What's in a name?

A hell of a lot, it turns out, especially if your name is Rebecca. More specifically, if your name is Rebecca De Winter. Some will say that I went into this book with a bias after finding out that the titular character is how I got my name. Those people would be right: I did go into this novel with a bias, but that was quickly punched in the face and kicked into touch. Finding out that your mum read a book, and saw the subsequent film, and was so overcome with intrigue by the eponymous role that she named her first born after her might be the kind of fact that inspires a heart-swelling joy. If that character wasn't described as "rotten through and through", "incapable of love", "like a snake", and compared to an animal crawling to its hole in a ditch. Reading this novel for the first time with the knowledge of its significance in your own life really sobers one up, take it from me. I chose to read this novel for the first time this year because I wanted to include it in my dissertation - boy did I regret choosing this before reading it, but, alas, it was too late. I'd like to get one thing straight; my strong thoughts about this novel and about Rebecca as a character serve only to highlight just how damn good it is. How well Daphne Du Maurier writes. Keeping with the theme from The Turn of the Screw, the narrator of Rebecca also comes sans a name. Just as well, I'd never have been able to play the role of the favourite child if my parents had named my sister after the lovely, kind-hearted new Mrs De Winter. The novel opens with one of the most famous opening lines in literature (well, in my opinion anyway - my dissertation supervisor has warned against making sweeping statements). A line so ominous that despite giving nothing away about what kind of journey we, as the readers, are about to embark upon, you cannot help but be hypnotised. "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again..." The power this single sentence holds is unparalleled; its melancholic and enchanting, with all of the trappings of the beginnings of a children's novel without any of the reassuring follow up sentences its like biting into a ripe fruit and realising it's been poisoned too late. Might as well keep eating it at that point. Mrs De Winter wastes no time in semantics like her name or her current whereabouts, and, instead, ploughs on, recounting the events that have led her to...wherever the hell she is now. We learn that she's timid and mousy and without parents and poor - all of the trappings of a classic Gothic heroine. Just when it seems she is destined for life at the beck and call of an ungrateful and arrogant rich lady, lo and behold, what do we have here? Enter Mr de Winter. Tall, handsome, classically wealthy. The perfect candidate to sweep in and rescue our female lost in the labyrinth of a man's world. Of course our narrator is overcome with emotions at being hand picked by this man - 'why, lil old me?' And this is where our story really begins. After the whirlwind romance in the dewy heat of Monte Carlo and the whole romping in the sun thing wears off, the couple head home to Manderley. The house dripping with grandeur and mystery situated in the countryside, a ways away from civilisation - all of the trappings of a classic Gothic house. If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck... What quickly becomes evident is that there are three people in the marriage, to quote the incomparable Princess Di (another persona my mum was somewhat besotted by, and being named after the People's Princess certainly wouldn't have given me the complex I have now, a different kind of complex maybe...), Maxim de Winter, Mrs de Winter and the former Mrs de Winter, Rebecca. Rebecca who, despite drowning, continues to haunt Manderley with her lithe figure and her calligraphic handwriting and her vibrant spirit. Everywhere our protagonist looks she sees the sweeping curve of Rebecca's 'R' and when she manages to forget for more than a page theres always the loyal Mrs Danvers - Rebecca's right-hand woMan - to remind her. Good old Danvers can always be relied upon to bring the mood down. The languid entanglements of the current Mrs de Winter's dreamscapes are addictive and the novel unravels around the reader rather than in front of us. This is also a side effect of the satisfying circular structure that the novel adopts. Much like Henry James, DU Maurier manages to usher us into the peanut gallery without us noticing too much, and then casts in the role of juror. Who is guilty? What is the crime? And who should we feel sympathy for? Everyone? No one? Once again, the classic trappings of a Gothic novel. I gave this book five stars on Goodreads, I really hate proving my mum right - but this novel really did stick in my mind for weeks. Especially that sloping 'R'...