Finished: Rebecca (Du Maurier) Such a good book, and hard to put down! "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." A book I've had on my "to read" list since I started this project, and now I wish there was more to read. The story is about the young, naive woman who is training to be a companion to a rich dowager when she meets the wealthy, older, Maxim de Winter in Monte Carlo. After a whirlwind courtship, she marries Maxim and he takes her back to live at his estate, Manderley. Mrs. de Winter, as she is heretofore known, is very unsure of herself and just knows that the staff will not like her.....because....less than a year earlier, the first Mrs. de Winter, the beautiful, confident, beloved Rebecca, had drowned in a boating accident on the estate. The new Mrs. de Winter feels like she pales in comparison in every way. What she doesn't realize is that her refreshing, non-spoiled, non-socialite ways are exactly what had drawn Maxim to her. Mrs. de Winter isn't very formidable against the evil housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, though. Mrs. Danvers detests the new mistress of the house because Mrs. Danvers adored Rebecca, who she had been a servant to since Rebecca was a girl. Mrs. de Winter's self-esteem and confidence in her abilities plummet when everyone in the household, and even her husband's sister, Bea, and his best friend, Frank Crawley, compare her to the dead Rebecca. It never occurs to her that maybe they are comparing her and finding her MORE worthy for Maxim than Rebecca was. Maxim doesn't help matters by being a little standoffish now that he's back home. He leaves his new bride to her own devices far too much, and this leaves her imagination, which is incredibly vivid, the room it needs to imagine all sorts of things, including the fact that her husband must certainly still be in love with his first wife. Finally, at the urging of some family friends, Maxim agrees to give a huge costume ball like he and Rebecca did in the good old days. He decides the ball will be in honor of his new bride and he will introduce her to everyone. Rebecca decides she will surprise Maxim with her costume and be more grown-up looking for once...but what to wear? Mrs. Danvers, in an unusual display of almost kindness, suggests that Mrs. de Winters go dressed as one of the many de Winter ancestors whose portraits are hanging in the halls. She even goes so far as to suggest the beautiful relative in the flowing white dress and mass of curly hair. Rebecca decides to do just that, and still tells no one. Of course, alarm bells are going off for me as the reader. I just know that Mrs. Danvers has set her up to fall miserably. And, I'm right. Before all the multitudes of guests arrive, but after Maxim, Bea, her husband, Frank Crawley, and all the staff are gathered at the foot of the staircase waiting for her, Mrs. de Winters descends the stairs in her white gown. Maxim, and everyone else, turns white as a sheet. Maxim yells at her, asks what in the world she thinks she's doing, and forces her to go upstairs and change. The poor new wife has no idea what she's done, but Bea comes up to explain that the white flowing dress and wig are the exact same outfit that Rebecca had worn to her last ball at Manderley before she died. omg, so Mrs. Danvers really pulled an evil one! Mrs. de Winters is mortified and distraught because she thinks Maxim thinks she did it on purpose. Honestly, he is rather a jerk about it....not speaking to her the rest of the night at the entire ball, after she comes down in a different frock. The next morning, Mrs. de Winter assumes that her three month marriage is over and that she has failed. She confronts Mrs. Danvers who goes off on an eerie tirade about Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers is so manipulative that she almost convinces Mrs. de Winter that she should jump from the window since there is no way Maxim will ever love her the way he loved Rebecca. As Mrs. de Winter stands near the window, three town-wide alarms sound which indicate that a ship has run aground in the harbor at Manderley. Mrs. de Winter snaps out of her near trance and runs downstairs in time to hear Maxim shouting to the servants to open their doors, fix lots of food, and prepare to help anyone who is brought in from the ship. After a trying day, both Mrs. de Winter (it really drives me crazy that we never know her first name) and Maxim, are given the shock of their lives when the harbor master comes to tell them that while the divers were inspecting the grounded ship, they actually came across Rebecca's capsized boat on the floor of the harbor.....and what's more...there's a body in the cabin. Two months after the accident, a body had washed ashore and Maxim had identified it as Rebecca's, so whose could this new body be? After the harbor master leaves, Maxim breaks down to his bride. He tells her that he's made a mess of things, and been so distant, that she surely probably doesn't love him anymore. Mrs. de Winter cries out and embraces him and tells him, on the contrary, she's so thrilled to hear he really does love her because she was