This blog post is a personal reflection and analysis of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, viewed through a feminist lens that considers both historical and modern perspectives. Literature is deeply subjective, and interpretations may vary. My thoughts on the characters and themes are based on my own reading and experiences, and I welcome respectful discussion from different viewpoints. This is not a definitive analysis but rather an exploration of the novelโs impact from my perspective. Any graphics you see were created on Canva Pro by yours truly. This post contains spoilers for major plot points in the book. Reader discretion is advised.
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It all started with just a name. Rebecca. The way the word itself almost explodes from your lips when you say it, charging into the conversation with reckless abandon. I had seen the Netflix adaptation two times before I had even thought to read the book, though my mom loved to chime in with, “Oh, that’s a good one” every time I mentioned it. When my friend, Madeline, proposed revamping our friend group book club with Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca, I immediately knew I was on board. If you want to read what Madeline said about this novel, check out her blog post on Madeline Daily, where she gives the inside scoop on the silliest of things mentioned in our book club meetings while offering a general overview of the book itself.
The story follows a young and naive narrator as she goes from working as a companion to the obnoxious Mrs. Van Hopper, only to be swept away into marriage with the dashing yet haunted and mysterious Maxim De Winter. We follow (our book club calls her NoName) the narrator as she moves into the famous estate, Manderley, where she starts to feel the remnants of what was before her creep into her psyche and unravel her deepest insecurities as whispers surrounding Maxim’s late wife, Rebecca, bubble to the surface. While Du Maurier wrote Rebecca in 1933, it explores power, gender, and identity through the lens of its female characters in today’s modern world. I love to look at stories such as this one with curiosity about what they are trying to say about women’s role in society, how they are expected to behave, and how these themes would hold up if the story were told today.
Gothic Fiction as a Genre
As far as Gothic Fiction goes, Rebecca has all of the necessary elements that keep it clasped securely in the genre: the story contains a large and eerie estate (Manderley), psychological warfare (our book club calls her Dirty Danvers), a haunting past along with the fear of female power (Rebecca), a brooding, moody, and mysterious husband (Maxim, whom I lovingly refer to as Mr. De Winter), and a destructive ending with Manderley going up in flames as the final thing we learn in the story. On the surface, Gothic fiction seems to be a genre misunderstood by the masses who only view stories through the modern and literal lens. Be on the lookout for a future blog post about this topic. In this post, I will go more in-depth on how these elements of gothic fiction act as a vehicle for exploring womenโs fears and anxieties, particularly around marriage, power, and identity. I want to examine how gender roles shape the novelโs characters, balancing a historical and modern feminist lens. With all this being said, it begs the question: Does Du Maurier’s Rebecca expose the harmful effects of patriarchal standards, or does it reinforce them?
The Unnamed Narrator: The โIdealโ Woman? What’s In a Name? Because It Is My Name.
NoName is the vehicle we take as readers in the fast lane to crashing out. Although this character does have a name, we, as readers, never learn what that name is. One of the first discussions we had as a book club was the obvious, “Why do we think that is?” which is a feast of a question. Why is it that this book is told from one character’s perspective, but all we seem to hear about is someone who doesn’t even breathe in the reality of its pages? Rebecca runs this show, and NoName feels the pressure of that insurmountable power when she learns who Maxim De Winter is. As readers, we are forced to carry the narrator’s burden of unadulterated fear as she burns what she thinks represents the claw marks Rebecca has on everyone she has ever come in contact with. Ripping the page of Rebecca’s signature from the poem book wasn’t enough. She had to destroy it. Talk about foreshadowing!
This unnamed narrator has all the characteristics needed to be what people who hate women would describe as “The Perfect Woman,” which extends to being what could be perceived as “The Perfect Wife.” The traits I would connect with those phrases are insecure, submissive, obedient, desperate for validation from her husband and anyone connected to him, and constantly in the dark about crucial details that affect her significantly since it’s not in her character to push back against her husband. Noname loses all of who she is once she gets to Manderley. Her very identity seems to hang in the balance as she constantly loses herself to the twists and turns of her mind. NoName continually flexes her hypervigilance and often confuses the reader when she launches into made-up and hyperrealistic conversations that aren’t even happening. She always assumes the worst about how people perceive her and is very sensitive to how she is seen vs. how Rebecca is, even though the latter no longer walks the Earth… or does she still walk the halls of Manderley?
