00:08 Frank: Hello, and welcome to Novel Conversations, a podcast about the world's greatest stories. I'm your host, Frank Lavallo. And for each episode of Novel Conversations, I talk to two readers about one book. And together, we summarize the story for you. We introduce you to the characters, we tell you what happens to them, and we read from the book along the way. So if you love hearing a good story, you're in the right place. This episode's conversation is about the novel, Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier. And I'm joined by our Novel Conversations readers, Megan Canty and Anthony Mahramus. Megan, Anthony, welcome. Thanks, Frank. Thanks, Frank. Glad to have you both here for this conversation. Before we get started, let me give a quick introduction to our novel. First published in 1938, Rebecca is a Gothic novel by British author Daphne du Maurier. The novel tells the story of a young woman who marries a wealthy widower, only to find herself haunted by the memory of his first wife, Rebecca. Du Maurier masterfully weaves suspense and psychological tension, exploring themes of identity, jealousy, and the oppressive influence of the past. Rebecca was adapted into an Academy Award-winning film by Alfred Hitchcock in 1940, starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier. I should also say that we quickly learn as we start reading this novel that the story will be told in a flashback, but it begins in the present for our characters. Megan, how does the novel start in the present time for our main characters?

01:29 Megan: Rebecca begins with the sentence, I know I'll always remember this.

01:32 Frank: It's a very famous sentence.

01:33 Megan: Yeah, it's a beautiful first sentence. I remember the first time I read this book, it's always stuck with me. Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. The heroine of the story and the narrator, whose name we never learn at any point throughout the novel, sees herself essentially in this dream as a ghost. She's kind of flitting through the charred ruins of Manderley, which was this once beautiful mansion she used to live in. When she wakes up, she resolves not to speak of the dream because, and it's another very famous line that she says, Manderly was ours no longer. Manderly was no more. So the only person to whom she could speak of it is her husband, and we haven't learned his name yet.

02:16 Anthony: So it starts with the couple traveling through Europe and they're staying in small hotels. They're trying to not run into anybody they might know. And it's clear that they had really been through something horrible. They have recently suffered and they're still kind of getting over it. And that suffering had some connection to the destruction of Manderley, but the heroine, she doesn't reveal the nature just yet.

02:54 Frank: Mrs. Danvers, we will learn, was always comparing the heroine to someone named Rebecca, but details are not forthcoming. Instead, the heroine's thoughts turn to her younger self, years before, and then, as I mentioned, the real story begins, told in a flashback.

03:10 Megan: So as a young woman, our heroine is traveling across Europe. She's working as a companion to Mrs. Van Hopper, a wealthy American lady. Being a companion was a very common job for young women back in the 19th and early 20th century. It would be common for wealthy, unmarried, older women to pay these young girls to be companions who would essentially travel around with them, kind of a mixture between a servant and a friend, someone to talk to on their journeys.

03:42 Frank: Giving these young girls a chance to literally see the world.

03:45 Megan: Yes, literally see the world and meet people, perhaps kind of expand their horizons. And during their travels, they go to Monte Carlo, the resort city in the south of France. It's a pretty exciting place for our heroine to get to go with an older woman.

04:01 Anthony: Now that older woman, Miss Van Hopper, she's nosy. She's gossipy. She's pretty much a vulgar woman. They make that very clear at the top. When they're there in Monte Carlo, she recognizes a handsome middle-aged man who's staying at their hotel, and she points him out. She knows who he is. Don't worry. Her gossip connections made it clear. I can tell you about him. That's Maxim de Winter. He's the owner of the famous estate known as Manderly. And you can tell how often we've already said it here. They're really drawing the lore of this place. They want you to know it's an important known place. And part of the thing that they think that he's traveling away because he's mourning his wife who recently died.

04:40 Frank: I think we could say Manderly almost acts as a character in our novel along with some of the other characters that we'll talk about.

04:47 Megan: Oh, definitely. I mean, the fact that we've heard the name Manderly about eight times in this conversation. And as we said, we never even know the name of the main character, but we definitely know the name of the place that she lived and where all these people have been. And we haven't seen Manderly, but we've heard, you know, it referenced with a lot of reverence and it's in the heroine's dreams. It's being talked about in reference to Maxim de Winter, you know, that's the place he owns. It plays a pretty big role there. And Mrs. Van Hopper decides to invite Maxim De Winter to tea, but the heroine is horrifically embarrassed because Mrs. Van Hopper, of course, is showing her most crude, vulgar side. She's just discussing, being very blatant, talking about the estate or about his wife, about money, just kind of everything that you wouldn't want to talk about over tea if you are a person of manners. And Maxim treats her very coldly. But later that day, he sends a note to the heroine apologizing for his rudeness at this tea.

05:51 Anthony: Yes. And it's funny, I could see a modern archetype that she still is, that woman says, well, I'm going to say it and I speak my mind. She has that sort of approach to him. And now, while she's not a nice person, but she doesn't even have bad intentions. She's not trying to hurt, she's entertaining herself and she thinks entertaining the heroine and that gossipy behavior around Maxim, it's It's embarrassing for the heroine. She doesn't find it very funny, but it is funny for us, the reader.

06:18 Frank: As readers, right?

06:19 Anthony: Yeah, exactly. Because just her going off and saying these really personal things and him very coldly going, uh-huh, yep, uh-huh. Like he's very cold, like short words. He doesn't want to say much. He clearly is not into it.

06:32 Megan: And the next day, in one of those great, convenient plot points in a novel, Mrs. Van Hopper is ill, and the heroine gets a day to herself. So she's out trying to enjoy Monte Carlo, and she runs into Maxim while she's at lunch, and he insists on eating with her, and then invites her for a drive along the coast. And he's very warm towards her, he's very courteous, very polite, except at one point when they're driving along the road, There's one place they go by with a particularly striking view that the heroine notes is really beautiful. But there seems to be a bad memory that this place stirs up, and he seems troubled by this.

07:13 Anthony: Right. Maxim goes through a lot of changes so early in the book. Exactly. He's very cold the day before, but now he's real into her. And I got to be honest, at first I was skeptical. I was going, oh, sure. He wants to hang out with this cute young girl. Well, who doesn't? But then he showed some vulnerability here and he was so it's beyond, why would he do that if he was flirting? It's very, it draws you in as well, I think. And speaking of drawing you in, you know, before they return back to Monte Carlo, the heroine, she sees a book of poetry in the car and he says, do you like that? You keep it. I want you to have it. She takes it. And that night she sees an inscription, says Max, from Rebecca. Then she remembers what Ms. Van Hopper said about Maxim's wife who passed away, that her name was Rebecca and that she drowned accidentally in a bay near Manderley.

07:58 Frank: And I guess, readers, we should mention that Rebecca is a gothic novel, meaning that it belongs to the same genre as books like Wuthering Heights or Jane Eyre and even Dracula, in which dark, ominous landscapes and architecture are the setting for violence, fiery passions, and perhaps even some supernatural events. Rebecca's characters, too, fit the gothic pattern. Already we see that in Maxim De Winter. The author has created the perfect gothic hero, the broodingly handsome nobleman with a terrible secret.

08:28 Megan: But it's interesting that with all the vivid description that is used to paint Maxim as a character, as we've mentioned, the heroine, who we don't even get her name, she's described kind of almost like background scenery. They say that she has straight bobbed hair. and a youthful, unpowdered face, but they even make a comment that she trails in the wake of Mrs. Van Hopper like a shy, uneasy colt. She really just seems to fade into the background of the entire story. We're not told what her first name is at any point, and even when she becomes Mrs. De Winter, marrying Maxim, we don't know what name she gives up, what her maiden name was, and we know very little about her background. She's just companion and then wife.

09:12 Frank: You know, I think this is a device by du Maurier, this lack of a name. It symbolizes this woman's search for an identity, a search that constitutes one of the novel's main themes. Indeed, Rebecca is in large part the story of the heroine's 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.

09:34 Anthony: So after that first day that they spend driving around together, the heroine and Maxim, they do it a lot. So frequently, as days come on, they do a lot of driving and they're together. And in that time, she finds herself falling in love with him, which she didn't anticipate. She's just, well, this is a nice change from hanging out with Mrs. Van Hopper. I'm going to do this. Well, She falls for him and he's always reserved and he's always proper in his kindness, except for once when she says that she or she accuses him of charity towards her. And he tells her he's so mad. He says, no, no, no, that he only remained in Monte Carlo for the sake of her company. He has been dead inside, and she makes him feel alive, okay? So it's not charity. You should feel lucky that I am giving this of myself to you. So that's, again… Well, and he's also saying, I'm getting something from you. Absolutely, yeah. It's not all one-sided.

