Initial Musings on Rebecca
100 pages into my reread
Happy Saturday! I hope everyone is enjoying reading Rebecca especially now that the weather is turning back to chilly Fall again. I love Fall as a reading season. It is perfect for getting a hot drink, sitting under a warm blanket, and reading a beautifully written page turner (extra points for a little bit spooky). Rebecca seems to fit into this season perfectly. I’m only 100 pages or so into my reread so I am looking forward to a few long reading sessions before our first group meets this week! I included some audio options below if you are feeling at all pressed for time and don’t want to show up to book club only to get the mystery spoiled before you finish!
Quotes
“A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners. Ivy held prior place in this lost garden, the long strands crept across the lawns and soon would encroach upon the house itself. There was another plant too, some half breed from the woods, whose seed had been scattered long ago beneath the trees and then forgotten, and now marching in unison with the ivy, thrust its ugly form like a giant rhubarb towards the soft grass where the daffodils had blown.” (pg 3)
“My family history was mine no longer, I shared it with a man I did not know” (pg 25)
“‘How old are you?’ he said, and when I told him he laughed, and got up from his chair. ‘I know that age, it’s a particularly obstinate one, and a thousand bogies won’t make you fear the future. A pity we can’t change over.’” (pg 29)
“the car could climb no more, we had reached the summit, and below us stretched the way we had come, precipitous and hollow. He stopped the car, and I could see that the edge of the road bordered a vertical slope that crumbled into vacancy, a fall of perhaps two thousand feet. We got out of the car and looked beneath us. This sobered me at last. I knew that but half a car's length had lain between us and the fall.” (pg 31)
“I cut the page right out of the book. I left no jagged edges, and the book looked white and clean when the page was gone. A new book, that had not been touched. I tore the page up in many little fragments and threw them into the waste-paper basket. Then I went and sat on the window seat again. But I kept thinking of the torn scraps in the basket, and after a moment I had to get up and look in the basket once more. Even now the ink stood up on the fragments thick and black, the writing was not destroyed. I took a box of matches and set fire to the fragments…the letter R was the last to go, it twisted in the flame, it curled outwards for a moment, becoming larger than ever. Then it crumpled too; the flame destroyed it.” (pg 64)
Thoughts
The significance of the floral imagery (the first quote above being a wonderful example)…
The intimacy of sharing about your life…we have Mrs. Van Hopper, who is drawn in a way that we are obviously supposed to dislike her, constantly intruding into other people’s lives. Then we have Maxim who reveals very little about himself. And then our narrator who shares her story so freely with Maxim and then almost regrets it because it wasn’t hers anymore. This scene (pgs 25-26) seems to be important foreshadowing.
The way the place changes as our narrator’s situation changes in Monte Carlo (pg 29) seems to be foreshadowing and mirroring Maxim’s feelings about Manderly.
Our narrator’s fixation on her age…
How does du Maurier want us to feel about Maxim? On this reread he seems more predatory. He is so much older than her and seems to be holding so much back while encouraging her to be so open and trusting. Is this du Maurier setting up the rest of the book or is it my modern mind judging the situation imperfectly?
du Maurier captures the spirit of a 21 year old girl so well…the explaining away of all of the weird things that Maxim does (and doesn’t do) instead of grappling with something being off, the insecurities, and the hopeless romantic tendencies.
Here is the whole poem by Francis Thompson, Hound of Heaven, referenced on pg 35
The symbolism of cutting Rebecca’s name out of the poetry book and burning it…
The driveway to Manderly…
The creepiness of Mrs. Danvers….
Audio Books
If you are starting to feel crunched for time or have a busy Thanksgiving weekend ahead of you and lots of cooking time to listen to an audiobook here are a few good options…
This free version on YouTube is actually very pleasing to the ears
The audible version also has an excellent narrator
Rebecca Movies
The 1940 Alfred Hitchcock Rebecca film is available for free on YouTube
Here is a trailer for the 2020 Netflix Rebecca with Lily James (full movie on Netflix still)
There is also a PBS Masterpiece two part mini series from 1997 (available to rent or buy on Prime, or with a masterpiece subscription)
Some more thoughts on Asher Lev
I have been listening to these Literary Life Podcast discussions on The Mind of the Maker by Dorothy L. Sayers (author of Gaudy Night and Murder Must Advertise, both past book club selections). It is Sayer’s consideration about how art is made in light of faith. This episode in particular had me thinking a lot of our discussion about art during our Asher Lev meetings. If anyone listens, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comments or on Slack!
(If anyone ever has any thoughts on any of our books, past or present, that you would like to share in a longer form essay, please let me know! I would love to feature other reader’s thoughts here as well!)
My Advent Plans
This is not an official part of Literature Book Club and I know plenty of you already have plans for Advent or traditions you do every year. But, if you are looking for something to guide you through with art and music and scripture I wanted to invite you to read Shadow and Light by Tsh Oxenreider with me. Tsh is an author/podcaster/blogger that I have been enjoying recently. She is a convert to Catholicism, but when she wrote the book she was not Catholic yet so it seems like a good ecumenical choice if you are not Catholic or you are Catholic but have any protestant friends and family who may want to do something Advent-y together.
Thanks for reading with us this month. I wish you all lovely meetings full of lively, literary chats and deeper friendships. Please let me know if you have any musings to share in the comments or on slack. I love reading in community and getting the diverse literary thoughts of all our intelligent fellow readers.
Now it’s time to get another cup of coffee, light a candle, get under that cozy blanket, and finish Rebecca…I wish you all a weekend full of lovely stories and coziness too!
A Few Reminders
Next up in December is A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles…keep an eye out in your inbox for an introduction to that next weekend.
If you found your way here and are not part of an in person book club, welcome! We would love you to read along with us. But, in person literary community is a beautiful thing. So please contact me if you’d like to join or start a group!
If you are part of a group, but you’re not on our Slack page, please contact me. That is where people share thoughts and logistics for each in person group.
Here is the whole list of this years book selections
And here all all the old lists (if you need to ask for any books for Christmas or need some good books to read over the holiday breaks coming up)
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