Chantel's Reviews > Rebecca

** spoiler alert ** It is important to note that the majority of the themes explored in this book deal with sensitive subject matters. My review, therefore, touches on these topics as well. Many people might find the subject matters of the book as well as those detailed in my review overwhelming. I would suggest you steer clear of both if this is the case. Please note that from this point forward I will be writing about matters which contain reflections on abuse, suicide, terminal illness, mental disability, gender equality, murder, sexual promiscuity, & others.

What are the markers of a good book? How do our subjective interpretations of the banal & bland, transform a shallow spike of intrigue into the famously acclaimed classic by du Maurier—one that is referenced & recreated into plots newly published for our consumption? I cannot begin to know. I enjoy classic works of literature. I appreciate their presentation, the writing style & the lengths taken by the authors to ensure that a great story is written. However, I was immediately dumbfounded upon beginning this book. This is an incredibly trite narrative given to the reader by a stained copper penny of a person left too long in the rain.

The narrator of this story begins recounting her tale of love & longing to the reader sometime in the future when she & her husband, Maximilian de Winter, spend their days languidly soaking up the sun in some foreign hotel. She had dreamt of Manderley, her husband’s family estate, & finds herself drifting into the recesses of long-kept memories of her time there. Given this revelation that both partners—the narrator & her husband—are alive & well, much of the suspense one might assume in this book is dashed, we already know the end so what is the reason for reading this story?

The format undertaken by older publications is the aspect I appreciate the most. I enjoy reading a story that is delectably written; a craft put forth into prose that sweeps me away, unawares, to the location of the story & nestles me in the corner of the room with the characters chatting away as my eyes absorb every word on the page. Yet, for all the romanticizing notions put forth in this book, I am left utterly devoid of feeling.

The narrator who is without a name begins her recollections at the ripe old age of 22. She is employed as something of a professional companion & personal assistant to an elderly woman who is without etiquette & so, our narrator finds herself consistently blushing past recourse due to the actions of her employer, tying her into the social blasphemes. One can certainly relate to being in the presence of someone who is without worry regarding their tone or unending questions & therefore I found this particular section of the story interesting to read. The reader is truly given the bare minimum in terms of character profiles; the emphasis is rather on the assumedly ravishing foreign land & the warm sunshine that sheds new light on the opportunities that life may grant the characters.

A lack of character profile did work positively in the case of this story because I do not think I would have cared to know more than I was told. The narrator is naive, ignorant, rather dumb, dull & dreary for the bulk of the entire book & yet, I could not help but believe that there was truly nothing more to her & so did not find myself longing for anything further than what was being shown. The same could be said for Maxim. Who is this man really? We know so many surface-level assumptions about his character from the point of view of the narrator yet, never once during the entire story was there an instant where I felt that the information which was being revealed rang true. I do not believe that the narrator knew her husband more nor less after the revelation that he killed Rebecca.

I believed none of anything, to be honest. I don’t believe that Mrs. Danvers was an evil witch of a person throughout the entire novel because the reader is given only what the narrator sees & as someone who is familiar with grief, I couldn’t help but feel a tinge of pain towards Mrs. Danvers’ character. This story takes place in the English countryside—a part of the world known for its lack of sentimentality—with dreary weather in comparison to the French seaside in which the de Winters fell in love roaming the roadsides for hours every day. How might our silly-minded little narrator perceive Mrs. Danvers more than the way that she did; as a skeleton-skinned aging woman who held nothing but evil in her heart. This is what I expect from someone who is as dense as the head of a screw.

Perhaps the reader is meant to regard all of what we are told with a grain of salt. Perhaps du Maurier wrote this book, not for the plot itself but to grant the reader an intricate look into the mind of someone who didn’t have one, to begin with. I suppose this is all very mean-spirited of me but, I find it difficult to read books wherein the simplest of tasks could be completed had not the main character been an ignoramus.

