Rebecca - Daphne du Maurier

A few months ago, a few of us decided to read Rebecca together.  Katrina has just posted her thoughts on the book, and there may be a few more posts.  Keep your eyes open.

I think this was only the second time I've read Rebecca.  I know I read it as a teenager and that's the only time I see any mention of it in my records.  I've seen the movie several times.

The unnamed narrator is companion to the social climber Mrs. Van Hopper when she meets the older Max de Winter in Monte Carlo.  She and de Winter enjoy each other's company and de Winter asks her to marry him to keep her from leaving with Mrs. Van Hopper.  de Winter makes the very young girl feel grown up and she makes him happy.  His wife, Rebecca, is dead, drowned in a sailing accident a year before.

I felt uneasy about the relationship when de Winter casually proposed during breakfast.  It seemed almost brutal.  He then tells her that there will be no church wedding because, she must remember, he's already had a church wedding.  Well, fine, but how about her?  She is a young girl with dreams and fantasies of romance.  He tells her she can call him Maxim, as his family does, although Rebecca called him the more intimate Max.  He also drives too close to a cliff edge in Monte Carlo and frightens her.  These should have been red flags, but she's young and naive.

Things start to unravel when they return to Manderley.  The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, is just this side of openly hostile to her, undermining her shaky confidence.  The girl starts to become obsessed with the dead Rebecca, the woman with whom she cannot compete, the woman who will never grow old, whose legacy as a beautiful enchantress will endure.  She's convinced that de Winter still loves Rebecca.  She starts acting like a child, accidentally breaking a china cupid (one of Rebecca's wedding gifts) with a painting book (one of her wedding gifts) and then hiding the broken pieces in drawer.  She's easily intimidated by de Winter and Mrs. Danvers and everyone else.

As it turns out, Rebecca is not what some people thought and de Winter is not still in love with her.  It's a completely different situation that becomes apparent toward the end of the book.  When the truth is revealed, it brings the narrator and de Winter together.

I liked this book much better than Jamaica Inn.  Katrina has mentioned that the writing is more polished and I agree.  The characters seem more fully developed and the suspense grows and grows.

Manderley was a real house in Cornwall called Menabilly.  du Maurier rented the house and lived there for more than twenty years.  According to the introduction in the edition I read, du Maurier was 30 when she wrote Rebecca.  Her husband was in the military and they were stationed in Egypt, which du Maurier hated, homesick for Cornwall and disliking the social duties of a military wife.  Jamaica Inn had almost been a bestseller, but she thought Rebecca was gloomy and that the ending was too grim.  Her publishers promoted it as a Gothic novel and it's never been out of print.

Jamaica Inn

Earlier this summer, my friend Katrina, at Pining for the West (http://piningforthewest.co.uk), and I were having a chat about Jamaica Inn by Daphne du Maurier, which we'd both just read.  We've edited our chat a bit, leaving out the parts about what we were each making for dinner that evening, Katrina's new summerhouse, the demolition happening around my house, the weather, gardening (which she does and I don't anymore), and a raft of other things.  We humbly submit our erudite discussion:


Joan Kyler:  
I thought the moors and the weather on the moors were major characters.

Katrina Stephen:  
Yes I know that du Maurier was a big fan of the Brontes and I suppose this is her version of Wuthering Heights, Bodmin Moor being used as a substitute for the Yorkshire Moors.

Joan:  
I didn't know that. I thought the characters and the outcome were predictable. I knew who the good guys and who the bad guys were from the start. And who Mary'd fall for and what she'd do about it. Not much suspense there. But it was a fun read.  I read it back in the 1960s and have my index card from then. I said I didn't think it was one of her best books.

Katrina:  
I would agree with that although I did enjoy it, it is predictable. I first read it around 1970 I think and again in the mid 80s probably, sadly I didn't take any notes but thinking back I thought it was darker and scarier than it actually is.  There was more sexual threat in it than I remembered, but maybe I just didn't pick up on that as a 12 year old.  Uncle Joss saying - I could have had you anytime if I wanted you a few times in the book.

Joan:  
I don't remember if any of that got past me or not. I was into reading modern Gothics then, they're usually fairly sexually charged.  I just checked my file. Although they don't have dates either, I have cards on Rebecca and Frenchman's Creek that, from the handwriting, look like I read them about the same time. I know I've read My Cousin Rachel, but I don't have a card on it.  Mary annoyed me for seeing things so black and white, but she was young, so maybe she could be excused.

