out the outfit special. It was in 90,000 degrees in DC that day, so I just went through the whole thing. But it was an incredible high to sit in an audience with all these people and see the film from start to finish, really, for the first time with anybody else. And I was very aware that most people don’t get a moment like that in their professional lives. It was very, very lucky to be able to share it in real time with a large group of people. It was unbelievably satisfying to do.

Carolyn Daughters 12:06
That’s peacecorpsdocumentary.com

Shana Kelly 12:10
It is on Amazon, and it’s on Amazon for Chrome books, wonderful. And then the league women voters. One is almost done, but the story keeps changing, so we have recently done a huge revision on that to kind of bring us up to date with summer 2024 events. Because, of course, when you’re talking about the League of Women Voters and women’s political power, historically, we are talking about a lot of firsts. The first woman to run for vice president for a major party, and the first woman to run for president. And so to have Kamala Harris right now as the candidate, and also to have been the first female vice president and person of color to be vice president, she represents a lot of first so we can’t really finish this movie until we know.

Sarah Harrison 12:54
Another question before we get to the Rebecca book. I was gonna ask, are you gonna wait to see how it comes down? Are you just gonna finish the movie?

Shana Kelly 12:59
I think we’ve got a day to do a final revision in January.

Carolyn Daughters 13:04
That’s a lot.

Shana Kelly 13:06
That’s a 100-year history. So that one is just insane, the amount of information we’ve tried to pack in there. And again, you just have to be okay with cutting some of your favorite moments.

Carolyn Daughters 13:19
Are you working with the same team? You’re now working with a different team.

Shana Kelly 13:23
It is a different team the League of Women Voters. But Alana and I have a few irons in the fire that I can’t really talk about, but I will be working with a Lina again. I am working with Alana again. It’s just not totally happening yet.

Carolyn Daughters 13:38
Okay, the next move. This sounds that sounds fun, and it sounds right up your alley. I know you’re excellent at research and storytelling and story arc, and so I’m imagining, and I’m just looking at your face now, like you’re this is cool, like you enjoy it.

Shana Kelly 13:53
I love it, I do. I never thought I’d get a chance to be involved with making a movie. I think on some level that would have been my childhood dream. So it really was unexpected. I love working with books. I loved my time at William Morris, and that was completely fulfilling in another way, but to be the person doing the creating is a whole different level of satisfying.

Sarah Harrison 14:18
That makes sense. That’s very cool. And as our illustrious first Emmy winning guest, how do you win an Emmy? Do you like? Does everyone self-nominate?

Shana Kelly 14:28
You have to actually join the Academy. And in our case, our movie premiered on Rocky Mountain PBS. So it was eligible for an Emmy in the heartland region, which is Colorado and Wyoming and Idaho and Kansas, like it’s several states. And then there is a Heartland Emmy nomination process. Our film was submitted, but we did have to join to be eligible, I think. And then. It got nominated, which really surprised me. So I didn’t think we’d even get a nomination. There were like five in our category, including us. And there was a ceremony downtown at the Denver Center, and a simultaneous ceremony in Kansas City, where there were a lot of people also winning awards. And it was mostly like newscasters from the local areas. So like the best newscast from the eight to 10 hour breaking news five to six and all these different categories. And we were in the historical documentary category, kind of a long form thing where most of the things were small stories. So I was really not expecting us to win. So I went there with no expectations. But the moment I got there and saw the shiny statue sitting there, I really wanted it. Oh, dang it. I now I want it. First was just a fun night out. It’s very incredible. Awesome. So fun.

Sarah Harrison 15:59
That’s really cool. Before we started the episode, you were talking about how sometimes being working in books makes it hard to read for pleasure. How did that was a sad story, and I was sad to hear it. But how did that affect your selection and reading of the Rebecca book Did it feel like work? Did it feel like pleasure.

Shana Kelly 16:21
It definitely felt like pleasure. I was thrilled anytime I take the time to really get into a non-work book. The problem is, I mostly read at night when I’m reading for pleasure, and I have that thing where I’m getting older and I start to fall asleep. I used to be able to read all night long, but it’s hard to turn off the editor’s brain. I wonder if you have that happen either one.

Sarah Harrison 16:46
Did you try to edit Rebecca in your brain? Yes, what were you edit? You’re like, this is too much dinner.

