Key themes
- The second wife haunted by a ghost she cannot see
- The house as a character — beautiful, hostile, possessive
- Class, identity and the self that almost disappears into another's story
About this book
A new bride is haunted by her husband's glamorous dead wife in a brooding country house; gothic suspense at its finest.
Published in 1938, Rebecca was du Maurier's fifth novel and immediate bestseller. She reportedly began it in a mood of jealousy while her husband was away, drawing on Gothic predecessors including Jane Eyre and Wilkie Collins.
Discussion questions
- The narrator is never named. What does this anonymity achieve — and how does it relate to the novel's central theme of a woman who feels she doesn't exist as herself?
- Rebecca is dead before the novel begins but dominates every page. How does du Maurier create such a powerful absent presence — and what does the revelation about Rebecca's true character do to the novel's moral framework?
- Manderley is described with a love that borders on dread. How does the house function — as a character, as a trap, as a symbol of the world the narrator cannot enter?
- Mrs Danvers is one of fiction's great obsessives. What is she loyal to — Rebecca's memory, the house, a fantasy — and how does du Maurier make her genuinely frightening?
- The ending is a form of punishment for a crime the reader has come to accept as justified. How does du Maurier make this moral complexity work — and does the ending feel right?
Get the book
Links open an Amazon search. As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases.
Read together or read next
Books that make a good pairing or natural follow-up.
Reading it with your group?
Get Rebecca
As an Amazon Associate and Bookshop.org affiliate we earn from qualifying purchases.