29. Rebecca: Daphne du Maurier’s Gothic Epic

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2:06I heard a step behind me, and turning round, I saw Mrs. Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face. Triumphant, gloating, excited in a strange, unhealthy way. I felt very frightened.

2:20Dominic Sandbrook: Is anything the matter, madam? I'm all right, Mrs Danvers. I did not expect to see you. You wanted to see the room. Why, have you never asked me to show it to you before? I was ready to show it to you every day. You had only to ask me. I wanted to run away, but I could not move. I went on watching her eyes. Now you're here, let me show you everything. She said, her voice ingratiating and sweet as honey. Horrible. False. I know you want to see it all. You've wanted to for a long time and you were too shy to ask. It's a lovely room, isn't it? The loveliest room you've ever seen. That was her bed.

2:59Dominic Sandbrook: It's a beautiful bed, isn't it? Here is her nightdress inside the case. You've been touching it, haven't you? This was the nightdress she was wearing for the last time before she died. Would you like to touch it again? Then she took the nightdress from the case and held it before me. Feel it. Hold it. She said. How soft and light it is, isn't it? I haven't washed it since she wore it for the last time. I put it out like this and the dressing gown and slippers just as I put them out for her the night she never came back. She was wearing slacks, of course, and her shirt when she died. They were torn from her body in the water, though.

3:40Dominic Sandbrook: there was nothing on the body when it was found all those weeks afterwards. Hello everybody, that terrifying reading was from Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, published in 1938 to widespread popularity. It is a gothic novel that tells the story of a young girl who falls in love with a much older, very wealthy widower. she discovers that he and his magnificent eerie house Manderley are haunted, not literally, but haunted by the ghost of his deceased wife, Rebecca, the titular Rebecca. And this impression of mystery and haunting and secrets is heightened by the vampiric housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, played there, exceptionally, I think, by Dame Sandbrook Danvers herself.

4:32And this sends the new wife, the character played by me, into a psychological spiral that sends her to the brink of despair and actually close to suicide.

4:42Dominic Sandbrook: This episode is brought to you by Klarna. I for one know that I would much rather join a dystopian uprising or attend one of Jay Gatsby's fantastic parties than look at my bank statements. Yes, I want to use my brain power to focus on the really big questions. Was Heathcliff born evil? Was it the Moors who made them that way? And crucially, who is going to be the next fairy love interest in the Court of Thorns and Roses? But alas, because we do eventually have to look up from our books, Klarna is there to handle the real world money admin. So Klarna gathers your spending in one place. So that way, monitoring your payments doesn't feel like a psychological thriller.

5:25Dominic Sandbrook: You can pay in a way that suits you. You can track your deliveries, get instant refunds, and you can even earn cash back on things that you were going to buy anyway. And there's buyer protection built in so you actually feel secure when you shop. Download the Klarna app to stay on top of your money so that you can think about, well, anything else. Klarna balance account required to receive cash back points. Limitations, terms and conditions apply. And the book is thrilling. It's tense. it is eerie so you can easily see why this was one of the books that alfred hitchhawk chose to adapt for the big screen in his famous movie which won the oscar in 1940 it's a wonderful book actually i hadn't read it before doing this show you and nicole our producer were very keen to do it and i loved it i i'm gonna come straight out and spoil you know if people are waiting with bated breath yeah i'll give it right away i really enjoyed this i read it sandbrook speaks Sandbrook Speaks.

6:25Dominic Sandbrook: In two days, absolutely riveted. It's one of the great kind of gothic 20th century novels. It's a wonderful mystery story. It's quite surprising, I think. So if you think it's all a ghost story, you will be mistaken because it turns into something, I think, much darker and more intriguing. and the tricks that Daphne du Maurier plays with her narrator, with her characterization, with her control of information, how much we know and how much we don't. They are worthy of a great master. So, for example, we did Kazuo Ishiguro very early on in this series. Yes. Never Let Me Go. And I think there are definitely some similarities there.

7:08Dominic Sandbrook: But Tabi, you have always been a fan of this book, haven't you? I have, but I kept thinking when I was reading it this time, I wish I could read it all over again as though I'd never read it. Yeah. For the suspense, because the big twist at the end, which we'll be coming to after the break, you just don't see it coming. Nevertheless, even though I knew what happened, I still felt the thrill of it, this kind of tug that pulls you page to page. And I love the pacing. It starts quite slowly. You could almost be lured into thinking that you're reading a romance at one point. But actually, you know, it gets darker and darker, more and more keeps happening.

7:45and you just want these questions answered. You want to know who was Rebecca? What was she like? What happened at Manderley? I just think Daphne de Maurier, she is the mistress of suspense. I love her other book, Jamaica Inn.

7:58Dominic Sandbrook: Oh yeah. And she has the same kind of haunting atmosphere there and the same questions that you don't really get answered until the last third of the book. But the interesting thing is that this time rereading it, I had a far more critical view of our narrator who we'll be meeting. and also Maxim, the man that I mentioned, the older widower who she marries. But on that note, should we get into the plot and just explain who all these characters are? Because essentially it is a book of three parts. So in the first part, our childish, awkward narrator is in France, Cote d 'Azur. She is a companion for a wealthy, dreadful American woman who's fascinated by the English aristocracy and who's who.

8:40There she meets and falls in love with Maxim de Winter. He's distinguished, he's well-known, and he's famous for this house that he has in Cornwall, this estate, Manderley. But the other thing that we know about him, that the awful American tells us, is that his wife, Rebecca, died a year earlier, and he's just torn apart by grief. And then the young narrator gets to know him. He seems fond of her, but we're never entirely sure. And unexpectedly, he asks her to marry him. And she agrees.

9:10Dominic Sandbrook: Yeah, so she's, as you say, she's very awkward and she's young and she appears to be innocent and naive. She has become completely infatuated with him, hasn't she? Obsessed with him. Yeah, shamelessly so. She's stunned when he asks her to marry him. Back they go to Manderley, this house that she's heard so much about that clearly is the sort of talk of Europe. And far from being sort of intoxicated with excitement at her newlywed status and her status as the mistress of this house. She is overwhelmed by it. Everything seems imbued with the presence of her predecessor, this woman, Rebecca. Yeah.

9:48Dominic Sandbrook: The servants are still in thrall to Rebecca. The housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers, who basically rules the roost at Manderley, she seems to have taken a violent dislike to our narrator from the very beginning. It's brilliantly done because if you imagine Jeeves or something like that, or a butler, your classic housekeeper, it's incredibly restrained, which means it's very chilly. And somehow that is far more daunting. Exactly. This sort of passive aggressive politeness of Mrs. Danvers is what intimidates our narrator. She discovers, as we found in that reading, that there's a whole wing of the house that has basically been shut up.

