Rebecca

The narrator did not sleep well. She dreamt that she could not keep up with Maxim as they walked through the woods. She could not see his face. When she awakens, her pillow is wet with tears. Maxim leaves a phone message that he will return to Manderley about seven that evening. After breakfast, Bea phones to invite the narrator to go with her that afternoon to visit Maxim’s grandmother. The hours seem long until the evening and the narrator is glad to have something to do.

She does not experience yesterday’s mood of freedom. “I had the feeling I was not alone” (176), the narrator thinks, sitting in the rose garden with a newspaper, a book, and her knitting. She knows that Mrs. Danvers may be watching her from one of Manderley’s many windows. It reminds her of a childhood game, “Old Witch,” when one child would stand with her back turned, counting to 10 before turning around, while the others tried to furtively creep up without being detected, until one bold player triumphantly pounced from behind.

When Beatrice arrives, she immediately tells the narrator that she looks unwell, too thin, without color in her face, and quite different from their first meeting. Beatrice bluntly asks the narrator if she is pregnant since a son and heir would be good for Maxim. The narrator says that she is not expecting a child. Beatrice is delighted that she liked her wedding present of books. However, Beatrice’s account of how she, her family, and friends spend Christmas in charades and noisy pranks makes the narrator reluctant to join them. The narrator asks Beatrice if she knows Jack Favell who came to Manderley to see Mrs. Danvers. Beatrice tells her that he is an awful bounder and Rebecca’s cousin. Beatrice informs her abruptly that she seldom went to Manderley during Maxim’s first marriage. Their visit to the 86-year-old nearly blind grandmother becomes very awkward when the old lady demands to see dear Rebecca instead of the unknown narrator. Beatrice had forgotten that she was so fond of Rebecca who had a gift of being attractive to men, women, children, and dogs. Beatrice apologizes to the narrator and drops her off at the lodge gates.

As she walks along the drive, the narrator imagines the grandmother when she was a young woman at Manderley. When she sees Maxim’s car in the drive, her heart lifts. However, she hears his raised voice in the library telling Mrs. Danvers to keep Favell away from Manderley in the future and never mind who told him about Favell’s visit. The narrator hides when Mrs. Danvers exits the library but sees her face distorted with anger. The narrator enters the library and greets her husband. Something made Maxim very angry. She asks if he is worried about anything, but he only mentions the long drive from London.

One Sunday, local guests unexpectedly arrive for tea at Manderley. Lady Crowan suggests the Manderley fancy dress ball be held again in honor of the bride. Maxim looks at the narrator and she uncertainly agrees to it. Frank organizes the ball, relieving the narrator of all responsibility. Maxim states that the locals think of Manderley as a place for their entertainment. As the host, Maxim never dresses in a costume. He teasingly suggests that the narrator should dress as Alice-in-Wonderland. She replies that she will surprise Maxim and keep her costume a secret until then. She wishes that he would not always treat her like a child, occasionally petted, but often forgotten. She wonders if it will always be like this: “Would we never be together, he a man and I a woman, standing shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, with no gulf between us?” (196). She feels that he has secret troubles that he does not share with her. She wants to be his wife, mature and wise. She wonders if Maxim orders the west wing bedroom to be kept furnished and if he occasionally touches Rebecca’s things there.

Since that afternoon in Rebecca’s bedroom, the narrator has avoided talking to Mrs. Danvers, using Robert, the footman, as a mediator. Desperate for a costume idea, the narrator roughly copies some illustrations from her books, but throws the sketches away. Mrs. Danvers knocks at her door, asking if she meant to discard the drawings. Mrs. Danvers suggests that the narrator examine the pictures in the gallery for costume ideas, especially the portrait of Caroline de Winter, Maxim’s ancestor. Mrs. Danvers gives her the name of a London store that makes costumes. The narrator realizes that reproducing Caroline de Winter’s white dress is an excellent idea. She wonders why the housekeeper is suddenly friendly. Was Mrs. Danvers grateful that the narrator never told Maxim about Favell’s visit? She wonders why Maxim dislikes Rebecca’s cousin. She cannot connect the coarse Favell with her image of Rebecca, her charm and breeding.

At dinner, the narrator imagines Rebecca cleverly placating Maxim when Favell phones. Seeing her antics, Maxim demands to know what she is thinking. The narrator realizes that she had returned to the earlier days at the house, “in that brief moment […]I had so identified myself with Rebecca that my own dull self did not exist, had never come to Manderley” (200). Maxim thinks she suddenly looks older and deceitful, like a criminal, with the wrong sort of knowledge in her eyes. One reason that Maxim married the narrator is because she had an innocent, sincere expression.