Katrina:  
On the other hand she is a stronger female character than her aunt who is I suppose worn down by years of domestic abuse.  Also compared with the second Mrs de Winter in Rebecca Mary seems like a really strong young woman.

Joan:  
That's true. I don't think Mary understood how hard it sometimes is to leave that sort of relationship, as we often wonder why women stay in them. She does seem strong and independent. I understand why she found Jem so attractive.  I wasn't sure she'd leave with him at the end, but I wasn't surprised when she did.

Katrina:  
Yes but maybe it would have been more sensible for her not to go with Jem. It's that dark and dangerous male - I read years ago that it was books like this and Wuthering Heights which were bad for young women, making them think that men who were going to turn out to be bad for them were exciting and so worth the risk. I think it was a 1970s burn your bras feminist who came up with that one.

Joan:  
But I can understand. I wonder what happened to them in the next ten years. He didn't seem to be the type who would stay and she seemed like she might decide to go back to that farm by herself. In the meantime, they probably had some fun.

Katrina:
Yes I don't see it lasting that long but in those days she would probably have had a few kids in tow by the time it all fell apart, she would have been forced to put the kids first.

Joan:
I think I'd like to read Rebecca and My Cousin Rachel sometime before the end of the year. I've seen the movie Rebecca so often, I think I get it confused with reading the book!

Katrina:
Rebecca is one of my comfort books so I'll definitely join you in that. Obviously that's her version of Jane Eyre, I love both of the books.  As you say though it's du Maurier's writing of the place which is such a large part of the book and after reading this one I always wanted to go to Cornwall and loved books with a Cornish setting.  It's quite unusual for an English writer to have the setting basically as important as any of the actual characters.  It's a Scottish/Celtic trait in writing I think.

Joan:
Is it? I have to get on board with more Scottish books. I loved the wildness of the weather and the moors. I don't think we made it quite that far when we were travelling in England. I looked at a map to see if I recognized any towns. We were in Swindon (sp?) and Cheltenham, but don't think they're considered Cornwall, especially Cheltenham.  I was such a little Anglofile in the 1960s, all that British invasion stuff, but I used to go out in storms and thought I was very oddly British doing it!

Katrina:  
You probably were, we often have no option and have to go out in hellish weather otherwise we would be housebound, in the winter anyway.  You would have to have travelled quite a bit further south west to get to Cornwall. Strangely Cornwall feels and looks very much like parts of Scotland, even the old buildings look similar, I suppose it's the stone but also the design of the houses.  It must be a Celtic thing, the Cornish don't regard themselves as English.

Joan:
That's interesting. England's such a small country to have divides like that.

Katrina:  
I think it is because when the Romans invaded the Celts were pushed out to the fringes of the island. The Romans didn't like Celts, I think they were afraid of them.

Katrina:
How about Rebecca what's your opinion of Max de Winter - from memory . Do you see him as 'that murderer' or 'sex on legs' or what?

Joan:
You know, I don't really remember. I don't think I liked him very much, but I don't remember much more than that.

Katrina:  
Well that'll be interesting then, I've always been on the 'sex on legs' side but it is a while since I re-read it, you never know, I might have changed my mind in my old age.

Joan:
I don't think I've read it since the 60s, at least I don't have a card on it. I started to get fairly compulsive about recording my reading after the late 1970s.

Katrina:  
I so wish that I had thought of taking notes on all the books which I've read over they years. Shall we plan to do a Rebecca readalong sometime before the end of the year then?

Reading in June

Two of the books I finished in June were included in a previous post.  I read several books at one time, and sometimes it takes me a while to finish a book, especially a long one, so these aren't necessarily books I started and finished in June.  But I doubt you care about that.

Jamaica Inn  -  Daphne du Maurier

No Man's Nightingale  -  Ruth Rendell

Patricia Brent, Spinster  -  Herbert Jenkins

A Spoonful of Poison  -  M. C. Beaton

The Sign of the Twisted Candles  -  Carolyn Keene

Heaven's Prisoners  -  James Lee Burke

My friend Katrina (http://piningforthewest.co.uk) and I decided we would read Jamaica Inn together.  Not page by page together, but during the same month.  I'm not sure how we plan to discuss it, so I'll just say that I enjoyed it but it was predictable.  I first read this book in the 1960s, during my Gothic period.  Even then, though, my index card says that I didn't think it was one of du Maurier's best and 'definitely not one of her more suspenseful ones'.