10:29Dominic Sandbrook: that was Rebecca and Maxim's old, it was where they lived, basically. Her old bedroom, all her old stuff. We had the reference there to her nightdress, her slippers, her dressing gown. Unwashed, which strikes me as sinister in the extreme. It is very sinister. Maxim has become, her husband, her new husband has become very distant and clipped and aloof. There is a sort of great set piece, which is they are persuaded to throw a costume ball, basically a fancy dress party and our narrator a spoiler alert for those of you who haven't read the book um so just be careful we are going to have to spoil it obviously in different ways yeah the twist is is is central related yeah but we'll leave that till after the break i think but anyway she is persuaded to wear a costume that turns out to be the same costume that rebecca wore yeah a year or a couple of years earlier and she's persuaded to do this by mrs danvers as a horrible trick as a way to humiliate her and our narrator sinks into this i mean she has this absolute crisis moment it feels like you know her husband has turned against her all the servants are against her she doesn't fit she is riddled with guilt with disappointment with inadequacy and all of this and then there is a third act and the third act starts with the discovery which completely turns on its head everything that we believe about the relationship between the three main characters There's Maxim, the narrator, and Rebecca, the dead Rebecca.

12:02Dominic Sandbrook: And the gothic book then starts to turn into something a little bit more like, I think, a 1930s whodunit. Don't you? Yeah, I agree. I agree. So Daphne du Maurier said of this point in the novel, kind of this turning point, she said, Crash, bang, then something happens. And she's not wrong. All through the book. I mean, one of the things I think people love about it. I mean, I have lots of friends who love Rebecca, especially female friends. and they like the house uh the love triangle the but above all i think the atmosphere yeah that's that's what does it for me the sense of uh foreboding um the sea crashing at the cliffs the cornish cliffs just below the house the sense that great elemental forces are gathering that are going to sweep you away but the sea in so many of daphne du morier's books because she loved Cornwall so much it's kind of it's the uncanny soundtrack to the setting and it comes to haunt you as it does the characters.

12:58Dominic Sandbrook: Agreed so Daphne du Maurier let's talk about Daphne du Maurier because Rebecca is born out of her own remarkable kind of psychology and the sort of the the observation of the relationships between men and women and the jealousies and insecurity they reflect her own background and her own life to some extent don't they Tubby? Lots has been written about the extent to which Rebecca is a product of her own life, her own relationships, her own family, etc. So let's dig into that. So she's born in May 1907. She's from a very celebrated theatrical family. So her grandfather basically inadvertently invented the Trilby hat.

13:34Yeah.

13:34Dominic Sandbrook: I was telling you about this great fact. Acknowledge. This great fact the other day. I see how thrilled you were by it. I actually so thrilled was I by it that I actually omitted it from my notes. It's the single most important thing anyone needs to know about Rebecca. I don't approve of Trilby hats, so. No, I don't. I think they're performative, aren't they? Yeah, they are. They insist upon themselves. Yeah, completely. Anyway, her grandfather wrote a play called Trilby in which Svengali, the character of Svengali, was born. Yeah. Anyway, people wore these hats in the play. Hence, they were called Trilby hats because the play was called Trilby.

14:05Dominic Sandbrook: And, you know, a legend was born. Anyway, let's put that on one side. In fact, never mind Rebecca. Let's just talk more about Trilby hats, I think. Surely. That's what you're really, that's your real passion. Well, it's a play. hey, we could do a whole episode about the place, will we? Please spare me. So her father, Gerald, Daphne's father, Gerald, was this distinguished actor-manager. They were extremely close, and some of her biographers suggest that the unusual closeness of the father-daughter relationship finds its way into her books, and actually the relationship between Maxim and Anna Rater has a very father-daughter side to it.

14:42A lot of people think that he may have been an inspiration for Maxim.

14:46Dominic Sandbrook: Yeah, I can absolutely see that. So she wrestles with her own identity a bit, doesn't she? She does. She has a sort of alter ego for herself who she calls the boy in the box. And she imagines herself as a boy. And she gives the boy a name, Eric Avon. She's taught by governess and she has to finishing school in Paris. She's a massive reader. She loves the Brontes. And there is tons of the Brontes, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, in this book. She loves Robert Louis Stevenson. She loves Joseph Conrad. And she loves Cornwall. And there's tons of Cornwall in this book. She goes to Cornwall. She loves the sort of isolation.

15:21Dominic Sandbrook: She loves the fact that it's a sort of, it feels like going back in time. So for people, I know we have like American listeners and whatnot. Cornwall, it's in the southwest corner of England. It feels like a place of part. It's got kind of Celtic traditions. Incredibly beautiful, rugged, sort of rural landscape. So she goes to Cornwall and she finds this house called Menabilly. I think this is so romantic and I totally get this. There's a building where I live, near where I live, and every time I walk past it, I think, oh God, you know, I've got to write a book about this or something one day because it's kind of gothic and mysterious and crumbling.

15:56So I understand why it is that this ruin, this great, beautiful ruin covered in ivy, hidden, dilapidated, takes such a hold of her imagination.

16:08Dominic Sandbrook: And she ends up leasing it, doesn't she, from the owners, who are the Rashley family. And she restores it and she lives in it, but she can never own it because it belongs to this other family. Though she loved it. She said she kissed the stones of it. She loved it so much. So the funny thing is that actually she is like Rebecca. Yeah. She inhabits and defines this house that is not hers, just as Rebecca haunts Manderley, which is the house of the de Winter family. So that's the house and then her own life and the book. So in 1932, she marries this guy who ends up becoming Lieutenant General Sir Frederick Browning, who she calls Tommy.

16:49Dominic Sandbrook: And lots of people think that their troubled relationship or their very colourful relationship finds its way into her fiction, don't they? Yeah, definitely. So he had a fiancé before they were married. She was supposed to be very glamorous. She had long black hair. And there are theories that Daphne du Maurier is sort of projecting her jealousy over that relationship into the relationship between the narrator and Maxim in this. But I think they were fond of each other. I mean, they remained married for the rest of his life. They had three children, but she was far from maternal. You know, she struggled with her identity as a woman throughout her life.

17:30And I think this probably applies to her maternal instincts. She wrote at one point, I'm not one of those mothers who live for having their brats with them all the time. She didn't like conventional domestic life. She preferred her world of solitary writing. And so with Tommy's long periods away with the army, it suited them both quite well. And they both encouraged each other to have a great deal of personal freedom. and that seems to have applied to their extramarital love lives because they both were unfaithful. She had a well-documented affair with a guy called Christopher Puxley who was some landowner, right?

18:04Herefordshire landowner. And then Tommy had several mistresses during the latter half of their marriage. And then in 1957, there's one particularly bad incident because following a nervous breakdown, it came out that he'd been having two affairs concurrently, which, I mean, exhausting, surely.

18:21Dominic Sandbrook: A lot of pressure on the diary. A lot of pressure on the diary. I think it would break anyone. But this devastated Daphne du Maurier. So she obviously wasn't at ease with all these liberties, these affairs. So again, that surely seeps into Rebecca in some way. The complexity of this marriage, the jealousy. I mean, that's pop psychology, but I don't see how it couldn't have really. Of course. And there's a question about her sexuality, isn't there? That some people think she might actually have been gay. So certainly she was very emotionally attached to lots of women. but I think probably also physically.

