Horror or Not: Daphne du Maurier and Rebecca
Women in Horror Month is over now, and after some consideration, I’ve decided to write a bit about a book I didn’t discuss during the month proper, and why it was I didn’t write about it. Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca is often mentioned as a classic horror novel and an important part of the Gothic tradition. I certainly can see it as a Gothic. But I wouldn’t describe it as horror, not exactly. I’d like to try to consider it here, and see if I can figure out just what it is.
To start with, I can say that Rebecca, published in 1938, was du Maurier’s fifth novel. It became a massive popular success, though critical reception was more mixed. Du Maurier adapted the book for the stage two years later, the same year Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptation — Hitchcock’s first movie for an American studio — reached screens. Du Maurier herself was thoroughly part of the English literary world; parodied by P.G. Wodehouse, daughter of a famous actor, cousin to the boys who inspired Peter Pan.
The book itself is told in retrospective, as a recollection of the unnamed first-person narrator, who as a young woman in her early twenties falls in love with an older man, Maxim de Winter, marries him, and becomes mistress of his great house called Manderley. But the new Mrs. de Winter finds herself competing against the memories of her husband’s first wife, the eponymous Rebecca. Manderley’s housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, idolised the dead woman. As the book moves along, we come to find out more about Rebecca and slowly come to understand not only the truth of her relationship with Maxim, but who Rebecca de Winter really was.