No Man's Nightingale brought me back to the evil in modern times.  Retired Inspector Wexford is finding it difficult not to be a policeman.  He's consulting with the department now.  This time, a female vicar is strangled.  Not only do we need to know who did it, we need to know who her daughter's father is.  There is a kidnapping and more murder and the father is revealed.  The motive is simple, and I'm surprised it's not a more common murder motive.  (BTW, I'm interested in differences between American pronunciations and British.  I heard in an interview that Ruth Rendell pronounces her last name REN-dle.  The ex-governor of Pennsylvania has the same last name but pronounces it ren-DELL.)

I believe it was Simon at Stuck in a Book (http://stuck-in-a-book.blogspot.co.uk) who posted a blog about Patricia Brent, Spinster.  It's been a while, but I noticed it, was in the mood for a light, amusing book, and it was a free e-book download from Manybooks for Kindle (http://manybooks.net/help/devices/kindle.php), a site I find easier to use than Project Gutenberg.  Simon was right:  it is amusing and light.  Patricia Brent is a spinster, although a fairly young one.  She's tired of the people in her boarding house pitying her, wondering why an intelligent, attractive girl is STILL unmarried.  To shut them up, she announces that she is having dinner with her fiance.  She doesn't dream that some of them will follow her to see this mystery man.  Patricia has to ask a man at the restaurant to pretend he's her date.  He plays along and he likes her and he wants to continue to see her.  She's humiliated that she's picked up a strange man in a restaurant and thinks he's making fun of her.  There are interesting revelations about the man that only trouble her more  -  because they make him even more of a catch.  I enjoyed it, but, in retrospect, I'm annoyed that she felt so constrained by the social mores of the time.  How silly!

Not everyone likes Agatha Raisin books, but those of us who do find ourselves returning again and again to find out what Agatha is doing.  She's frustrating and silly, but there's something endearing about her.  In A Spoonful of Poison, she's asked to do publicity for a village fete.  She's wildly successful, but someone puts LSD in the jam tasting samples.  Two old women die during their unplanned trips, and some people blame Agatha for luring so many outsiders to the fete.  It's Agatha all over again:  jealous of her lovely detective Tony, on the lookout for a lover, aware that she's getting older and worried about being less attractive.  The Agatha Raisin books are quick reads and I like the characters.  I consider them palate cleansers.

It was time for me to re-read a Nancy Drew book.  Belle, at Belle, Book and Candle (http://bellebookandcandle.blogspot.com), inspired me when she recently posted a blog about Nancy Drew.  I love Nancy Drew.  She colored and shaped my early reading years and she'll always have a place in my heart.  In The Sign of the Twisted Candles, Nancy and her friends Bess and George (a girl) take shelter at an inn, The Sign of the Twisted Candles, when caught in a violent rain storm.  Nancy notices the proprietor berating his foster daughter and attempts to comfort her.  She learns that a 100-year-old man, the owner of the property, lives as a recluse in the attic.  She and her friends have lunch with him and several days later, the girl asks Nancy's lawyer father to help the old man draw up a new will.  There's a fight between the man's distant relatives and they're livid when he dies and leaves almost all his money to the proprietor's foster daughter.  You'll probably guess why he left it to her, but I don't want to spoil it for you.

Last night, I finished Heaven's Prisoners by James Lee Burke.  I read this on my Kindle.  I have to tell you, I'm not sure why I keep reading this series.  The books are so evocative of what I think the deep south is like (hot, humid, lots of snakes, very shady characters), but I have trouble relating to the society he depicts.  It's just so far from anything I know.  The books are always very violent.  I can't always understand the Cajun lingo some of the characters speak.  I can usually follow the plot line.  So, there's a lot I don't like about them, but I keep reading them.  Dave Robicheaux and his wife are out in their boat when they see a plane crash into the water.  Dave dives to see if he can save anyone, but the only one alive is a little girl who doesn't speak English.  He takes her home with him, worried that she'll get lost in the system.  He's also worried because he saw four dead people in the plane but the authorities report that only three were killed.  Why?  Dave, a retired cop, can't leave well enough alone and it comes back to bite him big time.

I'm still reading The Count of Monte Cristo, which I hope to finish soon, Love Nancy, the letters of Nancy Mitford, Travels of William Bartram, and several others.

Are you reading anything interesting or amusing?