Abstract
This essay makes a case for a historically contextualised and politically engaged reading of Daphne du Maurier's haunting, anti-romance of the late 1930s: Rebecca and her short stories. Looking anew, it argues that one of her intentions in the conventionally conservative genre of romantic fiction in the comfortably aristocratic settings of country houses and hotels, was to represent an unease at the configurations of power and gendered relations of the time. A wider dis-ease is indicated in the troubling of genre of both Rebecca and the stories, which signifies that of the period, hinting at an end to comfortable decadence and a run up to the chaotic climax of war. Rebecca in particular, with its threatening imagery, haunting, deceptions, shakes the complacency of privilege, partying and place. Rebecca exposes a set of fictive romantic idealisations: of Rebecca herself, of Manderley, of Max. On the brink of war, the novel destabilises assumptions, social behaviours and values, and problematises conventional morality.
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