I’m spending the summer with Daphne du Maurier, and I’ve fallen in love with her. How is it that she didn’t cross my path before? It all started with the movie, Frenchman’s Creek, with Joan Fontaine playing Dona, the lovely, high-spirited Lady St. Columb. Such a yummy fantasy, to find a handsome French pirate has been hiding out in my beautiful, wild estate, has in fact been smoking strong tobacco in my bedroom and staring at my portrait. (Yes, I am Dona St. Columb while reading the book and watching the movie.) He slept in my bed while I was in London, bored silly with society, bored with my dull husband Harry, and so very very tired of Rockingham, the menace who doesn’t understand the meaning of NO.
The book was even more delicious, as du Maurier describes wild and dangerous places in Cornwall, the seaside, rivers branching into little nests of paradise, small boats at quays, and beautiful, old sailing ships that could only be built in the Seventeenth Century. As I read I stopped to look up birds, linnets (we call them finches) and night-jars. There were birds we know in San Diego, the gulls and curlews. Every scene, every twig, every bit of bracken come to life. I felt I was breathing the very air of du Maurier’s beloved Cornwall. When I finished the book I craved more. I wanted Rebecca.
I’d seen the movie once before, but hadn’t remembered. Our public library has a special DVD edition with pictures of du Maurier’s Cornwall, her homes, the village, Fowley, and lots of back and forth text between Hitchcock and Selznick.
I discovered the movie varies only slightly from the book, but originally, Hitchcock had quite a different picture in mind. Because he was under contract to Selznick (the producer) who insisted the movie must be faithful to the novel, Hitchcock had to trash his original screenplay and start over. This was exactly Selznick’s direction. There was one change from du Maurier’s story, regulated by the Hollywood Production Code. In the movie, Maxim could not kill his spouse unless he was punished by being sent to prison. Thus instead of shooting Rebecca, Maxim only thinks about shooting her. If you have the patience, you might read Selznick’s excoriating letter to Hitchcock chastising him with great scorn for writing a screenplay that strays here, there and everywhere from du Maurier’s scenes. The letter goes on and on and on telling Hitchcock what an idiot he is for making changes. Hitchcock was later recorded saying that Rebecca was NOT a Hitchcock movie, but a Selznick film.
Although Joan Fontaine is fabulous as the unnamed narrator in the movie, with Rebecca, as with Frenchman’s Creek, the book is 1000 times more stunning and intriguing. I believe it’s the best-plotted book I’ve ever read.
Du Maurier has said, “When one is writing a novel in the first person, one must become that person.” And when one reads a story told in first person, one also becomes that person. “I am Mrs. DeWinter, now.”
The novel begins at a point in time after the denouement, after the terrible conflicts and crises, where the I narrator has felt again and again inadequate, gauche, ill-bred, and poorly dressed. Two thirds of the way through the book you finally hear “I” standing up to Mrs. Danvers : “I am Mrs. DeWinter now.” At last! But so interesting. The novel begins with the current Mrs. DeWinter already transformed, already passed through her character arc. That’s how you get that famous first line: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.” And Manderley, both place and character, has already met its demise.
I am in a critique group for fiction writers, and one question often discussed is this: how do you get away with portraying a flawed character before its character arc, when it is not likeable and still hold the reader’s interest? Readers don’t like namby pamby, nor bullies, nor________ (fill-in-the-blank with a hundred character flaws). Today’s readers expect the arc, or the character’s turn-about to come soon – there’s no patience to wade through 200 pages of an unlikeable character. Like TV shows, the character should get its dose of healing or courage or whatever it takes within 50 minutes. But in Rebecca the narrator remains childish and self-effacing, submissive to Maxim and even to Mrs. Danvers, until the story is nearly over. Why do we keep reading?
My own answer is because of the voice, so soft, yet eager and humble. We understand somewhere in the book that the narrator is beautiful, even though she’s not stunning as the phantom Rebecca. There’s the mysterious way she imagines people and places, and the imprint a single living person leaves on a room or any place for that matter, even though that living person may be dead many years. The narrator says again and again that she loves Maxim, who in my mind is a civilized Heathcliff. Of course I saw Maxim played by a younger Sir Lawrence Olivier before I read the book, and while reading the book I pictured him more as a Clark-Gable-as-he-played-Rhett-Butler.
When I finished the book I went back to reread the first two chapters, to understand better where the narrator stood after the demise of Manderley. This is a book I will read again. Maybe again and again.
But summer is just beginning, and now I’m off to read The House on the Strand. After that Jamaica Inn. It’s going to be a hot summer and I can’t wait.