By Riss Stone
I have always been captivated by vampire stories, imaginative stories that deal with old houses, tales of seduction, and mystery. When “Twilight” (2008) and “The Vampire Diaries” (2009) came out on DVD, I was glued to the TV at all times of the year. As I got older, I read stories where vampirism was more subtle than eyes turning red or skin glittering in the sunlight. Daphne Du Maurier’s 1938 novel Rebecca deals with vampirism in a more metaphorical sense, with the patriarchy being the vampire that infects all the characters, in turn causing them to “feed” off each other’s vulnerability to make a place for themselves in an oppressive patriarchal society.
The novel follows an unnamed narrator through her sudden marriage to the wealthy widower Maxim De Winter who has more than a few secrets buried in the walls of his old estate Manderley. Constantly trapped in the shadow of Maxim’s late wife Rebecca, the narrator grapples with her sense of self identity as she tries to uncover Maxim’s secrets and establish herself as the one and only Mrs. De Winter. The narrator, Maxim, and Rebecca are all caught in a patriarchal system that they each use against each other to try and get what they want. Whether it is a title, an identity, or freedom, they all have something at stake and to lose. Du Maurier’s metaphorical vampire of the patriarchy introduces readers to a critical way of reading, not only modern vampire stories, but our modern media, looking into how patriarchy, gender roles, and social hierarchies corrupt people and spread like an infection from one person to another.
This feeding begins with the estate of Manderley itself and its owner Maxim de Winter. For Maxim, Manderley is the pinnacle of masculine dominance and stately power, and he is determined to keep that power in his hold. He states that, “I told her [Rebecca] she could see her friends in London, but Manderley was mine” (308). Rebecca was a free-spirited woman who did what she wanted without care about how it affected others, yet she still captivated all who knew her. The reason Maxim has a problem with Rebecca is because she presents a threat to his reputation with her frequent escapades to London, and subsequently to Manderley. By him being so shaken up by her deviant nature, it is shown to the reader how “underneath the surface, Maxim has been an immature and incompetent boy all along, forced to become a father figure to protect his estate and his people” (Pons 77). His entire identity is tied to that place, as well as his sense of social standing and when he perceives a threat to his power as a patriarch, he is driven to madness and crime, shooting Rebecca and then drowning her by sinking her boat. He becomes desperate to cling onto the social expectations that hold him up in society. However, when Manderley is burned down, his perception of himself also turns to ashes, as he becomes an unknown gentleman and is forced into exile with the narrator. When his physical indicator of patriarchal power disappears, so does his emotional and social power.
Additionally, the unnamed narrator (Mrs. De Winter as she is referred to by some characters) is also bitten and drained by the powers of patriarchy and social expectations. As a young woman with no money or prospects of her own, she is drawn to the dazzling exterior that Maxim and Manderley present to her at the beginning of the story. She is lured to his mystery, but she cannot help but always feel the looming presence of Maxim’s late wife Rebecca. When she gets to Manderley, nothing feels like hers even though she has the title of Mrs. De Winter and she feels like an imposter. She reflects that, “[Rebecca] was in the house still…she was in that room in the west wing, she was in the library, in the morning room, in the gallery above the hall…Rebecca was still Mrs. de Winter” (du Maurier 261). The narrator is drained by being surrounded by reminders of Rebecca’s presence in the house and the expectations to live up to her prestige. Mrs. Danvers—one of the housekeepers—even uses the title of Mrs. De Winter to refer to both Rebecca and the narrator, holding the current Mrs. De Winter to the same standards as the late Mrs. De Winter. Lost in the madness of social expectations, the narrator becomes a “passionate female character” who, like many other strong-willed women in literature, “end up locked up in turrets, convents or prisons of sorts” (Horner 31) when they are unable to conform to the expectations imposed on them. Manderley is the container of her madness, continually feeding off her insecurities about living up to the person that she thinks everyone wants her to be, to inhabit an identity and social role that is not hers. This drains the narrator both physically and mentally, turning her into an empty, frail, and almost ghostly vessel for these social expectations to pass through.
