Rebecca: The unsettling classic by Daphne du Maurier

Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier was my first ever Gothic novel and I ended the book with many thoughts in my head. 

 I can use one sentence to explain Rebecca to someone who has not read the book; I would say that if someone wrote "a fanfiction where the female protagonist is head over heels over this mysterious dude who is always brooding and she is completely ignoring all the red flags in their relationship", then that is Rebecca for you but only the author here is from the 1930s.

The story opens with the protagonist reminiscing about this beautifully haunting property called Manderly and you are left curious as to why the protagonist uses past tense when it comes to her time in Manderly. And then we follow the woman's walk down memory lane where she began as a woman's paid companion (with continuous judgement of her companion in her head, I might add) on vacation in Monte Carlo and she comes across the rich widower Mr. Maxmillian De Winter and immediately falls head over heels for him and decides to marry him by only getting to know him for over a few days. And the words "getting to know" is a big understatement because the only thing she shares with him is the same disgust for her companion and a passion for roaming around Monte Carlo. They never discuss De Winter's history or his feelings for her and she seems very comfortable with the fact that he is very much emotionally aloof from our protagonist. 

Maurier on the other hand paints our heroine (who remains nameless throughout the entire book, only referred to as Mrs De Winter once married) to the extremities of a naive woman in her 20s with extreme anti social tendencies. As an introvert myself I understand being anxious over social meetings, but our very own Mrs. De Winter takes it to a whole new level. From avoiding her own servants at Manderly to avoiding Mr. De Winter's relatives because of her heightened insecurities, she is so scared of facing the world around her that she acts out an entire conversation or scene in a social setting in her head rather than seeing it for herself. She is scared of being judged as the less polished Mrs. De Winter compared to Mr. De Winter's late wife Rebecca. And as if to provide reassurance to her, doubting herself, there are characters like Mr. De Winter and Mrs. Danvers who are either so removed from the entire situation looking for a way around the elephant in the room (the dead ex wife) or on the other end of the spectrum, breathing down your neck that you wonder whether all the characters in the story have mental problems and need to see a therapist. 

Mrs. Danvers needs a section alone in this blog. If unhealthy obsession to the level of being psychotic had a name-then look no further, here comes the showrunner of the property of Manderly- Mrs. Danvers. Her eerie fascination over her dead mistress is like a drug addiction. She keeps the belongings of Rebecca as if she was still around-with the nightrobe on the bed, slippers ready to use and the old bedroom at the West Wing as if it is still in use. The excitement of hers as she shows the protagonist all of Rebecca's belongings was extremely creepy. She even pushes the protagonist to take her own life at one point by belittling her that she wasn't good enough to replace the previous Mrs. De Winter. 

Coming back to the relationship between Maxim De Winter and our unnamed heroine, it is so toxic that even she says at one point that Maxim treats her like their pet dog; he pets her when he wants to and later becomes aloof when she apparently becomes too nosy. All of this we are considering by just brushing the whopping 20 years age gap under a carpet labelled "prevalent with the times?" It is pretty shocking that the emotional understanding between these two characters was at such opposite ends of the spectrum that when the horrifying truth about Rebecca's death is finally revealed to the readers, we as readers are shocked but the protagonist by that point was unscathed by how messed up her husband was and acted like a lost puppy, just overjoyed to have Maxim reciprocate her love. 

Supporting characters like agent Crawley didn't have much of a personality, therefore I don't have much to say about him. As for Maxim's sister she was probably the only character who could be liked even a little. 

And finally Rebecca. The title of the book and the previous mistress of Manderly. I honestly don't know what to think of her. At times I thought she was horrid and was two faced because despite her being the social butterfly that she was for the people of the town,  she was extremely unpleasant towards a slow witted man named Ben. We see her as this enamoring beauty through the eyes of the men and a goddess in the eyes of Danvers. To Max, she was unfaithful and did unspeakable unladylike things and to the narrator she was the ghost who was haunting their marriage. But in the end, we are left thinking that whatever she might be, did she deserve to die the way she did? 

The only aspect of the entire book that I enjoyed was the vivid hauntingly enchanting descriptions of Manderly and the constant enigma behind Rebecca's "accidental" demise. And as I sit here writing my final thoughts about Rebecca I realise the number of times I have used the word obsession. Danvers was obsessed with Rebecca, the protagonist was obsessed with De Winter and De Winter was obsessed with his reputation and to some extent Manderly. Even though some of the actions don't have the consequences we expect it to have by the end of the story, it is not surprising that such unhealthy fixation ultimately were precursors to a recipe for disaster.