July Book Club: Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

Rebecca is a slow, creeping novel that holds its readers by the throat.

The shy, nameless protagonist meets Maxim, owner of Manderley and grieving widower of his late wife, Rebecca. Soon after his wedding with the protagonist, Maxim takes her back to Manderley, which she soon finds is haunted by the ghost of Rebecca.

In full transparency, my feelings towards Rebecca contradict the masses. While I can totally recognise the magnificence of Daphne Du Maurier’s work, it did fail to ignite in me much inspiration personally. Perhaps this is simply due to the fact that I have been in a humungous reading slump for the past year (yes, that’s right – twelve whole months of struggling to get through a book!), but, to be honest, I have a feeling it isn’t just that…

The main issue I found with Rebecca is not a flaw of the book itself, rather a personal dislike. While in theory I enjoy rich prose, packed with symbolism and gorgeous, vivid imagery, and am definitely impressed by it, I tend to find classic novels far too descriptive. This can be a comforting thing, as it is in Dickens' Great Expectations, if that is what I’m in the mood for, but, to be honest, I typically am not. The only extensive visual description I tend to care for within gothic novels is of the architecture. I love classic gothic archways; haunted mansions; dark, looming castles on tops of hills; long, winding corridors. A couple sentences here and there to paint a picture of the fashion or the surrounding nature is fine. Much appreciated, in fact. But I found it so excessive in Rebecca that it repeatedly irritated me, took me out of the story and made my journey through the novel far too long. To put it simply, there were a LOT of details for which I just did not care.

On the other hand, I was thoroughly impressed by Du Maurier’s overall writing style. There were so many stunning descriptions of relatable human emotions. Her representations of inferiority, love, loneliness and embarrassment are especially unique and beautiful. I was repeatedly floored. This passage in particular, the opening paragraph of Chapter 5, describing the burdening complexities of first love, really resonated with me:

‘I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. Today, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one lightly and are soon forgotten, but then – how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal. A denial heralded the thrice crowing of a cock, and an insincerity was like the kiss of Judas. The adult mind can lie with untroubled conscience and a gay composure, but in those days even a small deception scoured the tongue, lashing once against the stake itself.’

Notice how the protagonist immediately critiques Romantic ideals, instead revealing the harsh reality of what first love can be like. For her, someone who is shy and believes herself inferior to others, first love is painful, awkward and mentally torturous. This is another of the novel’s aspects that I liked. Being inside the protagonist’s mind was a clever choice on Du Maurier’s part. The narrator is unreliable (a feature I adore in the literature I read) due to her inferiority complex. The way she views herself and others, particularly Rebecca and Maxim, is fed to the reader through the lens of this bias, causing her overall judgement to be somewhat cloudy. It is within the haunted walls of Manderley that the protagonist must face up to her fears and insecurities, while forced to contend with the ever-looming presence of Rebecca, which only heightens her jealousy and obsessions.

The protagonist’s moral greyness was another highlight for me. Upon discovering that Maxim was in fact Rebecca’s murderer, the narrator is relieved, glad that Maxim didn’t harbour any real love for Rebecca and she will no longer be burdened by the need to compete against her for her husband’s affection. But there are several signs of the protagonist’s moral greyness which precede this, even going back to her repeated deception of Mrs Van Hopper and, notably, her burning the first page of the poetry book Rebecca gifted to Maxim. Because of this, I think both Maxim and the narrator are the true villains of the novel, as, even though they ultimately failed to, they both sought to erase Rebecca.

Overall, I enjoyed this novel and found many of its aspects impressive and insightful. Its themes have stood the test of time and for that, it definitely deserves its reputation as a masterful classic. Despite this, Rebecca is not a new favourite of mine and I won't remember it as fondly as I do other works of classic fiction.

Star rating: 2.5/5.