This is a Cinderella story about a girl who could never quite shake off the soot from her heels. The girl who found her prince, made her way to the kingdom, but still couldn’t fit into her glass slipper—at least, not the way the old princess did, not like Rebecca.
It may seem like Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 murder mystery, Rebecca, is nothing more than a story about a jealous woman succumbing to her insecurities, but the truth is that Hitchcock wasn’t just a master of suspense—he was also the master of subtly injecting deeper layers of meaning into his movies. Yes, it’s true that the second Mrs. de Winter lets her obsession with her husband’s first spouse take over her life, but there’s something else at work here. It isn’t just envy that drives the second Mrs. de Winter mad, as in addition to her identity issues, she is dealing with the loss of her own innocence.
The fairy tale begins in southern France, where a credulous young woman (Joan Fontaine) quickly falls head over heels in love with an older widower named Maxim de Winter (Laurence Olivier). It was the perfect dream come true: a submissive servant girl swept up in the throes of first love, innocent and helpless to her lover’s charms; and an older gentleman grown bitter by age, who finds light in the darkness brought forth through the bright shimmer of his lover’s eyes. She may have been working for Mrs. Edythe Van Hopper (Florence Bates) when he met her, but after a few dreamy days of silly conversations and aimless driving through the canyons together, it’s clear that Max and his new lady are meant to be. Max pops the question, marries the happy little fool, and whisks her away to Manderley, his lavish estate on the sea. It all seems too good to be true… that is, until the girl steps foot in Rebecca’s house.
Despite the fact that she passed away more than a year ago, the sweet little second Mrs. de Winter can feel Rebecca all around her once she steps onto the Manderley grounds. She’s sulking in the shadows of the oversized wings. She’s watching from her pristine old bedroom, smiling out from her immaculate embroidered pillow. She’s dangling on everyone’s whispering lips as they quietly compare the second Mrs. de Winter to the first. Most of all, she’s present in the cold glare of the hard-hearted housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers (Judith Anderson). Rebecca may have died in the sea, but her essence is still very much trapped inside of this house.
She walked onto the property with a gleam of excitement in her eye, but ever since she took on the title of “Mistress of the House”, this anxious little girl, who’s made to feel all the more irrelevant by the fact that she’s without a first name, exhibits only dread and sorrow. She pulls back and pins up her peasant curls and trades in her common clothes for a fancier attire, but the harder she tries, the more evident it becomes that this nameless naïve girl could never compare to the flawlessly elegant memory of Rebecca. Suddenly the light, airy demeanor that always defined the shy Manderley newcomer is snuffed out and substituted with hostile pessimism, stern self-loathing, and fidgety, ever-present doubt.
One evening in particular, as the newlyweds project a film of their majestic honeymoon in their living room, Mrs. Danvers interrupts this rare happy moment to inform them that a family heirloom has gone missing and a member of the staff is being held responsible. After she leaves, the second Mrs. de Winter confesses to Maxim that it was she who broke the antique. Maxim scolds his new wife and questions why she cowers to Mrs. Danvers, who is technically beneath her. Distraught over displeasing her husband yet again, she begins rambling in a self-detrimental matter about how Maxim probably married her just because she’s simple and there could never be any gossip about her. Mistaking her self-pity for a jab at himself, Maxim jumps at the mention of “gossip” and remains cold and withdrawn when asked if their marriage is a success.
Several things are happening right now. The new Mrs. de Winter believes she is having trouble making her husband happy because he misses his old wife. In this moment, the last dangling bits of pure angelic innocence that once defined his new wife are carved out and replaced with stone. The girl is having her heart broken daily in this house, making it harder and harder to maintain her childlike innocence. However, at the same time, the truth is that Maxim isn’t angry at his new wife because she’s not living up to Rebecca’s standards, he is actually acting defensive because he’s petrified that she’s found out his secret. He’s afraid that she knows the truth: that Rebecca didn’t drown in the sea, but instead died right here on this property, and he laid her lifeless body in a boat and flooded it to make it look like an accident.