We see this narrator partake in what is supposed to be viewed as the happiest and best thing that could have ever happened to her: Marriage. But why does this book not end up being a fairytale? We get to see how much this character’s situation defies what women are told will bring them safety and security, and it ends up trapping her in a sort of beautiful hellscape, Manderley, without the autonomy she might have forgotten she needed. Through the modern lens, I think the novel shows us how much a facade marriage can be if you’re only doing it for society’s idealized version of you. It feels good to conform to what other people tell you, and it will make you happy until you wake up in a story that belongs to the gothic fiction genre. Speaking of NAMES, the narrator doesn’t need one once she takes her husband’s, further solidifying her loss of identity and lack of rooted knowledge of self. Reading the book from her perspective is how it feels to drink too many cups of coffee on an empty stomach… it makes your mind sick and your heartbeat an elevated ticking time bomb. So, pretty much every day of my undergrad. My mind can’t stop playing John Proctor’s famous line from Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, “Because it is my name! Because I cannot have another in my life! Because I lie and sign myself to lies! Because I am not worth the dust on the feet of them that hang! How may I live without my name? I have given you my soul; leave me my name!” I pity the narrator for being overshadowed in her own book by a character who defied what the “ideal woman” is supposed to be.
Rebecca: Villain or Victim of Her Own Power?
Of course, you can’t discuss Rebecca without discussing Rebecca. What we know to be true about Reba is that she pushed the limits of what the gothic genre would consider the passive heroine. She was sexually liberated, lustful, bold, and refused to play by the rules set before her by society. If all of this were true, why did many characters speak of her as Christ herself walking the Earth? Of course, once we learn that Maxim hated her after thinking for over half the book that her loss destroyed him, the entire perspective of the narrator shifts from fear to finally some hard-earned determination and resolve from NoName. The more we learn about Rebecca as readers, the more it aligns with how classically the genre punishes female characters who lean into what they would consider a “dangerous woman.” I want to believe that Maxim hated Rebecca because of the risk she posed to what he loved more than anything: Manderley, but what if some of that hatred stemmed from Rebecca’s unwillingness to play the role of a good wife? This makes the novel so brilliant: its ability to make you question who is good and who is bad: it’s all gray to me. Looking at this through a historical lens in which the genre plays a role, I will always appreciate the extra calories my brain burns by constantly being made uncomfortable by not seeing these characters in black and white terms. You have to think a little deeper than that.
An important question to consider is this: was Rebecca the villain? She was dead the whole book, so it would be an interesting stance to say yes. Was she a villain, or did she choose to play by her own rules and was punished for it? In a world where women are punished daily for not assuming their expected roles (listed above when describing NoName), how were we expected to view her as anything other than worthy of being killed? This shows us the double standard that society has in place: men with power and control are celebrated. Where was Rebecca’s celebration? At the bottom of the sea, it would seem. I will admit I felt the same relief our narrator felt when Maxim confessed that he killed her. It’s wild to me that even as a reader, I felt the weight of Rebecca’s lasting influence that stained the carpets of Manderley and its residents. I badly wanted our narrator to have a fair chance at happiness, but it didn’t seem possible, with Rebecca haunting the narrative. It’s so telling of the genre to see how even the ghost of a person can haunt and impact the living, which reminds us that these expectations women feel held to follow us and persist beyond death.
Mrs. Danvers: Internalized Misogyny in Action
Oh, Dirty Danvers. You are a tricky one, aren’t you? I won’t pretend to show any ounce of sentiment for this character since I love the narrator, and I can’t accept the role she played in tormenting NoName, but I will concede that she intrigued me. Like many Disney films, it’s true that gothic fiction uses older women to portray sinister roles who often antagonize the innocents in the story. Danny is interesting because she is obsessed with Rebecca, as many of the characters are in their own ways. Still, she chooses to use what she loves so much about Rebecca (power, dominance, sadistic pleasure in the pain of others) to uphold what ends up being used against Rebecca in the end. Mrs. Danvers is a prime example of how women are often the enforcers of patriarchal oppression.
I loved when we got to the unfiltered version of Danny. She very clearly loves Rebecca and has been with her for much of Rebecca’s life. Some members of the book club believe Mrs. Danvers had romantic feelings for Rebecca, and while that can’t be ruled out, I’m interested in how much it killed Danny to think she knew Rebecca, only to find out there were things she kept from even Danny herself. When Mrs. Danvers tells us how much Rebecca hated men, I wonder how much Rebecca might have been a vessel for people to see what they wanted. Through a feminist lens, Dirty Danvers represents how easily women are pitted against each other. When there were so many opportunities for the narrator and Danny to connect, she responded with vitriol instead. When there is internalized misogyny present, women will constantly challenge each other rather than the very systems that keep them oppressed. Still, Dirty D made Rebecca seem like a bad bitch, a baddie, if you will (through the modern lens, this is a compliment). Some may disagree, but that’s why I’m writing this blog post, and you’re just reading it.