Carolyn Daughters 16:51
You repeat this idea one more time.

Shana Kelly 16:57
No. I mean, it’s funny to do that with a classic novel, right? Can’t really turn your brain off, and you’re like, stop it, stop it, stop it. It’s done.

Carolyn Daughters 17:05
You’re so deep into her English train of thought that after a while, I was like, Okay, I get it. I got it. You’re obsessed with this idea, like, I get it right.

Shana Kelly 17:15
And I think also a lot of the questions I had when I dug a little deeper and I flip back through the Rebecca book, and I looked at the sections that I was thinking about. The answers are in there. So this is a book that was written by someone who knew exactly what they were doing and why, and so when we were talking about the beginning, when she’s just driving up to Manderley, and how ominous it is, and how she’s she’s describing, like, the rhododendrons are, like, terrifying, and the birch, the naked birch trees that are intertwined, like, there’s all this kind of sexuality to it, and sensuality And she obviously knew the story she was about to tell, and she’s setting the mood through this narrator’s terrified vision of what she’s approaching, right there.

Carolyn Daughters 18:15
There’s this annual award given at Bouchercon, a world mystery convention every year it’s an annual event. It’s called the Anthony award. And Rebecca won the Anthony Award for Best Novel of the Century. Wow. So I’ll just pause there, like discuss Best Novel of the Century. So I mean, what thinking about that? What about this book elevates it to the level that it would be the best novel of the century. And what about this novel would call that into question, if anything, because you could potentially read this Rebecca book and say, Oh, it’s a romance novel, or it’s, it’s, I think it’s pretty well written, but I want to hear what both you ladies think.

Sarah Harrison 19:04
That’s a tough one. To hearken back to what Shana was saying like that, to me is, is one of the reasons why I do love reading these classic mysteries that have just for whatever reason stood the test of time, is because this person is a master, and it’s, it’s very humbling, and I always find myself humbled in discussing these books. If I have a gut reaction, I always have to check it and be like, well, Sarah, but this Rebecca book is better than you. This writer is better than you, and they know what they’re doing, and it’s important, and then you need to think about, you just need to think about, I don’t know if I call it the best of the century. What do you think Shana?

Shana Kelly 19:47
I mean, I’m surprised that it would win that award, but this fabulous Rebecca book is more than I think I was giving it credit for. Having read it, I think one of the things that makes it special is what you were talking about in the first episode, where on subsequent readings, you have a whole different perspective on what’s happening. It’s one of those books that, like, what is it a little more than halfway through, maybe like three fourths of the way through, you have that moment with the narrator where you suddenly understand everything in a completely different light. And not only does she go back through you as a reader, are doing that. And then the minute you finish that book, I had to turn back to page one and start rereading. I could not reread the beginning smart, and I think that’s part. There’s also so many layers of meaning here, and the more I dug into the author’s life, and like maybe some of the symbolic meaning between or behind these characters, gender issues like she is touching on Gothic elements of Manderley. There’s so much in this Rebecca book that it almost feels like the more I studied it, the better it would get. So I don’t want to say it’s not the best book of the 20th century. I’m glad that it’s gotten that second like, because I do think it was dismissed when it was first published. She was called a romance writer, and this was called a romance, which is like, how this is not romantic.

Carolyn Daughters 21:25
Worst romance ever, right?

Sarah Harrison 21:27
The red cover implies it’s very romance cover. But like I think I said in the last episode, like that proposal, Maxim’s low point in the Rebecca book for me is that proposal where he ends up calling her like a fool and an idiot. And he’s like, Never mind, let’s not get married. Or like, Well, that was a terrible proposal, but you mentioned her personal life, I want to hear and we just mentioned what a great research you are. What did you look up about her personal life?

Shana Kelly 21:59
I did a little bit of research about Daphne du Maurier and the Rebecca book. I can’t say that. I’m some expert on her. There’s biographies out there about Daphne du Maurier, and I’m sure there, they dig in a lot. But she was born into privilege, and she was also she came from a very well known family, a family of writers, of performers, of artists, and so she was very much steeped in this world. And I think that made writing something that she was always a goal of hers, and was something she always did. But she also, from what I’ve read, had a lot of the qualities of our narrator, but also a lot of the qualities of Rebecca and she is a little bit of both characters, tom boy at top, for sure, she apparently had like a male alter ego.

