Gran

Gran is the nearly blind, eighty-six-year-old grandmother of Maxim de Winter, a figure who embodies the living memory of Manderley's past and whose confused loyalty to Rebecca exposes the fragility of the second Mrs de Winter's position in the family. She lives in a large, red-bricked, late-Victorian house with a nurse, attended by a trim parlour-maid named Norah, and is visited out of duty by her granddaughter Beatrice Lacy. Her physical decline—she is propped up in a Bath chair, surrounded by shawls, and her mind wanders—makes her a poignant symbol of a bygone era that the second Mrs de Winter can never fully enter.

Identity and Appearance

Gran bears a strong, rather uncanny resemblance to Maxim; the narrator observes that this is what Maxim would look like if he were very old and blind. She is described as having a calm, placid face, and her voice is thin and querulous. She is attended by a nurse who speaks to her in a special, bright, cheerful voice, a mannerism the narrator suspects Gran may have first noticed with resentment before gradually becoming accustomed to it. The nurse thumps her pillows and arranges her shawls, treating her with a professional cheerfulness that the narrator finds both exhausting and sad.

Life and Plot Trajectory

The narrator meets Gran during a visit arranged by Beatrice Lacy, who motors over to pick up the narrator and take her along. The visit is framed as a duty—Beatrice says it will "clear my conscience for three months." During tea, Gran is initially vague and confused, asking why Maxim is not there and seeming to think he is still in Italy. When the nurse and Beatrice try to correct her, she becomes agitated, plucking at her shawl, and demands, "Where is Rebecca? Why did not Maxim come and bring Rebecca?" The nurse, flustered, explains that Gran sometimes wanders like this, and the visit is cut short. The narrator is deeply embarrassed but insists she does not mind, though the incident confirms her sense of being an outsider.

Relationships and Conflict

Gran's relationship with Rebecca was one of genuine affection; Beatrice explains that Rebecca "made a great fuss of her always" and used to have her over to Manderley, where Gran "used to rock with laughter at whatever Rebecca said." Rebecca had "an amazing gift... of being attractive to people; men, women, children, dogs," and Gran never forgot her. This stands in stark contrast to Gran's reaction to the second Mrs de Winter, whom she does not recognize and cannot connect with Maxim. The narrator reflects that Gran's confusion is not malicious but a natural consequence of old age and the enduring power of Rebecca's memory.

Change and Ending

Gran's mental state deteriorates during the visit, and she is left behind in her bright, gabled house with the nurse, while the narrator and Beatrice drive away in awkward silence. The narrator later thinks of Gran as she once was—young, with chestnut hair and a narrow waist, walking in the gardens at Manderley with a small boy, Maxim's father, clattering behind her on a hobby horse. She imagines Gran in later years, leaning on a stick on the terrace, with someone tall and slim and beautiful holding her arm and laughing. This vision of the past, with Rebecca at its center, underscores the narrator's sense of being a stranger to the family's history.

Narrative Role and Evaluation

Gran functions as a living repository of Manderley's past and a painful reminder of Rebecca's enduring hold on the family. Her inability to recognize the second Mrs de Winter as Maxim's wife dramatizes the narrator's deepest fear: that she is an interloper who can never truly replace Rebecca. The visit also reveals the strain of family duty and the way the past can erupt unexpectedly, shattering the fragile peace of the present. Gran's confusion is not a plot device but a genuine, tragic consequence of age and memory, making her a sympathetic figure even as she wounds the narrator.