convinced that he was still in love with his first wife. Maxim scoffs at that idea and tells her that his marriage to Rebecca was a sham that they never even consummated. He married her because she promised to make Manderley a grand place for everyone to gather at. They pretended to have the perfect marriage, and everyone fell in love with Rebecca. In reality, she was selfish, willful, spiteful and had numerous affairs! As her affairs grew more brazen, Maxim confronted her about not keeping up her end of the bargain by painting the picture of a happy marriage. He followed her down to the little boathouse she had turned into a love nest...taking a gun with him in case he had to confront one of her lovers. She was alone, and she laughed in his face asking him what he could do about it? No one would ever believe they weren't happily married if he tried to divorce her. And what's more....if she ever had a child by one of her lovers, Maxim would have to recognize the child as his own and make the child his heir to inherit Manderley and everything else. In a fury, Maxim shot Rebecca, put her body in her boat, took it out to the harbor and sank the boat. The next day, everyone just assumes that the headstrong Rebecca had gone out in bad weather and been unfortunately drowned. Maxim insists to Mrs. de Winter that she's now the only other person who knows the truth. They both panic, though, at what will happen when the authorities realize that the body on the boat is Rebecca, and not the body identified months before. At the inquest, everyone believes Maxim when he says he must have been distraught and identified the body thinking it was Rebecca's, but clearly he was mistaken. He's about to get off when the boat builder testifies and insists that there is no way the boat would have sunk on it's own, so he had inspected the boat that morning and found man-made holes and other signs of foul tampering. Still, the jury comes back with the verdict that Rebecca must have committed suicide. Maxim and his wife again breath easy. However, soon the slovenly cousin of Rebecca's, Jack Favell, who was also her lover, comes to Manderley to try and bribe Maxim! He has a note written to him by Rebecca the very day of her death saying she needed him to meet her at the cabin as soon as possible. She had something very important to tell him. Maxim does not give into Jack's blackmailing attempt to be kept in a fine way with a yearly salary from Manderley for the rest of his life. Instead, Maxim calls his bluff and calls the county magistrate to come directly there and hear Jack's story. Jack is such a bully, that the magistrate doesn't for one minute believe him, but the note does nag at him. The magistrate decides to trace Rebecca's entire last day through her booking calendar. They all see that she had an appointment with a Dr. Baker that very afternoon which she marked off as completed. Maxim and Mrs. de Winter instantly look at each other and feel like they are doomed.....perhaps Rebecca really was pregnant and this is what she was going to tell Jack. In that case, she wouldn't have killed herself. Jack has now convinced himself and the evil, glaring Mrs. Danvers that Maxim, in fact, killed Rebecca. However, the magistrate won't believe him. To solve the last piece of the puzzle, they all agree to go to London and see Dr. Baker the next day and see why Rebecca was seeing him. Maxim and his bride spend their last evening together before who knows what lies ahead of them. The next day, as they all wait for Dr. Baker to thumb through his file, Jack is feeling confident, and Maxim and Mrs. de Winter very nervous. Finally, Dr. Baker says, ahhhh yes. Poor Mrs. de Winter, the first. She came to me with pains and xrays showed she was inoperably, terminally ill and wouldn't live but a few months more. Needless to say, the entire room is shocked. I think even the magistrate had started to wonder if there was some truth to Jack's accusations. As they all separate to head back their own ways, instead of taking the magistrate's advice that Maxim take his new wife and go on a holiday, Maxim has a foreboding feeling and decides he needs to drive through the night back to Manderley. As they approach Manderley in the middle of the night, Mrs. de Winter can't understand why it looks like the sun is rising at 3 in the morning. Maxim just says, "that's Manderley", and we are at the end of the book! I suppose that Mrs. Danvers, and/or Jack burned Manderley to the ground! Anyway....such an abrupt ending. I wanted a little more closure, but oh what a good book. :-)

Other than that infamous opening line, and the description of Manderley that follows it, here's another snippet of the writing that I liked. It is the narrator, Mrs. de Winter, looking back and talking about first love:

I am glad it cannot happen twice, the fever of first love. For it is a fever, and a burden, too, whatever the poets may say. They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. Today, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then--how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal. 

Love that, and her way with words. :-)