After the truth about Rebecca's death is revealed, the narrator loses her child-like innocence but also loses her insecurity and fears about Maxim's love for Rebecca.
She is able to "grow up" for the first time and become a part of a mature relationship with her husband. Although Maxim regrets the loss of her innocence, he acknowledges that it allows her to surpass her status as a child in the relationship. Maxim's primary reason for killing Rebecca is her manipulative lie that she is pregnant with Jack Favell's child. Maxim is so horrified by the prospect of Rebecca's bastard child becoming the heir to Manderley that he shoots her through the heart.
When he explains Rebecca's death to the narrator, Maxim also gives a more general background to justify the murder and explain his emotions leading up to the act; he describes Rebecca's immorality and the unspeakable things that she had told him about her life on the cliff in Monte Carlo. At the end of the novel, Maxim's act of killing Rebecca is further justified by the revelation that she was already dying of cancer and had simply manipulated him into ending her life quickly.
Gothic fiction, a combination of horror and romance, originated in with Horace Wadpole's The Castle of Otranto.
Since its origins, the Gothic literary tradition has become associated with certain stereotypical elements, such as tormented heroes, secrets, the supernatural, death, innocent damsels, haunted estates, and more. Although Rebecca was written long after the heyday of Gothic literature, Du Maurier was inspired by the classic Gothic novel, Jane Eyre. As a result, the novel includes all of the primary elements of the genre, including Manderley as the haunted mansion, Maxim as the tormented hero, and the narrator as the innocent damsel, plus the ominous Mrs.
Danvers, the secrets surrounding Rebecca's death, and a general sense of foreboding. For the majority of the novel, Maxim de Winter is not a particularly likable character. Throughout his early interactions with the narrator, he is rude, moody, condescending, and generally detached from those around him. The narrator is entranced with his sophistication and brooding temperament, but it is difficult for the reader to fall in love with him as quickly as the narrator does.
His behavior to the narrator when she finds the beach cottage, as well as after her entrance at the costume ball, is especially appalling. It is only after the truth of Rebecca's death is revealed that Maxim becomes a more sympathetic character.
His previous moodiness and detachment from the narrator are explained, and he is suddenly capable of treating the narrator as an equal partner in the relationship, rather than a child. From the very start, it is clear that Mrs. Danvers is the antagonist of the narrative; her rude resentment of the narrator establishes their relationship as the conflict that must be resolved. However, Mrs. Danvers is also crucial as the physical representation of Rebecca's presence at Manderley.
Danvers maintains all of Rebecca's traditions and habits in the house -- even down to the use of the house telephone for approving menus -- and strives to keep Manderley the same as it was during Rebecca's life.
In this role, Mrs. Danvers also articulates the narrator's fears about Rebecca, assuring her that she is and always will be inferior to Rebecca. It is only after the narrator discovers that Maxim never loved Rebecca that she is able to escape Mrs.
Danvers and Rebecca's influence at Manderley. Ben is the only character in the novel to refer to Rebecca in a negative way from the very beginning. Until Maxim reveals the truth about Rebecca near the end of the book, the narrator operates under the delusion that Rebecca was beloved by everyone. As such, she overlooks Ben's cryptic assertions about Rebecca, assuming that they are merely the confused ramblings of a mentally disabled man. In this way, Ben assumes the position of the wise fool, a literary archetype that dates back to Ancient Rome but was popularized in Shakespearean plays such as King Lear.
As with the Fool in King Lear who uses his "mental eye" to see the true natures of the King's daughters, Ben is able to see the evil in Rebecca long before the narrator does. For the majority of the novel, the narrator gives the impression of being very innocent, timid, unsophisticated, and insecure.
Rebecca, on the other hand, is described by all as being overwhelmingly beautiful, elegant, graceful, vivacious, and clever. The narrator herself prefers Rebecca's glamour and sophistication to her own shyness and finds it difficult to believe that Maxim could ever love such an inferior character. Even to the readers, Rebecca seems to be a more appropriate heroine than the insecure girl with lanky hair is.
However, as Frank Crawley points out, the narrator also possesses characteristics that Rebecca could never attain: modesty, sincerity, and kindness. After the narrator comes into her own at the end of the book, Rebecca no longer seems to be superior. The narrator is now a self-assured confident woman, far more worthy of being a heroine than the flashy and sexualized Rebecca.
Early in the novel Maxim tells the heroine, "You have a very lovely and unusual name. This absence of a name symbolizes the heroine's uncertain identity, on which she often nearly loses her grip during her time at Manderley. In marrying Maxim she has taken a new name, and her new acquaintances address her by this name, but she cannot feel comfortable in it--for she is not the first Mrs.
Effectively, she is competing for the right to bear her title of Mrs. In each of the roles denoted by that name--wife, society hostess, mistress of Manderley--she feels eclipsed by the memory of her predecessor.
Indeed, it is Rebecca's name that echoes throughout the book, over and over; and her name constitutes the book's very title. For most of the novel, Rebecca is on the verge of overpowering the heroine, and the heroine seems in danger of losing herself altogether; the danger reaches its peak in the symbolic scene in which she wears the same costume Rebecca wore to Manderley's previous costume ball.
Only the revelation of Rebecca's true nature enables the heroine to feel confident in being Mrs. Only then does she learn that the name of Rebecca, the name she has heard over and over again since marrying Maxim, has denoted a mere illusion; the real Rebecca was nothing like the mythic woman to whom the heroine had ascribed the name.
Now the heroine must no longer compete for her name with an unattainable perfection; she can begin to forge her identity. The Oedipus complex is a psychological theory that suggests that boys have a strong desire to kill their father and marry their mother. When the genders of this complex are reversed, the phenomenon takes the name "Electra complex," after a character in Greek drama who connived in the murder of her mother. It is this dynamic that plays out in Rebecca, as the heroine finds that she needs to overcome a maternal figure in order to marry the paternal figure, the older man Maxim.
In fact, the story provides two such maternal figures: the first is Mrs. Van Hopper, the heroine's surrogate mother at Monte Carlo.
But Mrs. Van Hopper exerts a rather weak force, and victory over her is easily won; in fact, Maxim actually defeats her on the heroine's behalf, by volunteering to reveal to her the news of their engagement.
After the couple arrives at Manderley, the heroine encounters the second, and more powerful, maternal figure--a woman who was actually Maxim's wife, the ostensibly perfect Rebecca. The fact that Rebecca is dead, from the heroine's perspective, only enhances her strength: how can the heroine hope to compete with a dead woman? How does one "kill"--even in a metaphorical sense--a woman who only exists in her husband's memory?
Resolution comes when Maxim reveals the truth about Rebecca: that she was wicked, and that he never loved her. From the heroine's perspective, this eliminates the figure of Rebecca as a threat to her happiness, effectively "killing" her.
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