10:23 Megan: Despite this, you know, one outburst from him, she still can't imagine him ever really returning her feelings or feeling as deeply for her as she does for him. And she starts finding herself frequently comparing herself to Rebecca, his dead wife. And she always compares herself unfavorably, finding herself coming up short when she thinks of herself compared to Rebecca.

10:46 Frank: And she doesn't even really know much about Rebecca other than what Mrs. Van Hopper, I guess, has filled her head with.

10:54 Megan: Right, and as you said, you know, this idea of a search for identity, you know, we find that she's even kind of, you know, finding an identity just in, you know, kind of comparing herself to someone she doesn't know. She's more kind of creating an idea of Rebecca and finding that Rebecca or that anyone that Maxim was in love with must have been better than her or must have been, you know, something more than she is. And meanwhile, Mrs. Van Hopper knows nothing about the heroine and Maxim and their drives and excursions. You know, the heroine has told Mrs. Van Hopper that she's taking tennis lessons. But then very suddenly, Mrs. Van Hopper decides she wants to leave Monte Carlo and get on a boat and go to New York. And of course, as her companion, our heroine is expected to come along with her on the

11:41 Anthony: She's paying the bills. Right, exactly. So, too bad. You have a new boyfriend? I don't care. So, she's pretty devastated, the heroine is. And that morning of the departure, she goes up to Maxim's room to say goodbye to him, and she figures, this is it. This is the last time I'm going to see him. Shockingly, however, he insists that, hey, why don't you have breakfast with me? And then, not much into the breakfast, he proposes to her with, I got to say, probably one of the most romantic ways possible, It was, and I quote, I'm asking you to marry me, you little fool. Which again, speaks a lot to how their relationship's gonna go. That's how my wife asked me, I don't know. Oh, that's, you know, that was, you know, you're still together. But so he convinced her in this moment, of course, that he is serious in his proposal and she accepts, and he volunteers to break the news to Mrs. Van Hopper, because she says, hmm, maybe you should tell her.

12:35 Megan: Now, that is a very gentlemanly thing to do, to be the one to bring the news to Mrs. Van Hoffer. That's a great engagement gift, better than any ring.

12:43 Frank: Well, really?

12:48 Megan: Well, and Mrs. Van Hoffer— For now. For now, for now. And Mrs. Van Hopper is less than pleased with this news, as one might have expected. Throughout the novel, she's enjoyed having this quiet, mousy woman that our heroine is at her beck and call. And privately, she basically accuses the heroine of having deceived her the entire time about what she was doing in Monte Carlo. She almost insinuates that her whole purpose of being there was that she was set out to find a man or that she had designs on Maxim. from the beginning as opposed to this just kind of unfolding naturally. And she says very directly that she'll never manage to be, as she calls it, the mistress of Manderly, that this is beyond her and she can't handle it. She even says, personally, I think you're making a big mistake when you will bitterly regret.

13:41 Frank: And quickly our narrative jumps ahead, skipping over the De Winter's quick marriage and honeymoon in France and Italy, and moving directly to their arrival at Manderley, a huge and beautiful manor house set in a coastal valley in England. And beautiful though the heroine finds it, the scale of her new home also intimidates her, especially when the entire staff of servants comes out to greet her, led by the butler Frith.

14:03 Anthony: This whole intimidating scene, Maxim had ordered, don't do this, but against his orders, it still happened. They were all there. And it was Mrs. Danvers who we had heard mentioned earlier. Well, now we're going to get to meet her. The main housekeeper? Yes. And she's described as sort of this gaunt hollow-eyed housekeeper. And she greets the heroine who will know now she is Mrs. DeWinter, the new Mrs. DeWinter. She greets her with stiff formality. She's just, you know, she's not excited to see her. She's just, hello, you know, I work here. You're the new person that I work for. Okay. But after returning the housekeeper's welcome, she's led inside by Maxim and is met by his two cocker spaniels.

14:41 Megan: And as they enter the house, the couple takes tea in the library. It's a really musty room, but it looks down at the sea. And Maxim is kind of catching up on things. He's opening his mail. So while he does that, the heroine goes upstairs with Mrs. Danvers to see more of the house and see her bedroom, which is in this newly renovated east wing of the house. And that faces away from the ocean. While Mrs. Danvers is respectful and civil to the new Mrs. De Winter. Her whole manner makes the heroine kind of nervously sense that she's resentful and kind of hostile. And she's really relieved when Maxim joins them upstairs to finish this tour.

15:22 Frank: You know, I think as readers, we see clearly Mrs. Danvers' wickedness. We read, and I quote, someone advanced from the sea of faces, someone tall and gaunt, dressed in deep black, whose prominent cheekbones and great hollow eyes gave her a skull's face, parchment white, and set on a skeleton's frame. This living servant looks like Death Incarnate, and she's the perfect representative for the dead woman, the Rebecca of Manderley.

15:49 Anthony: Now, even though really intense description that we just got of Mrs. Danvers, she looks like that, her powers overcome her physical reality just as Rebecca is able to still exert her influence in Manderly despite her death. She's not there, but she's just, she's everywhere. She's in the clothes, she's in the object, she's in conversation of the servants. And in this way, Rebecca remains the true mistress of Manderly. And so she's not only comparing herself, she's under her shadow somehow still, even though she's a dead one.

16:18 Megan: And as the husband and wife go downstairs for dinner, our heroine settles into her chair at the dinner table, which would have been Rebecca's chair. And she's kind of contemplating this and kind of reflecting on, she's taken her chair, her place at the table. She's taken her place as she's the Mrs. De Winter, and she's the mistress of Manderly.

16:38 Frank: But to be clear, Rebecca is not a typical ghost story. Although the characters frequently speak of Rebecca's presence at Manderly, her ghost never actually manifests itself. We don't see her running up and down stairs. But then the ghost does not need to actually appear, for she has a living spokesperson in the house, representing her interests, that being Mrs. Danvers. All right, readers, with that start and introduction to our characters, let's take a break here. And when we come back, we'll see just how well our unnamed heroine adjusts to her role as Mrs. De Winter, Mistress of Manderly, while under the hollow eyes of Mrs. Danvers and the specter of Rebecca, the former Mrs. De Winter. You're listening to Novel Conversations. We'll be right back. Welcome back. You're listening to Novel Conversations. I'm Frank Lavallo, and today I'm having a conversation about the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. All right, readers, when we left, our heroine was trying to adjust to her new role as Mrs. de Winter, the mistress of Manderly. Anthony, you want to continue our narrative?

17:46 Anthony: Yeah, these first few days for the new Mrs. De Winter, they're rough. She's adrift in this vast house and all these halls and all these places to go. She gets lost a lot. She's asking the servants for directions. And at one point when she thinks she's good, she wanders off on her own and she ends up in the closed off sort of dusty West Wing. And who does she find but scary old Miss Danvers. She's there. She constantly feels nervous, and she's worrying that the servants are secretly laughing at her. And all the while, her perfect, beautiful predecessor, the specter of Rebecca, just hangs over her.

18:21 Frank: And the more we learn about Manderly, the more it comes to stand as a symbol for the heroine's self. The heroine's inability to assert her authority, manifested in her fear of the servants and the way she easily gets lost in the corridors and rooms, symbolizes her failure to accept who she has become, namely, The Mistress of Manderley, Mrs. de Winter.

18:41 Megan: And she fails to really make Manderly, which is now her home, fully her own place or to make it her own in any way. And by continuing to just let Mrs. Danvers run the house the way she always has, she kind of allows that pressure to overrule anything she wants to do. She's effectively ceding her title as the new Mrs. DeWinter and allowing the previous Mrs. DeWinter, Rebecca, to still kind of be running things. Everything is still the way that it was when Rebecca ran it, because Mrs. Danvers, who was Rebecca's servant, is still in charge, and the West Wing is closed and unchanged. And we really just see a lot of these symbols of Rebecca's continued presence in the House and really hold over everyone in the House.

