Manderley in ruins

Manderley in ruins is the final state of the great estate after it is destroyed by fire, a condition that frames the entire novel as the narrator recalls the house as a desolate, overgrown shell, a sepulchre for the fear and suffering that once lived there, and ultimately a place that can never be returned to.

The Dream Vision of Ruin

The novel opens with the narrator's dream of returning to Manderley, and the first thing she encounters is the evidence of its ruin. The iron gate leading to the drive is barred by a padlock and chain, and the lodge is uninhabited, with no smoke from the chimney and the lattice windows gaping forlorn. The drive itself has become a narrow, unkempt thread of its former self, choked with grass and moss, its gravel surface gone. Nature has reclaimed the estate: the woods, always a menace, have triumphed, crowding dark and uncontrolled to the borders of the drive. The hydrangeas, once famous for their blue heads, have gone native, rearing to monster height without a bloom, black and ugly as the nameless parasites beside them. Nettles are everywhere, the vanguard of an army, sprawling about the paths and leaning against the very windows of the house. The rhododendrons stand fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and ivy has made prisoners of a lilac and a copper beech. The house itself, however, remains inviolate in its perfect symmetry, the grey stone shining in the moonlight, the mullioned windows reflecting the green lawns and the terrace. Yet the garden has obeyed the jungle law, and the house is a desolate shell, soulless and unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.

The Sepulchre of the Past

In the dream, the narrator reflects on what Manderley has become. She calls the house a sepulchre, declaring that their fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins and that there would be no resurrection. She resolves to think of it not with bitterness but as it might have been, remembering the rose-garden in summer, the birds that sang at dawn, tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up from the lawns. These memories, she tells herself, are permanent and cannot be dissolved; they are memories that cannot hurt. Yet the reality of the ruin is inescapable. The house lies like an empty shell amidst the tangle of the deep woods, a multitude of weeds and a colony of birds. The narrator imagines that a stout-hearted tramp might wander there seeking shelter, but the woods of Manderley are not for the timid. The little cottage in the cove might still linger with a certain atmosphere of stress, and the corner in the drive where the trees encroach upon the gravel is not a place to pause after sunset. The rustling leaves sound like the stealthy movement of a woman in evening dress, and the scatter of falling leaves might be the patter of a woman's hurrying footstep, the mark in the gravel the imprint of a high-heeled satin shoe.

The Final Destruction

The ruin of Manderley is not merely a state of decay but the result of a catastrophic fire. As Maxim and the narrator drive back to Manderley in the early hours of the morning, after the inquest and the visit to Doctor Baker, they see a strange glow in the sky. The narrator, thinking it might be the dawn, remarks that it is the wrong direction for sunrise. Maxim tells her it is not the northern lights but Manderley. The sky on the horizon is shot with crimson, like a splash of blood, and the ashes blow towards them with the salt wind from the sea. The house is burning, and the ruin is complete. The narrator's dream of a desolate, overgrown Manderley has become a reality, but the destruction is now absolute, the house consumed by fire rather than merely reclaimed by nature. The past, with all its fear and suffering, is finally and irrevocably buried in the ruins.