Rebecca-Daphne Du Maurier...weather before/after ball symbolizes/forshadows?

I am editing my answer to add this. Hitchcock did an amazing job with this movie. You truly feel the moods, the foreshadowing, the menace! If you have time, watch the movie. It is one of the few cases where I actually think the movie is better than the book. He was true to the book and brought the Gothic imagery to life. In his long career, Alfred Hitchcock directed many great films. Rebecca ranks as one of the greatest. It was the only Hitchcock movie to win a Best Picture Oscar and it was his first Hollywood film after leaving England. This was also the first film in which he adapted someone else's work, the famous novel by de Maurier.





As to your questions:





The weather mirrors the characters' moods. If you reread that part of the book, you will see it.





In the introduction of Rebecca, the narrator (who of course is Mrs. de Winter) describes a dream she recently had. “Last night, I dreamt I went to Manderlay again…” The dream is about her old home, Manderley. She describes the grand house, its vast gardens and wooded area, and its location near the sea. She imagines it, as it had once been, when she lived there. She describes the books and newspapers that would lay in stacks after being read, the warm fire they would sit near, and the dog that used to sit at her feet. The vision in her dream then turns to a description of how Manderley must look now. It is abandoned, no one is there to read newspapers by the fire or play with the dog. In fact the dog no longer lives at Manderley. The narrator describes how the gardens look; unkempt and the flowers have given way to weeds. The author is relieved they are no longer at Manderley because they had felt fear there. They are now staying at a hotel far away.The reader anticipates the telling of a story that will explain the narrator's current situation. There is suspense, not to what will happen but what happened in the past. Chapter 1 also presents the mystery of who the narrator's traveling companion is. It is not known what fear was felt that drove them away from Manderley.

Rebecca-Daphne Du Maurier...weather before/after ball symbolizes/forshadows?
Been a while but I do remember that the night after the ball, the storm unveils the remains of Rebecca's boat. Pax-C