Rebecca: Imagery 5 key examples

In the most basic sense, this passage delivers a description of the road up to Manderley as it would look after years of neglect by the groundskeeping staff. It would be overgrown and difficult to fight through. By leaning on personification and imagery, du Maurier packs her description with many further layers of meaning.

Manderley, as the narrator thinks of it, is an inherently wild place. Nature here is not just the collective name for flora and fauna, but rather a feminine being with "long, tenacious fingers" and a sneaky demeanor. Nature wants to get her hands on Manderley. For all the effort Maxim and other inhabitants of Manderley put forth over the years to manicure the grounds, this passage suggests that nature was always going to sneak back in and choke them out because that is her way.

Nature's "body parts" come alive in their own right. The woods at first seem to make up nature's "fingers," but du Maurier ascribes action to them: they "menace," "triumph," and "crowd" the drive. This language not only paints an image of overgrown trees, but also imbues them with sinister intent. The beeches' "limbs," too, grow with intent. These trees stand out not as bright points in the dark woods, but rather as a vault of "white, naked" limbs all tangled in a "strange embrace." A naked group embrace has sexual overtones that the narrator considers "strange."

Even if the sight is unsettling, the narrator is nonetheless drawn to it, walking under the "vault" the embrace forms. She seems especially fascinated with the way nature persists in coming back from the dead year after year. A naked tree limb is dead, at least for the duration of winter. These tree branches are zombie "limbs," pale with death, but nonetheless growing up out of the ground and tangling with one another. They stand side-by-side with elms that are even more zombie-like, "thrust[ing] themselves out of the quiet earth." Their "tortured" demeanor suggests that their souls have been in hell and are now "straggling" up from their graves. This word, "straggling," captures the way du Maurier skillfully blends personification and imagery. The word is just one letter off from "struggling," which emphasizes the idea of the trees as people fighting for life. And yet "straggling" itself emphasizes the untamed, uncontrollable look of the trees. It signals to the reader that nothing at Manderley, even human nature, can quite be brought under control.

Again and again, the narrator will remark on Mrs. Danvers's "skull's face." It practically becomes her epithet. It is somewhat odd to say that she has a "skull's face" on a "skeleton's frame" given that every face lies on top of a skull, and a skeleton provides the frame for every human body. What the narrator seems to mean is that Mrs. Danvers is so thin and so pale that she looks like a skeleton with no flesh. Instead of the rosy cheeks of a lively woman, she has protruding cheekbones. Instead of eyes that help the narrator "see into her soul," as the expression goes, she has "hollow eyes," almost as though they are empty sockets. She looks as though she has been rotting in the grave for some time. Even Mrs. Danvers's severe black dress suggests that she is still mourning Rebecca while others are trying to move on from her death. This same dress washes her out, accentuating her deathlike pallor.

The narrator uses even more deathlike imagery to describe Mrs. Danvers's handshake. "Limp [...], heavy, [and] deathly cold," it feels like a "lifeless thing" in the narrator's hand. It is almost as though the narrator is holding a dead fish that has flopped into her hand from the ocean. The "sea of faces" refers merely to the crowd of servants, but the phrase also evokes the image of Mrs. Danvers emerging from the actual sea where Rebecca's body lies. Although Mrs. Danvers does not yet know that Rebecca's body remains close to the shore, she is obsessed with the side of the house that overlooks the water because that is where Rebecca lived and died. This woman is alive, but it would hardly be surprising to learn that she sleeps each night under the ocean next to Rebecca and reanimates in the morning.

By linking Mrs. Danvers with Rebecca's burial place and by describing her as a dead woman walking, the narrator gives the reader the spooky sense that there is not such a clear difference at Manderley between the dead and the living. Rebecca is dead, but she is still haunting the place. In the end, she has Mrs. Danvers to do her bidding from the grave, burning Manderley down and preventing Maxim from keeping hold of it.

