fish

Fish are a minor but thematically resonant presence in Rebecca, appearing in three distinct contexts that together trace a trajectory from the mundane routines of Manderley to the horrifying physical reality of Rebecca's death. They first surface in the narrator's observations of the household's wasteful abundance, then return in a grotesque, folkloric register through the words of the local simpleton Ben, and finally serve as a stark, material reminder of the decomposition that has erased the beautiful woman who once was. In each appearance, fish are linked not to life or sustenance but to excess, decay, and the indifferent processes of nature that reclaim the dead.

Breakfast and the Waste of Manderley

The narrator's first encounter with fish as a domestic object occurs during her initial breakfast at Manderley, a meal that overwhelms her with its scale and formality. She notes that on the sideboard, among a vast array of dishes, there is a heater with "another of fish" alongside the scrambled eggs, bacon, and porridge. She watches Maxim eat a small piece of this fish, and then wonders with a mixture of awe and anxiety what happens to the rest of the lavish spread—the "scrambled eggs, that crisp bacon, the porridge, the remains of the fish." Her speculation that it might be "shovelled into dustbins" or consumed by unseen servants reveals her sense of alienation from the house's rhythms and her discomfort with the casual opulence that defines Manderley. The fish here is not a living creature but a processed, plated commodity, a symbol of the household's impersonal efficiency and the narrator's own powerless position within it.

Ben's Prophecy of Consumption

The motif takes a darker turn when the narrator encounters Ben, the mentally disabled man who lives near the cove. After the discovery of the stranded ship, she finds Ben on the beach and speaks with him. He grins and makes a chilling observation about the wreck of Rebecca's boat, which has just been found. "The fishes have eaten her up by now, haven't they?" he asks, referring not to the stranded steamer but to Rebecca herself. When the narrator, misunderstanding, says that "fishes don't eat steamers, Ben," he clarifies with a jerk of his thumb toward the sea: "Her," he says, "the other one." This exchange, brief and unsettling, strips away the romantic aura surrounding Rebecca's death. Ben's simple, uneducated words introduce the brutal biological reality that the sea and its creatures have consumed her body, a fact that the polite society of Kerrith and the formal proceedings of the inquest will never articulate. The fish become agents of a natural, amoral process that reduces the beautiful, powerful Rebecca to mere matter.

The Body in the Cabin and the Unseen Scavengers

The final, implicit reference to fish is the most powerful, though the word itself is not spoken. When the diver discovers Rebecca's boat, the cabin door is closed and the portlights are sealed. Inside, he finds a body, but it is "dissolved of course, there was no flesh on it." The narrator later learns that the body had been in the water for over a year, and that when it was finally found, "the rocks had battered her to bits" and "both arms gone." The fish, though never named in this context, are the logical agents of this dissolution. The novel's earlier, almost casual mention of fish at breakfast and Ben's blunt prophecy converge here: the same creatures that might have been served on a silver platter at Manderley have been silently, invisibly consuming the remains of its former mistress. This unspoken connection between the domestic fish of the dining room and the scavenging fish of the bay creates a grim, ironic continuity, underscoring the novel's central theme that the dead, no matter how beloved or beautiful, are ultimately subject to the same indifferent laws of nature as any other organic matter. The fish, in their silent, unseen work, complete the physical erasure of Rebecca that the narrator's psychological struggle could never achieve.