19:28 Anthony: It becomes clear to me at this point how much Maxim kind of set her up for failure because while she doesn't, as you say, get into the role, take over, she has no experience with that. She doesn't know about keeping correspondence, holding parties, how to speak with servants, it's all new to her. So immediately they're thinking, oh, she doesn't get it, but she's learning just like we are.

19:51 Frank: We don't think that Maxim set her up intentionally. He just never really thought about the trauma, maybe trauma is not quite the right word, that would be involved for our heroine replacing this, I guess we'll say for the moment, saintly Rebecca.

20:06 Megan: Well, I think even it's a class thing too, where for someone like Rebecca, this was, you know, a normal thing to take over a place like this. And I think it just doesn't really even occur to him, you know, because, you know, he thinks these differences don't matter to him when they get married, but he doesn't realize that, yeah, that this would be completely overwhelming and beyond anything she experienced. Whereas for Rebecca, this was something that would have been expected all her life and she would have been kind of trained. Right, she's from that class. Yeah, so trained from the start. So I don't think he realizes what she's been kind of thrown into. And of course, he doesn't realize that Mrs. Danvers is, you know, needling her and, you know, having this, you know, this, you know, is this malevolent presence making things worse.

20:47 Anthony: She's just a pest to him, but not, yeah, I like that malevolent presence. Well, the mood lightens a little bit for her after all this sort of intimidating first couple of days when Maxim's sister Beatrice and her husband Giles, they come to visit, and she also meets Frank Crawley, who ends up becoming sort of a, not a kindred spirit, but at least, you know, the one that's nice to her. So someone that she can sort of confide

21:09 Frank: And Frank Crawley is Manderly's overseer. Exactly. The man of the grounds, I guess.

21:14 Anthony: Right. Which is a concept that's probably foreign to her as well, but at the very least, he's sort of down to earth. She feels awkward at first when they're all kind of sitting together, because she knows that she's the second. She's like, hello, I'm the new wife. But it's okay, because Beatrice sort of fills that empty space. She's very talkative. They describe her as an athletic woman, and she draws our heroine aside and treats her with very friendly consideration. She's nice to her. And she encourages her to stand up for herself with the servants, particularly Mrs. Danvers. And I think that's a real key thing because Beatrice and Maxim grew up in Manderley. So again, to her, this is old hat and she goes, oh, I know she's intimidating, but you'll get used to her. However, she does drop this little anecdote saying, oh, Mrs. Danvers, she simply adored Rebecca. As if we didn't know, well, there it is in words.

22:02 Frank: We've already seen it, right? Yeah. We've already seen it in action. And Beatrice, I like Beatrice, I've got to say. She was a great character. And she also advises our heroine to buy new clothes, maybe find herself a hobby, something like horseback riding, which of course is Beatrice's own passion. And as the visitors depart, Maxim's sister mentions that the heroine is far from what she had expected. You see, she says, you are so very different from Rebecca.

22:27 Megan: Yeah, we keep having these incidents where people keep pointing out, you know, just the vast gulf, you know, between these two women, which isn't helping the heroine.

22:36 Frank: But after everything- But she's not hearing the words, right?

22:38 Megan: Yes.

22:38 Frank: She's not, she's, she is hearing the comparison.

22:41 Megan: Yes.

22:42 Frank: But not the comparison, I don't know, you know?

22:44 Megan: Yeah, well, she's hearing that there's differences, but she's assuming that those all mean that she is lesser or that they're all- Right, right. Inadequate or not up to it. Exactly. Exactly. And she's infusing meaning into all of it that isn't necessarily there. I mean, Beatrice doesn't appear to mean anything negative by it at all, but she, of course, takes that on. But after everybody does leave, the new Mrs. DeWinter and Maxim take a walk in the rain over their grounds, all very lovely. And Jasper, one of the Spaniels, comes with them. And as they're walking, they come to this really beautiful valley with a stream that goes through this bed of azaleas. And Maxim calls it the Happy Valley. And our heroine is just really entranced by this place. So it's really a shock to her that, you know, it opens up very suddenly onto this beach. And Jasper, at this point, runs away down the rocks towards the sea. And she, you know, chases the dog around a bend in the rocks. and finds this man digging for clams.

23:46 Anthony: So yeah, so she, again, she's concerned about the dog. So she just goes up to this man and says, hey, do you have any string? I want to make a leash for Jasper. But he doesn't quite understand. So she just takes matters into her own hands. She sees this sort of dilapidated boathouse. And she goes, okay, there's probably something in there. She finds some twine. She uses it to make the leash she wanted. She leads the dog back to the estate. She rejoins Maxim and they immediately have a fight. He tells her heatedly that the beach and the boathouse evoke bad memories for him. Yeah, I don't like it down there. And she goes tearfully inside for tea. And again, she doesn't understand what she did wrong. And he says, quote, oh God, what a fool I was to come back. Very bitter about this.

24:26 Frank: Anthony, do we know who this man on the beach is?

24:28 Anthony: Yeah, we learned soon that his name is Ben. He's a harmless, intellectually disabled man who spends much of his time on the beach near Manderley.

24:36 Megan: And the rest of the week, we see the weather gets very rainy, and people from the neighborhood start coming to calls. They want to all meet the new Mistress of Manderly. And the heroine has these visits, but she really kind of suffers through them. Again, it's really exhausting to her and overwhelming. But she does even return some of these visits, which again is kind of socially what she's expected to do. People come to call on you, and then you return the visit. And through these visits, she learns a lot more detail about Rebecca's life. She learns that she was very famous for being very witty and charming, as well as beautiful, and that she was known to be very skilled as a hostess, that this was something everyone knew about her.

25:18 Frank: She gave great parties.

25:19 Megan: Yes, gave a great party. And after one of her visits, the heroine encounters Frank Crawley. And again, she really enjoys his you know, quiet company, she finds him to just be a calming presence, and they walk together.

25:32 Anthony: And, uh, yeah, so this is where we start to flesh out a little more of that relationship, and we learn about Frank, and, uh, and she realizes… And Rebecca. Oh, and Rebecca, of course. She realizes, okay, here's some… I have some burning questions. He's the one I can ask, because she asks about Rebecca. And he seems a little reluctant to speak of her, but he tells the heroine that the boathouse by the beach was hers once, was Rebecca's. and that she used to use it to give, quote, moon-like picnics and one thing and another, nice and mysterious, leaves it hanging. Rebecca, she moored her boat at that boathouse, he says, the same boat that she took out the night that she drowned. Frank tells the heroine how Rebecca's body washed up miles away two months later and how Maxim had to go to a whole nother town in order to identify her body.

26:19 Megan: And when the heroine starts confiding in Crawley about her feelings of inadequacy and trying to live up to the precedent that Rebecca set, the overseer gets upset and says to her, look, forget it, Mrs. DeWinter, forget it like he's done and thank heaven for the rest of us. None of us want to bring back the past. And Maxim, least of all, he basically kind of tells her, stop trying to live up to this. Nobody wants to go back to that time. And frankly, your husband, least of any of us, wants to go back to when Rebecca was here. Stop romanticizing this into something that everybody wants her back. And she doesn't really understand what he means, but he's saying, that's not true. And your husband, more than any of us, does not want that.

27:03 Anthony: It comes as a bit of a surprise to us. Yeah, more information is all of a sudden, you know, sort of coming out about Rebecca. And the book is in a sense, a mystery story. You know, at this point we realize that the heroine, she's slowly accumulating knowledge, right? Often accidentally, but she's piecing together the real narrative here. And I like how you put that, Megan. It's, you know, don't romanticize it necessarily. Don't assume it was better and that everybody wishes it was back. In these chapters here, she learns about Miss Danvers' relationship with Rebecca. from the friendly, amusing Beatrice, and then she hears about the boathouse cottage and the manner of Rebecca's death from Frank. So she's going, okay, she's getting all kinds of perspectives.

