Rebecca: Unreliable Narrator 1 key example

She goes on to fill the "canvas" with a collection of close-up details about the party. She describes Robert dropping a tray of ice. She follows a a woman with large teeth as she first dances and then eats salmon and lobster mayonnaise. She notes new worry lines on Frank's face. All of these details make the party come alive on the page, and yet it is also clear that the reader's perception of the party is both enabled and limited by the details the narrator notices and chooses to depict in her representation of the party.

While any story is limited to the perspective of its narrator, this particular narrator makes it clear that she is not just a storyteller trying to describe events at an objective remove. She is an artist. She regularly refers to paintings both real and imaginary from art history, demonstrating a deep knowledge of art. She has fantasized about Manderley since she was a child because of a postcard she has kept with a painting of the house. Her wedding gift from Beatrice is a collection of art books. She knows artistic techniques and has developed her own, which she deploys here. While she sometimes expresses insecurity about her sketches when she is young, the novel itself appears to be her masterpiece. Full of rich imagery, the book makes it easy to see and feel the narrator's memories and all the emotions they bring. To an objective outsider, the hydrangeas may not look so wild, and the lines on Frank's face might not register. But because the narrator brings a focus to these details, the reader must look at them.