Sarah Harrison 22:47
What does that mean? A male alter ego?

Shana Kelly 22:49
She almost wrote from the point of view of a male or of a man.

Carolyn Daughters 22:54
She would say that she wished she were a boy. She did.

Shana Kelly 22:57
Some of the characters in the Rebecca book say that. Rebecca says it for sure. And our narrator …

Sarah Harrison 23:04
She offers to be a boy. She says, Your companion, I’ll just be I’ll just be like a boy.

Shana Kelly 23:09
So what’s going on there? She was thinking deep about these issues related to Rebecca and Manderley, and I she felt, I know you can tell so constrained by the world that she was living and at the same time that she was an artist and a free thinker and a free spirit, she was also anxious. She was also shy. She didn’t like, her husband, the person she ended up marrying, was some sort of military person. He got stationed in Alexandria, and she had to host all of these parties. And she just hated the small talk. She hated that part, so you see the narrator in that but she also, famously was almost definitely bisexual, and so there’s that aspect of her in Rebecca, and the breaking of sexual mores and expectations, and at the time, what was thought of as perversion. I’m fascinated by the fact that she is both these characters.

Sarah Harrison 24:10
It’s interesting. She just split them apart, like two.

Carolyn Daughters 24:14
Two sides of a personality thing. That’s really interesting. That, I mean, so this, this red cover here, Rebecca, the unsurpassed modern masterpiece of romantic suspense with a name like Daphne du Maurier. I almost feel like somebody might just a million to winter. But they would, somebody would assume it’s a romance, almost. Where’d she come up with that pen name? I was like, No, her name is Daphne Du Maurier. Like, that’s her name. And some people have argued that we don’t learn the narrator’s second Mrs. de Winter’s name. But at one point he says to her something like, oh, it’s. That’s an unusual and charming name. And so some people have speculated that her name in the Rebecca book is Daphne.

Shana Kelly 25:05
I thought the same thing, I have to say, because I was like, what else is an unusual name? And she’s like, and my father was an unusual person, or something like that, in response to that, which I think Daphne du Maurier might have said herself. And she also lived in a gigantic mansion that is similar to Manderley, so I think it was called, like menabilly, so starts with M-E-N, and Manderley starts with M-A-N. There’s just like all, I feel like I could write a whole college dissertation on even just gender issues and roles in this novel.

Sarah Harrison 25:43
That was so funny because our last guest Alex Serco. He was when he was considering his graduate dissertation. He was like, should I do Rebecca? And he was like, Oh, actually, everyone said Rebecca, so Ethel Lina White, and that was one thing that really shocked me, is where I waffle. Is this the greatest novel of the century? Is that it seems so similar to The Wheel Spins? But next level, she took a lot of the things Ethel Lina White was playing with, I feel like it had to have been an influence, and next leveled it into like, what if they were married? And you have this framing, reframing, kind of woman trapped and not really knowing what the real reality is.

Carolyn Daughters 26:38
In The Wheel Spins, she’s so sure of herself much of the time, and I think part of that is her education, her birth, her her class, whereas this narrator is so uncertain of everything. So they feel like different characters to me, but I do think they’re grappling the authors are probably we’re probably grappling with a lot of the same kinds of ideas.

Sarah Harrison 27:03
I would say in the wheel spin. She was sure of herself, but she was always reframing, you know? She was like, Oh, they’re all here. They’re attacking me. The gypsies have stolen my passport. And then she’s like, Oh, no. Actually, these wonderful people have saved me and have gotten me on the train, protected me because I have the square protection in my palm. And so a second which needs a better, she needs a better way to be referred to the narrator and Rebecca too. Rebecca too. In Rebecca, she’s always projecting herself, like, I’m going to be at Manderley, it’s going to be wonderful, and then reframe like, no, it’s terrible. I’ve got to run out of the window before they see me.