18:55So she became infatuated with this woman called Ellen Doubleday, who's the wife of her, strange name, the wife of her American publisher. This was unrequited though. But then she almost definitely had a sexual relationship with an actor called Gertrude Lawrence. Her biographer, Margaret Forster, wrote that based on her personal writings, her letters to very close friends, she referred to her heterosexual relationships with the code name Cairo. and then her homosexual relationships with the codename Venice. Wow. I think that's quite classy.

19:27Dominic Sandbrook: So she starts writing stories, doesn't she, at the end of the 1920s. She writes a novel, which is written in Cornwall, called The Loving Spirit in 1931. She wrote almost all of her books in Cornwall at this house, the house that inspired Manderley. She writes Jamaica Inn, which is her other really, really famous book. And then she signs a deal with Victor Galantz, the left-wing publisher. she has a title in mind for the next book which is Rebecca she has the title but she actually doesn't have the plot no and she's been thinking would jealousy kind of sexual romantic jealousy would be a brilliant subject for a book it's interesting that she thinks about this at exactly this point in her life when she marries Tommy her husband and you mentioned Tommy had been engaged before he'd be engaged to this woman Jan Ricardo very beautiful glamorous long dark hair like Rebecca like Rebecca exactly anyway signs a deal to do the book gets an advance struggles to write it at first and then actually the the point when she sort of turns it around and really gets into it is when she and Tommy end up going to Egypt and she's missing Cornwall she's missing you know the rain and the sea and the landscape and stuff in Rebecca the narrator talks at one point she's thinking about Manderley at the beginning and she says she's bewildered at the glittering sun, the hard, clean sky of the Mediterranean.

20:50Dominic Sandbrook: And then that almost gives Daphne du Maurier the spark, the idea of the contrast between somebody who has moved to the Mediterranean and it feels so different, but is yearning and pining for Cornwall. And then she goes back to England, the writing really picks up. She basically takes four months to do it. You know, actually, apparently she said that a big part of her being able to do that so quickly over Christmas was because she sent her daughters to go and stay with someone else and she said without the distraction it meant that she could really hone in on the manuscript it's not the lesson of um this entire podcast going back to the very first episodes that you can be a nice person and have a loving family and kids who adore you or you can be a great writer god that's actually true it does seem to be the case it's quite hard terrifying thought so anyway she she writes the the book um she she says you know uh bit by bit it became clear in her mind a beautiful home a first wife jealousy a wreck perhaps at sea near to the house something terrible would have to happen i did not know what and she finds her way through that she sent it to glance and it's a massive massive hit when it comes out isn't it it's never been out of print the 20 ,000 copies the first print run sold out more than twice that number it remains her most popular novel certainly her most famous interestingly though it wasn't that well reviewed when it came out so in the christian science monitor vs pritchett wrote that the novel would be here today gone tomorrow how wrong he was wow and the times wrote that the material is of the humblest nothing in this is beyond the novelette so i think people thought it was a a little bit sort of thrilling, maybe bodice rippy.

22:32I don't know.

22:32Dominic Sandbrook: Yeah, a bit too melodramatic. Not something to be taken seriously. A bit of a thrill seeker. If you were being harsh about this, you think about some of the other books we've talked about from this period in the show. 1984, For Whom the Bell Tolls, Mrs. Dalloway. This book is so much more melodramatic, isn't it? Yes. And yet, I think it is brilliantly written. I agree. The writing is luscious and sumptuous and gorgeous, But I do see what you mean in that at this period of time, you're getting so many books that are wrestling with the old forms or wrestling with the new world. She doesn't really engage with form and she doesn't really engage with the outside world at all.

23:11But I think that's part of the power. You're sucked into Manderley.

23:14Dominic Sandbrook: Yeah. In the same way that Wuthering Heights is a very claustrophobic internal book about the relationships between the characters. this a gothic book of course this which is very strongly influenced by weathering heights and jane eyre feels like that doesn't it yeah and she she categorized she called it a study in jealousy but she's always been very she was always very coy about having any origin in her own life but you just mentioned um jane eyre there yeah so in the mood and the plot of rebecca and the character of the narrator herself you can see the influence of jane eyre everywhere i mean it's a poor girl who meets a wealthy older man with dark secrets, a gloomy old house, a former wife, barely seen, flitting at the corners of the mind and imagination with dark, luscious hair.

23:59Interestingly as well, Wuthering Heights was a very big influence on the book that she wrote just before Rebecca, which is Jamaican. Yeah, so again, it's this gloomy, gothic feel. And just as in Jane Eyre, you know, where Jane is our narrator, our eyes and our ears, here too the story is guided and unfolded by the narrator, one perspective, her first person narrative but i actually think that jane eyre is a character with much more fire and backbone than the narrator in this we've talked about a few gothic influence books in this

24:30Dominic Sandbrook: in this show and you could argue that in all the 20th century fiction this is the supreme gothic novel isn't it because it's saturated in this very creepy sort of dark atmosphere and the key to it really is the well you've got the house which is I mean part of it is closed up and disused whenever you have that in fiction I mean it's in Sarah Waters' novels there are always houses with bits cordoned off or closed off there's always something creepy about that and then there's the character Mrs. Danvers who's always described as looking like a skull or a ghost isn't she she's vampiric but Mrs. Danvers what's so interesting is she knows this and she almost connives at creating a gothic atmosphere in order to terrify.

25:15Yeah, she's constantly popping out of the shadows like Count Dracula or something. Right. You hear a disembodied voice behind you, just know that Danvers is here to freak you out.

25:23Dominic Sandbrook: But she says at one point, doesn't she, isn't there a bit where she says, do you think you're being watched by ghosts or something like that? She says, do you think the dead come back and watch the living? Sometimes I wonder. Sometimes I wonder if she, Rebecca, comes back here to Manderley and watches you and Mr. De Winter together. Yeah, that would really freak you out if someone said that to you and you were the second wife. Yeah, very unsettling. Very unsettling. There's something in that, though, because Mrs. Danvers loved Rebecca, of Heathcliff, you know, inviting Kathy to haunt him. Mrs.