During the exciting party preparations, Mrs. Danvers carefully disappears whenever the narrator arrives in a room. On the day of the ball, the narrator is as nervous as the morning she got married. Her costume and wig fit perfectly, and she looks transformed: “Not me at all. Someone more interesting, more vivid and alive” (205). She has the new sensation of being important as Giles, Beatrice, Frank, and Maxim speculate about her secret costume. The narrator and her maid giggle together in her room as the costume is put on. Gazing in the mirror she does not recognize the face in the mirror and her new, slow smile.

The narrator tells the drummer to announce her as Miss Caroline de Winter. She stands at the head of the stairs, smilingly posed as the lady in the portrait. She expects clapping and laughter, but the others only stare at her. Beatrice cries out and puts her hand to her mouth. Maxim’s face is ashen. He angrily asks the narrator what she thinks she is doing. He coldly tells her to change her clothes before any of the guests arrive. She runs away in tears. Mrs. Danvers stands at the door to the west wing, wearing a triumphant, loathsome expression on her face, “the face of an exulting devil” (214).

When the narrator returns to her bedroom, her maid Clarice is waiting, pale and scared. Clarice cries about the lovely white dress and the narrator tells her that it is not her fault. The narrator tells Clarice to go and enjoy the party, after the maid helps her remove the costume. Beatrice arrives at the door, then holds out her hands to the narrator, asking if she is all right. Beatrice realizes it was a terrible mistake—the narrator did not know that the dress she had copied from the gallery portrait was what Rebecca wore at the last Manderley fancy ball. This was the reason for everyone’s shock. Only Maxim thinks that she did it deliberately to startle him. The narrator blames herself and says that she ought to have known. Beatrice suggests that the narrator put on her ordinary blue evening dress and come downstairs. The guests are just starting to arrive, and they will tell them a story about the shop sending an ill-fitting, wrong dress so she must wear her regular frock instead. The narrator refuses to join the party. Beatrice is very worried about how her absence can be explained. Beatrice tells Giles to inform Maxim that the narrator feels faint and will try to come down later. Beatrice directs Giles to not delay the dinner. Beatrice wishes she could do something to help the narrator, but she must leave.

The narrator feels that she has lost Beatrice’s sympathy with her refusal. The narrator believes she is badly bred, lacking the pride and courage that Beatrice would have exhibited. Beatrice belongs to another breed of men and women. The narrator imagines the servants and guests gossiping about her absence and unfavorably comparing her to Rebecca. Finally, she irons her blue dress, cleans off her make-up, and dutifully goes downstairs as if she were her old self at the hotel with Mrs. Van Hopper. When she gazes at the Caroline de Winter picture in the gallery, a board creaks behind her, but she turns, and no one is there. A current of air blows in her face. The door to the west wing is open and the sound of the sea comes from an open window. She shuts the west wing door and goes downstairs to meet the guests who have finished their dinner.

This is her first and last party at Manderley. Frank, Beatrice, and Giles try to be kind to her, but she watches the dance like “a dummy-stick of a person in my stead, a prop with a smile screwed to its face” (225). Maxim stands next to her but never speaks to her. His eyes are cold and expressionless; Maxim is in a tortured, private hell that she cannot share. They stand like two performers in a play for the sake of all these people that she does not know. After the fireworks, Beatrice tells her the party was a success. She goes up to bed, but Maxim never appears.

The narrator awakens late the next morning. She worries that the servants will gossip about Maxim’s untouched bed. The narrator had attended the ball the previous night because of personal pride, not for the sake of Manderley. She had not wanted the party guests to think that she and Maxim quarreled. She believes that her marriage has failed after three months. She assumes that she is too young for him and does not belong to his world. It does not matter that she loves Maxim “in a sick, hurt, desperate way, like a child or a dog” (232). He wanted what she could not give him—what he had with Rebecca. She believes that Maxim will never love her because he still thinks about Rebecca: “Rebecca was still mistress of Manderley. Rebecca was still Mrs. De Winter [...] I had come blundering like a poor fool on ground that was preserved” (233). Rebecca’s favorite flowers still fill the rooms, the servants still obey Rebecca’s orders, and Rebecca’s clothes still hang in the wardrobes. The narrator feels that wherever she walks in Manderley, she encounters Rebecca, and she will never be rid of her.