Shana Kelly 27:45
Well, she’s noticing too in her habits of because I there’s that irritating side where she has seen everything in the worst possible light, usually. But she’s also reading people very closely, like the slight change of an expression or body posture. She’s got that one moment where the truth is coming out, and there’s the whole trial is going on at the end. And Frank, the manager of the Manderley estate, she doesn’t think that he knows the truth, but then she sees an expression on his face, and she’s like Frank knows. And Maxim doesn’t know that Frank knows, and it’s like she’s so she’s very perceptive, she’s smarter than she gives herself credit for. But in all these habits, she feels like a writer. She feels like I believe that Daphne du Maurier had those qualities as well, because you are constantly like you said, not everybody does that. I think that writers tend to really be like, let me just tell the story of today, of how I was so awkward at that party, and how everyone thought that I was awful. You can tell a whole story in your brain and your imagination is, like an asset, but it’s also can be your greatest enemy.

Carolyn Daughters 28:54
Let’s talk about that. I call, call it the worst party ever. So, I mean, have you guys ever, I’m sure, like, we all have, like, planned for something for so long. It’s going to be the best day of your life, and everybody’s going to be so shocked at how beautiful you are and how magical. And now just everything is going to fall into place, and you put every ounce of energy and thought into it, and then you, in her case, descend the stairs. And in the Rebecca book, she has the drummer playing, and here she’s coming down, and there is this reception of her that was so horrifying. It is hard to read, like I had trouble for giving max for his reception of her, or his response to her.

Shana Kelly 29:49
Now she is set up so badly, so it’s a costume party and a winters ball that or costume ball that happens all or happened all the time when Rebecca. Is alive, and she’s taken it on against all odds, and she has been manipulated into choosing a costume that Rebecca wore just the year before.

Sarah Harrison 30:12
Max isn’t the only one that would have remembered, either, no.

Shana Kelly 30:15
But unfortunately, she wants to keep it a big secret so nobody knows, except for this one lady’s maid who wasn’t there, and, she’s horribly set up by Mrs. Danvers to have this moment at Manderley. And it is, you’re right. It’s just so gut wrenching and so humiliating and just you understand, it is this character’s worst nightmare. And she, again, has an amazing imagination. She never would have come up with this.

Sarah Harrison 30:43
Well, and what you’re saying about she’s perceptive and she’s not perceptive. And I strongly identify with the narrator in the Rebecca book in many ways. And it’s like there’s two perceptions, right? There’s other perception, which is a lot easier than self perception and like knowing where you are you are exactly at I you can read two people looking at each other. Can’t always accurately read somebody looking at me and me looking at them, and see I’m exactly like this. When I, when I’m having a low level of mental health, which I would say she was having in the Rebecca book, I get deeply paranoid. I get deeply paranoid, and I start taking that perception, and it goes crazy, like I remember one of my craziest moments, low spot for Sarah, for sure, but I was in church, and it was like singing time, and there was two teenagers in front of me, two teenage girls, and they, like, looked at each other and like giggled. And when you’re in that deep, low mental health and deep paranoia, which I feel like she was in, everything so self-focused, and we’re getting everything through her self focused. I was like, Are they laughing at me? Oh, am I singing like, I instantly made it about me, and I turned, like, the powers of perception, like, into this crazy place. When I look back at it, I’m like, oh my goodness, Sarah, not everything’s about you. I get some of the narrator’s paranoia about the party at Manderley. It’s certainly not that, but I think, and at the party too, ooh, I’m a terrible party story, because I’m like the narrator in my heart. I planned this party, and I was just thinking, I was like, I have this party. I have this great apartment. Now I’m gonna have a party, but then also I have a lot of anxiety, and so I didn’t invite anyone until, like, the day before, until, like the day before. Then I’m like, What you gotta invite somebody? You wanna come?

Nobody came. I had this party, and my brother showed up, and he’s like, where is everybody? And then I went in the kitchen and cried.

Carolyn Daughters 33:01
To be fair, nobody knew there was a party.

Sarah Harrison 33:03
Well, they knew, but at the last minute, I know, so it’s not unfair to them. It’s not like they were jerks, but it’s like, the way your brain turns against you and creates these nightmare scenarios. So that, like, that’s my conflicted relationship with the narrator here is, like, I identify with her, and I’m so mad at her all the time.

Carolyn Daughters 33:25
I was mad at the narrator a lot of the time in the Rebecca book, but I was really mad at max. And then the next morning, she can’t find him. He didn’t come to bed the night before, and when she sees him, Oh, I hope you will forgive me for what for? What? For trying to put on a fun dress.

Sarah Harrison 33:44
And in his defense, he also said for what it’s like, all right, I forgot you did that.