25:53Dominic Sandbrook: Danvers wants Rebecca to come and haunt them. Yeah, exactly. Mrs. Danvers is a complete head case, isn't she, really? I mean, she has been driven mad by her own obsession with Rebecca. Yeah, and I think by Rebecca's death as well. And she probably, you get the slight impression that the relationship between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca was not entirely healthy, do you think? Codependent. right exactly what about the house you love the house don't you yeah so as you say there's this west wing and this is like something from the castle of otranto or something a very famous gothic novel it's a grand house full of dark secrets and the interesting thing is is that there is a contrast so there is a sunny light side to man that the characters love the narrator loves kind of in the daytime and it has a lot of dogs and tea times and wild flowers or whatever and then there's something about this other half of it and this is kind of the world of the unseen the world haunted by Rebecca you know the mad thing is that this book came out only a few months apart from the code of the Worcesters such a strange thought and they're both set in country houses yeah totally towers in the code of the Worcesters where Bertie is having his adventures yeah and this is like that but you could use the same set for both for both novels um but the cast so different and this is like the dark side of the country house idyll exactly and then you know from the very beginning the first line of the book the first passage of the book is dedicated to manderley and it's like something from a dark fairy tale you know no smoke came from the chimney nature would come into our own again little by little in a stealthy insidious way and encroached upon the drive with long tenacious fingers the woods always a menace even in the past had triumphed in the end and it's kind of curled gnarling trees creeping up into the house you know right from the star that there is something haunted about the whole story um and i as i as we said earlier no one can conjure an atmosphere like daphne du Maurier and i quite agree with norman collins who wrote that rebecca brilliantly creates a sense of atmosphere and suspense and manderley is as much an atmosphere as a tangible erection of stones and mortar you know it's almost something that could become synonymous with a certain vibe vibe a certain feel yeah and you mentioned already the sea the sea is there the whole time and the narrator says at one point if i stood on the terrace and listened i could hear the murmur of the sea below me low and sullen a dull persistent sound that never ceased i began to understand why some people could not bear the clamour of the sea it has a mournful harping note sometimes and the very persistence of it that eternal roll and thunder and hiss plays a jagged tune upon the nerves so she arrives at the house and the house overwhelms her and intimidates her and there's a class element to this of course which we'll probably come to it's a little bit like i remember i watched an interview with emerald finnell when she did saltburn and she said of that that she wanted the house in that with its kind of strange secrets its strange denizens almost to become a character in itself and she wanted the butler in that almost to be like a fey spirit hardly human you know the heart of the house and that's a little bit like danvers and manderley in this and then into this comes this interloper this young naive interloper who thinks that she can just become mistress of manderley but no no no no there already is a mistress of manderley and she's going nowhere so the narrator is so interesting do you know this this is um this is a massive indictment of me as a reader no another one but it hadn't occurred to me until you pointed it out to me before when we were chatting the narrator is never named she's never named she presents herself as young innocent um naive i suppose clumsy yeah i mean she goes further she she is very open or appears to be open about her insecurities she appears to be uh candid about how clumsy and how hapless and how nervous she is um she does think you know she she talks about how she's dropping things how she doesn't understand how to manage her relations with the servants she is too formal too obsequious to the servant she's not casual and relaxed but also in her dealings with um their neighbors or whatever she always she overuses people's first names you know like a child who's been taught their manners and has been told you know someone's name when you say thank you she also whenever she's talking to anyone this is a very english thing she pats the dog relentlessly so that she doesn't have to speak to people she speaks to the dog and you know as you say she's always spilling things she's always dropping things everything's always too big for her yeah her role as the young child the unknowing child is almost i don't know it's it's so overdone well this is the question that occurs to you once you've read it i think is she playing a part is it disingenuous actually or is she lying to you, the reader?

30:43Dominic Sandbrook: I mean, the question about whether the narrator is reliable or not will come back to. Let's assume that we're taking everything on trust. She's clearly from a different class to the others. She's at sea in this world. She doesn't shoot. She doesn't hunt. And people can't believe that. She can barely ride. She can barely ride. And they're like, oh, you have to ride. And this is why she's anxious with the servants because she doesn't know how to manage servants. She doesn't have the tone of command, the casual relationship with them that somebody from that kind of landed aristocratic background would have.

31:17Dominic Sandbrook: She's too middle class, basically. So at one point, she breaks something and rather than just say, I broke something, you know, send it to London to get it fixed or whatever. She, shamefacedly, sweeps the crumbs into an envelope and hides it in a drawer. And then she sort of chastised in front of the butler and Mrs. Danvers and Maxim himself. Every morning, you know danvers basically plays upon the fact that she's not of this world and she doesn't really know what she's doing and she sends her these ridiculously sumptuous menus yeah for lunch and dinner that she has to approve and go through she doesn't have a clue yeah exactly and it's all well the former mrs de winter did this this is the thing so the obsession the servants keep saying well mrs de winter i mean she's mrs de winter now but the servants keep saying well mrs de winter used to do things very differently and that becomes more and more of an obsession with her She was obsessed with Rebecca even before she arrived at Manderley, wasn't she?

32:11Dominic Sandbrook: Because she was always conscious that Maxim had this kind of shadow hanging over him, the shadow of grief. And that she would never live up to the previous Mrs. de Winter, who was, you know, incredibly talented, elegant, beautiful. You know, everybody loved her, a social star, all of this. But once she gets to Manderley, this becomes worse and worse. and basically she's thinking about Rebecca. It affects her on every single page of the book. Yeah. This jealousy comes to absolutely consume her. And as we've already said, you know, Daphne du Maurier set out to write a book about jealousy. It was a great stimulus for her.

32:48And I think she does that brilliantly. The narrator describes at one point her jealousy for Rebecca as a demon living in her mind, whispering into her mind. And I think that's so well observed because that is how jealousy feels, you know. You try to tamp it down and it's like a poison that drips into you. So she relentlessly compares herself to Rebecca, who triumphs over her no matter what she does. And there's one scene in particular that kind of brings this all together, that embodies almost their competition between the two of them, that she could never, ever win. so she literally steps into rebecca's shoes with terrible consequences and this is the scene that you described where mrs danvers persuades her to dress as a beautiful portrait at manderley an ancestor of maxim's called caroline de winter and this is the first time that the narrator kind of feels good about her role as mistress of the house she gets quite excited she decides that she's going to surprise everyone with her wonderful outfit she's got a nice wig she's got a white dress she's got a lovely wig she's got a nice dress you know you know you're planning an outfit forever you feel really good about it and then this scene is literal chills because it's everyone's worst nightmare isn't it you know turning up somewhere and being the odd one out of course um so she very excited she gets to the top of the stairs she's wearing a lovely white dress she's looking very pretty and then she starts walking down the staircase and it just it's not at all as she expects i came forward to the head of the stairs and stood there smiling my hat in my hand, like the girl in the picture.

