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Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed

Rebecca

by Daphne du Maurier

1938

Novel

Gothic

A darkly brooding middle-aged widower marries a young, awkward woman and takes her to his estate where she is haunted by the memory of his beautiful first wife, Rebecca.

Told in the first person, this novel reveals the powerful psychological pressures on a very young, inexperienced woman who lives in the shadow of her husband's dead first wife, the brilliant and sophisticated Rebecca.

When the young woman first meets Maxim de Winter in Monte Carlo, she is working as a paid companion to an obnoxious, loud, and vulgar American socialite. Almost without being aware of it, the young woman drifts into a romance with de Winter, marries him, and returns with him to his sumptuous estate, Manderley, on the Cornish coast.

Once at Manderley, the young woman's awkwardness becomes more marked as she compares herself to Rebecca, who drowned in a sailing accident less than a year before.

The mansion is filled with mementos of Rebecca: the statuary she selected, the rooms she decorated, and the luxuriously scented clothes and furs which still fill the closets of Rebecca's bedroom—the most beautiful room in the house.

Every detail of daily life is just as Rebecca ordered it, from the sumptuous daily meals to the menacing housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who came to Manderley with Rebecca.

When de Winter's preoccupation with the estate makes him seem distant, the young woman assumes that he is comparing her, unfavorably, with Rebecca. She thinks that her clothing and makeup are wrong and that besides the memory of Rebecca she must appear very plain and ugly. Finally, after a disastrous costume ball, the truth about Rebecca is slowly and compellingly revealed.

Critics reviewed Rebecca favorably, some even saying it was a 20th century Jane Eyre. Whether this comparison is deserved, Rebecca is certainly one of the best of the perennially popular romantic novels.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Maurier, Daphne du. "Rebecca." Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed, edited by Editors of Salem Press, Salem Press, 2015. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=6CR_0452.
APA 7th
Maurier, D. d. (2015). Rebecca. In E. Salem Press (Ed.), Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Salem Press. online.salempress.com.
CMOS 17th
Maurier, Daphne du. "Rebecca." Edited by Editors of Salem Press. Recommended Reading: 600 Classics Reviewed. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2015. Accessed September 15, 2025. online.salempress.com.