Carolyn Daughters 33:50
But he wasn’t like, Oh my God, my behavior during this party was so horrifying.

Shana Kelly 33:54
I was angry with you, wasn’t I?

Carolyn Daughters 33:57
What a jackass. I was No. It was like, oh yes, for what, hey, you traumatized her the night before, and she was so excited, like a child, like Christmas morning, and the kid come and, like, open the presents, like she had this like child, like joy that had been built up over weeks, and then to have this response where then she tears up the stairs in tears and has to rip this dress off. Horrifying.

Sarah Harrison 34:26
That’s where I find, I agree. I agree. I’ll start that. And that’s where I find them very similar, is that he has this child like temper, and he’s all like she, she’s not seeing beyond herself, and he’s not seeing beyond himself, but he, significantly, is in a very powerful position, and she isn’t even in out of a servant, servant’s position in her own mind. And so it makes this insane, very interesting collection. It’s interesting to me that you say that Daphne Maurier was. Kind of an aristocratic personage, and yet was able to write this character that’s, that’s very interesting.

Shana Kelly 35:07
I would think it’d be very far from her experience. Yeah, this woman.

Carolyn Daughters 35:12
We have to talk about Mrs. Danvers. Yes, she do that? She’d be so mad. So, I mean, would I? Would I be correct in saying the hero of the story, we loved her. I mean, what’s, what’s this woman’s deal? And so also, I’m going to tack on, just to make it super complex, Rebecca, right? Like every she’s in every scene for a dead woman. Is there any dead character who’s ever been in more scenes of a book than the Rebecca book? So let’s talk Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca, their relationship like,

Shana Kelly 35:52
It’s interesting, because you find out that Danvers knew her since she was a child. She was like her, her person, her maid, I guess, some sort of ladies maid since she was very young, and then came with her to Manderley. So they have a very close relationship. They’ve known each other. You would think it would be like a mother child, maternal type thing. But there is definitely something else going on with Mrs. Danvers. She is, first of all, not okay with there being a second Mrs. de Winter.

Carolyn Daughters 36:22
I would even just say she’s not okay.

Sarah Harrison 36:24
She’s not okay. I think you’re right. She happened to Danvers.

Shana Kelly 36:29
she is not recovering from the death of Rebecca. She is grieving, for sure, and she hates this woman, the narrator, before she even sets foot in that house. And she does seem to have it in for her right from the start. And she does manipulate some situations. You even get the sense she knows about that broken tchotchke thing that she knows. Oh yeah, it was her who broke it.

Sarah Harrison 36:57
She wouldn’t check the drawer. She does. The hairbrush is in the room where no people is it makes sense.

Shana Kelly 37:04
The second Mrs. De Winter would be the one who was in that room when that thing went missing. And she immediately accuses a young servant, Robert, and he breaks down into tears. And so it becomes a big thing. So you feel like Danvers is manipulating the situation. She is three steps ahead of everybody in some ways.

Carolyn Daughters 37:25
The west wing of Manderley is like a mausoleum, right? She’s like, dusting the room.

Shana Kelly 37:31
It’s set up as if Rebecca might come back at any moment. It’s her bedroom at Manderley and it’s her shrine. Shrine. Her shrine, her nightgown and her clothes, hair brush, her hair brush. So when Danvers finds the narrator in there, she’s almost excited to show her all the stuff, like, Oh, I know, isn’t it beautiful? And don’t you want to look at this? But at the same time, she’s tormenting the poor narrator, but she’s also going through Rebecca’s underwear drawer and caressing her nightie and sniffing things. And it’s very sexual. And there’s definitely this undercurrent of some sort of like, what was the nature of their relationship? I mean, you guys feel that too.

Carolyn Daughters 38:18
I think from the opening pages of the Rebecca book, there is this dangerous sort of sexuality that is threaded throughout the book, like there are undertones. And I think you can read the book from beginning to end without even realizing that there are sexual undertones, or you can read it with a heightened awareness of it, and then you’ll see it everywhere, or maybe something in between, I don’t know, but Mrs. Danvers is not okay, I would say. If this were some other individual, say a child or something, I don’t think you would be like, sniffing their clothes and stuff like you. You might be mourning it. The room is kept exactly as it was.

Sarah Harrison 39:05
She might sniff their clothes. Okay, I’m gonna say I was just put about the sniffing there. I took a shirt out of the closet recently that had been in storage a really long time. That was my grandmother’s shirt. I put it on, and it smelled like her.

