{"description": "With these words, the reader is ushered into an isolated gray stone mansion on the windswept Cornish coast, as the second Mrs. Maxim de Winter recalls the chilling events that transpired as she began her new life as the young bride of a husband she barely knew. For in every corner of every room were phantoms of a time dead but not forgotten\u2014a past devotedly preserved by the sinister housekeeper, Mrs. Danvers: a suite immaculate and untouched, clothing laid out and ready to be worn, but not by any of the great house's current occupants. With an eerie presentiment of evil tightening her heart, the second Mrs. de Winter walked in the shadow of her mysterious predecessor, determined to uncover the darkest secrets and shattering truths about Maxim's first wife\u2014the late and hauntingly beautiful Rebecca.", "title": "Rebecca", "covers": [8238729, 3005652, 8847303, 9070307, 10533922, 7271602, 7263190, 8767961, 13525903, 14063014, 14063013, 15049576], "subject_places": ["Cornwall (County)", "Cornwall (England : County)", "England", "Great Britain", "Corwall (COunty)"], "first_publish_date": "1938", "subject_people": ["Laurence Olivier Olivier Baron (1907-1989)", "Alfred Hitchcock (1899-1980)"], "key": "/works/OL36633W", "authors": [{"author": {"key": "/authors/OL34047A"}, "type": {"key": "/type/author_role"}}], "excerpts": [{"excerpt": "\u201cSuddenly I saw a clearing in the dark drive ahead, and a patch of sky, and in a moment the dark trees had thinned, the nameless shrubs had disappeared, and on either side of us was a wall of colour, blood-red, reaching far above our heads. We were amongst the rhododendrons. There was something bewildering, even shocking, about the suddenness of their discovery. The woods had not prepared me for them. They startled me with their crimson faces, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic, unlike any rhododendron plant I had seen before. I glanced at Maxim. He was smiling. 'Like them?' he said. I told him 'Yes,' a little breathlessly, uncertain whether I was speaking the truth or not, for to me a rhododendron was a homely, domestic thing, strictly conventional, mauve or pink in colour, standing one beside the other in a neat round bed. And these were monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all.\u201d", "comment": "Du Maurier uses powerful flower imagery; the flowers seem to represent characters in the book.", "author": {"key": "/people/wideawakeowl2"}}, {"excerpt": "for to me a rhododendron was a homely, domestic thing, strictly conventional, mauve or pink in colour, standing one beside the other in a neat round bed. And these were monsters, rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all.", "comment": "This excerpt is in stark contrast to the description of the azaleas in the part of the property called The Happy Valley.  The azaleas are delicate and beautiful, as flowers supposedly should be.  So the azaleas symbolize the main character, who, plot spoiler, is the perfect demure attractive woman and the rhododendrons symbolize her nemesis, the dead Rebecca, her husband's ex, who was, we discover, not her husband's love but her husband's enemy: too strident, too greedy, \"too beautiful... too powerful,\" just like the rhododendrons.", "author": {"key": "/people/wideawakeowl2"}}], "subjects": ["Married women", "Cornwall (England : County)", "Remarriage", "Remarried people", "Fiction", "Drama", "Suspense fiction", "Open Library Staff Picks", "English fiction", "Wives", "England Gothic fiction", "Love stories", "Smugglers", "Gothic fiction, England", "Reading Level-Grade 9", "Reading Level-Grade 10", "Reading Level-Grade 11", "Reading Level-Grade 12", "Fiction, gothic", "British and irish fiction (fictional works by one author)", "Cornwall (england : county), fiction", "Fiction, romance, suspense", "Married people, fiction", "English literature", "Fiction, classics", "Social life and customs", "Folklore", "Fiction in english", "self esteem", "love", "man and woman love", "psycology", "Cornwall (County)", "Man-woman relationships, fiction", "Country homes", "collection:Name"], "type": {"key": "/type/work"}, "subject_times": ["20th century"], "latest_revision": 42, "revision": 42, "created": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2009-10-15T08:08:14.992135"}, "last_modified": {"type": "/type/datetime", "value": "2026-02-24T16:41:31.582711"}}