34:20I waited for the clapping and laughter that would follow as I walked slowly down the stairs. Nobody clapped. Nobody moved. Beatrice, this is Maxim's sister, uttered a little cry and put her hand to her mouth. Maxim had not moved. There was no colour on his face. It was ashen white. Something was wrong. They had not understood. Why was Maxim looking like that? Why did they all stand like dummies, like people in the trance? Then Maxim moved forward to the stairs, his eyes never leaving my face. What the hell do you think you're doing he asked his eyes ablaze in anger so it turns out that mrs danvers has absolutely done

34:53Dominic Sandbrook: her one and mrs danvers who basically suggested the costume did so because she knew rebecca had worn it in her last appearance at the costume ball and that this will drive this will drive maxim mad but also it's such an interesting and revealing moment because she's effectively she's dressed as rebecca she is as you said she's wearing rebecca's she's you know she's standing there in rebecca's shoes and she doesn't quite understand why maxim has taken this quite so badly yeah because for him it's as if his second wife has transformed into the ghost of his first wife yeah and for him as we will discuss in the uh second half this is peculiarly unsettling well they all feel like they've kind of gone mad madness kind of hangs over this like he is he's like a madman with rage she is um the demon in her head of jealousy has now now completely consumes her and that's the other thing about her she actually has a very lurid over vigorous imagination and it kind of comes to plays to play tricks on her it allows her to inflate this obsession with rebecca and that reminded me of kathleen morland in north angra bby you know who lets fancies get her carried away yeah and then i started to think well what if this it's the imagination it's her weakness you know human weakness to to to read into things that things that don't exist what if that makes her an unreliable narrator because we're getting a version of events as she saw them in her obsessive increasingly maddened mind and then i suddenly thought oh well as you said what if her jealousy is actually spite and she's telling us a version of the story that makes her look a certain way and Rebecca looked a certain way because she comes across as so honest and so sweet and so naive and I mean how accurate is it is a ruse is a recreation because we have to remind ourselves that she is retelling the events that unfolded at Mandalay in the first person from her perspective in the present and the contrast between her voice in the present and the sense we get of her as a young girl is so stark that it's very intriguing because you start to wonder is this cynical observant older woman is she recreating history as she would have wished it to be it's such a good point actually because you're so right that um the narrator of this story is not innocent clumsy and naive the narrator is very knowing very skillful she's brilliant she's very observant she's brilliant at uh withholding and then releasing information to keep us in suspense.

37:34And she makes us feel like we're in her confidence because she's telling us about sort of such a troubled version of herself, an anxious version of herself, that we sympathise instinctively. She's very persuasive. And she has power by not letting us into the secret of her name.

37:51Dominic Sandbrook: You've written down her, Agatha Christie was like, come on, what's her name? Yeah, she was like, this is ridiculous. What's her name? And apparently Daphne du Maurier wasn't very pleased. And she was like, you're just not getting it. I think Agatha Christie is not getting it, actually, because I think... I think you're right. The fact that we don't know her name, it's actually the more you think about it, the more unsettling it is. Yeah. That she withholds the single most important piece of information there is about anybody. I mean, you know, your name is the most important thing about you in many ways.

38:18Yeah.

38:19Dominic Sandbrook: Why don't we know that? And actually, if the clumsy person who's always upsetting teacups and getting in a mess with the menu and doesn't know how to talk to the servants... It's like a pastiche. Yeah, exactly. It is a bit of a pastiche. Is she misleading us about herself and also about Rebecca? The view we get of Rebecca is Rebecca never speaks. Rebecca is never seen. You know, it's Rebecca who dominates the book, is entirely defined by the narrator's kind of vision of her. Exactly. And once you start thinking like that, you start thinking, well, can I trust anything in the book? or am I just hearing the, is this just the statement for the defence of somebody who actually has connived her way into, you know, you can tell the story the other way around, right?

39:06About a social climber who sees a grieving widower

39:10Dominic Sandbrook: and thinks, I'd like some of that, I'd like that house. Yeah, it's the, is Nellie the villain in Wuthering Heights thing all over again, I guess. It is. But the other interesting thing is, is that she's clearly very in love with her husband, Maxim. Oh, she says she is. Yeah, she says she is. But he actually, it struck me this time rereading it, he in many ways is a very deceitful, like quite unattractive character. He is. But on that ambiguous note, I think we should come to a break. And then after the break, we'll meet Maxim. We'll meet Mrs. Danvers. We'll meet Rebecca herself. And we'll kind of we'll dig into the big reveal at the heart of this novel.

39:49This episode is brought to you by the Folio Society.

39:52Dominic Sandbrook: In Daphne du Maurier's book Rebecca, the most powerful character, the titular character, is already dead. But what begins as a romance soon turns into a story of jealousy, of obsession and of mounting dread. And Folio's edition carries this dark elegance into the reading experience. Beautifully bound and with illustrations by D.G. Smith, it brings Manderley close. And that's the power that Rebecca has over the whole novel. That is what Folio does so well. It takes favourite story and makes the book itself part of the pleasure. The look, the feel, the whole reading experience. So Folio's Rebecca is available now.

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43:22Dominic Sandbrook: Welcome back, everybody, to the book club. Now, before we get back into Rebecca, just a quick reminder, don't forget to sign up to our free newsletter book club notes. You get it every Saturday. there are um little witticisms from tabby there are loads as is that not enough well actually no because there are loads of tips about further reading tantalizing insights from dominic tantalizing insights exactly there are tantalizing insights from listeners actually so listeners write in with their thoughts uh we give advance warning about the books we're doing um all of these kinds of things now you can sign up for this at the book club hq.com and it will arrive on saturday is of course completely free yes now let's get into the story again and actually we were going to talk about the characters but tabby you wanted to say a word about nostalgia didn't you because you think that's very important of course it is important because the book begins with the narrator looking back and dreaming about manderley that opening line is so famous it's one of the most famous opening lines in literature it's last night i dreamt i went to manderley i went to mandalie again and the again is that because she's dreaming about it all the time is that again more obsessiveness that she's constantly dreaming about mandalie because mandalie is such an obsession for her and this sense of loss runs right through the whole book doesn't it the other characters feel they've lost rebecca but she she feels like she's lost this world that she has built up in her mind to be all consuming the country house the country life all of that kind of thing but also Also, the line that, you know, so she, in her dream, walks up the driveway and comes upon it.

45:05And it's all overgrown. So instantly, it's like coming upon a witch's castle in a fairy tale.

45:11Dominic Sandbrook: It is. But you know what else is, well, interesting, now you think about this one line. There's so much in it. She's not dreaming that she's in Mandalay. Yes. She's dreaming that she goes to it. In other words, that she is always the outsider, the intruder. Always the outsider. But then she says. She's not looking out the windows at the sea. She's walking up through the woods. But then she makes it her own, but actually not her own. She makes it hers and someone else's. There was Armanderly, secretive and silent as it had always been, the grey stone shining in the moonlight of my dream. And I think that definitely captures something of what Daphne du Maurier must have felt when she first stumbled upon that.

45:45Dominic Sandbrook: Oh, the house. Dilapidated house. Yeah. So we know right from the beginning there's an air of mystery around this place. There's something unknown going on. We know that something has been lost. And so instantly we're in. She's tugged us in. But the hour that she refers to that, that is Maxim de Winter, her husband. So tell us a little bit about him because he is a, certainly quite a mysterious character. He, mysterious, is putting it mildly. So she meets Maxim when she's on the Côte d 'Azur and she's a companion to Mrs. Van Hoppen or whatever she's called. This sort of... Terrible person. Sort of large American lady that she is a companion for, a paid companion.

