In this way, and very abruptly, the novel ends; it has come full circle. It is melodramatic in places, of course （even Jane Eyre cannot entirely escape that criticism）。 But it is remarkable, given the plot, how consistently and skillfully du Maurier skirts melodrama. What interested her as a novelist can be summarized by the distinction that Charlotte Bront? drew between writing that was “real” and writing that was “true.” There is realism in Rebecca; the mores, snobberies and speech patterns of the class and era du Maurier is describing are, for instance, sharply observed. The elements that give Rebecca its force, however, owe nothing to realism: its power lies in its imagery, its symmetry, its poetry—and that poetry is intensely female. The plot of Rebecca may be as unlikely as the plot of a fairytale, but that does not alter the novel’s mythic resonance and psychological truth.
One way of reading Rebecca is as a convention-ridden love story, in which the good woman triumphs over the bad by winning a man’s love: this version is the one our nameless narrator would have us accept, and it is undoubtedly the reading that made Rebecca a bestseller. Another approach is to see the novel’s imaginative links, not just with the work of earlier female novelists, such as Charlotte Bront?, but also with later work, in particular Sylvia Plath’s late poems. Rebecca is narrated by a masochistic woman, who is desperate for the validation provided by a man’s love—a woman seeking an authoritarian father surrogate, or, as Plath expressed it, a “man in black with a Meinkampf look.” Her search for this man involves both self-effacement and abnegation, as it does for any woman who “adores a Fascist.” She duly finds her ideal in de Winter, whose last name indicates sterility, coldness, an unfruitful season, and whose Christian name—Maxim, as she always abbreviates it—is a synonym for a rule of conduct. It is also the name of a weapon—a machine gun.
This woman, not surprisingly, views Rebecca as a rival; what she refuses to perceive is that Rebecca is also her twin, and ultimately her alter ego. The two wives have actually suffered very similar fates. Both were taken as brides to Manderley—a male preserve, as the first syllable of its name （like Menabilly’s） suggests. Both were marginalized within the confines of the house—Rebecca in the west wing with its view of her symbol, the sea, and the second wife in the east wing, overlooking the confines of a rose garden. The difference between them lies in their reactions: the second wife gladly submits, allowing her identity to be determined by her husband, and by the class attitudes and value systems he embraces. Rebecca has dared to be an unchaste wife; she has broken the “rules of conduct” Maxim lives by. Her ultimate sin is to threaten the system of primogeniture. That sin, undermining the entire patriarchal edifice that is Manderley, cannot be forgiven—and Rebecca dies for it.
The response of Mrs. de Winter to Rebecca’s rebellion is deeply ambivalent, and it is this ambivalence that fuels the novel. Her apparent reaction is that of a conventional woman of her time: abhorrence. Yet there are indications throughout the text that the second Mrs. de Winter would like to emulate Rebecca, even to be her—and these continue, even when she knows Rebecca has broken every male-determined rule as to a woman’s behavior. Although Rebecca is dead, is never seen, and has in theory been forever silenced, Mrs. de Winter’s obsession with her insures that Rebecca will triumph over anonymity and effacement. Even a bullet through the heart, and burial at sea cannot quench her vampiric power. Again, one is reminded of Plath’s embodiment of amoral, anarchic female force—I rise with my red hair/And I eat men like air. Within the conventions of a story, Rebecca’s pallid successor is able to do what she dare not do in life: celebrate her predecessor.
She does so with cunning and with power （du Maurier, of course, is pulling the strings here）。 Long after the book has been closed, which character reverberates in the memory? Rebecca. And which of the two women are readers drawn to, which of these polar opposites fascinates and attracts? Rebecca, again, I would say—certainly for modern readers. But I think that was probably true for readers in 1938 too: thanks to the cunning of du Maurier’s narrative structure, they were able to condemn Rebecca （a promiscuous woman—what other option did they have?）; but secretly respond to the anger, rebellion and vengefulness she embodies.
There is a final twist to Rebecca and it is a covert one. Maxim de Winter kills not one wife, but two. He murders the first with a gun, and the second by slower, more insidious methods. The second Mrs. de Winter’s fate, for which she prepares herself throughout the novel, is to be subsumed by her husband. Following him into that hellish exile glimpsed in the opening chapters, she becomes again what she was when she first met him—the paid companion to a petty tyrant. For humoring his whims, and obeying his every behest, her recompense is not money, but “love”—and the cost is her identity. This is the final bitter irony of this novel, and the last of its many reversals. A story that ostensibly attempts to bury Rebecca, in fact resurrects her, and renders her unforgettable, whereas Mrs. de Winter, our pale, ghostly and timid narrator, fades from our view; it is she who is the dying woman in this novel. By extension—and this is daring on du Maurier’s part—her obedient beliefs, her unquestioning subservience to the male, are dying with her.