In her flashback, the heroine is working as the young traveling companion to a wealthy American named Mrs. Van Hopper . In her flashback, Maxim is staying at the same hotel as the heroine and her employer, and after knowing the heroine for only a few weeks, he proposes marriage. She accepts, and he marries her and takes her back to his ancestral estate of Manderley. But a dark cloud hangs over their marriage: Maxim's first wife, Rebecca , drowned in a cove near Manderley the previous year, and her ghost haunts the newlyweds' home. Rebecca's devoted housekeeper, the sinister Mrs. Danvers, is still in charge of Manderley, and she frightens and intimidates her new mistress. Despite the encouragement of the house overseer, Frank Crawley, and Maxim's sister, Beatrice, the heroine struggles in her new life at Manderley. She feels that she can never compare f

The heroine's quest for a self has strong Oedipal overtones. The Oedipus complex is a psychological theory that suggests that young men have a strong desire to kill their father and marry their mother, as the character Oedipus did, unknowingly, in Sophocles's classical Greek play. In Rebecca, the complex is reversed: the heroine must overcome a maternal figure in order to marry the paternal figure of Maxim. (This female reversal of the Oedipal complex is sometimes called an "Electra complex," after a character in Greek drama who conspired to murder her mother.) It is in these chapters that the Electra complex is acted out: a maternal figure--Mrs. Van Hopper--is overcome, and the marriage takes place. But the victory is not complete, and the marriage not yet whole; for the real maternal figure, the real "older woman," still stands in the heroine's way--in the figure of Rebecca.

Mrs. Van Hopper - A vulgar, gossipy and wealthy American woman. She employs the heroine as a companion while she travels from one European resort town to another.

Then, abruptly, Mrs. Van Hopper decides to leave Monte Carlo and take a boat to New York; the heroine, as her companion, is of course expected to come along. On the morning of their departure, the heroine goes up to Maxim's room, with the intent of saying goodbye; she expects she will never see him again. To her shock, however, he insists that she have breakfast with him, and then brusquely proposes marriage. When he has convinced her that he is serious in his proposal, the heroine accepts, and he volunteers to break the news to Mrs. Van Hopper. The older woman is less than pleased at the news: privately, she accuses the heroine of having deceived her about her activities in Monte Carlo, and to her face she warns her that she will never manage as mistress of Manderley. "Personally," the older woman says, with more than a little spite, "I think you are making a big mistake--one you will bitterly regret."

But while Maxim is painted vividly, the heroine--"with straight bobbed hair and youthful unpowdered face... trailing in the wake of Mrs. Van Hopper like a shy, uneasy colt"--seems to vanish into the background. We are told neither her first name, nor the family name that she gives up to become Mrs. de Winter; this lack of a name symbolizes her search for identity, a search that constitutes one of the novel's main themes. Indeed, Rebecca is in large part the story of the heroine's psychological quest for her own selfhood; and our constant sense that the heroine is in danger of failing in this quest provides much of the novel's suspense.

Lady Crowan - A local noblewoman who suggests that Maxim and the heroine revive the tradition of holding an annual costume ball at Manderley.

Beatrice - Maxim's sister. A friendly, outgoing woman with a passion for horses.

Some topics in this essay:
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