Rebecca

Rebecca

When first reading the book Rebecca, I was attracted by the intriguing and mysterious spot. The story opens with the narrator’s elusive memories. The narrator ,as an important character in the book , whose name is never revealed. Rebecca, the title character, is dead before the novel opens. Her presence, however, pervades the entire story though she never really appears in the novel. What is the secret of Manderley? What’s the story people never know about Rebecca? What’s the real reason makes Maxim deeply in gloom? All these enigmars make me think that I should "expect the unexpected" .

The narrator, a shy, naÐ"Їve girl low in confidence and much given to romantic daydreams, is staying in a Monte Carlo hotel where she is acting as paid companion to the appalling, social-climbing Mrs Van Hopper. Happening to know the enigmatic Maxim de Winter, owner of Manderley and recent widower of the eponymous Rebecca, who died in a sailing accident,she falls madly in love with him. Just before her departure for New York with her companion,Maxim asks her to marry him. Once over a shock,she happily agrees.

However, her romantic fantasies about life at Manderley with Maxim are rapidly disappointed when she first arrives at the house as a bride of seven weeks.She finds at Manderley in many ways unwelcoming and intimidating, particularly the terrifying housekeeper, Mrs Danvers, “someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheek-bones and great, hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment white, set on a skeleton's frame". And the real torment for her is that she can’t escape Rebecca’s vital shadow. Everyone thinks that Rebecca was so nice a lady, and her death was so sorrowful.As the second wife of Maxim ,she thinks she can never fill her place .She even supposes that Maxim never forgets Rebecca and why he married herself is that he knew she was dull and gauche and inexperienced ,but not he loved her.

As the novel progresses, Rebecca's underlying evil and the previous events at Manderley become more and more apparent.The climax is the ball.After Rebecca’s sailing boat and her body were discovered ,Maxim tells the narrator all the profligate life of Rebecca and the process he killed her.She suddenly realizes that Maxim never loves Rebecca,in fact he hates her. She decides to help her husband to get rid of Rebecca’s ruling. Here we think we can discover the inside story, but we can’t - until we finish the last page of the book. According to Dr.Baker, Rebecca was suffering from terminal inoperable cancer.She knew that she had little time left before her death. Her last words hinted that she was determined to end her life immediately to spare herself from an unglamorous death. Eventually the truth about Rebecca and Maxim is revealed.She lied Maxim and wanted him to kill her ,so that she can continue to rule everything even though she is dead.

All above is the whole suspensive story.

Daphne Du Maurier ,the writer of Rebecca,excels