The "little thump of [Jasper's] tail, now and then, upon the floor" would not be a particularly remarkable image on its own. However, at this point in Maxim's story, it adds significantly to the suspenseful atmosphere. Jasper was Rebecca's dog. He and the narrator share a bond now, but he is also a living reminder of just how recently Rebecca was Mrs. de Winter. The irregular thump from Rebecca's dog's tail is a mundane trace of her life at Manderley.

The thumping tail also mimics the sound of Rebecca's heart struggling to beat while she dies. Maxim's comment about "so much blood" pouring from Rebecca's wound that night further adds to the visceral horror of both the scene he is describing and the scene in which he is confessing to the narrator. Not only does his comment add gore, but it also suggests that Maxim may have killed before. "I'd forgotten," he says, "that when you shot a person there was so much blood." This man, who has murdered at least once if not multiple times, is the same man who lives a quiet life in Manderley with his servants, the narrator, and the little dogs who like to sleep on the carpet. This chilling contrast demonstrates that even the most mild-mannered people can conceal horrible secrets.

Maxim and the narrator have been under pressure ever since Rebecca's body was found. The narrator was on edge long before that as well, constantly worried that she was not measuring up to Maxim's first wife. The initial verdict of the inquest brought short-lived relief, as Rebecca's death was ruled a suicide. Almost immediately, though, the pressure redoubled as Jack Favell accused Maxim of murder and insisted that they all go with Colonel Julyan to meet the doctor Rebecca saw on her last day alive. Maxim and the narrator have been practically sick with dread, believing that the doctor will confirm that Rebecca was pregnant. This, combined with Favell's admission that he was having an affair with Rebecca, would give Maxim obvious motive to have killed her.

Instead, the doctor has told them that Rebecca found out that day that she was terminally ill with cancer. This diagnosis gives her motive for suicide more than it gives Maxim motive for murder. No matter what Colonel Julyan believes, he has indicated that Maxim and the narrator no longer have anything to worry about: the case is closed. The narrator compares the sensation of relief to the feeling of an abscess bursting. Suddenly all the infected pus is released, and there is no longer a throbbing growth drawing constant attention to itself.

This simile is also a vivid and repellent image. Not only is an abscess uncomfortable, but most people consider it unsightly. It likely smells very bad when it bursts as well, because of the pus inside. By using this image, the narrator captures a mixed sense of relief, satisfaction, and disgust over the whole matter. The cancer, the murder, and the abuse in Rebecca and Maxim's relationship built up over time until it became necessary to prod them. The process of busting the abscess involved a slough of unpleasant sensations, but now the narrator feels nearly euphoric that it is done.

The narrator could simply tell the reader that she and Maxim watched Manderley burn. Instead, she uses a series of images to approximate the process that went on in their minds as they realized what they were seeing. At first, the narrator reports telling Max that it looks like dawn is breaking in the distance. The reader can imagine wisps of pink and gold peeking up over the horizon, signaling the end of a long night for these two characters. Immediately after offering this image, the narrator corrects herself: she can't be seeing dawn because she is looking west. This correction gestures at another image, which neither the narrator nor Maxim makes explicit: perhaps she is seeing the sunset after a long day. That can't be right either, though, because it is almost morning.

The narrator continues to think that whatever she is seeing looks like a sunrise. It has the characteristic "red first streak" and is growing lighter and lighter. The way it spreads makes her think that it could even be the northern lights. This idea conjures its own image for the reader, one that is more fantastical than either a sunrise or a sunset. It seems that along with the light, the narrator's hope for something beautiful on the horizon is growing. The northern lights would be out of place in the summer, but maybe she is seeing something so special it defies the usual laws of nature.

Maxim is the one who first realizes that what they are seeing is actually Manderley in the process of burning down. This final, shocking image is the last of the book. It is none of the beautiful weather events the narrator thought she might be seeing, and yet to her and Maxim it is no less impossible. To them, Manderley is a permanent fixture. It is the picture on the narrator's postcard from when she was young, and it is the house Maxim was meant to pass down to his children. To see it in flames is to see an unexpected end as well as the unexpected beginning of a new era. This fire is just as unprecedented as a sunrise in the west, a sunset in the morning, or the northern lights in the summer.