In addition to this fear, Maxim is also upset on a more basic level, because he does love his new wife, and he just wants her to be herself. He fell in love with the innocent girl with the bright beaming smile, and now she’s nowhere to be found. Ever since she moved in, his ecstatic little doe-eyed lamb has been acting more like a nervous, insecure mess than the giddy schoolgirl who stole his heart.
The trouble is, even when the second Mrs. de Winter attempts to be herself, she’s still bathed in the shadow of Rebecca; still shrouded in the secret of Manderley.
At one point, when she decides she’s had enough, the girl calls Mrs. Danvers into the morning room and instructs her to throw away all of the address books, notepads, and every other item on the desk bearing the letter “R”. When the sour old maid hesitates, saying that those are Mrs. de Winter’s things, this once shy girl raises her chin, looks down at Mrs. Danvers, and proudly proclaims, “I am Mrs. de Winter now.”
Feeling triumphant, the new and improved Mrs. de Winter bounces down the hall and straight into Maxim’s arms, asking him merrily if they might throw a ball. Maxim protests, but she insists, talking about how she can surprise him with her costume choice, and explaining how wonderful it will be to boast their new marriage to the public. Max reluctantly agrees, and she runs off to begin brainstorming her getup for the event.
Just when it seems as though Mrs. de Winter has finally grasped the confidence she needs to live happily ever after with her prince, the annual dance designed to show off the blissful new couple to the world does just the opposite, bringing her happy, floating dream down to earth with a crashing thud.
While she prepares for the gala, she begins pondering the costume she’ll wear. She draws ideas in her sketchbook, but she can’t seem to settle on an outfit that’s up to par for her party. Finally, Mrs. Danvers, seemingly accepting defeat, offers to help the new Mrs. de Winter, and shows her a row of family portraits hanging in the main hallway. She suggests that Mrs. de Winter copy the final portrait of an ancestor in a southern ball gown complete with ruffles, petticoats, flowers, and a big floppy hat, to which she enthusiastically agrees. However, when the night of festivities arrives, and she descends down the stairs, the look on her husband’s face is not one of joyous surprise, but of sheer horror, as it turns out that it is the very same dress Rebecca wore at their ball exactly one year ago. Mrs. Danvers tricked her, and she had taken the bait. She had actually believed that she could be better than Rebecca.
She never tried to be anyone but herself before, back when she was merely “the help” to Mrs. Van Hopper, but once she was thrust into the spotlight and pronounced to the world as the second Mrs. de Winter, she couldn’t help but cave in to her jealousy and shrink into the shadows of her predecessor.
Although her character called for an especially aloof performance, Joan Fontaine’s self-conscious personality was made all the more hesitant by director Alfred Hitchcock’s games. Apparently, when it was time to cast the woman who would play the pivotal role of the second Mrs. de Winter, Laurence Olivier was so furious that Hitchcock didn’t cast his girlfriend at the time, Vivien Leigh, that he treated Fontaine horribly on set.
Worried that her co-star wasn’t fond of her, Fontaine spoke to Hitchcock and admitted that she didn’t think he liked her. However, instead of easing Fontaine’s fears, Hitchcock emphasized them by telling her that it wasn’t just Olivier, but actually the entire cast of Rebecca that hated her, even going so far as to instruct the cast to isolate Fontaine. Because of his arguably mean-spirited antics, Hitchcock got the performance he wanted out of his lead, that of a twitchy, new-to-the-throne princess who wears her crown with sympathetic shame.