27:42 Megan: Yeah, and for the first half of the book, essentially, the heroine's been a prisoner of this assumption that she's made, a lot of assumptions she's made. She's decided that everybody just, you know, adored Rebecca and thought she was wonderful. And Maxim, most of all, she thinks he adored his wife, that she was just this brilliant, beautiful person, and that she was essentially flawless. But the reader starts to notice things like how Beatrice and Giles You know, Maxim mentions that they almost never came to visit when Rebecca was alive. And, you know, the reader notices they come immediately. You know, they want to meet the heroine as soon as she gets to Manderley with Maxim, and they're incredibly friendly. And if they really liked Rebecca, the reader starts to think, you know, then you would have expected them to maybe be kind of cautious or kind of cool towards his new wife, or to not visit at all that quickly, especially since he got married so quickly after Rebecca died. And, you know, it was kind of a whirlwind romance, but they really embrace her warmly. And that, you know, kind of clues the reader in that, you know, maybe not everybody thought Rebecca was so perfect.

28:46 Anthony: Right, and now with Frank, he's sort of this paragon of virtue, but then he's genuinely shocked when she compares herself unfavorably to Rebecca. Whereas before he was a little, you know, mum's the word, he was kind of keeping to himself. Now he's very expressive when he just says, I should say that kindliness and sincerity, and if I may say so, modesty, are worth far more to a man, to a husband, than all the wit and beauty in the world. So it's clear now that Rebecca wasn't the, to use a phrase from the time, she wasn't the bee's knees. She wasn't, you know, the best, you know. And he's saying, witty and pretty is in everything. There's another side of her that you have not heard about. Take it from this reply, it's okay. It's okay that you're not exactly like Rebecca.

29:32 Frank: But the heroine, I'll go this last line here.

29:36 Anthony: We know that, and we're saying that here, but she still just goes, oh, you're just being nice. You're just saying that to make me feel better because I'm not as great as the great Rebecca. And he's going, that's not what I'm saying.

29:45 Megan: And Mrs. Danvers, at this point, hires the heroine a maid. She hires a local girl named Clarice, who's from the village. And she's kind of a perfect fit because she's really inexperienced and shy and uncertain. and that kind of fits well with the heroine. They have these similarities in personality. The heroine is still really struggling in her new role as Mistress of Manderly, and she accidentally breaks this very valuable glass figure, and she deliberately does not mention that it happened. and hides the shattered pieces of glass at the back of a desk drawer. We see her kind of behaving like she thinks she's like a naughty child. Yes, exactly what I was thinking. Like, you know, she's a child trying to cover it up and thinking, you know, again, instead of thinking that she's, you know, the lady of the house and can just say, oh, this broke as though she's going to be, you know, reprimanded or in trouble for what's happened.

30:38 Anthony: Exactly, that's sort of- Sent to bed with no dinner. Right? But see, again, not coming up as privileged as Maxim and then probably Rebecca in her own home was, she doesn't realize what are the consequences of hiding it? A servant's going to be blamed. and that can turn into a bigger can of worms. And in fact. And that's exactly what happens. She's forced to tell what happens and she apologizes to Mrs. Danvers for not informing her earlier. Maxim is going, oh my God, this is just like unnecessary drama. He thinks it's amusing, but it really upsets the new Mrs. De Winter, she's pretty upset. And she uses this as an opportunity to say, you know what, I'm really feeling out of place here. You know, she's uneducated, she's unprepared for the responsibilities of her new wife. And he tries to go, oh, it'll be fine. He tries to soothe her. Oh, you'll get used to it. But by the end of it, she's worried, this marriage is failing. Oh my God, I'm blowing it. It's not going well.

31:34 Megan: And at this point, it's summer now, and early on in June, Maxim has to go away to London. He has to go to this public dinner. And as the heroine takes a walk, she wanders back down to the beach, and she encounters again this man with intellectual disabilities. And his name, Maxim has told her, is Ben, and he lives on a farm nearby. And Ben seems very nervous around her. keeps asking her if she's going to put him in an asylum. But he soon kind of warms to her because she's very gentle and kind of calms him. And he eventually makes the comment to her, you're not like the other one. Tall and dark she was. She gave you the feeling of a snake. I seen her here with my own eyes.

32:17 Frank: It was this tall and dark woman who first threatened Ben with the possibility of life in an asylum after catching him spying on her one day. Ben then turns to the heroine, asking, she's gone now, ain't she? But the heroine, confused, tells him, I'm not sure I know who you're talking about. And she then leads Jasper back to the house.

32:34 Anthony: At the house, surprise. Mrs. Danvers, she has a visitor. There's a well-built, good-looking man in a sports car. And he and Miss Danvers, they seem startled when the heroine stumbles upon them coming out of the West Wing, which again is also kind of, you know, it's shut down, it's been remained unpopulated. Why are they, what are they doing over there?

32:53 Frank: Early on in the novel, we're told that the East Wing had been renovated. Yes. This West Wing is still in the old fashion, the old style. It's not been cleaned up, renovated at all.

33:04 Anthony: They want to keep the fact that this man's visiting a secret. But the man, it's Jack Favel, recovers his poise quickly. He becomes quite friendly, sort of fake friendly, smooth talker friendly. And again, she doesn't see through this necessarily, but you can sort of see he's a character. He says, hey, why don't you come take a ride in my car? He's acting very gallant, a little over the top. He makes her uncomfortable. And when he leaves, she suddenly wonders if he was a thief. And so she impulsively, she goes back to the West Wing, where she saw them come out, and she wants to see if anything's missing.

33:35 Frank: You know, Anthony, you called Favreau a character, but in English, they would have used the term cad. Yes, yes. Overly friendly, hardy type with an unpleasant streak, the sort of man who spends money easily and carries on scandalously with women. His friendliness with Mrs. Danvers, whom he calls Danny, which I did not see coming, immediately singles to us, and to the heroine, his untrustworthiness. Absolutely.

34:01 Anthony: It's like, okay, no one is close enough to this woman to have a pet name for her, because she can't have any. So, suspect.

34:09 Megan: It's like, again, she's this malevolent presence who's kind of controlling everything, and suddenly she's Danny, and it's all warm and casual. Our heroine finds the West Wing is deserted, but none of the furniture has been covered up with dust cloths. The heroine goes into the bedroom that was once Rebecca's, and she opens up some shutters. She's trying to clear away the musty smell, and Mrs. Danvers enters, as she creepily often appears into rooms. And she says, you know, you wanted to see the room, you know, because the heroine makes some, you know, flimsy excuses for why she's there. Again, she seems to think she needs an excuse to be in any part of her own home. And Mrs. Danvers just says, hey, you wanted to see the room. Why didn't you ever ask me to show it to you before? And she shows her everything. She shows her Rebecca's bed where she slept, all of the slippers and dresses and clothes she wore. it's all kind of creepily still just kept just as it was. Everything is almost as if it's a waiting for Rebecca to return and use it.

35:06 Anthony: This is the most we get Danvers really going off here and she goes on and on to the new Mrs. De Winter. She says, she talks about the night Rebecca died, how everyone assumed she was sleeping in the boathouse, which she often did, and how they awoke to find her boat missing and pieces of it floating in the water. And then the housekeeper says she thinks Rebecca has come back to haunt the house. Okay, all right. And she says, quote, do you think she can see us talking to one another right now? Mrs. Danvers asks, do you think the dead come back and watch the living? And I like this so much because the plain language in her response, she just goes, I don't know. I don't know. It's not even poetic or sort of like, you know, well, it's not witty. It's just, she's frightened and that becomes clear. Cause she's like, what are you talking about, lady? So anyway, she is like, I got to get out of here. She makes an excuse. She runs downstairs and feeling a little ill, she lies on her bed.

36:00 Frank: It's in these chapters that the heroine's inability to assert herself, to use the authority she's been given, begins to seem almost, I don't know, pathetic. She's a young girl, but she's acting like a young child, at least to my reading. The scene with the broken ornament marks a low point and exemplifies her powerlessness. She's forced to apologize to Mrs. Danvers, who seems to have her completely cowed, and ends up feeling and acting, as I said, like a child who's been caught being naughty. And it's no coincidence that her marriage to Maxim is suffering. She's failing to act the part of his wife. Indeed, she's failing to act as an adult.

36:36 Megan: But still, to be fair, she can't take all the blame for the problems in her marriage. Granted. You know, Maxim still, you know, stays kind of partially aloof, you know, from her, and he still guards his own secrets tightly. You know, we forget that when they met, you know, it was, you know, we describe it as a whirlwind courtship, but, you know, he was always very private even then, and there were always just these very small bursts of being open, you know. him being uncomfortable on that drive, or him saying, oh no, I'm only here because of you, and proposing marriage. But in between, he was very tightly wound, and that's continued into the marriage. And in these chapters, we get just even more pieces to kind of puzzle together at the same time. Our heroine sees Ben again, and he once again kind of hints about some darker truths about Rebecca. Essentially, we get the sense that because of his kind of childlike, you know, simplicity, he was able to see the simple truth of Rebecca's, you know, real nature. As he said before, she gave you the feeling of a snake, even though everybody else was kind of caught up in, you know, the version of herself she presented, you know, and her charm and her beauty and kind of this facade.

