Beware! Plot Spoilers Ahead!
My first experience with Gothic literature was Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. The story touched me in such a deep way that I fell in love with the Gothic genre from that point on. The novel was published in 1938. Since then, Hollywood has made two movies based on it: the 1940 film by Alfred Hitchcock and the 2020 remake by Ben Wheatley. Clearly, the story is a fantastic one – full of intrigue, psychological depth and relational complexity, set against a fascinating backdrop: the historical estate of the de Winter family on the coast of England.
On the surface, the story is about a young woman who meets a widower in Monte Carlo. She falls in love with him, marries him, and then moves back to his estate, Manderley. Once she gets there though, she learns that his first wife, Rebecca, was a woman of great beauty, intelligence and skill. Throughout the book, she feels the growing weight of the comparison between herself and Rebecca and what she believes her husband, Maxim, thinks of her in contrast to his perfect first wife. This comparison grows to a paralyzing point until she learns something cataclysmic that changes everything.
This main character, the second Mrs. de Winter, is never named for at least two possible reasons. The first is that we as readers are meant to see ourselves in du Maurier presentation of her. The second is that the protagonist’s self-perception is only in relation to her status as either the companion to Mrs. Van Hopper (at the beginning of the book), or subsequently, as the wife of Maxim de Winter and/or the successor of his first wife, Rebecca.
The Antagonist(s)
What the protagonist wants most is for her husband to love her as she loves him, and to reconcile herself to the idol that she sees in his former wife.
However, there are two principle antagonists in this book who are preventing her this. Both are reflections of the main character’s beliefs about who Rebecca was. The first is an external one: Mrs. Danvers. As Rebecca’s former personal maid, Mrs. Danvers is fiercely loyal to the memory of her mistress. As such, throughout the book, she constantly reiterates and reinforces the protagonist’s opinion that she is inferior to Rebecca.
While Mrs. Danvers plays an antagonistic role, the principle antagonist is actually the second antagonist: the main character’s own imagination, her comparison of herself with Rebecca, and her resulting sense of inferiority.
What is the Theme?
In this work, du Maurier is exploring the idea that comparing ourselves to someone else is paralyzing, and that, in the process, we often reach false conclusions. I love that du Maurier uses a deceased character whom the main character had never met in order to demonstrate this theme. All the new Mrs. de Winter knows of Rebecca is what other people tell her. As the book progresses, readers sense that these perspectives are very one-sided.
For example, many of the characters who tell the protagonist something about Rebecca only knew Rebecca’s public face. They didn’t really know the full person. In contrast, there are some characters like Frank Crawley, the manager/ agent of the estate, who chooses his words very carefully. If you read beneath the surface, it’s clear that Frank did know who Rebecca really was, but he doesn’t want to say anything against her out of his loyalty to Maxim. And also because Frank knows more about Rebecca’s fate than he lets on.
For example, right around the one-third point in the book, Mrs. de Winter comes home from a trip to visit the Bishop’s wife. She sees Frank walking along the drive and gets out of the car to walk with him. When she tells him about her day, Frank makes a very general comment in response and the protagonist rightly assesses that “It was the sort of remark Frank Crawley always made. Safe, conventional, very correct.”
So, she clearly understands that he is very politically careful not to say anything objectionable. Then she begins to prod him with comments about Rebecca’s skill in organizing large balls and parties at the estate. Instead of praising Rebecca, Frank says, “We all of us worked pretty hard.”
Now, given that she’s just identified that Frank is one to only say what’s safe, she should have begun to suspect that his comment actually conceals a very different truth. Instead, she says that, at that point, she began to wonder if Frank had been in love with Rebecca.
That’s a perfect illustration of what du Maurier does with the theme throughout the book. She makes a true statement and then causes the protagonist to misinterpret it so that the theme is exaggerated. This allows the protagonist to build up a false view of Rebecca in her mind: that everyone else must have loved and admired her.
Gothic Tropes
To work with this theme and make it clear, du Maurier uses at least four tropes: fog, an old estate, isolation, and family secrets.
Fog
At the three-quarters point in the book, after the fateful costume party, the protagonist’s false reality – her incorrect conclusions about who Rebecca really was – are at a fever pitch. Simultaneously, a ship runs aground off of the coast of Manderley. When the divers go down to investigate the wreckage, they discover Rebecca’s sunken sailboat with her body in it. Now everyone knows that what they had believed about Rebecca’s death is false. But this discovery also challenges all of the protagonist’s prior assumptions about who Rebecca was as a person. At this point, she’s left with nothing but confusion.
