Novels, in general, present us fictitious stories with a plot and suspense that encourage us to continue reading. But Rebecca, this classic, suspenseful, and romantic novel written by the Daphne du Maurier, does more than that, it also takes to a fictitious world without realizing that we are in it and believe that we are reading a true story because we will see how experience most often changes people’s thoughts, beliefs, words and actions both temporary and throughout their lives. It is the engrossed, drastic, tragic, and emotional chronicle of how the memory of the late Rebecca haunts and changes the lives of the newlyweds Maxim and Mrs. De Winter, and also their estate: Manderley.
"Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again." Perhaps it is one of the most powerful opening lines, in all of literature. The story opens with an insecure, young and a simple timid servant girl in Monte Carlo, France, who meets in a Hotel and falls deeply in love with Maxim, the wealthy man who owns Manderley, just outside London, however, when she becomes the new Mrs. De Winter, her life changes drastically. Now only she has now entered a new and unknown society as and become part of the elite class of society, but also has to face and cope with the many responsibilities and live up to the expectations imposed on her as the new wife of the wealthy and famous Mr. Maxim De Winter. Mrs. De Winter is the narrator in this novel.
Her life has been altered by this experience and she became worldly, more confident woman, nevertheless the process was gradual. In the beginning of the novel, the narrator has unrealistic romantic fantasies of her and Maxim. However, following Maxim's unique way of extending a marriage proposal, the reality of the situation begins to dawn on her:
'And he went on eating his marmalade as though everything were natural. In books men knelt to women, and it was moonlight. Not at breakfast, not like this.'
This is where Mrs. De Winter changes. What she has...