spring

Spring is the season in which the narrator arrives at Manderley for the first time as Maxim de Winter's wife, a moment freighted with both the promise of new life and the shadow of the past. The journey from London begins in a heavy shower of rain, which the narrator superstitiously takes as an omen of ill-will, but Maxim reassures her that the sun will be shining when they reach Manderley. His prediction proves correct: the clouds clear at Exeter, leaving a great blue sky and a white road ahead. The narrator, a bride of seven weeks, is unsuitably dressed in a tan-coloured stockinette frock, a small fur called a stone marten, and a shapeless mackintosh far too big for her, clutching a pair of gauntlet gloves and a large leather handbag. The arrival is timed for early May, which Maxim says brings the first swallows and the bluebells, the best moment before the full flush of summer, when the azaleas in the valley will be prodigal of scent and the blood-red rhododendrons in bloom.

Arrival and the Drive

The drive itself is a serpentine, narrow path through a colonnade of trees whose branches intermingle like the roof of a church, so thick that even the midday sun penetrates only in flickering patches of warm light. The narrator notes the silence and stillness, the engine of the car taking a new, quieter note as the drive descends into the valley. The length of the drive begins to nag at her nerves, and she is for ever disappointed, expecting the house to appear around each bend but finding only the silence and deep woods. Then, suddenly, the dark trees thin and a wall of colour appears: rhododendrons, blood-red, massed one upon the other in incredible profusion, showing no leaf, no twig, nothing but the slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic. The narrator finds them bewildering, even shocking, unlike any rhododendron she has seen before—monsters rearing to the sky, massed like a battalion, too beautiful and too powerful, not plants at all.

The House and the Welcome

When the drive finally broadens to the sweep she had expected, the narrator sees Manderley at last: the Manderley of her picture postcard long ago, a thing of grace and beauty, exquisite and faultless, built in its hollow of smooth grassland and mossy lawns, the terraces sloping to the gardens and the gardens to the sea. But the moment of arrival is marred by the sight of the hall full of people, collected by Mrs Danvers to welcome them. The narrator feels slightly sick and cold from the long drive, and as she fumbles for the handle of the door, the butler Frith comes down the steps to help her. She is aware of a little pain at the pit of her stomach and a nervous contraction in her throat as she stands on the threshold, a slim, awkward figure in her stockinette dress, clutching her gauntlet gloves, facing a sea of curious faces. Mrs Danvers advances, tall and gaunt in deep black, her prominent cheek-bones and great hollow eyes giving her a skull's face, parchment-white, set on a skeleton's frame. Her hand is limp and heavy, deathly cold, and the narrator blushes scarlet, stammering some sort of thanks, dropping both her gloves in her confusion.

The Library and the First Evening

Once inside the library, the narrator finds a deep, comfortable room with books lining the walls to the ceiling, solid chairs before a great open fireplace, and long windows looking out upon the lawns and the distant shimmer of the sea. The room has an old quiet smell, as though the air is little changed, and the narrator feels better after taking off her hat and her wretched little fur. Tea is brought, and while Maxim glances through his great pile of letters, she plays with dripping crumpets and crumbles cake with her hands, swallowing her scalding tea. She thinks how little she knows of his life here at Manderley, of how it goes day by day, of the people he knows, of what bills he pays, what orders he gives about his household. The last weeks in Italy and France have gone so swiftly, and she thought only of how she loved him, seeing Venice with his eyes, echoing his words, asking no questions of the past and future. She watches him read his letters, sees him frown at one, smile at another, and realizes with a chill that but for the grace of God, her own letter from New York would be lying there, read in the same indifferent fashion.

Thematic Significance

Spring at Manderley is thus a season of deceptive beauty and latent threat. The narrator's arrival in May, with the swallows and bluebells, is meant to be the best moment, but the rhododendrons are too powerful, the drive too long and dark, and the welcome too formal and intimidating. The season's promise of renewal is undercut by the narrator's sense of being an interloper, a guest in her own home, and by the ever-present shadow of Rebecca, whose taste and presence permeate every room. The spring landscape, with its prodigal azaleas and blood-red rhododendrons, becomes a symbol of the beauty and menace of Manderley itself, a place that the narrator loves but cannot yet call her own.