Not surprisingly, du Maurier lays a heavy fog over this entire scene. At the point when the fog rolls in, our protagonist knows that something about her assumptions is wrong and that she can no longer hold on to her false beliefs. But she still doesn’t know the truth. The fog mirrors her confusion. She can’t see through it. She can’t understand what is or isn’t the truth.
Old Estate (Manderley)
The de Winter estate is a large, old home resembling a castle. I mentioned earlier that it mirrors the internal antagonist: the protagonist’s false reality. It’s clear from the point at which Mrs. de Winter first arrives at Manderley that she is uncomfortable there. She feels awkward, out of place, and ill-equipped to manage the estate. At the very beginning, she gets lost and can’t find her way back to the main rooms she knows. She also responds to a phone call by saying that Mrs. de Winter isn’t alive, illustrating the fact that she doesn’t see herself as the true Mrs. de Winter.
Later on, she breaks a little statue that represents, on a micro-scale, the house itself. Instead of owning the accident as her own, she tries to hide it. Why? Because she doesn’t see herself as the mistress of the house. The house and its contents stand apart from her as something that she believes are better than herself. These events exemplify her inability to find her place in the household.
And throughout the book, she is afraid of Rebecca’s former suite of rooms. Even when she finally ventures in, the bedroom is a place of terror and another source of her false reality. Because she sees the room as one of perfect beauty, she sees in it a confirmation of her incorrect belief: that Rebecca was perfect and that she is inferior to her.
In all of these incidents, du Maurier uses the house to parallel the protagonist’s psychological state. In her responses to the house, we see her inferiority complex more clearly.
Isolation
After Maxim and Mrs. de Winter return to Manderley from their honeymoon tour, our protagonist is often alone. It is implied that, since he’s been away, Maxim has business to attend to, business that takes him to London for overnight trips. In reality though, with an estate manager/ agent, Frank Crawley, on site, Maxim should have had more time for his new bride. Instead readers witness incidents such as when, on one occasion, the protagonist comes to breakfast and the men immediately get up and leave, having already eaten. On this occasion, it’s clear that they could have lingered long enough to keep her company.
This is not an accident. Du Maurier did this in order to support the theme. The main character’s problem is one within her own head. It is her isolation from the reality of Maxim’s history and the truth that enables her to generate her incorrect conclusions about Rebecca. Thus, her physical isolation from Maxim – the source of the truth – is an important means of exaggerating and demonstrating that.
Family Secrets
Lastly, what about the family secrets? I’ve already hinted at it. Rebecca was not the woman who the protagonist assumed her to be. And Maxim’s relationship with Rebecca was something entirely different as well.
[I’m trying not to give away everything!]
But the truth about these things had to be a secret. Not just because this is a mystery, but because the theme wouldn’t have worked if the protagonist had known the truth.
If, early in the book, Maxim had confessed to her even part of the truth, she wouldn’t have created the false reality in her mind. She wouldn’t have decided that Rebecca was a perfect woman whom he loved and to whom he constantly compared his new wife. She would have known that that was at least partly false.
By keeping the main character in the dark, by establishing the family secrets, the author is able to work with the theme and show readers how terribly destructive it is to build up a false reality in our heads. One to which no one can measure up, least of all ourselves.
Can you see how these tropes help with the theme? That’s the key in the Gothic genre. It’s not the fog or the secrets that make the book Gothic. These elements are there to support a Gothic theme. It’s the Gothic theme that makes the book Gothic.
Is the Book Gothic?
I think you know the answer to this already, but let’s summarize. First the theme: is it a Gothic one? Well, it deals with something that can’t be reasoned or proved empirically: the idea that we create entire expectations and assumptions in our heads, based on false understandings. The idea that these false conclusions can be paralyzing and can produce a constant state of debilitating terror in our lives is a psychological one. It’s definitely Gothic. In Rebecca, du Maurier takes a psychological – you might even argue spiritual – state and makes it tangible. She brings it to life in the character of Mrs. Danvers, in the character of the house, Manderley, and in the protagonist’s responses to these.
And as we just discussed, all of the Gothic tropes that she uses exist to prove and support this Gothic theme. That’s the essence of Gothic right there.
So yes, I believe that this book is quintessentially Gothic. And I hope you’ll read (or re-read) it and enjoy it as much as I do!
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