the fancy dress costume

The fancy dress costume, a white dress copied from the portrait of Caroline de Winter in the minstrels' gallery, becomes the instrument of a devastating psychological blow when the second Mrs de Winter unwittingly wears the identical costume Rebecca had worn at the last Manderley ball, triggering Maxim's fury and revealing the depth of Rebecca's lingering power.

Origin and Decision

Struggling to think of a costume for the Manderley fancy dress ball, the second Mrs de Winter sat in the library turning over the pages of the four-volume History of Painting that Beatrice had given her as a wedding present, passing from illustration to illustration in a sort of frenzy. Nothing seemed suitable. She copied one or two of the elaborate costumes of velvet and silk from the reproductions of Rubens and Rembrandt, but they did not please her, and she threw the sketches into the waste-paper basket in disgust. Later that evening, while she was changing for dinner, Mrs Danvers knocked at her bedroom door holding the discarded drawing. After a brief exchange, Mrs Danvers suggested she study the pictures in the gallery, especially the portrait of Caroline de Winter, a Raeburn painting of a young lady in white with a hat in her hand. The second Mrs de Winter, who had always loved that portrait, seized on the idea. She wrote to Messrs Voce in Bond Street, enclosing a sketch of the portrait, and the shop replied with honour at her esteemed order, promising to copy it faithfully and to manage the wig as well. Clarice could hardly contain herself for excitement, and the second Mrs de Winter, too, began to get party fever as the great day approached.

The Night of the Ball

On the evening of the ball, the second Mrs de Winter dressed in her bedroom with Clarice's help. The dress fitted perfectly. She stood still, hardly able to restrain her impatience while Clarice hooked her up with fumbling fingers. Clarice declared it a dress fit for the Queen of England. When the second Mrs de Winter put on the curled wig, covering her own mousy hair, she did not recognise the face that stared at her in the glass: the eyes were larger, the mouth narrower, the skin white and clear. She paraded up and down in front of her glass watching her reflection, then lifted her skirts off the ground and followed Clarice along the corridor. She peered through the archway at the head of the big staircase and looked down on the hall below, where Maxim, Beatrice, Giles, and Frank stood. The band was in the gallery; one of the men was tuning his fiddle. The light shone on the picture of Caroline de Winter. The second Mrs de Winter waved her hand at the man with the fiddle and put her finger to her lips for silence. She whispered to him to make the drummer announce her as Miss Caroline de Winter. Her heart fluttered absurdly, and her cheeks were burning. She picked up her skirt in her hands. The sound of the drum echoed in the great hall. "Miss Caroline de Winter," shouted the drummer. She came forward to the head of the stairs and stood there, smiling, her hat in her hand, like the girl in the picture.

The Catastrophe

Nobody clapped, nobody moved. They all stared at her like dumb things. Beatrice uttered a little cry and put her hand to her mouth. The second Mrs de Winter went on smiling, put one hand on the bannister, and said, "How do you do, Mr de Winter." Maxim had not moved. He stared up at her, his glass in his hand. There was no colour in his face; it was ashen white. Frank went to him as though he would speak, but Maxim shook him off. The second Mrs de Winter hesitated, one foot already on the stairs. Something was wrong. Then Maxim moved forward to the stairs, his eyes never leaving her face. "What the hell do you think you are doing?" he asked. His eyes blazed in anger. His face was still ashen white. She could not move. "It's the picture," she said, terrified at his eyes, at his voice. "It's the picture, the one in the gallery." There was a long silence. When Maxim spoke again, his voice was still and quiet, icy cold, not a voice she knew. "Go and change," he said, "it does not matter what you put on. Find an ordinary evening frock, anything will do. Go now, before anybody comes." She turned and ran blindly through the archway to the corridors beyond, tears blinding her eyes. Then she saw that the door leading to the west wing was open wide, and Mrs Danvers was standing there, the face of an exulting devil, loathsome, triumphant. The second Mrs de Winter ran from her, down the long narrow passage to her own room, tripping, stumbling over the flounces of her dress.

Aftermath and Revelation

Beatrice followed her to her bedroom and explained that the dress she had copied was identical to what Rebecca had worn at the last fancy dress ball at Manderley. The second Mrs de Winter sat on the bed, stunned, repeating, "I ought to have known." Beatrice tried to persuade her to come down in a blue evening dress, but she refused, unable to face the guests. She sat on the bed, plucking at the eiderdown, pulling a little feather out of a slit in one corner. Eventually, she ironed the blue dress herself, cleaned the make-up off her face, and went downstairs to stand beside Maxim through the long evening, a stiff, set smile on her face that did not match the misery in her eyes. The costume, meant to be a triumph of surprise and a declaration of her new identity as mistress of Manderley, had instead exposed her as an unwitting mimic of the dead, revealing the extent to which Rebecca's shadow still governed the house and its master.