The pure and sweet girl portrayed on the screen avoided heartache for several years while she was stuck in the background working for other wealthier, more important figures, but once she is thrust into the forefront as the second Mrs. de Winter, she feels a rush of maturity hit her like an old wooden ship crashing onto a rough rocky shore. All at once, her innocence is vanquished, as she experiences her first broken heart when Maxim vows to love her until death do them part and then immediately begins distancing himself once they arrive back home, allowing the malicious acts from Mrs. Danvers, who not only taunts his new bride with Rebecca’s memory, but purposely humiliates her and even attempts to coax her into committing suicide. Through this growing disconnect with herself, she is forced to grow up in the harshest possible way. The girl was promised a fairy tale, but instead becomes involved in a horror story.
After their ball is ruined, not only by the girl’s poor costume choice, but also by a ship crashing onto Manderley’s shore, Maxim confesses the truth about Rebecca to his new wife. He knows that with this new accident on their property, the old story will inevitably bubble to the surface, and with his fear and his guilt rising within, he simply must share the real facts with the only person who could possibly forgive him: his new wife. As she listens to his recollections, the second Mrs. de Winter learns two shocking facts about the woman she has replaced: 1) Maxim hid her body in a boat that’s resting comfortably on the bottom of the sea, and 2) Maxim absolutely hated Rebecca.
In a Jane Eyre-esque turn of events, it is revealed that Maxim and Rebecca were actually not the ridiculously happy couple they led the world to believe. Rebecca was cruel and heartless and used Maxim’s dedication to his family’s reputation against him, explaining immediately after their wedding how she was going to do as she pleased, buy what she wanted, and date who she liked, and there wasn’t a thing Max could do about it, because if he dared air her dirty laundry, he would be the one who looked foolish for marrying such a harlot, bringing shame to his family name.
Apparently, one night when Rebecca went on one of her usual rants belittling her husband, she told him that she was pregnant with a son, who was not actually Maxim’s, but her lover Jack Favell’s (George Sanders). She taunted him, telling him how her new son would inherit all of Max’s fortunes, and no one would be the wiser because only the three parties involved knew she was having an affair. During her crazed speech, Rebecca fell, hit her head, and died. In his panic, Max collected her body, put it in a boat, and scuttled it, but her memory has been haunting him ever since, especially since he purposely misidentified a random washed-up body as her own.
As he reveals his big secret, the second Mrs. de Winter gazes upon her husband with a heavy heart, and that last desperate shimmer of hope drains from her sparkling eyes. Maxim realizes what he’s just done, and expresses his sorrow for betraying his wife in the worst possible way by destroying the thing about her that he loved most: her innocence. “I can’t forget what it’s done to you,” Maxim later tells his wife. “I’ve been thinking of nothing else since it happened. It’s gone forever, that funny young, lost look I loved won’t ever come back. I killed that when I told you about Rebecca. It’s gone. In a few hours, you’ve grown so much older.”
Maxim’s temperament before the truth surfaced was bad enough, but once he discloses the big reason behind his detached attitude, any shred of purity and virtue still remaining within the second Mrs. de Winter is completely obliterated. She entered the house a small and happy child, but once she learns of the horror that has soiled this place, her peaceful existence is violated beyond repair. Although an excruciating investigation later uncovers that Rebecca was actually hosting suicidal tendencies due to terminal cancer, and Maxim is let off scot-free, it’s simply too late. The damage is done. The man that once made the second Mrs. de Winter’s heart flutter has now tarnished her very soul, and she’ll never be that carefree girl again. She’s grown tougher and wiser, but at what cost?
In the end, the girl not only gained confidence and learned to overcome the memory of Rebecca, but also accepted that she was no longer a shy little wallflower, but a grown, fully flourished, if not somewhat jaded woman. In a way, her story is not that different from all of ours, as she makes the jump from child to adulthood while struggling to adjust to her sudden royalty. Every person on the planet must come face to face with their own mortality and realize that fairy tales are fiction and heartbreaks must be endured. At some point, each person has to grow up and let go of that awe and wonder that goes hand in hand with childhood and innocence. However, the fact that this harsh life lesson is one that so many people must experience doesn’t make its effects any less devastating for anyone involved, as the second Mrs. de Winter learned during her transformative time at Manderley.
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