37:44 Anthony: And then this West Wing scene, to go back and talk about it a little more, I loved it. It was one of the creepiest scenes just because Ms. Danvers alone or already was kind of unsettling, but now hearing her explain herself, like typically that might happen. And the character, oh, you learn a little more about them. You have some humility, some vulnerability, but it just makes her scarier. It's spine chilling. And Mrs. Danvers, she's made these rooms in sort of this shrine, this morbid shrine to Rebecca. And Du Maurier's descriptions both of the bedroom and of Mrs. Danvers' sinister devotion of this departed mistress, it sets a tone that echoes throughout the rest of the book. And it shows the malignant nature of the secrets yet to be revealed.

38:28 Megan: And it seems really remarkable at this point, when you get into this point of the book, that Maxim keeps Mrs. Danvers on staff at all. And even more surprising that he allows her to keep the West Wing is, as you said, this like creepy shrine to Rebecca. Mrs. Danvers tells the heroine very explicitly what up until then was only implied. She says that Rebecca's ghost haunts Manderly, that it's wandering the halls, watching everyone. and she even whispers, you know, really in a sinister way, sometimes I wonder if she comes back here and watches you and Mr. De Winter together. I mean, it's really, you know, as you said, spine-chilling stuff. And, you know, she kind of suggests that Rebecca is definitely not happy with whatever she's seeing. Right. She is coming back.

39:16 Anthony: That's right. For the heroine, these are all, you know, sort of her worst fears. vocalized. She says, yeah, she's watching. She doesn't like it. You know, she's telling her this.

39:25 Frank: And again, as we've said, it's not a manifested ghost, but the presence of this Rebecca is strong.

39:33 Anthony: Yeah, she can't avoid it. So the following day, the heroine, she drives with Beatrice, that's again, Maxim's sister. They go to visit Gran, Beatrice and Maxim's grandmother. And along the way, Beatrice tells her that Jack Favel was Rebecca's cousin and that he visited Manderley frequently while she was alive.

39:50 Megan: They get to Gran's, and Gran is nearly blind and very forgetful. Yet the visit goes well at first, until the old lady suddenly starts demanding to see Rebecca. She starts saying, you know, why didn't Maxim bring Rebecca? I'm so fond of her. Where's Rebecca? Where's dear Rebecca? And Beatrice is really mortified by this and, you know, gets the heroine out of there right away. And when she returns to Manderly, the heroine finds that Maxim is now back from London, and she comes in and overhears him talking to Mrs. Danvers, and he is angry, and he's basically forbidding Jack Favreau from coming to his home ever again.

40:27 Anthony: A few weeks later, it's a Sunday. Maxim and the heroine, they're hosting some guests at Manderley, and one of them, a lady Crowan, she asks if they'll be holding a costume ball, which is apparently this yearly tradition at Manderley. When Rebecca was alive, of course, of all the parties, this was the big one. And after a lot of discussion, Maxim agrees, yeah, sure, we'll host the event. And Frank Crawley promises to work with Mrs. Danvers to prepare it.

40:53 Megan: this is going to be the heroine's first grand affair, you know, as mistress of Manderly. And almost in spite of herself, she starts feeling excited, you know, about hosting a party and having this opportunity to kind of demonstrate what she can do. And she tries to decide what to wear. And of course, who comes to see her but Mrs. Danvers with a suggestion for her costume, which is so kind and thoughtful.

41:16 Anthony: Hey, thanks, Dani.

41:18 Megan: Yeah. She advises the heroine that she should use one of the big paintings hanging in the stairwell, these 18th century paintings, as essentially she should model herself after one of them. There's this painting of this lovely woman. She's holding a hat in her hand. And she even says, oh, there's this great dressmaker in London who would make a specially designed costume based on this for you. Here's their contact information.

41:45 Anthony: Now, the heroine, she's astonished about this, and she says, you know what, Miss Danvers, she has finally decided to be friendly. Oh, I knew she'd come around. But she thinks carefully on the matter, and she resolves to follow Miss Danvers' advice. She orders a costume like the one worn in the woman in the painting.

42:04 Megan: And the day of this grand ball approaches and the heroine conceals the details of her costume from everyone. It's again, almost like childlike, hoping to surprise them. She's all excited to show off this. And again, thinking that she's finally gonna show them that she's done something well and done something impressive. On the night of the party, Giles and Beatrice arrive early and they're chatting with Frank Crawley and Maxim. and the heroine goes upstairs to change. And she comes down the main staircase with this grand confidence, walking down, thinking that everyone is gonna see her and just be stunned by her appearance.

42:43 Anthony: And this, it's not the way she imagined. It does not go well. And this is one time where I'll just reference the Hitchcock film. I can still see Laurence Olivier's face. It's so just, sort of just stunned, and he can barely speak. He's so upset about this. And of course, she's bewildered by this. She doesn't understand. He turns white. He orders her to go upstairs, change out of the dress. And she's hurt. She returns to the room. She breaks down in tears. Beatrice runs in and says, oh, hey, I kind of understand what's going on. This is why they're all so shocked. You're wearing the same dress that Rebecca wore at the last costume ball, okay? The last one before her death. Right. She tells her that Maxim believes she's done it on purpose.

43:31 Megan: And this is, of course, just horrifying and horrifically embarrassing to our heroine. And a long time passes before she can even bring herself to go back downstairs. And when she does, you know, the party's in full swing. And essentially to explain the heroine's absence and her lack of costume, everyone's been told that the dressmaker sent the wrong costume. You know, we'll just blame it, blame it on the dressmaker. Somehow she survives the evening. She wears just a simple dress and makes kind of light conversation with everyone. But she spends the whole night imagining that everyone's talking about her behind her back and she's just miserable. And at the end of the ball, there's this big fireworks display out on the lawn. And after that, all the guests start drifting away and depart. And the heroine goes to bed. She's exhausted and miserable, but she lays awake all night waiting for Maxim, but he never comes.

44:24 Frank: hear the heroine's decision to follow Mrs. Danvers' advice and dress as the lady in the painting, it marks a key moment in the novel's psychological drama. I think it's also a moment when the reader wonders how, as we've said, after all the housekeeper's sinister behavior, how could the heroine possibly trust her? I know I've been wondering about, I wondered about that at this moment. Why would she even believe her in the first place? I was surprised, I'll use the word shocked as well.

44:52 Megan: I think she's almost just so desperate to have a friend or to have an ally of any kind, because it does seem shocking and almost stupid of her. But when we think about how isolated she's been all this time, I think she's so desperate that she's willing to believe it because it's finally seems to… It feels good. Yeah, it feels good. And it feels like someone on her side and building up her confidence.

45:16 Anthony: Exactly. I mean, ever since she arrived at Manderley, she's failed to carve out her own identity. She needs to show how she is the new Mrs. De Winter, but instead, she is overcome by this presence. Again, the palpable presence of Rebecca, who's dead and not there, but not only from the comparisons, from the conversations, from the pictures, from the stuff in the room, from Miss Danvers herself saying, she's here and watching you. you know, she's just maintained her hold from beyond the grave, Rebecca has. Now this costume ball, the first large-scale public event at the mansion, you know, since her marriage, which she told these were always the big deal, this is where Rebecca excelled, and it was her first chance to do it. She blew it spectacularly, and it was a chance to shine herself, but it ended in a disaster.

46:04 Megan: And essentially by following Mrs. Danvers' advice in her choice of costume, the heroine was believing herself to be original and surprising and really daring. She thought she was gonna make an impression and make her mark finally on this house and kind of among this social set as well. But in fact, her choice comes from Mrs. Danvers and ultimately, you know, meaning it comes from Rebecca. It was Rebecca's idea first. And so ironically, instead of taking this big step forward, you know, into this life and stepping outside of the shadow of Rebecca, instead she, you know, essentially garbs herself in Rebecca's clothes and walks directly in Rebecca's footsteps. And Beatrice even says afterwards, you stood there on the stairs. And for one ghastly moment, I thought, and she trails off, you know, leaving the rest of the sentence unspoken, that essentially she thought Rebecca had come back to life. And it's interesting that she says, for one ghastly moment, I thought, like, this is not a welcome thought. You know, it's not a welcome thought to have Rebecca back. We again get this message sent to us.

