the drive
The drive at Manderley is the winding, serpentine road that leads from the lodge gates to the house, a central symbol of the narrator's dream and her memory of the estate. In her opening dream, the drive is choked with grass and moss, narrowed by encroaching woods, and transformed from a broad gravel path into a poor thread of its former self, representing the decay and loss of Manderley itself. The drive's physical state—overgrown, dark, and twisting—mirrors the narrator's psychological journey into the past and the inescapable, triumphant return of nature over human cultivation.
The Dream Drive: A Landscape of Loss
In the narrator's dream, the drive is the first obstacle she encounters. She stands by the iron gate, barred by a padlock and chain, and the lodge is uninhabited. Once she passes through as a spirit, the drive winds away in front of her, twisting and turning as it had always done, but she is immediately aware of a change: it is narrow and unkempt, not the drive that she had known. The gravel surface is gone, choked with grass and moss, and the trees have thrown out low branches, making an impediment to progress. The gnarled roots look like skeleton claws. The drive has become a ribbon, a thread of its former self, and the woods, always a menace even in the past, have triumphed in the end, crowding dark and uncontrolled to its borders. The beeches lean close to one another, their branches intermingled in a strange embrace, making a vault above her head like the archway of a church. This transformation from a broad, cared-for approach to a choked, labyrinthine path embodies the narrator's sense that the Manderley she knew is irretrievably lost, consumed by the jungle law that has reclaimed the estate.
The Real Drive: A First Impression of Foreboding
When the narrator first arrives at Manderley as Maxim de Winter's bride, the drive is not the broad and spacious thing of gravel she had imagined. Instead, it twists and turns as a serpent, scarce wider in places than a path, with a great colonnade of trees above whose branches nod and intermingle, making an archway like the roof of a church. The midday sun does not penetrate the interlacing of those green leaves, and only little flickering patches of warm light come in intermittent waves to dapple the drive with gold. It is very silent, very still, and the engine of the car takes a new note, throbbing low, quieter than before. The length of it begins to nag at her nerves; she expects the house to appear at every turn, but is for ever disappointed, finding only the silence and deep woods. The lodge gates become a memory, and the high road something belonging to another time, another world. This long, dark, and winding approach instills in her a sense of unease and anticipation, a prelude to the overwhelming and intimidating beauty of Manderley itself.
The Drive as a Boundary and a Memory
The drive serves as a boundary between the outside world and the private, almost sacred realm of Manderley. It is the path that separates the public high road from the secluded estate, and its condition reflects the state of the house and its inhabitants. In the narrator's dream, the drive is a poor thread, choked and overgrown, leading to a labyrinth and a choked wilderness, not to the house at all. This mirrors the way the past has become inaccessible and the house itself is a sepulchre. The drive is also a place of memory and association. The narrator recalls how, as a child, she bought a picture postcard of Manderley at a village shop, and now she belongs there, this is her home. She imagines walking along this drive with perfect knowledge, conscious of every twist and turn, marking and approving where the gardeners have worked. The drive, in its physical reality and in her memory, is a constant reminder of her journey into a new life and the inescapable weight of the past that haunts Manderley.
