Rebecca Context + Interpretations
NOVEL:
- Published 1938 in Hampshire.
- Manderley: based on Menabilly- large empty woodland+headland in Cornwall.
- Author heard the owner had been married to a beautiful woman then remarried a
much younger woman. Rumours that the 1st wife had an affair.
- Olivia Laing- It’s a grim reworking of “Bluebeard”, in which the murderer is suddenly
the victim, adorable despite his bloody hands.
- The name “Rebecca” means to tie or to bind, a further allusion to the first Mrs de
Winter’s stranglehold on her home and its inhabitants even after her death. Also
mean captivating beauty
- Jewish- “ark hair”, “pale skin”- otherised- like Jan Ricardo
FAMILY: marriage and her husband
- Written after the birth of 2nd daughter, living in Egypt with her husband Tommy
Browning (10 years older), but she was shy, reclusive and homesick.
- Du Maurier wanted the book to be about jealousy- drawing from her own jealousy
related to Tommy Browning's previous engagement to Jan Ricardo.
- Jan Ricardo signed her name with a big elegant “R” in love letters- made Du Maurier
painfully aware of her own shortcomings as a woman and a wife.
SEXUALITY: lesbians and sexual identity
- In 1947 Du Maurier had multiple female affairs like actor Gertrude Lawrence.
- Du Maurier never wanted to participate in the ‘masquerade of femininity’.
- Margaret Forster’s 1993 autobiography- Du Maurier “female on the outside with a
boy’s mind and a boy’s heart”.
- Du Maurier describes a “menace” as a sexually attractive person. Rebecca unites
both the word’s meanings: she is “vicious, damnable, rotten through and through”.
She’s destroyed because of her poisonous sexuality
NOVEL:
- Published 1938 in Hampshire.
- Manderley: based on Menabilly- large empty woodland+headland in Cornwall.
- Author heard the owner had been married to a beautiful woman then remarried a
much younger woman. Rumours that the 1st wife had an affair.
- Olivia Laing- It’s a grim reworking of “Bluebeard”, in which the murderer is suddenly
the victim, adorable despite his bloody hands.
- The name “Rebecca” means to tie or to bind, a further allusion to the first Mrs de
Winter’s stranglehold on her home and its inhabitants even after her death. Also
mean captivating beauty
- Jewish- “ark hair”, “pale skin”- otherised- like Jan Ricardo
FAMILY: marriage and her husband
- Written after the birth of 2nd daughter, living in Egypt with her husband Tommy
Browning (10 years older), but she was shy, reclusive and homesick.
- Du Maurier wanted the book to be about jealousy- drawing from her own jealousy
related to Tommy Browning's previous engagement to Jan Ricardo.
- Jan Ricardo signed her name with a big elegant “R” in love letters- made Du Maurier
painfully aware of her own shortcomings as a woman and a wife.
SEXUALITY: lesbians and sexual identity
- In 1947 Du Maurier had multiple female affairs like actor Gertrude Lawrence.
- Du Maurier never wanted to participate in the ‘masquerade of femininity’.
- Margaret Forster’s 1993 autobiography- Du Maurier “female on the outside with a
boy’s mind and a boy’s heart”.
- Du Maurier describes a “menace” as a sexually attractive person. Rebecca unites
both the word’s meanings: she is “vicious, damnable, rotten through and through”.
She’s destroyed because of her poisonous sexuality
