Du Maurier’s bestselling novel reveals much about the author’s fluid sexuality – her ‘Venetian tendencies’ – and about being a boy stuck in the wrong body, writes Olivia Laing
A small group of novels are famous for their first lines: Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Herman Melville’s Moby Dick (1851) and Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina (1877). Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier (1938), belongs to this elite collection. Its opening line perfectly encapsulates the narrative’s core theme. “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again,” the book begins — though it is not Rebecca who speaks.
Rebecca is a classic of modern gothic literature. Gothic fiction is characterized by picturesque settings, an atmosphere of mystery and terror, and a hint of violence and the supernatural; Rebecca exemplifies the genre.
Rebecca, Gothic suspense novel by Daphne du Maurier, published in 1938. Widely considered a classic, it is a psychological thriller about a young woman who becomes obsessed with her husband’s first wife.
While working as the companion to a rich American woman vacationing on the French Riviera, the narrator becomes acquainted with a wealthy Englishman, Maximilian (Maxim) de Winter, a reasonably young widower. After a fortnight of courtship, she agrees to marry him, and after the marriage accompanies him to his mansion, the beautiful West Country estate Manderley.
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