Daphne DuMaurier: Rebecca

One Word Summary: Haunting
More Words: When Will asked if Alfred Hithcock's film was based on this novel my vision automatically shifted to a black and white film, so silent you can hear clocks ticking, and short uncomfortable dialogue with the nameless girl painfully repeating the same answer to different questions. I started holding my breath for the terrible thing to come at last. Before that I felt impatient with the nameless girl. I wanted her to be better than Rebecca after all, eventhough there's no competing with Rebecca. I felt frustrated and jealous for the nameless girl. Really, DuMaurier is a genius with words, she can capture so much human feeling with them. I like how her words pulse through the text ("We would not talk of Manderly, I would not tell my dream. For Manderely was our no longer. Manderly was no more.") There was one passage in chapter two that made me think "this will be quite different from Jane Eyre". I really liked reading this book, although I may never read it again.

Quotes:

The devil does not ride us anymore. We have come through our crisis, not unscathed of course. His premonition of disaster was correct from the beginning; and like a ranting actress in an indifferent play, I might say that we have paid for freedom. But I have had enough melodrama in this life, and would willingly give my five senses if they could ensure us our present peace and security. Happiness is not a possession to be prized, it is a quality of thought, a state of mind. Of course we have our moments of depression; but there are other moments too, when time, umeasured by the clock, runs on into eternity and,catching his smile, I know we are together, we march in unison, no clash of thougth or of opinion makes a barrier between us.
We have no secrets now from one another. All things are shared. Granted that our little hotel is dull, and the food indifferent, and that day after day dawns very much the same, yet we would not have it otherwise.

This passage reminds me very much of the famous passage in Jane Eyre near the end where she says,

I have now been married ten years. I know what it is to live entirely for and with what I love best on earth. I hold myself supremely blest - blest beyond what language can express; because I am my husband's life as fully as he is mine. No woman was ever nearer to her mate than I am: ever more absolutely bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. I know no weariness of my Edward's society: he knows none of mine, any more than we each do of the pulation of the heart that beats in our separate bosoms; consequently, we are ever together. To be together is for us to be at once as free as in solitude, as gay as in company. We talk, I believe, all day long: to talk to each other is but a more animated and an audible thinking. All my confidence is bestowed on him, all his confidence is devoted to me; we are precisely suited in character - perfect concord is the result.

Study Questions:

1. Who is the nameless girl? A natural extension of her husband, a foil for Rebecca, a sort of Everyman, a ghost?
2. Does Maxim love the nameless girl? Why does he love Manderly? Why can't he forget Rebecca?
3. How do societal conventions help the plot, and inhibit the characters?
4. What words and phrases does DuMaurier use to create such on ominous tone?
5. Are the nameless girl's imagining more real than what's actually happening?
6. When does the nameless girl star refering to herself and Maxim as we?
7. Do they have children?