Oh yeah, she’d been dead for years. Why haven’t we invented the technology to save this? It’s a shame. I’ll sweat in it and have to wash it. But the smell is so powerful, sorry. It just even made me emotional.

Shana Kelly 39:45
There is like a strong sense memory connection that almost brings you back to a moment where you have that. So, yeah, I get that. It was her scent was on her clothes. And she could spray it around the room, and she could remember her that way.

Sarah Harrison 40:07
I remember my grandmother went, had to go into a nursing facility, even she was still alive. My parents lived in her home, and the first time I went in and the home didn’t smell like grandma immediately lost it. So it’s like a visceral animal reaction. And I think of Danvers as very animalistic. She’s part mother, but also I think part worshiper of Rebecca setting up this shrine at Manderley. I got the sense that Danvers was like herself, somehow wounded earlier. She hated men, and she was happy to see Rebecca.

Carolyn Daughters 40:54
Rebecca hated men. She laughed at all the men. And hated men. They were ridiculous,

Shana Kelly 41:02
According to Mrs. Danvers, you believe her.

Sarah Harrison 41:05
Right? Is she the most reliable narrator?

Carolyn Daughters 41:08
No one in the Rebecca book is reliable.

Sarah Harrison 41:12
I felt like Danvers was vicariously living through Rebecca, wanting to be her, admiring her, worshiping her, and like privileged to be the one that knows her so intimately into that

Shana Kelly 41:26
privileged fold by, being so trusted, being her confidant, being friendly with this cousin, even Jack Favell, who comes and you know he’s calling her Danny, and She’s been pulled into the fold, even though, presumably she was born into a lower sofa class. I wonder how much of that has to play into it a little bit. She separates herself from the other staff. She’s above them.

Carolyn Daughters 41:57
Rebecca, right? Like this character for somebody who’s dead. For the whole novel is extremely complicated. We learn really near the tail end when Maxim reveals who he is and what he thought and what’s going on and all of this, he finally reveals this to his wife, Rebecca, too. I mean, she embraces him with open arms, with this sort of joy, huh? He didn’t love Rebecca. Oh, he didn’t think Rebecca was amazing. And I thought to myself, was this justifiable homicide? Did I miss something here? What in the world is this event that happens with him and Rebecca at Manderley?

Shana Kelly 42:44
I don’t see how you can justify it.

Sarah Harrison 42:48
Were you surprised that that he did actually kill her, given what you knew of the Rebecca book.

Shana Kelly 42:53
I wasn’t. I feel like he is suspicious from the start. There’s that scene right in the beginning where he drives right up to the cliff, and there’s just 2,000 foot drop, and he’s very broody and dark, and it almost feels like he might just shove Rebecca, too, right off the cliff.

Sarah Harrison 43:14
That’s not in the Rebecca book, right? Or is it?

Shana Kelly 43:17
Well, not at the beginning. It is in the beginning. It’s when he drive that week that the driver is ill.

Sarah Harrison 43:27
Well, next episode we’ll discuss the movie.

Shana Kelly 43:32
They handle it differently in the movie, but, yeah, he’s got this dark side, his temper, that’s kind of immature.

Sarah Harrison 43:40
There’s something else.

Shana Kelly 43:42
There’s more to this story. I don’t think I was surprised that he killed her at the Manderley estate, but I was weirdly delighted by her reaction, because it’s real. I mean, you could also be horrified to find out that your husband killed his first wife, and then you’re like, oh, this explains some of the broody temper stuff. But instead, she’s just so freaking relieved that he didn’t love Rebecca.

Carolyn Daughters 44:12
He didn’t love Rebecca! That’s all she heard. Also, he killed her.

Sarah Harrison 44:18
I heard you say you didn’t love her.

Shana Kelly 44:20
He immediately starts saying, Who else knew? How do we cover it up? How do we how can we make this okay, found this body, and it’s, oh, well, you were confused when you identified the other woman as Rebecca. So she’s on his side 1,000% and I don’t know. Maybe that is, I think that’s part of the twisty brilliance of this book, because all these characters are so flawed, and so just thinking of themselves, it’s not about morality at this point for anybody, for any of these characters.

