Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier
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Web ID: 156236003 reviews
second wife Gothic
In Rebecca, du Maurier uses a very Gothic Cornwall setting (as did Conan Doyle, Stoker & Hardy before her). This is a love story in which it is the house that is the love object rather than Max, who is, in the preface, far from seeming to be a catch since a power reversal appears to have occurred in the marriage. The Gothic tone unfurls slowly and the novel begins as a comedy of manners and a straightforward romance (but then, so does Jane Eyre, a novel to which this other haunted-second-wife story seems indebted.) Time is somewhat unmoored in the action - Max is 42 in Monte Carlo but 46 on arrival at Manderley, so four months becomes 4 years - though the line “Maroons had sounded in London” at the beginning of chapter 21 suggests Armistice. The vocabulary of “bad breeding” and miscegenation looms in the preface, which begs the question as to which marriage is “miscegenation.” The unnamed narrator’s social class is vague, and it is striking that the novel’s title is not HER name, as would be conventional, but that of someone who is dead from the outset of the action, as though the new wife has been subsumed by the more dominant dead woman, whose scent hauntingly lingers on her old clothes. (Indeed, no “unimportant” female- either animal or human - has a name in this novel. We get the “bishops Wife,” “Jasper [the dog]’s mother”, and “housemaids”!) The burning question at the close is: has the narrator exorcised Rebecca OR has she become possessed by her?
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Literary Gothic Noir
Like some of the best gothic romances, Rebecca provides just the barest hint of the supernatural—oh, there’s definitely something haunting about this intriguing tale, but the ghosts are all quite possibly a product of the unnamed narrator’s overactive and sometimes paranoiac mind. The novel itself and its cinematic adaptations are quite well-known. I enjoy dark narratives filled with suspense and ambiguity, so this book was right up my alley. If you enjoy such stories, too, give it a read.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com
Creeps into your Mind
I loved this book. With that said, it is a slow burn. Even though it moves slower at the beginning, part of the beauty of this book is all the interesting descriptions of Manderley. It puts you in the mood/ space to be told this dark tale. The plot itself is fun and picks up momentum the more you read. The book leaves you thinking about all the character's point of views and the narrator's perspective.
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Customer review from barnesandnoble.com