Another Bad Retelling - "Rebecca"

Hello fellow ink drinkers! Today, there is going to be another bad retelling. Today’s book is going to be “Rebecca” by Daphne du Maurier. Before the actual retelling though, I am first going to talk about both Belle and my general thoughts about the book. Belle’s overall thoughts are that she fell in love with the book and it actually solidified her love for the classics. She read all the unofficial sequels. On the other hand, when I read “Rebecca” I was not that much of a fan and as time went on, it got worse for me. There were just certain things that I thought kept repeating and repeating and repeating. This isn’t a book that really resonated with me. I did end up reading one of the sequels but I’m not quite sure why I did so.

Now we have reached my actual bad retelling. This is the one bad retelling of mine that is super short. It is only a few sentences long and they are: Oh my goodness Maxim doesn’t love me. He only has eyes for Rebecca. He will only ever love her. I’m so sad. For me, that was what it was through the entire book. Regardless of the psychological aspects of this book, that is what I perceived this book to boil down to.

That being said, I’ll now go over Belle’s synopsis. The story starts by introducing the narrator who remains nameless throughout the book. The narrator is a companion to a wealthy lady and she meets Maxim de Winter when she is traveling. Maxim is twice her age but they fall in love. After a very short courtship they decide to get married and once they are married Maxim takes the narrator back to his estate. At the estate, the narrator meets the housekeeper who keeps telling the narrator that she will never be like Maxim’s first wife Rebecca. The housekeeper then starts the process of brainwashing the narrator. The narrator then starts thinking that Maxim is really upset because he misses Rebecca and laments at the thought that she is nothing like Rebecca. She then starts to try to mold herself in Rebecca’s image. At one point, she even tries to duplicate a costume that Rebecca wore to a party that was hosted by Maxim. Maxim gets upset at this and the narrator thinks that she really messed up and that he really misses Rebecca (in a sense going through the whole Maxim doesn’t love me like I said in my retelling). The narrator eventually tries to commit suicide due to all the brainwashing, but stops when a boat crashes. A body is found on the boat and it turns out to be Rebecca’s body. They then try to find out what happened to Rebecca.

The narrator eventually brings up all of her concerns to Maxim, saying that he wishes that she were Rebecca. Maxim says that he does not wish this because he hated Rebecca. She was a selfish, shallow, cruel, and mean woman. Their marriage was a sham. He ends up confessing to the narrator that Rebecca had told him she was pregnant with another man’s child and that Maxim would treat this child as his heir. As a result of this news, Maxim became so enraged that he killed Rebecca. He then covered up her murder to make it look like a boating accident. The supposed father of Rebecca’s unborn child (her first cousin) comes forward and states that Rebecca was really excited about the pregnancy and that her death was not a suicide like everyone had started to believe. Maxim starts to freak out because he doesn’t want to go to prison and the narrator is freaked out because she also doesn’t want Maxim to go to prison. They got and find the doctor that Rebecca saw when she was alive and found out that Rebecca was very sick. She had cancer and some other medical condition; she also was unable to have a child. She only had a few months left to live at the time she was killed. The housekeeper had mentioned that the only thing that Rebecca feared was dying a slow and painful death. Because of this, she ended up deciding to essentially force Maxim to kill her so she did not have to die in the manner she was scared of. Maxim is relieved by this realization and they go to the inquest into Rebecca’s death. As they are returning home, Maxim and the narrator come to find that their estate has been set on fire and the housekeeper is the one responsible. This is how the book ends.

We hope that you guys have enjoyed this bad retelling compared to the actual synopsis of the book and we will see you guys next week.

Arya