In the edition I've got, which has du Maurier's letter to the reader, she says that she never settled on a name for the narrator because she never found one that fit properly. But I like your interpretation, and maybe that's what was working in du Maurier's subconscious. Plus, it didn't bug me THAT bad, only at the beginning, when she and Maxim meet, and he comments on her unusual name.
One of my SHU colleagues has read that sequel, and she said this:
Sally Beauman recently published a sequel to Rebecca set in 1951, 20 years after the original story. Interesting fleshing out of the story , characters and incidents from the original book. Rebecca is my favorite book. I even liked the sequel and I was not expecting it to be as good as it was.
But I'm like you about unnecessary sequels to classics. Very suspicious, and I like where the original left me in terms of what I think about Rebecca's character. :)
I felt bad for the nameless narrator. She has no identity because her existence is pathetic, in DuMaurier's mind. This is one of the existentialist characteristics of the novel. I like how the book left me with so many questions to ponder after I read! I loved this book in general though.
I just finished reading this book and so I had to read your review....
If I have any complaints at all about the book, they'd be that our narrator is nameless, save for her married name of Mrs. de Winter, and that our narrator has a tendency to launch into vivid fantasy, and if a reader isn't careful, one might think those events are actually happening, when the truth is the narrator is imagining things. I also had trouble pinning down the narrator's age. At the start, I thought she was Lolita-esque, but I think she was meant to be older than that. It was difficult to tell: she seemed so young for so much of the book, but her youth and excitement could be pinned anywhere from her late teens to her early twenties.
My take on the narrator being nameless fits along the lines of what
Hi. i wrote an essay on du maurier on my lj, which discusses rebecca and her other works, so do drop by. rebecca is one of my favorite book of hers. i agree that the narrator was kept nameless to emphasize rebecca's power and stature in the society and in maxim's life. in lit theory, naming is power. it means that a character has an identity. the narrator's identity in the novel is subsumed by rebecca: she is everything that rebecca is not.
i also read somewhere that du maurier tried to keep narrator nameless as a challenge for her literary abilities: she was trying to determine if she could sustain not naming the narrator, if she could pull it off althroughout the novel.
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One of my SHU colleagues has read that sequel, and she said this:
Sally Beauman recently published a sequel to Rebecca set in 1951, 20 years after the original story. Interesting fleshing out of the story , characters and incidents from the original book. Rebecca is my favorite book. I even liked the sequel and I was not expecting it to be as good as it was.
But I'm like you about unnecessary sequels to classics. Very suspicious, and I like where the original left me in terms of what I think about Rebecca's character. :)
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You really should watch the movie--it's classic Hitchcock, with Laurence Olivier as Maxim.
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If I have any complaints at all about the book, they'd be that our narrator is nameless, save for her married name of Mrs. de Winter, and that our narrator has a tendency to launch into vivid fantasy, and if a reader isn't careful, one might think those events are actually happening, when the truth is the narrator is imagining things. I also had trouble pinning down the narrator's age. At the start, I thought she was Lolita-esque, but I think she was meant to be older than that. It was difficult to tell: she seemed so young for so much of the book, but her youth and excitement could be pinned anywhere from her late teens to her early twenties.
My take on the narrator being nameless fits along the lines of what
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i also read somewhere that du maurier tried to keep narrator nameless as a challenge for her literary abilities: she was trying to determine if she could sustain not naming the narrator, if she could pull it off althroughout the novel.
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