Narrator explores the west wing

The narrator's exploration of the west wing begins as a lost wanderer's mistake and becomes a deliberate trespass into the preserved domain of Rebecca de Winter. Having fled the morning-room to avoid meeting Maxim's sister Beatrice and her husband Giles, the narrator takes a wrong turn through a stone passage and back stairs, emerging in the dark, panelled corridor of the west wing. The silence there is unusual, carrying the oppression of an empty house whose owners have gone away. She opens a door at hazard and finds a room in total darkness, its furniture swathed in white dust-sheets, the air close and stale with the smell of a room seldom used. She shuts the door softly and continues along the corridor, flanked on either side by closed doors, until she reaches a little alcove with a broad window that gives her light at last. Looking out, she sees the smooth green lawns stretching to the sea, bright green with white-tipped crests whipped by a westerly wind, and realises she has made the circuit of the house and is standing in the corridor of the west wing. The sea is closer than she had thought, barely five minutes away, and she can hear the surf breaking on the shores of some little bay she cannot see. A mist salt-laden, borne upwards from the sea, clouds the window-glass. As she prepares to go down, Mrs Danvers opens a door behind her and confronts her, her face a mask. The narrator claims she lost her way, but Mrs Danvers insists she will show her the rooms in the west wing whenever she wishes, her persistence making the narrator vaguely uncomfortable, reminding her of a childhood visit to a friend's house when the older daughter whispered about a locked book in her mother's bedroom.

Entering Rebecca's Bedroom

Later that same day, after the unsettling encounter with Jack Favell and the discovery that Mrs Danvers had entertained him in the west wing, the narrator returns alone. The house is very still and quiet; the servants are all in their own quarters. Her heart beats in a queer excited way as she climbs the stairs. She finds herself in the corridor again, the sun streaming in from the alcove window making gold patterns on the dark panelling. She turns the handle of the door from which Mrs Danvers had emerged and goes inside. The room is dark because of the shutters, but when she turns on the electric light she is shocked to find it fully furnished, as though in use. There are no dust-sheets. Brushes and combs lie on the dressing-table, scent and powder beside them. The bed is made up, with white linen on the pillow-case and the tip of a blanket beneath the quilted coverlet. Flowers stand on the dressing-table, on the table beside the bed, and on the carved mantelpiece. A satin dressing-gown lies on a chair, and a pair of bedroom slippers beneath it. For one desperate moment the narrator thinks something has happened to her brain, that she is seeing back into Time, looking upon the room as it used to be before Rebecca died. She expects Rebecca herself to come back, sit before the looking-glass, hum a tune, and run a comb through her hair. Nothing happens. The clock ticking on the wall brings her back to reality. The hands stand at twenty-five past four. The room is not used, not lived in any more; even the flowers cannot destroy the musty smell. Rebecca will never come back to this room again.

The Material Remains of Rebecca

The narrator opens the shutter and daylight casts a white beam upon the bed, shining on the nightdress-case lying on the pillow, on the glass top of the dressing-table, on the brushes and scent bottles. The daylight makes the room vivid and alive, and she feels like an uninvited guest who has strolled into her hostess's bedroom by mistake. Her legs tremble, weak as straw, and she sits down on the stool by the dressing-table. Her heart feels as heavy as lead. She touches the brushes; one is more worn than its fellow. She looks at her own reflection in the glass: her face white and thin, her hair hanging lank and straight. She gets up and touches the dressing-gown on the chair, picks up the slippers and holds them in her hand, aware of a growing sense of horror turning to despair. She traces with her fingers the monogram on the nightdress case: R de W, interwoven and interlaced, the letters corded and strong against the golden satin material. She draws out the nightdress, thin as gossamer, apricot in colour, and puts it against her face. It is cold, quite cold, but there is a dim mustiness about it still where the scent has been—the scent of white azaleas. She folds it and puts it back, noticing with a sick, dull aching in her heart that there are creases in the nightdress, the texture ruffled; it has not been touched or laundered since it was last worn. On a sudden impulse she moves to the little ante-room and opens one of the wardrobes. It is full of clothes: evening dresses, the shimmer of silver over the top of white bags, a piece of gold brocade, wine-coloured velvet, a train of white satin dripping on the floor of the wardrobe, and an ostrich feather fan peeping out from tissue paper on a shelf above. The wardrobe smells stuffy and queer; the azalea scent, so fragrant in the air, has turned stale inside, tarnishing the silver dresses and the brocade. She shuts the doors and goes back into the bedroom, where the gleam of light from the shutter still shines white and clear on the golden coverlet of the bed, picking out the tall sloping R of the monogram. Then she hears a step behind her and turns to find Mrs Danvers, whose face wears an expression of triumphant, gloating excitement in a strange unhealthy way. The narrator feels very frightened.