the library
The library at Manderley is the heart of the house, a deep, comfortable room lined with books from floor to ceiling, furnished with solid chairs and a great open fireplace, with long windows looking out onto the lawns and the distant sea. It is a room for peace and meditation, smelling of old, musty books and the unchanging air of a silent church. This is the room where Maxim de Winter habitually sits after dinner, reading his paper, and where the daily ritual of tea is performed with solemn precision by Frith and Robert. For the second Mrs de Winter, the library is both a refuge and a place of acute discomfort, where she feels the weight of her predecessor's memory and the distance between herself and her husband.
The Library as a Space of Routine and Alienation
From her first evening at Manderley, the second Mrs de Winter is initiated into the library's rigid routines. She observes Maxim instinctively settling into his chair on the left of the fireplace, reaching for his papers, and lighting a cigarette—a custom he has followed for years. The room bears witness to his presence: the little heap of library books, the discarded copy of The Times, ashtrays with cigarette stubs, cushions with the imprint of heads, and the charred embers of a log fire. The narrator feels like an interloper, acutely aware that she is sitting in Rebecca's chair, leaning against Rebecca's cushion, and that the dog Jasper has come to her because that had been his custom with Rebecca. The library's routine becomes a daily reminder of her inadequacy; she cannot even find matches to light the fire, as the library fire is not lit until the afternoon, a rule she learns only after Frith corrects her. This small humiliation underscores her status as a guest in her own home, unable to navigate the household's unspoken laws.
The Library as a Site of Marital Tension and Revelation
The library is the stage for the couple's most painful arguments and their most intimate reconciliations. After the disastrous walk to the cove, where Maxim's anger erupts over the cottage, they return to the library, and the narrator kneels beside him, begging for forgiveness. The ritual of tea—the placing of the table, the laying of the cloth, the silver kettle—interrupts their moment, and the performance of normalcy resumes. Later, after the fancy dress ball, the library becomes the scene of Maxim's confession. He paces up and down, up and down, as he had done after Rebecca's death, and finally tells the narrator that he killed Rebecca. The room, with its familiar objects—the mantelpiece, the window-seat, the carpet with a burnt hole from a cigarette—becomes the container for this shattering truth. The narrator, kneeling on the floor, holds his hands and listens as he recounts the murder, the sinking of the boat, and the years of torment. The library, once a place of silent routine, is transformed into a confessional.
The Library as a Repository of Memory and the Past
The library is also a space where the past is physically present. The narrator finds a handkerchief in the pocket of a mackintosh she has borrowed, a scrap of cambric with a monogrammed "R" and the scent of white azaleas—Rebecca's scent. This small object, forgotten in a pocket, brings Rebecca's presence into the room with startling immediacy. The library's very atmosphere is saturated with memory; the narrator imagines Rebecca sitting in the same chair, pouring coffee from the same silver pot, bending down to the same dog. The room's unchanging quality—its ancient mossy smell, its books that are never read—makes it a mausoleum for the past, a place where the dead seem to linger. It is in this room that Maxim, after the inquest, tells the narrator, "Rebecca has won," and where they finally hold each other, having passed through the crisis. The library, which had been a symbol of their separation, becomes the place where they are united, even as the future remains uncertain.
