Ernie reads Rebecca by Daphne DuMaurier

When I started reading Rebecca I was confusing it with Jane Eyre.   Assuming that I knew what was going to happen, I was perplexed when the story kept taking strange turns from what I “knew” was the plot.  Part mystery and part thriller Rebecca is an excellent book, an engrossing read and can be enjoyed by anyone.

Our narrator/heroine is a young, smart and seemingly sensible woman who meets Max DeWinter, falls in love and escapes the mundane world to live out her fantasies at Manderlay, the DeWinter estate. They get married and everything is going to be perfect!  Max, a recent widower, finds peace and happiness with his new bride and is going to begin living a normal life again.  But this is not to be.

Rebecca is a love triangle with one of the players missing.  Young Rebecca DeWinter is dead and gone but Max can’t seem to escape her memory and our heroine finds her presence everywhere.  Of course, even if they could, Rebecca’s ghost has a proxy in the form of Mrs. Danvers the housekeeper.  Having adored Rebecca, Mrs. Danvers takes an instant dislike to the new Mrs. DeWinter and works to sabotage the marriage from the moment the honeymooners arrive at Manderley.  (It helped me to picture Frau Blucher from Mel Brook’s Young Frankenstein when I read her part.)

Our heroine (we never do learn her name) finds peril and turmoil throughout her life at Manderley.  At first it’s hard to tell if someone is out to get her or if she’s just in over her head.  All through the courtship and honeymoon she dreams and plans about her new life and how wonderful it will be to visit the commoners, entertain guests and lounge with her husband.  The reality is that she hides from the DeWinter family, can’t make decisions, feels inferior to everyone and is just miserable.  Much like Donny from The Big Lebowski, she is definitely out of her element.

But Max isn’t quite the catch that he’s been made out to be.  At one point, our heroine thinks:

 I wished he would not always treat me as a child, rather spoilt, rather irresponsible, someone to be petted from time to time when the mood came upon him, but more often forgotten, more often patted on the shoulder and told to run away and play.  I wished something would happen to make me look wiser, more mature.  Was it always going to be like this?  He away ahead of me, with his own moods that I did not share, his secret troubles that I did not know?  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. 

That sums up much of Mrs. DeWinter’s feelings throughout the book.

There seems to be a cast of thousands in this book but everyone has an important role to play.  The exposition is handled by the recollections of family, friends, villagers, the household staff and more.  These “minor” characters are vital in both the telling of the story and the building of suspense.  And suspense there is.  Without giving away too much of the story, let me just say that Rebecca is dead.  However, I expected Rebecca to show up at any time and wreak havoc. 

Rebecca was published in 1938 and was mostly panned by the critics of the time.  However, it made Daphne DuMaurier a popular writer for the remainder of the 20^th Century.

Rebecca is a good book.  I enjoyed it and you will too.

Next week:  Sandra reads Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut