the portrait of Caroline de Winter
The portrait of Caroline de Winter is a Raeburn painting of a young woman in a white dress, holding a hat in her hand, that hangs in the minstrels' gallery at Manderley. Caroline de Winter was a sister of Maxim de Winter's great-great-grandfather who later married a prominent Whig politician and became a famous London beauty. The portrait, painted before her marriage, depicts her in a white dress with puffed sleeves, a flounce, and a little bodice, her hair in curls standing out from her face. The painting becomes the unwitting instrument of a devastating psychological blow when the second Mrs de Winter, desperate for a costume for the Manderley fancy dress ball, has a dress made that exactly reproduces it—the same costume Rebecca wore at the last ball, an act that triggers Maxim's fury and reveals the depth of Rebecca's lingering power over the house.
Discovery and Decision
The second Mrs de Winter, struggling to think of a costume for the ball, had spent a morning in the library turning over the pages of the art history books Beatrice had given her as a wedding present, copying sketches that did not please her and throwing them into the waste-paper basket. Mrs Danvers, checking the baskets at the end of the day, brought one of the discarded sketches to the narrator's bedroom and suggested she copy one of the pictures in the gallery. "I wonder you don't copy one of the pictures in the gallery," she said, and then specified: "All the pictures in the gallery would make good costumes, especially that one of the young lady in white, with her hat in her hand." She advised having the dress made in London at Voce in Bond Street, and promised not to give the secret away. The narrator, relieved to have a solution at last, wrote to the shop enclosing a sketch of the portrait, and received a favourable reply confirming the work would be put in hand.
The Costume and the Ball
On the evening of the ball, the dress fitted perfectly. Clarice, the narrator's maid, helped her into it and declared it "a dress fit for the Queen of England." The wig, with its soft gleaming curls, transformed the narrator's appearance entirely. She felt different, no longer hampered by her own dull personality, and told Clarice, "I don't think I have ever felt so excited before, so happy and so proud." She arranged with the drummer in the minstrels' gallery to announce her as "Miss Caroline de Winter" to surprise the guests below. When she came forward to the head of the stairs, smiling, her hat in her hand like the girl in the picture, she expected applause and laughter. Instead, nobody clapped, nobody moved. They all stared at her like dumb things. Beatrice uttered a little cry and put her hand to her mouth. Maxim, his face ashen white, stared up at her with blazing eyes and demanded, "What the hell do you think you are doing?" When the narrator, terrified, said, "It's the picture, the one in the gallery," Maxim ordered her to go and change immediately, before anybody came.
Aftermath and Revelation
Beatrice followed the narrator to her bedroom and explained the terrible mistake: the dress the narrator had copied from the portrait of Caroline de Winter was identical to what Rebecca had worn at the last fancy dress ball at Manderley. "You stood there on the stairs, and for one ghastly moment I thought..." she said, not finishing her sentence. The narrator, stunned, repeated, "I ought to have known." Beatrice insisted it was a terrible accident, that no one could have known, but the narrator understood that Mrs Danvers had deliberately suggested the costume, knowing what it would do. When she fled through the corridor, she saw Mrs Danvers standing in the open door of the west wing, her face loathsome and triumphant, "the face of an exulting devil." The portrait of Caroline de Winter, a harmless family heirloom, had become the instrument through which Mrs Danvers exacted her revenge, forcing the narrator to reenact Rebecca's moment of glory and exposing the raw wound of Maxim's grief and rage.