47:14 Frank: And after this terrible night, the day dawns damp and foggy. Beatrice has left the heroine an encouraging note, but Maxim has disappeared. The heroine calls Frank Crawley at the estate office, but he hasn't seen her husband either. And she tells Frank what she believes, that Maxim will never love her, that he will always be in love with Rebecca. And Frank, appalled, insists that he come down and talk with her, but she hangs up on him. After wandering the grounds in the fog, she sees Mrs. Danvers watching her from the windows of the West Wing. And finally, she decides to go upstairs and confront the housekeeper. Where does she find Mrs. Danvers?

47:48 Anthony: Oh, I think we both know. Rebecca's bedroom. You've done what you wanted, haven't you? The heroine says. You meant this to happen, didn't you? Mrs. Danvers, who looks suddenly old and ill, she lashes out, very defensive. She accuses the heroine of trying to take Rebecca's place, telling her that Maxim does not love her. He still loves Rebecca.

48:08 Megan: And then she starts describing what Rebecca was like as a young woman. She talks about how she had all the courage and spirit of a boy and how she was so beautiful. She was so perfect. And every man who saw her fell in love with her. Everyone from Maxim to her cousin Jack. to Frank Crawley. They were all jealous, all mad for her, as Mrs. Danvers puts it. And she says this almost ecstatically, but she says, but she didn't mind. It was like a game to her, is how she puts it about Rebecca. And then her voice really changes. It gets very, you know, soft and kind of hypnotic, saying, you know, why don't you go? He doesn't want you. He never did. He can't forget her. It's you who ought to be dead, not Mrs. De Winter.

48:53 Anthony: Scary. Yeah. And she leads the heroine over to the window, and they look down on the terrace below. Mrs. Danvers, she begins to urge her to jump. She just flat out says it. She says, take a quick painless death. Why don't you jump? Yeah, why don't you? The stones below. There's not much for you to live for, she insists right out with it. Why don't you jump now and have done with it? And the heroine, having fallen into an almost sort of trance-like state, amid the fog and the housekeeper's soft voice, she looks down and she considers it.

49:25 Megan: And Mrs. Danvers kind of continues kind of, you know, needling her and trying to kind of, you know, spin this idea that the heroine should kill herself and that there's really no point to her life. He's still in hell, as she says, and he's looked like that ever since she died. Why don't you just leave Manderly to her? Again, this idea that Manderly is like something in Rebecca's clutches or Rebecca is still this specter, you know, kind of haunting the place. And, you know, this suggestion kind of makes sense to the heroine. She feels like she has failed in her marriage. She's failed to kind of step up and lead and make Manderly her own. And with all this fog and Mrs. Danvers' poisonous voice in her ear, this idea that throwing herself onto the terraced stones seems like a logical and possibly even welcome next step after all these failures. She thinks, You know, the pain would be sharp and sudden, is what Mrs. Danvers says. And the fall would break my neck. It wouldn't be slow, like drowning. It would be over quickly. And Maxim doesn't love me. You know, Maxim wants to be alone with Rebecca, is the idea that she really has stuck in her head.

50:38 Anthony: Just at this moment, however, there's a boom of guns from the cove, and the trance is broken. A ship has run aground at Manderley, and the women hear footsteps of Maxim running across the terrace, down to the sea.

50:49 Megan: The heroine goes down to the water, too, and she leaves Mrs. Danvers behind and her, you know, intentions of getting her to commit suicide. The ship has been stranded two miles offshore, and divers have been sent to see if they can shift it. And Maxim has taken an injured sailor to a doctor, and for most of the afternoon, the heroine stays on the cliffs. with a lot of locals who have come who are curious to see what have happened. They're all kind of watching the divers and the tugboats trying to dislodge this boat from the bottom of the cove. But finally, the heroine returns to Manderley, but Maxim is still not back.

51:25 Anthony: So the harbormaster, he comes to see her. However, he has news that divers have found the wreckage of another boat at the bottom of the cove. The same boat that Rebecca took out on the night she died. And there's a body in the cabin.

51:37 Megan: And at this point, Maxim appears, ironically. The harbormaster repeats his report to Maxim, and then he leaves. And now that the heroine and Maxim are alone, she essentially says, you know, forgive me for my mistake with the costume. And he just brushes this apology aside and says, it's too late, darling. As he put it, we've lost our little chance of happiness. And she's confused. And when she asks what this means, he finally tells her the truth about Rebecca's death. He says, the body in the cabin is not someone who sailed with Rebecca. It is Rebecca. And the reason that Maxim knows this is because he killed her. He shot her in the boathouse, took her body out in the boat and let it sink to the bottom of the cove.

52:21 Anthony: Heavy. This is a big turning point.

52:24 Frank: Big secrets coming out.

52:25 Anthony: Yeah. So now they're sitting in the library with Jasper, and husband and wife discuss the true story of Maxim's marriage to Rebecca. Yeah, she was beautiful, charming, and brilliant, he says, but she was also wicked, selfish, and deceitful. Their marriage was a sham from the beginning. On their honeymoon in Monte Carlo, they stopped at the same vista. Remember that one where Maxim was driving with her and had sort of a moment? And Rebecca told him that she would be a perfect hostess, a wonderful mistress of Manderly, but that in return, he would have to let her live her life as she pleased. And because he loved Manderly and his family name, and he wanted to avoid any scandal, they're already married now, and he needs it to have, you know, his wife needs to be a good mistress of Manderly, he agreed.

53:09 Frank: And so for years, everyone believed that he had a perfect marriage, and Rebecca turned Manderley into the greatest showplace in England. But all the while, she was spending her days in London, where she gallivanted with a shady group of friends, or in the boathouse, where she took her various lovers. She had a voracious sexual appetite, and she and her cousin Jack Flavell were lovers. But she also tried to seduce Beatrice's husband, Giles, and even Frank Crawley. Because appearances were maintained all the while, though, Maxim allowed the debauchery to continue. But when Rebecca taunted him and suggested that she was pregnant, Maxim flew into a rage, one that would prove murderous.

53:47 Megan: One night, he went down to her cottage on the beach with a gun, hoping to frighten Favell away with it. But he found Rebecca alone and told her he would divorce her if she didn't break off the relationship with Favell and all of her other friends. But Rebecca laughed at him and said he would never be able to prove any of her infidelities in a court of law. He'd have no evidence, and all the servants would side with her, and so would everybody who knew the couple and attended all of their fabulous galas.

54:15 Anthony: Mm-hmm. Rebecca, at this time, she proceeded to tell him that she might tame her behavior anyway. She was pregnant with Fawvel's child, gross, which everyone would assume was Maxim's, and which she would raise as heir to Manderly. Upon hearing this, Maxim broke down and he shot her. He carried her out to the sailboat, he locked her corpse below deck, and then took the boat out to sea, where he drove spikes into the hull and rowed away in the dinghy, letting the boat sink.

54:44 Megan: Months later, luckily for Maxim, a drowned female body turned up in another town, and thinking it might belong to the mysteriously vanished Mrs. DeWinter, authorities asked Maxim to come look at the body. To quell all suspicion, he did, in fact, identify the body as Rebecca's, even though he knew Rebecca's body was still where he'd left it at the bottom of the cove.

55:05 Anthony: Now, when the heroine hears this story, she embraces her husband and tells him that their situation isn't as bad as he thinks. It's okay. We can work through this. Yeah.

55:17 Megan: Exactly. The party was a disaster, but we can work through the murder.

55:19 Anthony: Not the worst I've heard. But truly, it is kind of interesting how this brings them closer together. They sort of have this secret together now. This is the most couple-like they've been, because they sort of have this together now. and he had admitted this. And she says, hey, no one knows the truth except for the two of them. Maxim can tell the police, oh, I made a mistake with the earlier corpse, and there'd be nothing to make anyone suspect foul play. But just then, in true Gothic fashion. The telephone rings.

