Mrs Danvers and Rebecca de Winter

Mrs Danvers, the gaunt and skeletal housekeeper of Manderley, is the living embodiment of Rebecca de Winter's lingering presence. Her devotion to the first Mrs de Winter is not a simple servant's loyalty but a profound, possessive, and almost religious worship that defines her entire existence. From the moment the second Mrs de Winter arrives, Mrs Danvers becomes her most formidable and malevolent adversary, a silent sentinel dedicated to preserving Rebecca's memory and ensuring the new marriage fails.

Origins of Devotion

Mrs Danvers' bond with Rebecca predates her marriage to Maxim de Winter. She reveals that she "had the care of her as a child," having served Rebecca since she was a young girl. This lifelong service created a relationship of absolute intimacy and control. Mrs Danvers was not just a maid but a confidante and accomplice, a role she cherished. She describes Rebecca as a girl of extraordinary spirit, recounting how at fourteen she drove a four-in-hand and fought with her cousin Jack Favell for the reins, and at sixteen rode a dangerous horse, slashing it until it bled. Mrs Danvers witnessed and approved of this wild, untamed nature, seeing it as a sign of Rebecca's superiority. She was the one who brushed Rebecca's hair every evening, who knew her secrets, and who was entrusted with the running of her household. This history forged a bond so intense that Mrs Danvers felt Rebecca's death as a personal mutilation, leaving her with a mission to guard her memory.

The Campaign Against the Second Mrs de Winter

From the narrator's first day at Manderley, Mrs Danvers establishes herself as an enemy. Her welcome is a cold, rehearsed speech delivered with a lifeless hand and a look of scorn. She immediately begins a campaign of psychological warfare, designed to make the new bride feel inadequate and like an intruder. She constantly invokes Rebecca's superior taste and competence, from the choice of sauces for dinner to the proper placement of the alabaster vase for lilacs. She deliberately shows the narrator Rebecca's preserved bedroom in the west wing, a shrine where everything remains untouched—the brushes on the dressing-table, the nightdress in its case, the clothes in the wardrobe—and describes Rebecca's beauty and Maxim's love for her in intimate, painful detail. The climax of her cruelty is the manipulation of the fancy dress ball, where she suggests the narrator copy the portrait of Caroline de Winter, knowing it was the exact costume Rebecca had worn at the last ball. This act is designed to humiliate the narrator and wound Maxim, a calculated strike to destroy their fragile happiness.

The Nature of Her Loyalty

Mrs Danvers' devotion is not love in any conventional sense but a form of idolatry. She sees Rebecca as a force of nature, a creature of "spirit" and "courage" who was "above all that"—meaning above love or morality. She tells Jack Favell, Rebecca's lover, that Rebecca was not in love with him or anyone, that she despised all men and treated love-making as a game. This reveals that Mrs Danvers' loyalty is not to a person but to an ideal of power and freedom that Rebecca represented. She is fiercely protective of this ideal, which is why she resents the gentle, insecure second Mrs de Winter so deeply. Her loyalty is also possessive and jealous; she cannot bear that anyone else should take Rebecca's place, not even Maxim, whom she watches with a cold, critical eye. When the truth about Rebecca's terminal illness and the circumstances of her death emerge, Mrs Danvers' world collapses. She disappears from Manderley, her final act a silent acknowledgment that her long war is lost, and the shrine she guarded has been desecrated by the truth.