By the time du Maurier wrote Rebecca, she had mastered the techniques of popular fiction. Her novel came well disguised as bestseller material: an intriguing story of love and murder—a “page-turner” in modern parlance. But examine the subtext of Rebecca and you find a perturbing, darker construct, part Grimm’s fairytale, part Freudian family romance. You also find a very interesting literary mirroring, of course, an early example of intertextuality—and that is rare in a “popular” novel, certainly one this early. Rebecca reflects Jane Eyre, but the reflection is imperfect, and deliberately so, forcing us to re-examine our assumptions about both novels, and in particular, their treatment of insanity and women.
None of these aspects of Rebecca was noticed by critics at the time of publication—and few have paused to examine them since. Instead, Charlotte Bront?’s gifts were used as a stick with which to beat an impious, hubristic du Maurier over the head: she was Bront?’s inferior, how could she dare to annex a classic novel? The critics moved swiftly on, not pausing for thought, and shunted du Maurier into the category of “romance” writer—a category she detested and resented, but from which she was never able to escape. Thus was du Maurier “named” as a writer. The question of how we name and identify—and the ironies and inexactitudes inherent in that process—is, of course, of central importance in Rebecca. Both female characters—one dead, one alive—derive their surname, as they do their status, from their husband. The first wife, Rebecca, is vivid and vengeful and, though dead, indestructible: her name lives on in the book’s title. The second wife, the drab shadowy creature who narrates this story, remains nameless. We learn that she has a “lovely and unusual” name, and that it was her father who gave it her. The only other identity she has, was also bestowed by a man—she is a wife, she is Mrs. de Winter.
That a narrator perceived as a heroine should be nameless was a source of continuing fascination to du Maurier’s readers. It also fascinated other writers—Agatha Christie corresponded with du Maurier on the subject—and throughout her life, du Maurier was plagued with letters seeking an explanation. Her stock reply was that she found the device technically interesting. The question is not a trivial one, for it takes us straight to the core of Rebecca—and that may well be the reason why du Maurier, a secretive woman and a secretive artist, avoided answering it.
The unnamed narrator of Rebecca begins her story with a dream, with a first sentence that has become famous: Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again. Almost all the brief first chapter is devoted to that dream, describing her progress up the long winding drive, by moonlight, to Manderley itself. The imagery, of entwined trees and encroaching undergrowth that have “mated,” is sexual; the style is slightly scented and overwritten, that of a schoolgirl, trying to speak poetically, and struggling to impress. Moving forward, with a sense of anticipation and revulsion, the dream narrator first sees Manderley as intact; then, coming closer, she realizes her mistake: she is looking at a ruin, at the shell of a once-great house. With this realization—one of key importance to the novel—the dreamer wakes. She confirms that Manderley has indeed been destroyed, and that the dream was a true one. （“Dreaming true” was a term invented by du Maurier’s grandfather, George du Maurier, author of Trilby; it was a concept that fascinated her all her life. Daphne was aware of Freud and Jung: George was not.）
Du Maurier’s narrator can now begin to tell her story—and she does so in a cyclic way; she begins at the end, with herself and her husband Maxim de Winter living in exile in Europe, for reasons that as yet are unclear. Their activities, as they move from hotel to hotel, sound like those of two elderly ex-pats. They follow the cricket, take afternoon tea; the wife selects dull newspaper articles to read to her husband, since—again for reasons unexplained—both find dullness reassuring and safe. The narrator describes a routine of stifling monotony, but does so in terms that are relentlessly optimistic and trite. This may be a marriage but it is one carefully devoid of passion, and apparently without sex.
It therefore comes as a considerable shock to the reader to discover, as the story loops back to this couple’s first meeting, that this narrator is young. The lapse of time between this present and the past she will now describe is unspecified, but it is clearly only a few years. This makes de Winter a man of about fifty, and his childless friendless wife around twenty-five. Their life in Europe is never mentioned again, but this is the “grim ending” to which du Maurier referred. It is easy to forget, as the drama unfolds, that the aftermath for the de Winters will be exile, ennui, and putting a brave face on a living death.