55:50 Frank: You know, readers, it's one of the novel's ironies that the discovery of Rebecca's body represents both disaster and redemption for the novel's hero and heroine. For while the event opens Maxim up to the danger of arrest, it also destroys the secrets that has kept him from his new wife and enables her to see her marriage clearly for the first time. The emergence of Rebecca's body from the sea symbolizes the emergence of the truth, buried for a time beneath the waves and also marks the end of Rebecca's power over the heroine.

56:18 Megan: And this discovery is one of the book's two biggest plot twists. Twists that come as real shocks to readers and to the characters in the story as well. Every characteristic that we thought we could ascribe to Rebecca with absolute certainty, beauty, charm, wit, and of course perfection, the biggest one, all turn out to be illusions concealing a manipulative, cruel-natured woman.

56:41 Frank: And as is the case with any good mystery thriller, all of the strange details of Rebecca's plot fall into place with the disclosure of one overarching explanation. We now understand Favreau's relationship with her cousin and her housekeeper, as well as Beatrice and Giles' reluctance to visit Mandalay, and Frank Crawley's distress at the heroine's suggestion that Maxim is still in love with Rebecca.

57:03 Anthony: And those cryptic comments that Ben made at the beach now, they make sense. They do. He must've witnessed Rebecca meeting with the lovers and she threatened him with the insane asylum. I'll put you there if you ever tell anyone. Finally, we understand how Rebecca goes on so well with Mrs. Danvers and why Mrs. Danvers remains so devoted to her now that she's dead. The two women, they shared a sinister streak.

57:24 Frank: And I think most readers will object to the fact that the novel now expects us to sympathize with an admitted murderer and to accept without question his account of his dead wife's character. Disturbingly, Maxim seems to have no real justification for murdering Rebecca. Yes, she was unfaithful to him and could be viciously cruel, but if these are the extent of her, quote, crimes, then Maxim can only be viewed as a cold-blooded killer. However, the narrator, the heroine, doesn't hesitate to accept her husband's evil deed as warranted. She's simply relieved to discover that Maxim never loved his first wife. Rather, his affections are reserved solely for the heroine. This new certainty saves and transforms their marriage. It allows the heroine, for the first time, to become who she is, namely, Mrs. De Winter. The only question left is whether the transformation comes too late. Whether Rebecca's corpse can now bring down Maxim, as her ghost almost brought down the heroine. All right, readers, let's take a break here to digest all we've just learned. A pregnant Rebecca was killed by Maxim. She was not the Saint and Mrs. de Winter we were led to believe. And Maxim may be headed to prison. We'll also find out who is on the phone calling at a time like this. You're listening to Novel Conversations. We'll be right back. Welcome back to Novel Conversations. I'm your host, Frank Lavallo, and today I'm having a conversation about the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. And I'm joined by our Novel Conversations readers, Megan Canty and Anthony Mahramus. Readers, when we left, we learned a pregnant Rebecca was killed by Maxim. Maxim may be headed to prison, and the phone keeps ringing.

59:07 Megan: The man on the phone is Colonel Julian, the local magistrate, calling to ask Maxim if he might have made a mistake in identifying the body the year before. Already, it seems, the authorities have realized whose body is in the sunken boat. Next, a reporter calls, but Maxim just brushes this reporter off and hangs up the phone. After dinner, he and the heroine sit together for a long time in the dark, just holding each other.

59:33 Anthony: Next day, Manderly undergoes a transformation. As does the heroine. Yes. For the first time, the heroine, she takes charge of her home. She orders Mrs. Danvers around. She changes menus. She generally asserts herself in a way she hadn't up to this point. Colonel Julian comes to lunch, and the De Winters discuss the coming inquests with him and Frank Raleigh.

59:52 Megan: At this point, they've identified the body in the boat as being Rebecca's, and the colonel seems to think the whole thing will be explained as an accident. Rebecca went below, a sudden wind came up, and the boat suddenly capsized. After he leaves, Maxim tells the heroine that there was no trace of a bullet wound in the skeleton. The bullet must have passed through the flesh, meaning that, at least for now, he thinks he's safe.

01:00:14 Anthony: The newspapers are full of the story the next day. They're playing up the sensational angle, making Maxim look like the heartless man who married a young girl while his wife's grave was still fresh. In the afternoon, the couple goes into town for the inquest, and the heroine sees Fawvel there and Mrs. Danvers.

01:00:32 Megan: At first, it seems like the coroner is likely to return a verdict of an accidental death. But then the man who built Rebecca's boat takes the stand, saying that he examined the wreck and that he found holes that Maxim made in the bottom. He says that those holes indicate that the boat was sunk deliberately and not by accident. And from this point, the questioning of the inquest starts to take a sharper tone. instead of this gentler, relaxed tone of questioning. And the coroner starts asking Maxim if his relationship with Rebecca was a happy one. At this point, the heroine faints and has to be taken outside.

01:01:07 Anthony: Eventually, the coroner settles on a verdict of suicide. Committed for reasons unknown, and briefly it appears that everything's going to turn out okay. But Maxim, Frank, and the heroine, they return to Manderley. But then Maxim goes out again, to attend the burial of Rebecca's body in a nearby churchyard. While he's gone, Fawvel appears. He has been drinking heavily, and he is very, very rude to the heroine.

01:01:28 Megan: He tells her he knows Rebecca's death was not suicide and that he's gonna see justice done. He has a lot of bravado while he's drunk, apparently. Then Maxim returns with Frank and insists that Fav will leave at once. But Rebecca's cousin takes out a note that Rebecca sent him the night she died, telling him to meet her at the cottage because she said she had something very important to tell him. And as he puts it, it's not the sort of note you write when you're going to commit suicide, is it? And he's very triumphant about this note as he kind of waves it in the air. And he tries to use it to blackmail Maxim. He threatens to go to the police unless Maxim gives him an annual income out of the dwinter pocket.

01:02:07 Anthony: Now, Frank, ever practical, he gets worried and he says to the couple, he's like, you should probably yield to this demand. But Maxim, he refuses. He insists on telephoning Colonel Julian and settling the matter then and there. When the magistrate arrives, Favreau laughs drunkenly and tells him to arrest Maxim for Rebecca's murder.

01:02:25 Frank: Demurier in this story skillfully blends suspense by repeatedly having Maxim appear safe from danger, only to pull the rug out from under him. First, we learn that the bullet is not a Rebecca skeleton, and it seems that the inquest will call it an accidental death. But then the shipbuilder's testimony dashes that hope, as he reveals that the boat was sunk deliberately, and the questions from the coroner turn sharper. Finally, the verdict of suicide is returned, and again, it seems that all may be well, but Hope flags again with that interference of Favel. He sits with Mrs. Danvers at the inquest, the two of them seeming to be watching out for Rebecca's interests, and the reader feels sure that both of them instinctively know the truth about her death.

01:03:08 Megan: And by refusing to pay this blackmail money and calling the colonel, it seems like Maxim's acting against his own interests. And yet, it makes psychological sense. Essentially, he's been wrestling with Rebecca's ghost for so long that he probably just couldn't bear to have Favel hanging around, living off of him, and being this constant menace, and again, more of a specter of Rebecca that everyone's been dealing with for so long. He seems to have decided it's better to just finish the matter off, for better or worse, than to live in agony.

01:03:40 Anthony: So Fawvel proceeds to tell Colonel Julian that he and Rebecca were lovers, and that the two were planning to get married, and that Maxim killed her out of jealousy. However, Fawvel's obvious drunkenness inclines the Colonel to distrust his words, and he demands to know if Fawvel has any proof of his accusations. And he witnesses to back up what he says.

01:03:58 Megan: Favreau thinks for a moment and then says that they should call Ben. Remembering Ben's cryptic comments about the dark lady who won't come back again, the heroine is afraid that Ben might indeed have witnessed the murder and that he might testify that he saw it. But Ben comes in kind of whimpering and clutching his cap. and talking about being put in an asylum again just says that he saw nothing and he denies ever seeing Favell before. He's obviously still frightened by those threats that were made by Rebecca against him.

01:04:28 Anthony: Colonel Julian points out that Favel cannot even prove that he and Rebecca were lovers at all. Can't I? He smirks and calls for Mrs. Danvers. The old housekeeper tells the magistrate that, yes, Favel and Rebecca were having an affair, but her mistress never cared about him. Quote, lovemaking was a game with her, only a game, she repeats adamantly, threatening to become hysterical.

