A Good Classic with a Twist

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	• Rebecca Daphne du Maurier Avon books, 1997 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 477 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Good Classic with a Twist

I read this book in the 8th grade and haven't forgotten it. Since then I've brushed up on it a couple of times. Rebecca, the late wife of Maxim, is praised and adored by the staff at Maxim's house. The new wife (whose name we are never given) feels inadequate to fill the "wonderful" shoes of Rebecca. Since there are many other reviews that describe what happens, I will touch on why this book is memorable and worth reading.

The biggest plus to this book is suspense. Was Rebecca who others thought she was? Did Maxim adore her? Does the new wife have any chance at his heart considering their chaste relationship? They didn't even sleep in the same room. It's no wonder that the new wife feels like she'll never match up. The story picks up halfway through the book when we discover that Rebecca isn't all she pretended to be. This idea intrigued me, and I was relieved to find that Maxim preferred his new wife and did love her more than Rebecca. I do agree with the other reviewers who said that another chapter could have been added to the ending. I would like to know how their marriage was different after the trial and fire.

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Rebecca

This is a great classic. It is the love story of a young woman who thinks she doesn't measure up to her husband's first wife, as she didn't come from "society." It takes many interesting turns and keeps the reader's attention.

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Manderley, revisited

"Last night I dreamt I was in Manderley again."

And so begins a literary classic that, to me at least, is so riveting and wonderful that you have to read it again and again. And that's what I've done -- I have read it for the third time. First published in 1938 and set some time during the 1920s, this is the tale of a nameless heroine who has no idea what she's gotten herself into when she marries Maxim de Winter. At twenty-one, her future is uncertain, and she had settled for a life as a lady's companion to Mrs. Van Hopper, an American social climber. They are vacationing in Monte Carlo, and that's where she meets Maxim -- a dark, handsome, sophisticated and mysterious widower who is twice her age. When he pays her special attention and proposes marriage, she immediately agrees. She fell in love with him from the moment she met him, after all, and she had heard wonderful things about his English estate, the beautiful Manderley. Mrs. Van Hopper gives her a warning. She will regret it. He will marry her because he cannot stand to be alone in that house. But the heroine marries him anyway. After all, her new life will be a marriage to a handsome man who owns one of the most fascinating homes in England. What could possibly go wrong?

No sooner does she arrive at Manderley than she discovers just how important the late Mrs. de Winter had been to the old estate. Everyone there follows things as though Rebecca, the late wife, still lives there. This is most evident with Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca's former personal maid, who takes an immediate dislike to the heroine. The heroine is afraid of the servants and of disrupting the order of the house and is soon consumed with jealousy for Rebecca. After all, she was a tall, dark, beautiful and vivacious party girl -- everything the heroine is not. What's more important is that Maxim still loves Rebecca. He is taciturn and brooding, and she is constantly afraid of upsetting him. After a disastrous fancy dress ball thrown in her honor, the heroine feels that perhaps it had been a mistake to marry Maxim. But, in spite of Mrs. Danvers's creepy attempts to frighten her, she will remain in Manderley, where nothing is the way it seems.

What I love most about the novel is the narrative. Daphne de Maurier had a gifted way of drawing you into this dark, ironic and very sinister tale of secrets, deception and death. The nameless heroine (the author wrote that she hadn't given her a name because she simply couldn't think of one good enough for her) is young and naïve and it shows. To me, it is frustrating that she has no name, especially since Rebecca, her rival in mind if not in life, is so prominent in the story that the book had been named after her. Then again, this gives a special emphasis to the fact that the heroine finds herself lacking in manner compared to Maxim's previous wife, so perhaps the not having a name works. I also love the gothic feel of the story and how well-woven it is. Twists and turns creep in from beginning to end. Even though I had read Rebecca twice before, it was like reading it for the first time. The narrative and descriptions are as vivid, Maxim is as enigmatic as ever, Mrs. Danvers still gives me the creeps, and the ending gave me goose bumps again. The novel felt unfinished, which is why the author wrote an epilogue that is included in this edition, but I kind of liked leaving things to my imagination, so I only read the first two pages of the epilogue and skipped the rest. Rebecca is one of those classics that you'd want to keep in your library for rereading, much like Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre and other gothic classics. If you'd like to read a novel that is similar to this one, I recommend Dragonwyck by Anya Seton.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

"Last Night I Dreamt
I Went To Manderley Again."

So the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter remembered the chilling events that led her down the turning drive past ther beeches, white and naked, to the isolated gray stone manse on the windswept Cornish coast. With a husband she barely knew, the young bride arrived at this immense estate, only to be inexorably drawn into the life of the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful Rebecca, dead but never forgotten...her suite of rooms never touched, her clothes ready to be worn, her servant -- the sinister Mrs. Danvers -- still loyal. And as an eerie presentiment of evil tightened around her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter began her search for the real fate of Rebecca...for the secrets of Manderley.

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