Rebeeca
"I dreamt I went to Manderley again." (Dumarier 2) is the famous opening line to the classic novel Rebecca. Right from the beginning Dumaurier builds up the mystery of Manderley by showing a conflict between the way the main characters live now verses how they remember the tragic events of the past. The narrator is an inexperienced young girl who is overwhelmed when she moves into Manderley. The husband, Maxim, is still troubled by the death of his last wife Rebecca, which happened almost a year before. Rebecca is "a heroine that we never see in the flesh, but whose spell is written through every page" (Weeks 163). Mrs. Danvers is Rebecca's former maid who has sinister intentions and remains loyal to the dead Rebecca and is even obsessed with her in some ways. "Mrs. Danvers' relationship to Rebecca, is such that she could never allow herself to believe that any human being could destroy her" (Kelly 60). As clues to the cause of Rebecca' death are uncovered, the story form of the story changes. Dumarier uses not only writing techniques such as foreshadowing and symbolism to make the novel more suspenseful, but she also uses the elements of greed, deception, and insecurity to change Rebecca from a Gothic Romance novel into a
hough, and that helps the reader relate to her and sympathize for her. The narrator does not believe that Maxim loves her. She thinks that he still loves Rebecca. This keeps the reader trying to figure out if Maxim really loves her or not. The insecurity of the narrator also shows how she evolves throughout the story. The narrator is a dynamic character that changes many times throughout the story. The biggest change comes when she finds out that Maxim never loved Rebecca. This gives her more confidence and she starts to take control of the things around her. She says "I had not thought it would be so easy to be severe. I wondered why it had seemed so hard for me before" (Dumaurier 289). She also starts to stick up for herself because she loses all fear of Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. She also feels that she has finally grown up. Maxim also notices this when he says "Its gone forever, that funny, young, lost look that I loved. I killed that too, when I killed Rebecca! Foreshadowing also adds to the suspense near the end of the novel. Throughout the story there are clues that hint toward the truth. The way that Maxim got so upset whenever Rebecca was mentioned gave the reader the feeling that something terrible must have happened. When the narrator first meets Mrs. Danvers, she gets the chills when she shakes Mrs. Danvers' cold and heavy hand. This foreshadows the evil intentions of Mrs. Danvers. Another major foreshadowing is the way Ben, the mentally handicapped man talked about Rebecca. He said that she was mean and that she was going to have him put in the asylum. The reader later discovers that Rebecca was mean like Ben had said, and not the great person everyone believed her to be. The final foreshadowing is at the end of story when Maxim and the narrator are on their way back to Manderley and Maxim becomes very uncomfortable. He wants to get back to Manderley as soon as possible because he feels that something terrible is go! ing to happen. He was right because when they get back, they find Manderley burning down. Symbolism is also used to foreshadow some of the important events in the story. Rebecca's boat which was also the one she sank in, was called Je Revienss, which means "I come back". The name is symbolic in that the boat was risen from the bottom of the bay and physically did come back. It was also symbolic in that Rebecca came back to haunt the present (Kelly 58). Another symbol that reoccured throughout the story was the big slanting R. Whenever the narrator saw an R that Rebecca had written, she immediatly thought of how incredible Rebecca must have been and how she herself was so inferior. Many of the characters in the story are deceptive,
Some topics in this essay:
Romance Masterplots,
Danvers Rebecca,
Gothic Romance,
Danvers Danvers,
Je Revienss,
Maxim Rebecca,
Manderley Dumarier,
Danvers Rebecca's,
Jack Favell,
Manderley Maxim,
gothic romance,
throughout story,
masterplots 3,
gothic romance masterplots,
romance masterplots 3,
romance masterplots,
helps reader relate,
wife rebecca,
rebecca haunt,
story mystery,
relate sympathize,
death rebecca,
classic gothic romance,
inexperienced girl,
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Approximate Word count = 1831
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)
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