Rebecca: Allusions 5 key examples

In Jane Eyre, the orphan girl after whom the book is named must find a way to establish herself socially and financially without any significant inheritance or loving parents. She gets an education and takes a job as the governess at the estate of Mr. Rochester, a wealthy aristocrat who has secured his estate in part through colonial enterprise. Already there are some similarities between Jane Eyre and Rebecca's narrator. Both come from humble backgrounds and use their educations to network with wealthy aristocrats and eventually move into their homes. While Jane doesn't marry Mr. Rochester before moving in with him, these two also fall in love. Like Maxim and the narrator, Mr. Rochester and Jane also find their relationship tormented by Mr. Rochester's first wife. Bertha Rochester is supposed to be dead, but she turns out to be alive and imprisoned in the attic. Mr. Rochester has been keeping her there ever since she began exhibiting mental health problems—and ever since he learned that she has Black ancestry. Only after Bertha burns the house down and dies inside do Jane and Mr. Rochester get to live happily ever after.

The fact that both novels feature a vengeful first wife who only goes away when the house burns down makes it impossible to ignore the parallels. Some could accuse du Maurier's novel of deriving its plot from Jane Eyre, but most critics find instead that the similarities enrich both books. Both books explore gender roles in a similar way. However, other key differences raise questions about memory, guilt, and whether anyone can ever be free of their sins. Brontë's novel suggests that this kind of freedom might be possible. Mr. Rochester can move on from his unsavory past after he no longer has any connection to Bertha and after the house he secured with colonial profit has burned down. Ultimately, Jane Eyre is a book about Jane coming into herself and achieving a happy ending with Mr. Rochester.

Things are not so clear-cut for Maxim and the narrator. Maxim's key sin is caring about Manderley and his family legacy so much that he kills his wife over it. Rebecca threatens to force Maxim to pass Manderley down to a child who is not his, so he murders her. The danger that he will lose his property doesn't entirely go away with her death because she ensures that Maxim will forever be a murderer who might have his assets seized. The fire at Manderley strips Maxim of the property, and it also doesn't seem to destroy Rebecca's memory. After all, the narrator goes on to write an entire book named after her. Du Maurier weaves Brontë's plot into her novel to suggest that there may be no such thing as outrunning your own past.

"Bradshaws" were a British series of travel guides that were popular in the 19th century and up through 1961. They began as books of train schedules but soon expanded to include more detailed maps, information about historic buildings, and other contents aimed at guiding tourists. The narrator refers to the "vice of reading Bradshaws." As travel guides became more popular, many people read them for the fun of it. They would learn about far-off places and "plan innumberable journeys" without ever embarking on them. This hobby met criticism from those who worried that people were confusing trip-planning with the actual experience of travel. As still happens today, those who traveled widely often distinguished themselves as "cultured" people a cut above those who never made it out of the place where they were born. Then, as now, travel had major class connotations. Being able to afford travel put people in a different class from those who merely fantasized about travel by reading Bradshaws.

The narrator, too, distinguishes herself from people who compulsively read Bradshaws. She does seem to enjoy thinking of herself as an aristocrat, but it is not exactly a class difference that she emphasizes. Instead, she uses the allusion to introduce a metaphor about her memory. Unlike Bradshaw readers, who go to the books for information about far-off places, the narrator herself is a "mine of information on the English countryside." It is as though she herself is a Bradshaw, chock full of all the intimate details a traveler may need to know about the English countryside. Most people have to consult books for these details, but she need only consult herself. While she has traveled—after all, she makes a point to let the reader know that she is writing from outside England—she is not bragging that she knows places far and wide. Instead, she is emphasizing her deep connection to the place where Manderley once stood. The sensory memories of that place "will not be denied" because they have made her, just as train schedules make a Bradshaw.

Traditionally, aristocratic estates in England could be "entailed," or put into a trust that dictated the estate's terms of inheritance. Owners of entailed estates, upon their deaths, were generally required to will them to the nearest patrilineal descendant. They were not allowed to sell the property or name an heir of their own choosing.

Rebecca was published in 1938, and it flashes back to some time in the narrator's past. English property law changed in the 1920s, and entailed estates largely became a thing of the past. While this change reflected a shift in popular attitudes about property, class, and bloodlines, Maxim belongs to the class of aristocrats that were clinging to older ideas about the importance of the patrilineal line. Rebecca threatens to get pregnant with a child that would not be Maxim's biologically. Because they are married (and given that this novel far predates paternity tests), he would have no way to prove that he was not the child's father. Legally, he would be required to pass Manderley into another man's biological line. Because Maxim clings to older ideas about bloodlines and aristocracy, this threat was enough to drive him to murder.

Othello, the title character of Shakespeare's play, is a Black general of Venice. He elopes with Desdemona, the White daughter of a senator. He also has an ensign named Iago who is furious that Othello has passed him over for a promotion. Iago launches a campaign of psychological warfare against Othello, eventually convincing him that Desdemona has cheated on him (she has not). Iago ultimately drives Othello into a murderous rage. After killing Desdemona and trying to kill Iago, Othello dies by suicide.

Favell uses the Othello reference somewhat lazily, simply to suggest that Maxim killed Rebecca out of jealousy once he learned that she had been having an affair with him, Favell. He is taunting Maxim. However, the reference also raises the question of just how responsible Maxim is for his own actions. On the one hand, he is the person who pulled the trigger on Rebecca. Domestic violence is very serious, and most readers today would struggle with the notion of blaming a woman for getting herself killed by her husband. On the other hand, part of the horror of du Maurier's novel comes from the fact that Rebecca is both a Desdemona and an Iago. She died at Maxim's hand only after she pushed and pushed him, whipping his emotions into a frenzy. Maxim even believes that she planned to die once she found out that she was terminally ill and that she manipulated him into killing her as a last act of cruelty against him. The reference to Othello draws attention to the book's inconclusive ethics.

"Roses in Picardy," or "Roses of Picardy," was written by Frederick Weatherly and set to music by Haydn Wood during World War I, when British troops were stationed in Picardy. The song was enormously popular, with soldiers singing it on the front lines and people singing it at home to honor the soldiers. It is a love song about memory and loss. All the roses in Picardy die, the singer laments, except for the one metaphorical rose (his lover), who will live forever in his heart.

It would not have been uncommon to hear buskers playing this song around this time period. Still, it is eerie that they are all met with this song as they emerge from Dr. Baker's house. For Favell, who had an extramarital affair with Rebecca and did not understand why she would kill herself, the song likely resonates with his bittersweet grief. She was not murdered after all, he now sees. She is gone, but she will linger forever in his memory.

For the narrator and Maxim, the song is something between a farewell ballad to Rebecca and an ill omen that she is not done haunting them. They have just learned that Rebecca was not pregnant, as they had feared. There is a plausible explanation why she would have killed herself, and Dr. Baker has not provided an obvious reason why Maxim would have killed her. Still, Maxim and the narrator don't know what Colonel Julyan believes. Has Maxim gotten away with murder?

In the end, Maxim does escape legal punishment. However, he and the narrator are not in the clear. Mrs. Danvers ensures that Rebecca gets her revenge by burning Manderley down. Rebecca herself continues to weigh so heavily on the narrator's heart that she writes an entire book about the dead woman. The book keeps Rebecca alive in perpetuity, a never-fading rose.