The number of times we have to watch this young girl wander around Ben & totally disregard everything he was saying because he was developmentally disabled & she couldn’t think to put two & two together & piece what he was very plainly said, was incredible. I won’t be speaking about the representation of disabilities in this review because this book was published in 1938 & therefore we can all acknowledge that the chances of any of the representation being stellar are zilch. Perhaps what is most ironic of all is the fact that the main character is totally & completely incompetent in the face of everything that is obvious.

How did she never think that Ben, who had been active on the grounds during Rebecca’s tenure at the house, might be talking about her every time they were around the water & boats? What else is the main character actually thinking about safe for Rebecca? That is all she ever talks about, all she ever thinks about; all her actions are predicated on thoughts of what Rebecca’s actions were or would have been. It’s absurd that she never thinks to link any of the situations around her.

Can I appreciate that this story took place during a period in time when women were granted very few freedoms & therefore might it be accurate to assume that the main character had little opportunity to be better than she was? Certainly. Yet, her total lack of depth & suffocating inability as a human being were highlighted in contrast to every other woman around her. Even the Bishop’s wife, whose life consists of playing social cards & being content, had more of a personality than the main character who could not think to converse beyond simple one-word rhetorics.

Once again, I acknowledge that this might have been du Maurier’s intent. Was I meant to feel frustrated towards the main character because she spent all her time in a dreaming state & gave me nothing of value during my reading experience? Was I meant to feel annoyed that the ‘twist’ came suddenly & left just as swiftly because the main character cared only to focus on proclaiming love for a 42-year-old man who hadn’t cared a wink up until that point, to tell his young wife that he loved her or that he was gland she was around? Was I supposed to feel disconnected from a narrative that saw two characters absolutely miss the point—who cares if Rebecca was sleeping with every man in town, it seems Maxim is unable to make profitable relationship decisions given he married the main character after knowing her a handful of days.

Structurally this story could have been shortened a significant amount. The flow was constantly stunted by a repetition of what the reader already knew simply to highlight that the main character had to simmer over the information again. This is certainly an accurate representation of someone who might be experiencing anxiousness however, to read such a long book with such an amplitude of redundant information & scenes; this approach dragged the book into the depths of its peril.

I would have been glad to read this book had I had a bit more patience for the absurdly tiresome experience of the main character; a person who has no sense of self, a person who longs to be loved by a man who could not stand up for himself. There are aspects of this story that I appreciate many people enjoyed & I am certainly able to acknowledge wonderful writing when it is due but the bulk of this plot was totally lost in the absurd number of times the narrator runs away from a situation; please at least eavesdrop so I don’t have to read 400+ pages of useless information, waiting for you to get the confidence to inhabit your home.

An aspect of this book I found interesting for comparison's sake was the general approach to ‘final words’. With everything we now know about circumstances surrounding mental health & the very thin line that some people tread before being led to their end, utilizing a note that Rebecca left for her cousin as evidence that she would not have committed suicide was very sad to read. The story divulges that Rebecca was sick with what we might assume to be cancer & therefore her death in the boat is concluded to have been by suicide. Yet, Favell cannot acknowledge that she would have left him a note if she wanted to end her life. I suppose that if there is one thing to take away from this story it is; the imminent happiness one might see from someone who is suffering from suicidal ideations or, the promise of a later moment either by plans made or notes left, do not indicate that a person is not experiencing mentally taxing thoughts.

This scene should be used as a reference to all to remind ourselves that we truly do not know how another person is feeling. Communicating amongst ourselves is important, none of us are mind readers. Ever so much as we might wish that the promise of another moment together is what we both want, the hardship of living with mental illness—specifically those that consume a person’s thoughts of leaving this life—is never to be downplayed. A smile in one moment does not dictate happiness in the next.

When all is said & done, du Maurier had a story & she told it. She wrote all the characters to be drudgeries & I do applaud her for that because they felt like whom she wanted them to be; her ideas translated onto the page for me, all these years later, to be reading a story that she wrote so long ago. This is not a book I would recommend to others as something they must read while time allows it but, not one I would say is an utter waste of time given the subject matters do spark conversation & where are we without our words—silent, verbal, written & imagined.