Rebecca

When Ladies of Horror Fiction announced a Rebecca read a long I was excited to participate. I remember that this Daphne du Maurier's  book was one of my favorite books as a teenager. I wondered if I took the chance to closely re-read it if I would love it just as much as an adult in my late thirties as I did when I first discover this book as a teenager. It was right up there with Jane Eyre as some of my favorite classics that I was exposed to in my adolescence.

Reader, I had a difficult time putting Rebecca down! I read it from beginning to end without starting a new book. But when I tweeted my enthusiasm to Ladies of Horror Fiction they mentioned that many people were having a difficult time getting through the book.

This book is a slow burn. The part of myself that I need to divulge in my perspective on the book is that I am the type of reader that loves escapist fiction. I do not own a house and becoming a homeowner is not a goal of mine. So the concept of the second Mrs. DeWinter running a wealthy household is a world that I will never even consider. And then the gorgeous descriptions that du Maurier utilizes makes this quite an enjoyable read. Then having the twist of the household staff not behaving in a trustworthy manner brings an element of terror to this otherwise idyllic setting.

Then there is the entire issue of the second Mrs. DeWinter trying to make sense of her place in the house and in her marriage knowing that everyone is comparing her to Rebecca, her husband Maxim’s first wife.  By everyone else’s standard she is not living up to what Rebecca was like…

(WARNING if you haven’t read the entire book, the rest of this blog post contains spoilers)

…everyone except Maxim. He confesses to his new wife when Rebecca’s boat was found that he killed Rebecca. He confesses that his marriage to Rebecca was mostly for show and that Rebecca was not really as sweet as everyone else perceived her. It was all an act. This somehow made his gesture of shooting Rebecca to be okay in the eyes of the second Mrs. DeWinter.

I have to confess that reading this at a point in my life where I know a lot more about feminism that I actually did find this problematic.  Somehow Rebecca being portrayed as being one way in public and another way in marriage made it okay for her husband to murder him. It even begs the question of if he felt the need to paint Rebecca in a negative light in order to justify his actions.

Yet the excitement of this discovery makes the second Mrs. DeWinter feel even more attracted to him. That his love for her is authentic in contrast to what he felt for his first wife.

However, I had a moment of realizing that this was also written in a different kind of era. An era where divorce did occur but with a higher level of stigma than it does today.  And when I started to look more critically in light of that particular era I felt like the book had its own feminist ring to it.  I felt like the act of Maxim’s second marriage that is based on passion versus his first marriage that is based more on the image he feels like he is supposed to portray to the rest of the world. 

Frankly having this book come out of a completely different era is part of what made this such a cozy, compelling read for me. However it should not negate the popularity it enjoyed in its own time either as it won the National Book Award in 1938. But it is still much loved today as it placed as #25 on The Great American Read. I know I read this book from a completely different type of perspective now than I did when I first discovered it at age 14. Not everything I loved reading as a teenager stood the test of having more maturity and education, however this book is definitely a gem as I still LOVED reading it now.