The Role of Manderley: The Symbol of Domestic Entrapment
As obnoxious as Mrs. Van Hopper was, she is like anyone who doesn’t live under a rock: You can’t bring up Maxim De Winter without bringing up his rather famous home. Manderley was well known by every character we met in this book, including our narrator, who starts as an outsider. We learn she even bought a postcard of the famous estate when she was a young girl, reminding us that the largeness of Manderley is so much more than its literal size. In other gothic stories like Wuthering Heights and Dracula’s Castle, we see that these large mansions can be used as symbols of confinement. In the book’s very first lines, Manderley is mentioned as the narrator visits in her dream. What starts as a dream quickly turns into something that resembles a cage. Once our narrator gets to Manderley in our story, we learn quickly as readers that there are many rituals and routines in place, which NoName is kept in the dark about. What starts with being made aware that the lady of the house usually begins in the morning room turns into more of an awareness that everything in Manderley is there because Rebecca wanted it there. We feel Rebecca in every dark shadow of Manderley, whether it be the furniture and decor, the very sauce she used to choose for the meats, or even the loyalty of the staff. In so many ways, Rebecca owns Manderley, even though it technically has always belonged to Maxim and his family.
When looking at Manderley through a feminist lens, we see how the home, which has always been the domain of a woman, becomes a place of not only terror to a psychological degree but a place where we see our narrator almost convinced to end her own life. Mrs. Danvers keeps Rebecca’s room exactly how it was the night Rebecca died, showing us that Manderley will not progress with the times but stay the same and conserve. What should have been our narrator’s sanctuary became a place of confinement. The largeness of this place is yet another thing that makes NoName feel very small and out of place. It is a constant reminder that she doesn’t fit in and furthers her feelings of inferiority and insecurity. The ending of our book, which tells us how Manderley ceases to be, is also very on par with the gothic horror genre tropes. Since Manderley is Rebecca, just like the poem book page at the novel’s beginning, it must be destroyed for the heroine to be truly free.
What Rebecca Teaches Us About Feminism Today
No matter the lens through which you view this novel, it’s clear that historically, Rebecca reflects 20th-century anxieties about womenโs roles in marriage and society. Today, it still resonates because women continue to navigate issues of identity, power, and autonomy. The gothic genre amplifies all of these themes through ghostly presences and psychological terror. We get the opportunity to see a nameless character who cannot be grounded in the truth, whether that’s due to her youth or the omission of the truth by her husband and his staff. There are so many things to be learned about the expectations women face, historically and in the modern day, and what it looks like when women push against those ideals. It exposes the double standards involved when we look at power dynamics in gender and the harmful effects of navigating life without truly knowing who you are. I love the unnamed narrator because she reminds me of myself… I thought that was pathetic until the women in our book club told me they felt the same exact way.
Ultimately, it thrills me to see how much Rebecca could use her power, even in death, to win in the end. My friend Jacq said it best: Rebecca won. She got what she wanted- she was able to drive Mr. De Winter away from his new wife by forcing him to stay in utter torment by the crime she drove him to commit. She was able to die, which she was going to do anyway due to her terminal illness, with a plot set in stone that affected everyone she left behind (especially Maxim). Rebecca made it impossible for Manderley to exist without her, and in the end, the destruction of the large estate was the only way to gain freedom from her. I get it that I’m supposed to see her as “bad,” but sometimes I can’t help but say, “good for her.”
How has Rebecca influenced your own thoughts on gender and power? Do you see Rebecca as a feminist icon or a cautionary tale?
Possible Future Reads
Paperback Cowgirl’s next read: The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
In one of the most important and beloved Latin American works of the twentieth century, Isabel Allende weaves a luminous tapestry of three generations of the Trueba family, revealing both triumphs and tragedies. Here is patriarch Esteban, whose wild desires and political machinations are tempered only by his love for his ethereal wife, Clara, a woman touched by an otherworldly hand. Their daughter, Blanca, whose forbidden love for a man Esteban has deemed unworthy infuriates her father, yet will produce his greatest joy: his granddaughter Alba, a beautiful, ambitious girl who will lead the family and their country into a revolutionary future.
The House of the Spirits is an enthralling saga that spans decades and lives, twining the personal and the political into an epic novel of love, magic, and fate.
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