Rebecca tells the story of a naive young woman - who remains unnamed throughout the novel - who marries a much older man, Maxim de Winter. It is his second marriage: his first wife, Rebecca (the central, though ghostly, presence in the novel) died in mysterious circumstances the previous year.
The couple meet at Monte Carlo, where she is working as a companion to an older, quite irritating older woman. She falls for him with the typical abandon of a teenage girl, and the descriptions of the joy-filled torment of knowing that the time spent with him will pass, and that it will all change, are one of the highlights of the book.
Surprisingly, he decides to marry her and, after going on a trip through Europe, they move to Manderley, the De Winter family mansion, where he used to live with Rebecca, whose haunting grip - haughty, mysterious, and unreachable - threatens to destroy any possibility of happiness. In particular, the house keeper Mrs Danvers acts as a memorable passive-aggressive threat due to her fixation on Rebecca and coldness of character; the house is also much more than a physical setting, taking on a variety of heavy symbolic meanings that permeate the characters' lives. Then, we discover a 'terrible secret' about Rebecca's death, and the book morphs into an Agatha Christie type of suspense/detective story, only from a skewed perspective.
It is a very good Summer read - suspenseful, gripping, written in a clear, elegant style, with a sympathetic narrator/leading character, and, perhaps most importantly, a very involving setting, both seductive and scary (a remarkable setting makes reading feel like travelling) - but that is not the only reason I recommend it. Most importantly, it is a sensitive exploration of a variety of important questions, most of them related to power imbalance in relationships and its consequences. The relationship between the de Winter couple is unbalanced in every way: he is much older, richer, more experienced, and from a higher social level than she is. In fact, she has nowhere to go, no life to return to and, due to the lack of perspectives women had, no opportunities to take up; furthermore, she is shy and lacks in self-confidence - you could cal her weak, though her clear wit would keep me from doing so. Thus, her life revolves around her husband, and she tries her best to fit herself into a mold she perceives his first wife to have set. That would be hard enough due to the hardness of learning to behave - and feel like - a member of a higher social class than the one you were educated into, but the presence of Rebecca, who appears to have been the epitome of perfection but of whom no one speaks with clarity, is an even bigger threat to her mental sanity and to any chance of happiness. And why? Simply because, due to the power imbalance between the couple, she is left in the dark through most of the novel, treated as a pet, that is, as someone unable of depth of intellect or emotion, pleasant enough but ultimately insignificant.
Curiously, Maxim de Winter is not a repulsive character. The fact that he remains charming throughout the novel, the reader sharing his wife's desire to spend time with him an get to know his mysteries, is a proof of the author's skill in narrating. Her subtle - but constant, realistic and very textured - psychological portrait of the leading character, in my opinion, the best feature of this book. The use of symbolism, the descriptions of Manderley, the emotional reactions, all are great achievements. On the other hand, I found the plot slightly clumsy in its development and climax.
It is interesting to trace Rebecca's literary ancestry. It is a Gothic novel, with a dark, sultry ambiance that reminds the reader of books such as Dracula. However, the most striking parallel is with Jane Eyre: saying it is a retelling is not much of a exaggeration. In both, the heroine from a lower social class falls for a richer, older man with a dark secret related to his first wife; in both, the revelation of this secret is essential to change the power imbalance of the relationship and to lead to a resolve; in both, fire plays a both destructive and restorative role. The main difference is the personality of the heroine: Jane is a far harder, more determined and stronger young woman, much more admirable but not as easy to relate to.
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