46:26Dominic Sandbrook: and um van hopper i think it is isn't it and um mrs van hopper says of him an attractive creature but queer tempered i should think difficult to know and the interesting thing is that mrs van hopper is is presented to us as an absolute idiot and a terrible woman but mrs van hopper is right maxim is yeah there is something very dark about maxim he is aloof he's very self-assured he is kind of unknowable there's a part of him that always seems shielded from our narrator now of course there is a way that you could present this character she presents him to herself as handsome you know dark uh an older man uh urbane you know self-assured all of these things another way of telling the story is here is this widower who has gone to the south of france he's basically picked up a much much younger woman who is completely enthralled to him he has decided to make her his wife he brings her back home and then you know he's she's basically like a toy she's a pet for him because even the way he proposes she says you know she's slightly you can tell she's thrilled when he proposes to her in the hotel in france but he does it in such an offhand casual way such a bad proposal it's so it's oddly depressing yeah it is it's so underwhelming she's built it up in her mind maybe you know maxim she doesn't she doesn't ever think seriously he's going to propose and suddenly he does but he basically tosses the remark aside away kind of a breakfast doesn't he amid the marmalade and the coffee and the tangerine and it's not a sort of and she says at one point well maybe you know stuff about going down on one knee and that never really happens and this is more authentic and all of this kind of thing and then after that he never really talks to her about their relationship or about her he doesn't ask her questions about herself he doesn't meet her halfway he just sort of expects her to fit into his life in a rebecca shaped hole and he's constantly whenever she questions anything which is very very rare he always says oh you silly little fool god yeah my little darling and and she says kind of sort of slightly disappointedly mourning mournfully at one point perhaps once uh perhaps he when when she had gone and Mrs.

48:46Van Hopper had gone, he would at last talk to me about loving me, about being happy. Up to now, there'd be no time. And anyway, those things are not easily said. They must wait their moment. You know, she's trying to make excuses for him and she makes excuses for him throughout the book. I mean, I think he's quite unkind to her.

49:01Dominic Sandbrook: He is. I mean, let's be honest, if he's not going to talk about those things now, he's definitely not going to do it later on. And then they get to Manderley and rather than kind of allowing her into his confidence, meeting her on a sort of level of mutual trust, he almost deliberately keeps her in the dark and he says to her, I mean, this is your ultimate kind of red flag, I think, Tabby. A husband is not so very different from a father, after all. There is a certain type of knowledge I prefer you not to have. It's better kept under lock and key. So that's that. Now eat up your peaches and don't ask me any more questions.

49:34Dominic Sandbrook: Or shall I put you in the corner? Oh, God. Wow. I mean... That is the ultimate ick, isn't it? That's terrible. Yeah, that's a shocker. I was told, go into the corner and eat your peaches. it wouldn't go well. So Anarita doesn't really have the friend and companion that she wants in Maxim. She feels like he's abandoned her once they get to the house and he's abandoned her to be the prey of this sinister, skull-like, ghostly character, Mrs Danvers. Yeah, I love it. So Helen Dunmore, who wrote the introduction to the Folies Society, she described her as a skull-faced, sinister figure of nightmare and she's not wrong.

50:11She almost is not human. there's almost something i don't know demonic about her christian scott thomas by the way plays her exquisitely in the 2020 adaptation of this book which which is otherwise rubbish very good it's rubbish otherwise but she is superb um and she is every inch the gothic villain she is a brilliant housekeeper but all the while is working psychologically to undermine and unsettle our nameless narrator um so for instance as we've said she encourages her to wear the costume at At one point, she actually encourages her to jump out of a window and commit suicide. Yeah, she does.

50:49That's a mad scene, isn't it? But why is it that she takes against her so much? Because she loved, she adored, almost with a slightly sexual fervour, I would say, Rebecca. She holds her up as an idol of womanhood, of all the narrator can never be. and she actually, interestingly, defends a portion of Rebecca's nature that we will learn about later on that no one else will stand for. You know, she loves her for every single facet of her personality, her flaws and everything like that.

51:21Dominic Sandbrook: Big spoiler alert now and more coming. We find out that Rebecca was not faithful to Max De Winter, that she was having affairs all the time. You know, she was picking up and discarding men casually like toys. and mrs danvers says well so what she says well and what if she did she had a right to amuse herself hadn't she lovemaking was a game with her only a game and mrs danvers says it with this passionate fervor and the narrator seems to be very shocked by this and says clearly rebecca was an absolute monster she wasn't the power again after all but mrs danvers will not hear a word against Rebecca and effectively has turned Mandalay into a temple to her former mistress.

52:13Dominic Sandbrook: And she's always, I mean, you're right, she's always lurking in the shadows like a ghost. There's a scene, isn't there, where... It's so creepy. The narrator is exploring the house. She goes into the west wing, which has been shut off. And then I heard a step behind me and turning round, I saw Mrs. Danvers. I shall never forget the expression on her face. Triumphant, gloating, excited, in a strange, unhealthy way. You're enjoying this much too much, by the way. I am enjoying this. It's so well written. Brain it in. In a strange, unhealthy way. I felt very frightened. Is anything the matter, madam?

52:45Dominic Sandbrook: She says. This is literally what it's like doing a podcast with you, Tabby. Constantly looking over your shoulder. I never like my excitement to be pure and unadulterated. I like to be slightly twisted. Creepy about it. You've stubbed your toe. Yeah, well, the question with Mrs Danvers again... we only know this because the narrator tells us. Like, Mrs. Danvers might actually be a really decent, dutiful, faithful servant, true to her mistress's memory, who is being introduced by a narrator. No, or do you think I'm reading too much into that? Yeah, I mean, the thing is, she's so, she's almost camp in how horrific she is and how creepy she is.

53:23That you slightly wonder, has the narrator transformed a woman who was just, you know, very, very fond of her mistress, they had a really close relationship, she was also her lady's maid, into this monster of nightmare. Because as I say, she's almost inhuman in how horrific she is. And also how visceral she is in describing the death of Rebecca. But I think that almost suggests to me that she was driven mad by it. Because she says at one point, Her fingers lightened on my arm. She bent down to me, her skulls face close, her eyes dark. Her dark eyes searching mine. The rocks had battered her to bits, you know.

53:57Her beautiful face unrecognisable and both arms gone.

54:07So if that's someone you love, why do you want to dig into the physical details of it? I think because it slightly drove her mad. Or as we say, it's because our narrator is trying to turn her into a demon to make herself look more innocent.

