Previous
Style
Definition of Tone
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical, and so on. For instance... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical or mournful, praising or critical... read full definition
The tone of a piece of writing is its general character or attitude, which might be cheerful or depressive, sarcastic or sincere, comical... read full definition
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis:
For all that the narrator is reflecting on her life years after she helped Maxim get away with Rebecca's murder, her tone remains anxious, obsessive, and sometimes bitter for most of the book. For example, in Chapter 5, the narrator finds herself zoning out and seething about Rebecca, the woman she has never met:
How many times she must have written to him thus, in how many varied moods.
Little notes, scrawled on half-sheets of paper, and letters, when he was away, page after page, intimate, their news. Her voice, echoing through the house, and down the garden, careless and familiar like the writing in the book.
And I had to call him Maxim.
Her obsession begins the day Maxim tells the narrator to call him "Maxim" instead of "Mr. de Winter." The narrator is flattered at first. She feels special that she is allowed to be so familiar with this older man. However, this same day, Maxim gets angry at the narrator for prying into his past. When she gets home later, she finds that a book of poems Maxim gave her has an inscription reading, "Max -- from Rebecca." Suddenly, the fact that he has asked her to call him "Maxim" is a slap in the face that places her behind Rebecca in an imaginary competition for his attention.
The narrator is recalling how she felt at the time, when she was only 21. Her obsession, her anxiety, and her bitter jealousy may be unhealthy, but they are somewhat understandable for a very young woman who is receiving special attention from a man who is not only much older than her, but who could also give her wealth and social status. On the other hand, there is no clear indication that the narrator does not still feel this way. If anything, remembering this time in her life seems to call all the emotions up again. The older narrator is still angry that "I had to call him Maxim."
The narrator tries to modulate her tone and to be more lighthearted. There are periods at Manderley when she really seems to appreciate the beauty of the place and the kindness of some of the people she meets there. Still, she struggles not to obsess over Maxim, Rebecca, and her relationship to both of them. Even after she finds out that Maxim killed Rebecca and is not pining over her, the narrator continues to obsess over the future they will have together. The entire novel is a flashback that the narrator tells years later because she cannot stop thinking about this period of her life. No matter how much she gets what she wants, she still seems anxious and even petulant over the fact that Rebecca had it first.
Related Themes:
