How to Read Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Introductory Lecture)

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.'

It’s time to begin our journey into the heart of Daphne du Maurier's dark gothic bestseller: Rebecca.

Our reading will teach us about possessive jealousy, hauntings of the past, the evolution of gothic literature, the rise of the bestseller, the interwar years, identity, memory, class, marriage, women in the modern world, the human condition, and much more.

Today we’re meeting Daphne du Maurier together, contextualising her life, the modern era, and the history of the gothic genre, with a spoiler-free discussion, in order to elevate our appreciation of one of the most iconic works of 20th century British Gothic Literature.

Video Timestamps:

0:00 ‘last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’

1:30 Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca spoiler-free talk

2:30 book club autumn lecture series for Rebecca

3:00 meeting the author Daphne du Maurier

5:00 when writers fall in love with a locale

6:00 growing up in the du Maurier family

7:00 Daphne’s trauma and identity crisis

8:00 portrait of the artist as a young woman

9:00 writing in the 1920s Paris cafe culture

10:00 leaving the Victorian era behind

11:00 landmark era for women’s rights

12:00 Victorian to Edwardian to Modern

14:00 birth of Modernism out of WWI

16:00 channeling trauma into great art

18:00 Daphne du Maurier’s Cornwall

20:00 Cornish myths, legends, folklore

21:00 a shipwreck inspires her first story

22:00 Daphne du Maurier’s Jamaica Inn

23:00 Menabilly, the real life Manderley

24:00 how Daphne met husband Tommy

25:00 real life romantic jealousy of the past

26:00 letters from her husband’s ex-fiancée

27:00 haunted by the ghost of her father

28:00 the marriage of Daphne du Maurier

29:00 trauma from the First World War

30:00 Daphne’s struggles with motherhood

31:00 the challenge of being the breadwinner

32:00 Daphne du Maurier in Alexandria

33:00 what inspired the novel Rebecca?

34:00 feeling of homesickness in Rebecca

35:00 the destruction of the first draft

36:00 Alfred Hitchcock’s film adaptations

37:00 Daphne du Maurier on writing

38:00 the double life of Daphne du Maurier

40:00 Rebecca during the Interwar Years

41:00 looming threat of Second World War

42:00 Britain enters World War Two

43:00 carrying the scars of two world wars

44:00 Daphne du Maurier during WWII

45:00 crisis of faith in the 20th century

46:00 Daphne du Maurier’s The Birds

47:00 Rebecca and the Gothic tradition

48:00 was Daphne du Maurier a Modernist?

49:00 what does gothic literature mean?

50:00 formulation for unlocking the gothic

52:00 French Revolution and gothic evolution

54:00 Gothic as corrupted quest romance

55:00 structural definition of romance

57:00 rebirth, renewal and reunion

58:00 heroines at the centre of the gothic

1:00:00 gothic as male or female fantasy?

1:02:00 the byronic anti-hero archetype

1:04:00 brooding Maxim de Winter

1:05:00 on the rise of women writers

1:06:00 gothic and the rise of the novel

1:08:00 sublime terror in the gothic

1:09:00 difference in terror vs horror

1:10:00 why do we love the sublime?

1:11:00 the war of realism vs romance

1:13:00 gothic literature as political force

1:14:00 proto-feminist critique in the gothic

1:15:00 historical skewed marital rights

1:17:00 woman defined in relation to man

1:18:00 Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre

1:20:00 Sally Beauman on Rebecca

1:22:00 gothic as eternally popular literature

1:23:00 the threat feared becomes internal

1:25:00 identity crisis at the heart of Rebecca

1:26:00 the story of du Maurier’s Rebecca

1:28:00 the narrator’s possessive jealousy

1:29:00 marriage in modern gothic novels

1:30:00 Manderley as masculine metaphor

1:31:00 the two Mrs de Winter characters

1:32:00 the dominating presence of the book

1:33:00 reading as dreaming whilst awake

1:34:00 complex persona put into both women

1:35:00 what does being possessed mean?

1:36:00 haunting means returning home  

1:37:00 how Rebecca became a bestseller 

1:39:00 is du Maurier really a romance writer?

1:40:00 Daphne du Maurier vs the critics

1:41:00 why I reread Rebecca every few years

1:42:00 Rebecca book club lecture series

Recommended Resources:

• Editions: I am working from the Virago Modern Classics paperback for our read-through, which is also available in hardback, and has a thought-provoking afterword by Sally Beauman. There is also a beautiful edition from Everyman's Library. One of my favourite copies of the book is an old battered and well-loved Penguin paperback with a wonderful cover. There are plenty of editions to choose from, so grab whatever comes most easily to hand for you. And, for fellow audiobook lovers, Anna Massey and Harriet Walter have wonderful narrations on Audible. I'm also a huge fan of the abridged Talking Classics version, read by Jenny Agutter and Simon Williams.

• Film & TV Adaptations: There are two major film adaptations that you will want to note. You've got the classic black-and-white 1940 Alfred Hitchcock masterpiece, starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier, which helped further propel Daphne du Maurier to superstardom. Then there's the more recent stunning 2020 film on Netflix, which has a very glossy production value. There are adaptation for television too, like the excellent BBC miniseries from 1979 and the 1997 series. All of these adaptations take different approaches into Dame du Maurier's great novel. My recommendation is to hold off on watching an adaptation until you've finished the book. Whilst reading, think about how you would adapt Rebecca to the screen. What directorial decisions would you make? We'll talk about the film adaptations together when we reach the climax of the story. Instead of watching an adaptation of Rebecca from the outset, you might enjoy watching another of her stories brought to life on screen instead. Hitchcock also adapted The Birds and Jamaica Inn. Nicholas Roeg directed a great adaptation of one of du Maurier's short stories with the 1979 film Don't Look Now.

• Biography: There is an excellent biography of Daphne du Maurier by Margaret Forster, which is well worth dipping into. Forster has done a tremendous job researching the writer's private letters and papers to explore the secret drama of her personal life. If you're interested in knowing about du Maurier's life and craft in her own words, Virago has put together a work based on her personal diaries kept from 1920-1931, called Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer, and also The Rebecca Notebook.

• Short Stories: Daphne du Maurier is a superb short story writer. Her stories offer us some of her darkest stories and make for perfect reading during the autumnal season. The Birds, and Other Stories and Don't Look Now are excellent volumes to have with a wonderful selection of some of her finest works in the mode.

• Spoilers: This introductory talk is a spoiler-free discussion, designed for first-time readers and rereaders of Rebecca alike, mentioning only the plot details that one finds on the back cover of the book and things we learn early on. I will be refraining from spoilers for later in the story as we move through each lecture, focusing only on the events of the chapters up for discussion. If you're a rereader of this phenomenal novel, I ask that we make efforts to protect the secrets of the story for first-time readers. Unlike with Homer's Odyssey, the air of mystery shrouding Rebecca is a profound part of one's first engagement with the work.

Reading Assignment:

Our next discussion will cover events from chapter one up to and including chapter ten of the story, which will take us from Monte Carlo to the famed Manderley.

So start making your way into the work, enter the world of Daphne du Maurier, meet her complex characters, and note down any themes, ideas, or passages that personally resonate with you.

Questions for You:

1) What is your current relationship with Daphne du Maurier? Is this your first reading or a rereading of this great story?

2) What are you hoping to get out of your deep reading of Rebecca?

3) What themes from your wider reading would you like to pull into this journey?

4) Are you a fan of dark gothic narratives? And why do you think gothic stories are so popular with readers?

Happy reading, everybody!