They Are Not The Northern Lights. Review on Rebecca - Daphne Dumaurier

== Introduction ==

IT IS Probably because I haven’t read much about it, but I have never quite understood the social structure of the traditional blue-blood British. Therefore, I always find myself at a complete loss at understanding the relations between people of that community. To begin with, their culture is jarringly in contrast with ours, I daresay. But I must not blame myself for it: I have never seen the earls and counts of India as well. Probably, the culture of the rich and famous is similar, in some sense, across nations, but since I have socialized with none so far, I guess I won’t know, will I? Yes, I think that is why I don’t understand their ways. Whatever be the reason… I will never stop wondering what Mr. Maximilian de Winter did to get all the money to maintain such a large estate as Manderley…

== Manderley ==

THEY ARE Often the most splendid things that hold the most horrible secrets beneath their beauty. Manderley is the name of a very large estate, owned by Mr. Maximilian de Winter, a little far from the British town of Kerrith, by the sea. A large house, a sprawling flower-laden valley and a cozy cottage by the sea… luxury worth dying for! The book is titled “Rebecca” but it is truly the story of Manderley—that mysterious estate around which the lives of so many men and women revolved, that drove them into doing so many things they would normally never have done.

Maximilian de Winter

MR. MAXIMILIAN DE WINTER, owner to the estate of Manderley, introduces himself to the reader as a troubled individual with a past that weighs down on his mind like an anchor. He has lost his wife, Rebecca, a year before we meet him, in circumstances that were never well understood. All we are told is that she drowned in an accident while sailing at sea late at night, alone. Max de Winter falls in love with our narrator (whose name is not revealed anywhere) and Max marries her, in his desperate attempts of forgetting the past and erasing it from his memory forever. Yet the past is not what he says it is, and it does not remain a secret, as he had wanted it to…

== Rebecca ==

WE NEVER MEET Rebecca alive in the book. She is always an enigma—a spirit that had met with a ghastly end at sea, unsung, whose mangled corpse had been found several days later in a nightmarish state. The servants of Manderley and the friends of de Winter’s are all so fond of her, her refined manners, her beauty, her aristocracy. She was a born mistress, they all say. She was most beloved to Max de Winter, they all say. Our narrator is always told (quite uncharitably so) by the housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, that it was Rebecca that Max truly loved—in her death as well—and that he would never forget her. Rebecca is Max’s true love—and our narrator is just someone he wants to use to forget his inconsolable sorrows and irreconcilable loss. She belives Mrs. Danvers—she believes Max never loved her truly, but loved only Rebecca, and she will never get her husband’s complete love ever… Rebecca died, in body and action, but her grip as the mistress of Manderley continues… She lived as she wished, she died as she chose and now she shall continue to live as she wanted… Rebecca had never left Manderley…

== Mrs. Danvers ==

THE HOUSEKEEPER, the maid who had brought up Rebecca since her childhood and very faithful to the Late Mrs. De Winter, Mrs. Danvers has the most eerie presence all throughout the book. She despises the new Mrs. De Winter, for she is not Rebecca, or even so much of her likeness, in looks or in manners. Danvers does all she can, and very effectively, to remind Mrs. De Winter that she is not Rebecca and that she can never replace her… Rebecca is the true mistress of Manderley… the true Mrs. De Winter… dead or alive… And Manderley will remain hers… forever…

== The Alcove ==

OUR FIRST ENCOUNTERS with Rebecca and her mysterious death begin in the alcove, where the Happy Valley ends. Rebecca took her final voyage out to the sea at this bay, where she chose to go at any time she pleased. Rebecca had been the perfect wife of Maximilian, in the eyes of the world—the two an envious doll-house couple. And yet, her death betrays these impressions. There was something that was not known—hidden on purpose. She had not died in an accident after all and that becomes fairly obvious when her defeated boat is uncovered from the sea… Had she been murdered? Or had she died off her own will, by suicide?

The alcove was the last place she was before she undertook the unfortunate voyage… And it is the alcove where we revisit time and time, to find ourselves standing in front of a Rebecca we had never known, as each fold of her enigmatic personality unfolds before our very eyes… And forcibly it reminds us of the celebrated cliché—the truth is not always what it seems…

== An Honest Opinion==

“REBECCA” IS A STORY that is set against the backdrop of a dreamlike estate of Manderley, about the troubled lives of the de Winter’s. It is a story of a woman who had died under circumstances that were far too grim than they seemed, of the mistress of Manderley who shall have Manderley to herself and herself alone. The story is at once a very thrilling and mind numbing account of a spirit that refused to die and a delicate and artistically created account of the life of a second wife, struggling for the complete and unconditional love of her troubled husband, knowing how dark his past was and how dear it was to him, making him forget it, yet never letting him feel she had disregard for it… The relations between its characters continue to remain very subtle and delicate to handle and it is without disturbing the sanctity of these very deep rooted emotions that this story, of a very different kind, progresses… Brilliant!

They Are Not Northern Lights

REBECCA’S DEATH means a lot to many people—to Mr. de Winter, to Mrs. De Winter, to Mrs. Danvers and to a cousin, a certain Jack Favell. But justice is never done unto those who were faithful to Rebecca and therefore to the obstinate mistress Rebecca herself… Rebecca will take revenge… She lived through the eyes and hands of Danvers and Favell… and she will avenge herself through their hands…

He (Max de Winter) drove faster. We topped the hill and the road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black, but the sky on the horizon was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.

“They are not the northern lights,” he said. “That is Manderley…”