Daphne Du Maurier Rebecca - Naxosaudiobooks

Daphne du DRead by EmmaFielding

1234567891011121314151617181020Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.We can never go back again, that much is certain.I wonder what my life would be today,“What brings you here?”The morning after the bridge partyThere was a strange air of unreality aboutthat luncheon,Mine was a happy mood that afternoon,What gulf of years stretched between him andthat other time,I am glad it cannot happen twice,I did not notice the slowing down of the car,Packing up.“You haven’t started a cold, have you?”We went up in the lift to the first floor,I went to Mrs Van Hopper,We came to Manderley in early May,We went together up the flight of steps.I got up slowly,I could see she despised me,I had never realized, of course,I turned away into the hall 25:522:393:344:254:044:083:354:243:04

21222324252627282930313233343536373839And when the telephone rang,When I heard the sound of the car in the driveI stood for a moment outside the morning-room,At that moment the door openedWe watched the car disappear round the sweepof the drive,We threw more stones,I wondered if there was any string in theboat-house,I went across the shingleI walked slowly across the hall to the library.I could not forget the white, lost look inMaxim’s eyesIn the car going home I sat in my cornerI did not see much of Mrs Danvers.Frith left the room and we were alone again.She went out of the room,Maxim had to go up to London at the end of JuneAs I wandered across the lawn to the terraceThe man wheeled round suddenly and saw me.He walked out on to the drive,I was uncertain which way to 163:184:384:233:414:522:514:45

40414243444546474849505152535455565758Then I heard a step behind meHer fingers tightened on my arm.It was one Sunday, I remember,In the evening, when I was changing for dinner,The great day dawned misty and overcast,The band were changed,I began tearing at the hooks of my dress,I felt I had forfeited her sympathy by my refusalto go down.I think I fell asleep a little after seven.I could not go on sitting in my bedroomany longer.I passed through the door to the west wing,She pushed me towards the open window.It was Maxim.I left him and walked towards the path throughthe woods,Maxim was standing by the window.I was aware of no feeling at all,He lit a cigarette,I came back after dinner,I could hear the murmur of Maxim’s voice in 563:226:145:106:374:416:49

5960616263646566676869707172little room beyond.At five minutes to one I heard the sound of a carin the drive,The inquest was to be on the Tuesday afternoonat two o’clock.The policeman was bending over me,I did not hear Frith come in at the door.The door opened and Maxim came into the room,Maxim walked slowly across the room“You have just made a serious accusationagainst de Winter.”Ben stepped awkwardly into the room.At last she was silent again.Mrs Danvers shook her head slowly.When I awoke the next morning,We went and stood by the car.It was quiet and happy and friendly in therestaurant.I climbed over and sat beside 534:443:402:32Total time: 5:16:485

Daphne du MaurierRebecca1938, when Rebecca was published, is wellmatched by du Maurier’s 20th-centurytribute, though it did not on its firstappearance attract critical acclaim, beingdismissed by V.S. Pritchett as a novel thatwould be ‘here today and gone tomorrow’.In similarly dismissive tones some criticsregarded it as another addition to thegrowing genre of ‘women’s fiction’.The reading public disagreed and thenovel went through twenty-eight reprints inits first four years, launching du Maurier’scareer as an international writer, andsubsequently has never been out of print. Itwas turned into a classic Hitchcock film in1940, starring Laurence Olivier and JoanFontaine, and has had countless adaptationsmade for the stage, radio and television, aswell as several sequels that attempt toanswer so many of the questions posed butunanswered in the novel.So what is the endless fascination of astory that does indeed seem on the surfaceto be a piece of light romantic fiction?It may well be the overall mood of‘Rebecca’; which du Maurier herself‘Last night I dreamt I went toManderley again ’(Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier)‘Reader, I married him ’(Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte.)Though a hundred years separates thesequotations, two of the most famous inEnglish Literature, they are linked by acommon theme and story; for Daphne duMaurier’s ‘Rebecca’ is undoubtedly ahomage to ‘Jane Eyre’. Both novels depict ayoung, gauche and plain girl who meets adashing but troubled older man, falls in lovewith him and by her devotion saves himfrom despair and death. The similarities gofurther: Maxim de Winter has a statelyhome called Manderley; Rochester hasThornfield. The happiness of both theheroines is threatened by the former wivesof their lovers, and it is only the destructionby fire of Manderley/Thornfield that finallypurges the past, and allows some prospectof future happiness for the hero andheroine. Jane Eyre, an established classic by6