01:04:50 Megan: Colonel Julian attempts to extract more useful knowledge from her, asking if Rebecca had any motive for suicide at the time that she died. Mrs. Danvers dismisses this idea, but she mentions she still has Rebecca's engagement book, documenting where she went in London the day that she died. They go fetch the book, and it shows that Rebecca had an afternoon appointment with a man named Baker, who turns out to be a doctor and what they called at the time a women's specialist. And it's decided that the whole company, except for Mrs. Tanvers, should go to London and interview this doctor tomorrow because why not?

01:05:27 Frank: You know, and it seems to the heroine and to Maxim that at last they will be found out. Dr. Baker will surely testify that Rebecca was pregnant. And with this disclosure, the law authorities will surely suspect that Maxim killed his wife out of a jealous rage, which of course he did. The next morning, they rise early and drive to London, accompanied by the now sober Favel and the colonel.

01:05:47 Anthony: Dr. Baker meets with them. He goes back over his records till he finally remembers Rebecca, and she came to him under an assumed name. He says, calling herself Mrs. Danvers. Good one. He tells the group that she was suffering from an incurable disease, an inoperable cancer of some sort. She had asked for a truthful diagnosis, he says, and he gave her one, telling her that she only had a few months to live. Incidentally, Dr. Baker adds, her uterus was malformed. She could never have had children.

01:06:16 Megan: So from Colonel Julian's perspective at this point, mystery solved, because Rebecca did have a motive for suicide. However, he does advise Maxim and the heroine to leave the region for the time being, take a holiday on the continent perhaps, he says, just until the gossip dies down. Everyone's very concerned with how things will appear at this point still. And Favreau drives away, he's shaken, and he starts muttering about whether cancer is contagious.

01:06:43 Frank: Another brilliant man. The scene in Dr. Baker's office offers the book's second great plot twist and serves as the novel's denouement. Both the heroine and the reader assume that Dr. Baker will reveal what Rebecca told Maxim that fateful night, that she was pregnant with Fawvel's child. But now we learn that Rebecca's statement to Maxim was merely another one of her many lies. Indeed, perhaps this last deceit was even calculated to make Maxim kill her, and thereby to bring about his death when the murder was found out. Lastly, the fact that Rebecca was sterile resonates somewhat symbolically in the novel. Just as no good can come of evil, so too can no child issue from Rebecca's womb.

01:07:22 Anthony: Together, Maxim and the heroine begin the long trip back to Manderly. As night falls, they find an inn and stop for the evening. Maxim telephones the butler, Frith, and learns that Mrs. Danvers has vanished. He becomes uncomfortable, and after he has dinner, he decides not to spend the night at the inn, but let's just drive straight through until morning. I gotta get back to Manderly.

01:07:42 Megan: And the heroine sleeps during the car ride, but she dreams fitfully. And in her dream, she goes to the mirror and she sees Rebecca's face instead of her own looking back at her. So she awakens kind of suddenly from this dream and she just, for the rest of the drive, sits beside Maxim quietly. But at one point, she believes she has glimpsed the sunrise. There's an orange glow on the horizon, but it turns out that the glow is coming from the West, from over the hills ahead of them. And when the couple comes over a ridgeline, they look down in the valley, and before them, they see Manderly consumed by flames.

01:08:17 Anthony: The final pages of the novel see Maxim and the heroine driving home, apparently victorious, but Rebecca has taken the form of a flashback. The reader knows that in the books present, Manderly is burned. We do not need the news of Mrs. Danvers' disappearance to warn us the troubles awaiting the DeWinters when they return home.

01:08:34 Megan: While we'll never know for certain that Mrs. Danvers set the fire, all the signs point to that conclusion. And in a way, the burning of the house is the price the heroine and her husband have now paid for their triumph over Rebecca. They've overcome her insidious power, but they've done so by murder and concealment, and they have to answer for this somehow.

01:08:54 Frank: I think, in a way, the loss of Manderly comes as a fitting end to the couple's travails. The mansion was Rebecca's home, and it's hard to imagine them living happily in a place still so haunted by her memory. The destruction of the mansion is a difficult burden to bear, but it frees them, once and for all, from the past. And readers, that's how our novel ends. Essentially, through destruction, we have acceptance and, finally, redemption. All right, readers, great insights, great conversation. Megan and Anthony, let's take a final break now, and then we'll head into our last segment, where I'd like to ask the two of you to share a moment or a character, a quote that we haven't had a chance to talk about yet. You're listening to Novel Conversations. I'm Frank Lavallo. We'll be right back. Welcome back. You're listening to Novel Conversations. I'm Frank Lavallo, and today I had a conversation about the novel Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. And I've been joined by our Novel Conversations readers, Megan Canty and Anthony Mahramus. All right, Megan, Anthony, before our break, we ended our story. And now I'd like to ask the two of you if you have a character or a moment that you'd like to share with us, or even a quote that we really haven't had a chance to talk about. Megan, do you have something for us?

01:10:10 Megan: Yeah, I just want to share that I remember vividly the first time I read this book. It was on the summer reading list before my freshman year of high school. And as I've re-read it over the years, what's always just stuck with me is so much of how the trajectory of somebody's life in this book. And Demore does such a beautiful job of showing how the assumptions that we make and the doubts that we have about ourselves and the blanks that we fill in with information that we've kind of skewed can really impact our major decisions and the outcomes of our lives. Here we have this heroine who appears to be kind of a nobody, a nothing, and she sees herself that way. And even when this interesting wealthy man falls in love with her, she doesn't really believe it. When she becomes, you know, the lady of this, you know, big manor house, she can't really take it upon herself to, you know, rise to the occasion. And when she sees that there was someone else that was there before her, who was different from her, she assumes that that person must have been better than her. And all of those things really shape, you know, the trajectory of her marriage and her life until, and when things are kind of, the smoke has cleared away, which is a bad, literally the smoke has cleared away. You know, you really see that, you know, their relationship was very different than she thought it to be. And things were, you know, much better than she thought them to be. But that, you know, for so long, there was this heavy influence that wasn't Rebecca at all, you know, in the book. It was our heroine's influence of herself and what she kind of made Rebecca to be.

01:11:41 Anthony: Gotcha, gotcha. Anthony, you have something you wanna share? As we often do, we talk a lot about the plot, we talk about the characters and stuff, but the prose is something that I wanted to focus on. So I have a little quote here. This is when the heroine first comes to the shuttered West Wing, and she's describing it as she sees it for the first time. And she says, the room smelt close and stale, the smell of a room seldom, if ever used, whose ornaments are herded together in the center of a bed and left there covered with a sheet. It might be, too, that the curtain had not been drawn from the window since some preceding summer, and if one crossed there now and pulled them aside, opening the creaking shutters, a dead moth, who had been imprisoned behind them for many months, would fall to the carpet and lie there, beside a forgotten pin and a dried leaf, blown there before the windows were closed for the last time. Like, there's no need to get into that much detail, but it's so evocative. It's just so excellent.

01:12:36 Frank: I was going to use the exact same word, evocative. Absolutely. It is great writing. And I just want to mention to our readers listening out there, Megan told me that DeMaurier has written a series of short stories as well. and that some of these short stories really reveal this ability to write, Anthony, as you mentioned about her. So I would encourage all of our listeners to pick up the book of short stories, as I know I'm going to based on Megan's recommendation. All right, guys, I think that's certainly a great way to end our conversation about Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier. Anthony, Megan, I want to thank you both for coming in and having this conversation with me today. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Absolutely.

01:13:17 Megan: Oh, say you did, whether you did it or not. Thanks, Frank. Loved it. I guess.

01:13:21 Frank: Yeah. Whatever. I'm Frank Lavallo. You've been listening to Novel Conversations. I hope you soon find yourself in a novel conversation. Thanks for listening to Novel Conversations. If you're enjoying the show, please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find us on Instagram at Novel Conversations. Follow us to stay up to date on upcoming episodes and in anything else we've got in the works. I want to give special thanks to our readers today, Megan Canty and Anthony Marames. Our sound designer and producer is Noah Foutz, and Gray Sienna Longfellow is our audio engineer. Our executive producers are Brigid Coyne and Joan Andrews. I'm Frank Lavallo. Thank you for listening. I hope you soon find yourself in a novel conversation all your own.