Sarah Harrison 44:56
There’s a lot of self interest. So a lot of self interested. And in our poor Rebecca, too.

Carolyn Daughters 45:02
One last thing I want to you know. The Rebecca book closes out with a bang. She says, the house was a sepulcher. Our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. I mean, it all burns down at the end, like, what? What’s your take on this ending? It’s a it’s the unnatural burning down. It’s a fresh new start for the narrator and Maxim. What is happening with this ending?

Shana Kelly 45:33
Yeah, it’s like Rebecca’s final act of revenge. Rebecca Favell says when they’re done, and it looks like Maxim is going to get away with it. He says, You think you’ve gotten away with it, but you haven’t. And to me, that’s him knowing that when he calls Danvers and tells her that maxim has gotten away with it, that something’s going to happen, he may not know that she’s going to, like, douse the place in gasoline, or whatever she does and, like, burn it down, but it it felt to me like there’s all this talk of like, Rebecca has won, no. Rebecca hasn’t won, no. Rebecca has won. It almost feels like Rebecca has won.

Carolyn Daughters 46:08
So Mrs. Danvers is like a the conduit, then. So Rebecca has her final revenge at Manderley.

Shana Kelly 46:13
That’s what it felt like to me. But I could see the argument for like, merging through fire and fresh start. But to me, it read like, oh, I mean, because then it just ends. It’s so abrupt. It’s just over the second they see Manderley burning down.

Carolyn Daughters 46:29
They don’t arrive, and the police don’t come, and we don’t like it, just we see them approaching. Sarah, what are your thoughts?

Sarah Harrison 46:37
Two-part thoughts. I think in my heart, it’s a bummer, because I loved Manderley. We talked about how much.

Carolyn Daughters 46:43
Manderley is my favorite 25,000 square foot estate.

Sarah Harrison 46:47
Yeah, these amazing estates, and I love, ancient history and Family History and Collections at the same time. I think it’s a happy ending for Rebecca, too, and it really harkened back to her foreshadowing. And when she thinks about her thoughts as she’s just getting to know Max. It’s always sad, and she talks about wanting to live in hotels and staying in hotels, and that’s almost the thing that puts them on equal footing, is they’re just two nomads, and there’s no estate to run and look stupid failing at. So she finds her success and her talent. She talks about her talent for reading aloud, and she’s really found a talent for reading aloud, and Max just really enjoys it, and now she’s like a real partner, which is what she always wanted.

Carolyn Daughters 47:35
She has one upped him a little bit. The power dynamic maybe has shifted at this point in the Rebecca book.

Sarah Harrison 47:40
I don’t think she could have done it at Manderley, but if they just live in a hotel, they are, in fact, equal partners, then they both just eat toast.

Carolyn Daughters 47:48
They both eat toast. And there we have it.

Sarah Harrison 47:52
Listeners, they both eat toast. That’s our closing remark until our new and exciting bonus episode. So we’re gonna kidnap Shana just a little bit longer. We just locked the door. She can’t leave, yes, so we’ve bolted it from the outside. We had Michael do it.

Carolyn Daughters 48:10
We’re gonna talk a little bit about Alfred Hitchcock folks.

Sarah Harrison 48:14
And some other adaptations that she’s seen and how they relate to the Rebecca book. So check that out. It’ll be on our Patreon page. Let us know what you think of our new endeavors, all the things we’re experimenting with, we can’t get enough hearing from you and thank you, Shana, for joining us for these two episodes. You’ve been fabulous. I feel like we could do a whole episode on you and your work. Thank you, Shana!

Shana Kelly 48:37
Thank you for having me.

Sarah Harrison 
We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, it would mean the world to us if you would subscribe and then you’ll never miss an episode. Be sure to leave us a rating or review on Apple podcasts Spotify, or wherever you listen to Tea, Tonic & Toxin. That way, likeminded folks can also find us on all platforms.

Carolyn Daughters
You can learn more about all our book selections at teatonicandtoxin.com. You can also comment, weigh in, and follow along with what we’re reading and discussing @teatonicandtoxin on Instagram and Facebook. And you can subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Finally, please visit our website, teatonicandtoxin.com to check out current and past reading lists and support our labor of love, starting at only $3 a month.

Sarah Harrison
We want to thank you for joining us on our journey through the history of mystery. We absolutely adore you. Until next time, stay mysterious.

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