described as ‘rather macabre’. The mood isgothic fantasy, hovering between thedaydreams of the heroine and hernightmares. The novel in fact beginsfamously with a dream. The ‘ghost’ ofRebecca, the first Mrs. de Winter, pervadesthe whole book, getting inside the heroine’smind and pushing her to the brink ofinsanity. Du Maurier thought her storywould prove to be ‘too gloomy too grim’to appeal, but it is this close identificationthe reader inevitably feels for the unnamedheroine that makes the novel so powerful;we are gripped by the relentless drive of thenarrative, all seen from the perspective ofthis tormented young girl.It does not take any great insight to seethat the heroine of ‘Rebecca’ is the authorherself. The young girl refers to the difficultypeople find in pronouncing her ‘lovely andunusual’ name, although we are never toldwhat it is; ‘du Maurier’ no doubt presentedsimilar difficulties for the author. ‘I’mgauche and awkward, I dress badly, I’m shywith people,’ says the heroine, and thoughthe author had many more complex sides toher personality than the narrator, she doesseem to have been at times cripplingly shy,and felt herself out of place, which was hersituation when she began writing the book.Her husband, Frederick Browning, acommanding officer in the GrenadierGuards, had been posted to Egypt andDaphne went with him. Desperatelyhomesick, hating the hot country andfeeling inadequate to the duties of anofficer’s wife, she took refuge in writing anintensely personal novel set in her belovedCornwall (though the word ‘Cornwall’ isnever actually used). She explored the twosides of her personality: the socially ineptversus the wild, rebellious, independenttype she could sometimes be, as exemplifiedin the first Mrs. de Winter, Rebecca. There isalso a hint in the close relationship she hadwith Mrs. Danvers, that Rebecca might havebeen bisexual; while the narrator oftenthinks of herself as a boy: ‘I was like a littlescrubby schoolboy, with a passion for asixth-form prefect, and he kinder, and farmore inaccessible.’ Daphne du Maurier wasdigging deep into her subconscious self.It is the close identification the readerhas with the narrator that blunts theunavoidable truth that is at the centre ofthis novel: the narrator’s husband Maxim deWinter is a self-confessed murderer of hisfirst wife and her unborn child. Yet duMaurier has so cleverly involved us in herheroine’s story that we can’t help feeling7

have all the characteristics of a vampire,that make the book such a page-turningread. For the more cerebral it can be seenas a psychological novel exploring theevolution of a girl into a woman; or readmerely as a simple romance, where a younginsignificant girl wins her man by beatingher sexually charged rival, and this seems tobe the version the critics responded to intheir reviews of 1938.It is a clever book that can be read onmany levels, but always wrapped in mysteryand suspense: du Maurier’s trade marks.In truth though, it is a brilliant and skilfulnovel that manipulates and disturbs farmore than its role model ‘Jane Eyre’.that we want him to escape hanging, sothey can live happily ever after (as in JaneEyre). Herein lies the moral centre of duMaurier’s story: is a wife justified in stayingloyally devoted to her husband even whenhe has committed murder? We feel guilty aswe willingly become accessories to perjury,though the sharp and brutal ending ofthe novel and the subsequent exile fromtheir country of the two main characterscompensate to some degree any latentdesire for moral justice the reader may feel.Du Maurier need not have feared that‘Rebecca’ would be ‘too gloomy’, for onone level it is the Gothic accessories: thehaunted mansion, the sinister servant, fog,mirror-images, troubled dreams and a deadfirst wife who for the narrator comes toNotes by David TimsonThe music on this recording is taken from the NAXOS catalogueBRIDGE WORKS FOR STRING QUARTETMaggini Quartet8.553718BRIDGE STRING QUARTETS NOS 1-3Maggini Quartet8.557133Music programmed by Sarah ButcherCopyright Du Maurier Productions 1938, 20048

RebeccaRead by Emma Fielding‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.’These famous words open the most popular novel by Daphne du Maurier,the story of an intense romance set in a mysterious house in Cornwall. Itsunforgettable atmosphere and tension has transformed it from a popularromance on the page and on film to become a modern classic. Here, it ispresented in a new and absorbing recording by Emma Fielding.CD ISBN:978-962-634-323-4View our catalogue online atwww.naxosaudiobooks.comALL RIGHTS RESERVED. UNAUTHORISED PUBLIC PERFORMANCE,BROADCASTING AND COPYING OF THESE COMPACT DISCS PROHIBITED.p 2004 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd. 2004 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd.Made in Germany.Emma Fielding trained at RSAMD. She has worked for theRoyal National Theatre and the RSC, most notably in JohnFord’s The Broken Heart for which she won the Dame PeggyAshcroft Award for Best Actress and the Ian CharlesonAward. She has also appeared in numerous radio plays forthe BBC and performed the parts of Desdemona in Othello,Ophelia in Hamlet and the title role in Lady Windermere’s Fan, as well asreading Jane Eyre and Hedda Gabler for Naxos AudioBooks.Abridged by David Timson. Recorded at RNIB Talking BookStudios, LondonEdited by Sarah ButcherCover: ‘Portrait of a woman with hyacinth’ 1932 Fritz Jansen,Courtesy of AKG Images, LondonDaphne du MaurierTotal time5:16:48

(Rebecca, Daphne du Maurier) ‘Reader, I married him ’ (Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte.) Though a hundred years separates these quotations, two of the most famous in English Literature, they are linked by a common theme and story; for Daphne du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ is undoubtedly a homage to ‘Jane Eyre’. Both novels depict a