54:23Dominic Sandbrook: Well, if our narrator can't be trusted, then which is a really interesting possibility, possibility then that also unsettles the way we think about rebecca herself yeah so rebecca i mean she's the title of the book is rebecca rebecca is dead throughout the book she never speaks we never see her you know she's just a um a creature of story you know we just hear her stories about her um but she in a weird way is a more identifiable character than our narrator is you know we know what she looks like and we never know what the narrator looks like yeah she hangs over everything she's everywhere and so i mean right from the beginning we're encouraged to think this is her story her name is on the front cover and our narrator is nameless so you know our narrator is like a conduit for her and she is almost she's more domineering more charismatic more passionate as a ghost than our narrator the corporeal form of our narrator she's almost supernaturally feminine but while mastering kind of the boldness of a man she is beautiful she's funny she's clever she's raven haired the narrator is is kind of pallid and she we're told she has this long lank hair so and this contrast is surely exaggerated in the in the telling because rebecca comes to take on the role of something like almost the beautiful queen in snow white you've made this point haven't you in your notes that um there's a fairy tale quality to this the the narrator is really leaning into the narrator is the sort of the outsider yeah the snow white sweet little snow with a heart of gold yeah when we're talking about her walking up the drive towards the big house and all that it's very fairy tale scene through the woods yeah and rebecca as the supremely you know uh elegant well-born villainess that you see in so many kind of fairy tales or disney films or whatever but it's important to stress that i mean we are doing this episode having obviously read the book but throughout the majority of the book three quarters of the book almost we believe as the as the young narrator believes that that rebecca is perfect she's the perfect wife and that maxim and also everyone everything we hear about her as you say she never appears she never says a single word in the book we're only told about her but we also encouraged to believe that maxim de winter the narrator's husband rebecca's original husband is still in love with her you know it's so broken by her death that he almost brings in the narrator to marry him because he's lonely and he needs consolation and he never really loves her and this is what obsesses the narrator and actually the height of her despair she says doesn't she he didn't belong to me at all he belonged to rebecca he still thought about rebecca he would never loved me because of Rebecca.

57:10Dominic Sandbrook: Rebecca was still mistress of Manderley. Rebecca was still Mrs. de Winter. Rebecca, always Rebecca. I shall never be rid of Rebecca. That name, the way that it pounds you. Yeah. That's such a brilliant piece of writing because it hammers it home to you, the reader. It does. You get stuck in Rebecca. But now let's turn to the big twist. Okay, so if you haven't read the book, we are now going to give away the big twist. So basically I want you to continue listening but then not complain afterwards that we've spoken about you. That would be great yeah so okay the twist tabby tell us what happens so that ba ba boom moment that daphne demoria wrote about the narrator is contemplating whether to commit suicide and then there's there's some sort of a chaos unfolding on the beach and it turns out that there has been a shipwreck and the diver exploring it has discovered rebecca's boat the boat that she died in but not only that she has discovered, the diver has discovered Rebecca's corpse.

58:07And remember that Mrs Danvers has told the narrator that Maxim went personally to identify the body that was found as Rebecca's. He said, yes, that is Rebecca, but no, Rebecca's body has been found anew. And finally, Maxim admits to the narrator that he loathed Rebecca. He said she was cruel, she was malevolent, she had affairs. They kept up this mirage of perfection to the outside world, but he hated her and then this had all culminated in a scene where Rebecca had taunted him and said to him that she may be pregnant with another man's child and she would make him raise it and so in the heat of the moment Maxim shot her and carried her body to the sea and sunk her boat with her in it so and actually all along he really loved the narrator and Maxim the way that his actions are described murdering his potentially pregnant wife and then dumping her body and never ever fessing up to it the way that that's told to us again calls to mind the possibility of an unreliable narrator because she totally saps the horror of what has happened from it it's lifeless

59:17Dominic Sandbrook: it's barely important well here's the thing they're describing an act of tremendous violence and you know the worst thing you can do murdering somebody he says at one point you forget that how much blood there is well here is the thing that line is so revealing i think if you're going to take a more heretical view of the book i had forgotten said maxim and his voice was slow now tired without expression i'd forgotten that when you shot a person there was so much blood so he's killed before so he's killed before i mean wow that's i mean that's you miss that when you first read it probably during the war but well you don't know though helen dunmore in her introduction essay drew attention to that i was like yes i did miss that when i first read it i've forgotten in other words i would know and so from this point onwards our view of rebecca completely changes we now see rebecca as this sexual deviant promiscuous monstrous breaking her marriage vows manipulative horrible a sort of um it's the ultimate uh sort of fantasy of the demonic woman Which brings us back to Jane Eyre, because at one point Maxim describes her as being like an animal, and that's just how Mr.

1:00:28Rochester describes Bertha, his wife that he keeps in the attic, in Jane Eyre.

1:00:33Dominic Sandbrook: I mean, I forget Maxim is a murderer. Yeah, but I think we can also have Maxim as a villain, Rebecca as a femme fatale, and the narrator as a young woman who just loves Maxim at any cost. but you could also have it that the narrator is in it with maxim and is twisting rebecca in order to defend the husband that she loves yes you can absolutely you can see each you can see any of the three of them as the true villain of the piece but because it's narrated by well the story is told by the narrator we are kind of complicit in this story aren't we and actually it's very cleverly constructed so that while you're reading it when you're in the moment all you want is for maxim him to get away with it don't you you do you're really worried at one point because he comes pretty close to being arrested but then he manages to justify rebecca's death he manages to say that it was a suicide because when they go to visit the doctor that rebecca had been visiting we think to confirm her pregnancy it turns out that she had cancer and that there is a chance that she almost provoked maxim into shooting her because she didn't want to die a long slow painful undignified death and i think there is something admirable in that for rebecca and it means that no matter which way you see the story rebecca triumphs because she engineers her death and i think probably hoping that it will mean that maxim is arrested yeah and so for those people who have read the book obviously those final 50 pages are brilliantly done thrilling oh my gosh absolute sense of tension because basically the person with whom rebecca was having an affair called jack fable sorry can we quickly talk about that because he's her first cousin i feel uncomfortable with that i don't know about you uh am i am i buttoned up i'm i'm not really in touch with my cousins so they are thought of having an affair with them as never really i mean it's not impossible but it's never really impinged on my consciousness this is my this is the point it's still a bit weird i suppose it is a bit weird and also we're told that he's sort of red-faced and sloppy-lipped and a massive drinker i think that if your cousin is red-faced sloppy-lipped and a massive drinker and your cousin i think maybe don't don't have an affair with him maybe find a more attractive less closely related individual.

1:02:46Dominic Sandbrook: But the thing is, again, Jack Fable, who is the villain, he's the villain in the final hundred pages of the book. He finds out Maxim's secret. He wants to blackmail them. There is another way to tell his story, which is that actually he is loyal. He is loyal to the memory of a murdered woman who he did genuinely love, both as a cousin and as a bedmate. And as a lover. Yeah, as a lover. Thank you for that, Tabby. Well, it's important to pull out all the gothic horror. It is. Was that gothic horror, was it? the way he said that. I love her. Yeah, it was pretty horrible. But he could be the good guy of the story, right?

