Daphne du Maurier creates a seemingly quiet countryside in the heart of England in 1940 in her book Rebecca. Though the world seems tranquil, in reality, it is chaotic under the surface as it follows the main protagonist who is never named. She soon falls in love with the new widower and billionaire Maxim De Winter. She struggles to find out why Maxim continues to act strange and why Mrs.Danvers, the housemaid, continues to try to push her over the edge. During the fight with Mrs.De Winter’s inner emotions and outer conflicts she stays strong and her “love” persists but will it last to the conclusion of the novel.
Many of the characters in Rebecca are forced to be civil to each other, so many of the backstabbing and passive-aggressive comments have to be subtle. This is true also concerning the body language and mannerisms of each character. This creates an amusing act between characters trying to figure out the true meaning of their acquaintance’s words. Take Maxim’s sister Beatrice. Beatrice and her husband Giles had come to meet her new sister in-law. Maxim warns our protagonist that Beatrice is very outright with her thoughts and will make it known if she likes or dislikes her, which makes her remarks even more unsettling. Amid Beatrice’s visit to Manderley, the residence of the De Winters, she makes it obvious that she wishes she had lived there instead of her new sister in-law but the most significant blow Beatrice takes is when she is leaving. She continues to tell Mrs.De Winter that she’s “not a bit what she expected”(26%). These words, though few, resonated with the new bride. Like she had done with other characters in the book she analyzed Beatrice’s words. Was Beatrice pleasantly surprised with the personality of Maxim’s new wife? Was Mrs.De Winter exactly what Beatrice wanted in a sister or was she dissatisfied with the results? Mrs.De Winter feared that Beatrice was comparing her to the late wife of her husband. She knew that she could never live up to the great departed Rebecca. Following this incident Mrs.De Winter finds herself in her predecessor's room. The room had been off limits by orders of Mrs.Danvers. When Mrs.Danvers finds her in this room, she offers to show her the room. This sounds innocent enough but her motives were not pure. Mrs.Danvers takes Mrs.De Winter round the room revealing the significance of each item in the room as “her fingers tighten on [ Mrs.De Winter's] arm...smiling all the while, watching [her] eyes.”(41%) In this scene Mrs.Danvers is trying to be as condescending as possible. Obviously she cannot outright voice her feelings to the mistress of the household, so she has to mentally torture her by using the calming voice shadowed by a fake smile.This frightens Mrs.De Winter to the point where Mrs.De Winter wants to leave the room but physically can’t because Mrs.Danvers was gripping to her arm, even to the point where “[Mrs.De Winter’s] arm was bruised and numb from the pressure of her fingers”(42%) The dialog in this scene builds an abundance of suspense from a relatively boring sounding scene. The tensions in the scene build up to the ending of the chapter where Mrs.Danvers is urging Mrs.De Winter to jump from the balcony to her death, thus ridding the sad replacement for Rebecca from this world.
Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier could be be regarded as an amazing, well written, and intriguing work of art, or waste of time and energy that seems unrealistic and impractical. Either way, the commentary on the contrast amid real life and illusion, which is so apparent in today’s society, is something that cannot be forgotten because, as represented in the book, not everything is what it seems.