Rebecca

My group chose to read Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. This book is very different from our first book And then there were none by Agatha Christie because the story begins with a flashback. Unlike Agatha Christie who displayed out who is who, Daphne Du Maurier makes it more "mysterious" by not even telling the names of the character until further in the story.

The book starts out with a flashback of the protagonist being a young girl and how she met Maxim de Winter meets. In her flashback, basically, they meet through the unnamed heroine's employer and within a few weeks, Maxim proposes to her and she accepts. However, when her employer, Mrs. Van Hopper finds out, she isn't very happy and tells the unnamed heroine that she will regret this. Once Maxim takes the heroine into his house and all the servants and Mrs. Danvers welcomes her, she feels intimidated and she is nervous. She believes that everyone is laughing behind her back for marrying Maxim and thinks he still loves his old wife, Rebecca. She also has trouble accepting that she is the new mistress of Manderly not Rebecca.

The heroine also meets Ben, who acts very nervous around her and asks if she will put him in an asylum. The heroine finds out that Rebecca threathened him and scared Ben. Throughout the beginning of the novel, it is mostly finding out about Rebecca. The heroine assumes that she was very beautiful and talented. I don't think Rebecca was talented or beautiful. She was probably a woman who was "boss" around the house and treated everyone poorly. Mrs. Danvers starts asking the heroine and tells her that she thinks that Rebecca has come back to haunt the house. I mean Rebecca probably is haunting the house because she probably has competition. She probably thinks that the heroine will soon make Maxim forget about her so I think throughout the novel, Rebecca might start scaring everyone especially the heroine.