1:03:20Dominic Sandbrook: Yeah. I feel like that's working a bit hard though. No, though, because the way Maxim is able to get away with this. God, you're livid. I am furious. The way Maxim is able to get away with it is that he's posh. Yes, this is true, actually. This is true. He's untouchable because he's so high status that he is untouchable. So if it was a man, one of his servants or whatever, for instance, one of his servants almost does get arrested for breaking a statue. maxim murders his wife and totally gets away with it because basically colonel whatever his name is yeah he trusts maxim he wobbles at times because he can see the evidence mounting up against him but you can see but he's also thinking he's a good chap he's one of us he wouldn't possibly do this so yeah bloody good bacon bloody good port but then the thing is as well whether or not you you go down this line of um reading the book you know where the maxim is the villain rebecca is hard done by in order to achieve the happy ending the narrator's happy ending this that sees her with maxim and maxim a free man she has to collude in the murder and that is undoubtedly what happened well in covering up the murder you mean in covering up the murder exactly by stand in standing by him it's a bit like yeah it's standing by him but then this isn't the only twist Daphne de Mauret gives us more because then there is the absolute ending and I think this time you should you should tell people what happens so we knew this was coming didn't we from the beginning in a weird way at least I could see it coming we bring it back to that opening line last night I went back to Manderley yeah last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again it seemed to me I stood by the ironing gate blah blah blah blah blah and looked through and in her dream mandalay is rusting and it's been consumed by the woods and all of that kind of stuff so we know that they've lost mandalay in some way and they're driving back after the after maxim has been cleared by the doctor because the doctor's told yeah whatever that there's um that rebecca had cancer so that the colonel says oh well she must have killed herself maxim's got away with it and the narrator's got away with it and then as they they're driving faster and faster to get back to manderley and i was thinking to myself this is like the final couple of minutes of one of those films where you think it would have faded out and we would have had the credits by now if it was going to be a happy ending clearly there is something coming because there's this sense of gathering tension the faster they drive the closer they get to the house and then 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 not dark at all it was shot with crimson like a splash of blood and the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea it's beautiful writing actually really controlled well-judged writing i think that about all of her writing it's always very embroidered and rich but so well controlled yeah jack fable went out near the end to make a phone call didn't he and he was obviously bringing his ally, Mrs.

1:06:20Dominic Sandbrook: Danvers, who has set fire to the house. Her final revenge for her beloved mistress. And in a way, you know, for the untouchable Maxim de Winter, you know, it's the one thing that she can do to undermine him. Because all he cared about was Manderley. So this is a nod to Jane Eyre, isn't it? Because this is what happens to, what's the house in Jane Eyre, Tubby? Thornfield Hall. And actually, we're doing Jane Eyre on the show soon. so I guess we've just spoiled Jane Eyre too well it's an old book so it's a nod to Jane Eyre but also this now means a Manderley the one thing he cared about is lost to him but Manderley will forever belong to the woman he murdered to Rebecca basically they managed to exercise themselves of Rebecca's ghost because Rebecca lives in Manderley so they are free from Rebecca's ghost they are free from the law but they've actually in freeing themselves had to hand Manderley over to Rebecca forever and in losing Manderley, Maxim loses his status, his sense of self, so he is reduced too because we also get an interesting sense in the present tense when our narrator, you know, when she is saying, oh, and I remember this and when we sit together in the Mediterranean sun or whatever it may be, you get the sense that their status has slightly shifted.

1:07:35So true to me. That now she is on top and it's basically losing Manderley that has allowed her to finally conquer her husband.

1:07:44Dominic Sandbrook: such a good point because he is absent he is a nothing presence dead eyes yeah he's just hanging around and you get a sense that he is a reduced shell of a man but maybe another way of presenting this is the narrator has won she's got what she wants she's got him under her control yeah wow i think it's very important that we rate this yeah in what on the same on the right scale right and i played around with a bunch of ideas i had fun with it you spent too much time thinking about this literally i two pages of notes 10 pages of ideas for the rating system i think we should rate it out of creepily sexually infatuated housekeepers brilliant so i'm gonna give it a nine out of ten nice um and i'm gonna why am i docking a mark i'm docking a mark purely because i think that it's melodramatic it's very very melodramatic i don't mind that but it doesn't quite hit you know i'm going to reserve tens for the absolute peak of the great literary art yes and so this is a notch below that however in terms of what it does it is absolutely brilliantly done i mean vs pritchett saying it would be here today gone tomorrow is mad yeah what a fool well he was He was one of the greatest short story writers that ever lived.

1:09:05Dominic Sandbrook: But in this case, it's completely wrong. It is so well written. It does remind me in places of the control and the discipline of Agatha Christie, who I also love. But it's actually richer than an Agatha Christie. It's much more layered. The unreliable narrator is so... You know, Tabby, I'm obsessed with unreliable narrators. I know, you are. Some people... I was speaking to someone the other day that said that they loathe an unreliable narrator because they feel what's the point in reading it. But I know what you mean. It's endlessly intriguing. isn't it? Also, everybody you ever speak to is an unreliable narrator.

1:09:35No? That was so profound. Thank you. Thanks. Okay.

1:09:39Dominic Sandbrook: Well, that's what I'm here for. So yeah, I'm going to give it nine out of 10. I think it's terrific. And if you haven't read it, I could not recommend it. It's the perfect summer read. I'm also going to give it nine. I enjoyed every single second of reading it, even the second time around. The characters are wonderfully wrought. The pacing is brilliant. It's thrilling. The big reveal is genuinely shocking. It has everything. Romance, mystery, murder gothic undertones and i think the writing is beautiful and perfectly judged perfect do not forget dear listener to join our own secretive and mysterious haunted household and sign up for our beloved book club notes and this is our wonderful wonderful newsletter where you get kind of deep dives into the book you get some witty comments repartee between dominic and i you can write your own views you can give it your own ratings you can let us know what you thought of it you know you can interact with other other listeners it's just yeah it's the best thing ever it's it's like it's the manderley of the book club it's genuinely the best thing dominic and i haunted it's the best thing that ever happens to you on a saturday tabby when that drops in your inbox yeah totally right okay so what's coming up on the show uh we have next week an absolute tip-top banger of a book lolita blive vladimir nabikov one of my very favorite writers and favorite books.

1:10:56Dominic Sandbrook: We have Lord of the Flies by William Golding. A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr. American Psycho by Brett Easton Ellis. Charlotte Bronson's Jane Eyre, Ian Fleming's Goldfinger, Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Fyodor Dostoevsky's White Nights, The Shining by Stephen King. Bye-bye, everybody. Thank you for listening. Bye.

1:11:25Getting a statement from Melton 10 on that flight with 350 passengers on board.

1:11:33Dominic Sandbrook: The great game. Strategic struggle between Britain and Russia. We assess, Prime Minister, with high confidence it was Russian. Holding the Russians accountable is World War III. They took down a British passenger jet containing 350 people. The man in the Kremlin is playing, Alex. You've got to ask yourself, do you want to play or not? You're the Prime Minister. You've done nothing!

1:12:05Dominic Sandbrook: We would need to understand the policy context. All the relevant context will be structured as a framework today. And disseminated into an operation order, or FRAGO. A FRAGO that says to kill the President of Russia. Yes. New from Goalhanger Who is going to be able to pull this off? You're my soldier, are you? Sergeant Tom McDuff, Duffy An audio drama journey like no other Men like Duffy, they are our most valuable weapons Devised as a technically rigorous geopolitical action thriller We have two times friendly key Where Britain plays its strongest hand He's the best Against its strongest foe Don't do it, Duffy!

1:12:49Dominic Sandbrook: Bear Hunt Available now wherever you get your podcasts.