Alice

Alice is a housemaid at Manderley, part of the household staff that the second Mrs de Winter encounters during her first days as mistress of the estate. Though she appears only briefly in the narrative, Alice serves as a quiet but potent gauge of the new Mrs de Winter's failure to meet the standards set by Rebecca de Winter, and her presence deepens the narrator's sense of insecurity and displacement.

Identity and Role

Alice is a senior housemaid at Manderley, a member of the domestic staff who has served under the previous Mrs de Winter. She is first mentioned when Mrs Danvers tells the narrator that Alice has unpacked for her and will look after her until a personal maid arrives. The narrator, who has never had a maid, awkwardly declines the offer, and Mrs Danvers responds with a look of scorn identical to the one she wore when the narrator dropped her gloves on the first day. Alice's role is thus established from the outset as part of the apparatus of Manderley's rigid household hierarchy, a hierarchy that the narrator, with her humble background and lack of servants, is ill-equipped to navigate.

The Underclothes Incident

The most significant encounter with Alice occurs when the narrator, having no personal maid, must rely on Alice for the care of her personal belongings. The narrator recalls seeing Alice with one of her chemises over her arm, examining the plain material with its small edging of lace. The expression on Alice's face is one of shock, as though her own personal pride had received a blow. The narrator had never thought about her underclothes before, believing that cleanliness and neatness were sufficient, but Alice's silent judgment teaches her a lesson. The narrator writes quickly to a shop in London for a catalogue of under-linen, but by the time she makes her choice, Alice is no longer looking after her, and Clarice has been installed instead. The narrator decides it seems wasteful to buy new underclothes for Clarice, who would not know the difference, and puts the catalogue away. The incident reveals the narrator's deep anxiety about her social standing and her fear that the servants discuss her inadequacies among themselves. She wonders whether Alice told the others and whether her underclothes became a topic of conversation in the servants' hall, something dreadful to be discussed in low tones when the men are nowhere about.

Narrative Significance

Alice functions as a representative of the old order at Manderley, a servant whose standards were set by Rebecca and who measures the new mistress against that impossible benchmark. Her silent, critical presence contributes to the narrator's pervasive sense of being judged and found wanting. The narrator's relief when Alice surrenders her to Clarice, a girl who has never been in service before and has no alarming standards, underscores the class anxiety that haunts the narrator's early months at Manderley. Alice's brief appearances thus serve to dramatize the gap between the narrator's humble origins and the expectations of her new role, a gap that Rebecca's ghost seems to occupy at every turn.