The narrator wonders if she haunts Rebecca like Maxim’s first wife haunts her. Perhaps Rebecca sees her use all her things and resents her. The narrator can fight a living woman for Maxim’s love, but not a dead one who never grows old. She telephones the estate office to explain to Maxim that she had not intended to hurt him last night, but he is not there. She shocks Frank when she tells him that she ought to have suspected something about Maxim when she married. When she informs Frank that Maxim does not love her because he still loves Rebecca, Frank says that it is important that he talk to her in person. She does not think Frank can help her, so she ends the call. She is convinced that Maxim has left her and will never come back. She walks onto the terrace, where fog is rolling in from the sea as if “a blight had fallen upon Manderley” (239). She spies Mrs. Danvers watching her from the west wing window.

She knows that Mrs. Danvers intended the costume mistake to happen; it was a triumph for Rebecca and the housekeeper. The narrator cannot confront Rebecca, but she can speak to the flesh-and-blood Mrs. Danvers. When she enters Rebecca’s bedroom, she is surprised to find that Mrs. Danvers’s eyes are reddened with crying, as are her own eyes. She pictures her evil smile from the night before. Mrs. Danvers tells her that she never should have come to Manderley or married Maxim. The housekeeper hated her because she tried to take Rebecca’s place. The narrator points out that she loves Maxim and had not changed Manderley’s routines. The narrator is not afraid of the old woman anymore and shakes her by the arm for speaking to her so contemptuously. She tells Mrs. Danvers that Maxim has suffered enough without her playing that horrible costume joke on him. Mrs. Danvers angrily states that Maxim never cared about her suffering, why should she care about his. The housekeeper hated seeing the narrator use Rebecca’s things while her mistress was lying dead and forgotten.

Mrs. Danvers begins “raving like a mad-woman, a fanatic” (243), about the spirited, boy-like courage of Rebecca. At age 16, Rebecca would ride a large brute of a horse and slash him, drawing blood, until the animal was trembling. Mrs. Danvers boasts that no one ever got the better of Rebecca, she did what she liked. Rebecca’s beauty made men desire her, she brought them to the cottage on weekends, and laughed behind their backs.

Mrs. Danvers says Rebecca is the real Mrs. de Winter and the narrator is “the shadow and the ghost” (246). No one wants the narrator; she ought to be dead. Maxim wants to be alone in the house with Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers pushes the narrator towards the open window and urges her to jump, since she does not have anything to live for. The narrator holds on to the windowsill with her hands while Mrs. Danvers grips her arm. Mrs. Danvers asserts Maxim does not love her. The fog is shattered by several explosions. Mrs. Danvers relaxes her grip and states that the rockets signal a ship gone ashore in the bay. They hear the sound of running footsteps below.

The narrator cannot see Maxim below, but she can hear him shouting about a ship that ran aground in the fog. Mrs. Danvers resumes her housekeeper role, preparing to provide food in case the stranded ship’s crew accepts Maxim’s invitation to come back to the house. Expressionless, Mrs. Danvers shuts the window and goes downstairs. Frith tells the narrator that Maxim went to the beach. On the terrace, the narrator gazes up at the west wing window from where Mrs. Danvers had been urging her to jump. The narrator feels faint and sits down. For the first time, she realizes that Maxim had not gone away as she feared. His voice sounded normal and practical.

The fog lifts, and the narrator walks to the cove. A crowd of people on the cliffs and in motorboats on the sea stare at the stranded ship. Maxim has taken an injured crew member to a doctor. Frank tells her that Maxim is splendid in this kind of crisis and the coast guard agrees about Maxim’s generosity in the county. On the cove’s other side, Ben tells the narrator that the ship will break up, not like the little one that sunk like a stone, with the woman eaten up by the fish. The narrator does not understand Ben.

When the narrator returns to the sheltered house, it seems more beautiful than ever, and she realizes for the first time that she belongs there and Manderley belongs to her. In the library, she experiences a sense of foreboding. She feels different, as if the girl who had dressed for the ball last night had been left behind. Captain Searle, the harbormaster, urgently needs to see her because Maxim and Frank are unavailable. He does not want to cause pain to Maxim or to her, but the diver inspecting the stranded ship discovered the hull of Rebecca’s little boat and a decomposed body inside the cabin. Bewildered, the narrator assumes that Rebecca had sailed with a companion. She wishes that Maxim did not have to be told, but Captain Searle must report the body.

