It's the way Daphne du Maurier presents her, says Nilanjana S Roy. Obliquely, insidiously, always offstage, and always at the centre of the actionI was precociously young when I first read Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca -- too young to understand the dark sexual underpinnings of the book, but old enough to be hooked by both the novel and the title character. The problem with precocious readers is that they're not necessarily astute readers. It took me eons to work out that what made Rebecca so fascinating, a modern-day Jezebel among women, Scarlett O'Hara and Scarlet Woman in one Gothic package, was not Rebecca herself. 

Anyone who's read the book will understand. The story is told from the point of view of a woman so civilised and so effaced that we never learn her actual name. She's a paid companion when the book opens, rescued from a life of drudging gentility by Maxim de Winter, a Mr Darcy figure recovering from the tragic and mysterious drowning of his first wife, the eponymous Rebecca, in the bay off Manderley. 

The ingenue becomes the second Mrs de Winter, but Manderley, instead of being her escape into married paradise, harbours its own secrets. From Mrs Danvers, Rebecca's nurse and Manderley's housekeeper, to the most humble member of the staff, Manderley carries the imprint of Rebecca's taste, wit, beauty and ample ability. The second Mrs de Winter remains an outsider in a mansion run from beyond the grave by Rebecca. A fancy dress ball and a well-timed storm conspire to reveal the truth: far from being perfect, Rebecca was a monster, a dissembling, depraved nymphomaniac who deceived all the world. Her husband, the only person who knew what she was, made a sordid bargain with her and paid the price for it. The second Mrs de Winter regains Maxim, only to lose Manderley. 

The stripped down Rebecca is almost banal. Is this all, one wonders -- merely a selfish woman who cold-bloodedly used her beauty and social skills to achieve a position that allowed her to indulge her baser passions, the sort of character you might find in a Judith Krantz novel? 

What makes her special? It's the way Daphne du Maurier presents her -- obliquely, insidiously, always offstage, and always at the centre of the action. We never really see Rebecca, only other people's versions of her. The second Mrs de Winter sees her first through her handwriting -- strong, precise, beautiful, the initial R as impossible to ignore as the woman herself. To the awkward girl-woman struggling to assimilate to her new role as chatelaine, Rebecca becomes the epitome of everything she isn't and can never be -- clever, effortlessly charming, and absolutely sure of herself and her place in a world where her successor is at sea. 

To Maxim De Winter, she's a grating reminder of failure. He married Rebecca not out of attraction, but because she appeared to have breeding -- qualities he expects for the chatelaine of Manderley, the house that lies at the true heart of his passions. And she is right for Manderley, though she's entirely wrong for Max himself. 

To Mrs Danvers, Rebecca is an obsession -- the child admired because of her ability to grasp what she wants, the woman adored because she remains untouched by any of her affairs. To the other men, such as Frank Crawley, she's an unattainable ideal who remains almost mythical in her charms, even when she descends from the pedestal. Or, as for Jack Favell, she's an object of passion whose fascination lies in her refusal to be possessed, body and soul. 

And to the reader, who sees the multiple reflections but never the woman? In our generation, the machinery that clanked behind the scenes of Rebecca is outdated. Marriage is not the only possible future for a woman; it is no longer extraordinary for a woman of strong, even unusual, sexual appetites to indulge them. 

And yet, Rebecca belongs among the immortals. Perhaps it's because she does exactly as she pleases, down to orchestrating her own exit from the world. Perhaps it's because she illustrates an old, old principle that runs counter to the homily that it's what's inside that counts. No, says Rebecca serenely, it's what people see that matters--the apparent warmth, the semblance of passion, the appearance of gaiety and confidence. For all her wicked, wicked ways, she beguiles the world, or as much of it as counts in her book. 

As children, the more imaginative among us dressed up and fought over who would get to play Mrs Danvers, a good character part if there ever was one, and fought even more fiercely over who was to play Rebecca. The second Mrs De Winter is all that's admirable--she has principles, charm on her own terms, a survivor's resilience, and even a certain dry wit. But no one ever read Rebecca and emerged from the book wanting to be her. 

(from Bonnanova.com)