Create a Powerful Reader Experience: Rebecca

Have you ever read a book that made your skin crawl, even when nothing frightening was happening? You knew there was something you didn’t understand, didn’t add up and you couldn’t put the book down until you figured it out.

That is the peculiar power of Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier’s 1938 novel. It doesn’t simply tell a story. It draws the reader into an atmosphere of uncertainty, where every conversation seems to conceal something and every new discovery raises another question.

The Story

The novel opens with: “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”

Manderley is the magnificent country estate where the unnamed narrator once lived with her husband, Maxim de Winter. But when we meet her, she is far away from it and the house exists only in memory.

The story takes us back to her youth, when she meets the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter while working as a companion to an older woman. They marry and she moves with him to Manderley, expecting to begin a new life.

Instead, she finds herself in the shadow of Rebecca, Maxim’s first wife, who died before the novel begins.

Rebecca is everywhere: in the house, in the memories of those who knew her and in the behaviour of Mrs Danvers, the formidable housekeeper who seems devoted to her former mistress. The new Mrs de Winter begins to feel that she can never measure up to the woman who came before her.

But what really happened to Rebecca? And how well does the new wife know the man she has married?

As the story unfolds, the answers become increasingly unsettling.

How Has It Stood the Test of Time?

More than eighty-five years after its publication, Rebecca continues to captivate readers. It won no major literary prize on publication, yet it became an enduring bestseller and has inspired numerous adaptations, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Oscar-winning 1940 film.

Its longevity is not difficult to understand. The novel combines a Gothic atmosphere, psychological suspense, a troubled marriage and a mystery that gradually changes shape as the reader learns more.

But its appeal goes beyond the question of what happened to Rebecca. The book explores insecurity, jealousy, power and the unsettling experience of living in someone else’s shadow. These are recognisable human anxieties, even for readers who have never set foot in a grand English country house.

Most of us know what it feels like to compare ourselves with someone who seems more attractive, more accomplished or more admired. And if they are dead, we are now compelled to compete with a ghost. They may have been as wonderful as we are told they were or were perfectly ordinary and only distance has provided them with a shiny aura.

Our uncertainty makes us imagine the best of them.

Du Maurier takes those familiar feelings and builds an entire world around them.

What Is the Reader Experience?

Reading Rebecca is rather like walking through a beautiful house in which you suspect something terrible has happened. The rooms are elegant, the furnishings exquisite and everyone insists that everything is perfectly normal. Yet you cannot shake the feeling that something is wrong.

I remember watching the Hitchcock movie based on the story. I had my face covered with my hand while I peeked from between the fingers in fascinated horror. The most powerful feeling the movie invoked was that of impending doom of the worst kind. I found it very difficult to use the washroom for days afterwards. I couldn’t have been more than seven.

Many years later when I read the book, I felt that horror and doom every bit as keenly as I had in the movie theatre.

The narrator’s insecurity become my insecurity. I felt her discomfort when she is compared, directly or indirectly, with Rebecca. I shared her fascination with the dead woman’s possessions and her growing suspicion that the people around her know things she doesn’t.

Rebecca is absent. We have to construct our own picture of her from other people’s accounts. Is she the extraordinary woman everyone remembers? Is the narrator simply intimidated by her? Can we trust what anyone says?

The reader is constantly revising their understanding of the story.

This creates a particular kind of engagement. We aren’t just waiting to find out what happens next. We are trying to interpret what has already happened. We revisit earlier conversations in our minds, question people’s motives and look for clues we might have missed. We read avidly on because we want to know whether our assessment of her was correct!

When new information arrives, it changes the meaning of everything that came before.

The experience of reading Rebecca is one of sustained uncertainty. We are fascinated, unsettled and compelled to keep reading because we suspect that the truth is more complicated than it appears.

What Did Daphne Du Maurier Do to Create This Experience?

First, she gave us an unnamed narrator who is inexperienced, insecure and unsure of her place in the world. We experience Manderley through her eyes, so the house that might otherwise seem magnificent becomes intimidating. The people who inhabit it seem to possess knowledge and confidence that she lacks.

Du Maurier also makes Rebecca a powerful presence without allowing us to meet her. We know her through memories, objects, stories and other people’s reactions. Each account adds another layer, but none gives us the complete picture. The reader must do the work of imagining Rebecca and that imagined woman becomes almost impossible to ignore—or escape.

Then there is the control of information. Du Maurier doesn’t explain everything at once. She gives us enough to make us curious, but not enough to settle our doubts. A detail that seems unimportant at first may acquire a different meaning later. An answer may lead to a more troubling question.

Finally, she makes the setting part of the experience. Manderley is not merely where the story happens. Its rooms, routines and inhabitants keep the past alive. The house seems to have a memory of its own and the narrator can never be rid of it.

Notice how these choices work together. The narrator’s insecurity makes us sensitive to every slight. Rebecca’s absence makes us curious. The controlled release of information keeps us guessing. And Manderley gives those feelings a physical place to inhabit.

Du Maurier doesn’t have to tell us repeatedly that something is wrong. She creates a world in which we feel it.

That is the lesson worth taking from Rebecca: a writer can hold a reader’s attention not only by revealing information, but also by carefully managing what the reader doesn’t yet know.

In the next post, we’ll explore a very different kind of reader experience through Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged.

Read Part I of this series, which was about Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird.

Mother of three adult, opinionated humans and two boisterous dogs. An idealistic, outspoken woman of scrupulous integrity. Author coach and developmental editor. And a passionate bibliophile, of course.