Maxim enters the library, not expecting to see Captain Searle, and the narrator leaves the room like a coward. She waits, knowing that she must face the crisis: “My old fears, my diffidence, my shyness, my hopeless sense of inferiority, must be conquered now […] If I failed now I should fail forever” (264). After the harbormaster departs, she kisses Maxim’s hand, saying that she does not want him to bear this alone: “I’ve grown up […] in twenty-four hours. I’ll never be a child again” (264). Maxim says it’s too late; they have lost their chance at happiness. He tells her that Rebecca’s shadow was always keeping them from each other: “How could I hold you like this, my darling […] with the fear always in my heart that this would happen” (265). He remembers Rebecca’s treacherous smile as she died. Rebecca knew she would win in the end. He reveals that he killed Rebecca and placed her body in the boat. He asks if the narrator loves him now.

The narrator is in shock after Maxim’s confession. Maxim begins to kiss her in a way that he never has before and tells her for the first time that he loves her. She had always longed for him to declare this, but she is numb. He stops kissing her and says it’s too late because she does not love him now. The narrator asserts that she does love him, and they cannot lose each other: “We’ve got to be together always, with no secrets, no shadows” (268). They only have a few hours or days left together since the authorities have found the boat and Rebecca’s body. He does not know what to do. The pieces of the puzzle begin to fit together for her: why Maxim had been moody and never spoke about Rebecca. Only the narrator and Maxim know about the murder. She asks him if he believes she loves him now: He kisses her, holding her hands “very tightly like a child who would gain confidence” (270).

He explains he thought he would go mad, waiting for something to happen, trying to act normal after the murder, and having to utter lies to his sympathetic sister and Frank. He did not have the courage to fire Mrs. Danvers because he feared she might suspect something. He almost confessed to the narrator after she went to the cottage for string, but he thought she was unhappy because he was too old for her. She admits that she believed he was always comparing her to Rebecca. He reveals that he hated, not loved, Rebecca.

Dishonest Rebecca was incapable of decency and love. Rebecca cleverly manipulated people to think she was kind, but she was cruel behind their backs. Maxim discovered her real personality five days after their marriage, when they were parked at the summit in Monte Carlo and she laughingly told him about her misdeeds. He almost killed her then: “It doesn’t make for sanity, does it, living with the devil?” (273). Rebecca made a bargain with him that she would appear to be the perfect wife, with breeding, brains, and beauty, and make his precious Manderley the loveliest showplace in the country. Rebecca knew that he would not risk the scandal of divorce and she could do whatever she wanted at her London flat, if it did not hurt Manderley. Maxim despises himself for living this lie with Rebecca, placing Manderley first in his life. He explains that it was Rebecca’s taste, planting the gardens and the azaleas in the Happy Valley, purchasing fine objects or moving them out of storage, that made Manderley such a beautiful place photographed by people.

A different Rebecca takes shape in the narrator’s imagination as she realizes who Ben was describing as a snake. The narrator happily focuses on the fact that Maxim never loved Rebecca. The narrator realizes that she built up false pictures in her mind because she suffered from shyness and not demanded the truth months ago from Maxim. He tells the narrator that Rebecca became more careless over time, bringing her male friends to the cottage, trying to have affairs with Frank and his brother-in-law, Giles. Maxim knew that Rebecca was getting worse in her behavior and the scandal he dreaded would emerge. Rebecca began spending nights with her filthy cousin Favell at the cottage. Maxim warned her he would shoot Favell if he found him on the estate.

One day Rebecca came back earlier than expected from London. Maxim guessed she had gone to the cottage with Favell, so he took his gun to frighten them. To his surprise, Rebecca was alone in the cottage, looking pale and ill. Maxim told her it was the end of this deceitful life, and she could live with Favell in London. Rebecca tells him that he cannot get a divorce because everyone believes their marriage is successful. She taunts him, implying that she is pregnant by another man with an heir for Manderley. Rebecca smiles as Maxim shoots her. He took the body to her boat and drove a spike into the planks; he went back to the cove in a dinghy, as the boat sank. The boat sank too close to shore. He knew that Rebecca would win in the end. The narrator tells Maxim that no one can prove anything against him since he was not seen that night. Maxim tells her that the coast guard will try to raise the boat tomorrow morning at 5:30am, and he will accompany them. The telephone starts ringing.