That said, the constant subjugation of her consciousness to this power structure makes her reliant on it; she becomes a vampire herself that feeds off the death of Rebecca. When it is revealed to her that Maxim killed Rebecca, the only concern she expresses is towards his reputation and the fact that he never loved Rebecca in the first place. She states how, “My heart was light like a feather floating in the air. He had never loved Rebecca” (du Maurier 307). Instead of being appalled by the knowledge of her husband being a murderer, the narrator is happy. She feels freed by the fact that Maxim had never loved Rebecca and hated her promiscuous personality. Maxim recounts how he believed that Rebecca weaponized her femininity to get what she wanted. Or, as English feminist critic and literary journalist Alison Light describes these dynamics,”Rebecca refused to obey the law whereby women exchange their bodies for social place. Moreover, by treating sex as a game, she exposed the ways in which femininity is powerfully over-determined” (15). What is at stake in her murder is the continuance and retention of male authority and power over women. Since denouncing Rebecca would allow the narrator to finally feel like Maxim’s wife, she takes joy in going along with Maxim’s cover up. By this, she takes part in his continued dragging of Rebecca’s name and identity, estranging her from the position of Mrs. de Winter so the narrator can feel more comfortable stepping into that position herself. What she fails to recognize is that no woman is safe from the violence against them by men and patriarchal power. By putting herself in a place of voluntary submission to Maxim, she is contributing to the systemic oppression of not only Rebecca, but also herself (even if she is not conscious of it). Her thirst for the title and prestige of “Mrs. de Winter” and desire to be with Maxim is greater than her sense of moral obligation to turn him in, corrupting her character to cover up Maxim’s unspeakable act of murder. Even Rebecca herself needed Manderley and the security that patriarchy provided. The only reason she was able to be wild in London and run slightly outside the boundaries of social conformity was because she had Manderley to come home to. Manderley promised a life of safety and luxury, enabling her to be free at certain moments, while ultimately falling back into the comfort and docility of being Maxim’s wife.
Despite the oppressive patriarchal nature of the house and the social expectations it presents, everyone needs it to attach themselves to identity, luxury, and ultimately protection. Without Manderley, everyone loses their social prestige and sense of belonging in high class society. Maxim, the narrator, and Rebecca all are victims of the patriarchal vampire of Manderley, infected with the power structure, yet reliant on it and doomed to take part in its cycle. The systemic nature of this hierarchy drives them to madness and crime when confronted with either external or internal deviations from those rules.
We still see this in modern life and literary traditions in how expectations (be that social, personal, or political) drain and prey on all of us, making us vulnerable. Trends on social media are a perfect example of this. From fast fashion brands like Shein and Zara, to water bottles like Stanley and Owala, to “Clean Girl” make-up trends, certain brands and aesthetics have social associations and communities that surround them. The draw to consume often comes from a feeling of needing participate in order to be a part of these communities that have a lot of social media popularity. However, by participating in this mass consumer culture of buying into the next new fad every other month, you are included in communities, yet potentially at the expense of your own individuality (and bank account). From inherited estates to contemporary social media trends, people will go to extreme means in order to maintain wealth, power, and influence.
One of the reasons why vampire traditions are still so interesting for readers is because of the tension, the drama, and the stakes. How fragile these situations are and how we can sometimes see ourselves in these characters through sympathy or anger. Whether it is the narrator, Rebecca, or Maxim, all these characters play a hand in the game of who gets to drain the most out of the other, a game hosted in the house of patriarchy that is also draining them. Additionally, we as readers feed off the suspense and the elements of deception, manipulation, and predation as we try to figure out who the mastermind is.
Our literary traditions reflect our values, and literary vampires, be they literal or metaphorical, present a nuanced conversation about power, who it infects, and how we structure our relationships to one another. The human condition is complex and messy. By looking at and reviving literature of the past, we can reflect on our current social, economic, environmental, and political issues with a new perspective. Reading Rebecca allows us to dive deeper into critiques of gender expectations and inherited patriarchal norms, helping us to make sense of how our current world still centers around patriarchy and consumption through the means of technology. It is imperative that we break the cycle of vampirism in our society and look critically at those in power, as well as how and what we consume in this system.
Works Cited
Du Maurier, Daphne. Rebecca. Back Bay Books, 2003.
Horner, Avril, and Sue Zlosnik, editors. Women and the Gothic : An Edinburgh Companion. Edinburgh University Press, 2016, doi:10.1515/9780748699131.
Light, Alison. “‘Returning to Manderley’: Romance Fiction, Female Sexuality and Class.” Feminist Review, no. 16, 1984, pp. 7–25. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1394954. Accessed 30 Mar. 2025.
Pons, Auba Llompart. “Patriarchal Hauntings: Re-Reading Villainy and Gender in Daphne Du Maurier’s ‘Rebecca’ / Fantasmas Del Patriarcado: Una Relectura de La Villanía y El Género En ‘Rebecca’, de Daphne Du Maurier.” Atlantis, vol. 35, no. 1, 2013, pp. 69–83. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/43486040. Accessed 20 Mar. 2025.
Riss Stone (she/her) is a graduate student at SUNY Cortland studying English and Professional Writing. She has worked as an associate editor of the international literary magazine, Hoxie Gorge Review, for a year and a half. She currently lives in central New York where she is working on her thesis research.