Lovely and Unusual

"suspended, as it were, in time" (42).
Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca (1938)

Points for Reflection

Rebecca, chps. 1-9

1. does Nature remain a foreboding presence that infiltrates the novel in a “stealthy, insidious” way (1)?
2. the narrator tells us that she and her husband now, years after Manderley, have ‘no secrets” from each other (6).  Does this appear to be true?
3. does the narrator live in the present?
4. the narrator likes to “give reign to [her] imagination” (7-8).  Do her powers of imagination bring more pleasure than pain?
5. does the British narrator’s class consciousness ever wear off? Is this part of a value system, or a function of her feeling of inferiority?
6. do any of the generalizations about men made by Mrs. Van Hopper appear to be true?
7. what clues does the narration drop about the first-person narrator’s appearance?
8. in which era and culture does the narrator imaginatively place Max de Winter, and why?
9. the narrator thinks she’d give all five senses to ensure the “present peace” (5), and Mrs. Van Hopper observes that most girls would “give their eyes for the chance of seeing Monte [Carlo]” (16).  How important are her five senses in the narrator’s experience of Manderley, her new home?
10. do the narrator and Maxim de Winter read each other’s non-verbal cues with equal adroitness?
11. is the narrator right to disparage her own mind’s faculties and her education?
12. does the narrative suggest the narrator is a more than adequate artist?
13. why might du Maurier withhold the narrator’s name?
14. does the narrator have a strong sense of and gravity towards a particular place?
15. does the actual estate do justice to its visual representation on that postcard the narrator bought long ago—the one that reproduced a painting of Manderley?
16. is the narrator’s and Max’s intimacy planted in fertile ground?
17. does the narrator’s moral fabric appear resistant to tearing?
18. are the narrator and Maxim equally nostalgic for the past?
19. which of the many flowers which flourish on the Manderley property seems most closely linked to Rebecca?  Are any linked, either directly or symbolically, to our narrator?
20. what draws Max and the narrator towards one another?
21. does Max love the narrator?
22. what does the poem glimpsed by the narrator, in the book loaned her by Max, suggest about the nature of his own internal journey?
23. does Mrs. Van Hopper genuinely wish the narrator the best?
24. does marriage increase the narrator’s self-confidence?
25. does marriage nurture and improve Maxim?
26. does Maxim support and protect his new young bride?
27. is Manderley itself—the house and outdoors--inviting to the narrator?
28. does Manderley appear to renew Maxim?
29. are the east and west wings of Manderley mirror images of one another?
30. is Carol Danvers direct or subtle in expressing her opinions?
31. in what ways does the narrator differ from the dead, absent-present Rebecca?
32. does her new position as mistress of Manderley instill in the narrator a new, powerful self-confidence?
    

Beer, Devon; Figures Walking on a Beech Beneath Cliff
George Mark

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu