What is the significance of rebecca de winter in the novel "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier?

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BookRags Premium ($$) - "Rebecca"





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Spark Notes - "Rebecca"





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Summary and Analysis





As Rebecca begins, the Second Mrs. de Winter talks about her dream that she has returned to Manderley. Supernatural powers allow her to pass through the gate to her house. She realizes that things have changed as nature encroached upon the property. Finally she sees the house, Manderley, which is now desolate. She says that sometimes in her dreams she goes back to an earlier time that began for her in the South of France.





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Rebecca - In life, Rebecca was the beautiful, much-loved, accomplished wife of Maxim de Winter, and the mistress of Manderley. Now a ghost, she haunts the mansion, and her presence torments the heroine after her marriage to Maxim.








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Summary





Rebecca's narrative takes the form of a flashback. The heroine, who remains nameless, lives in Europe with her husband, Maxim de Winter, traveling from hotel to hotel, harboring memories of a beautiful home called Manderley, which, we learn, has been destroyed by fire. The story begins with her memories of how she and Maxim first met, in Monte Carlo, years before.











The Heroine - The novel's protagonist and narrator; we never learn her given name. A shy, self-conscious young woman from a lower-middle class background, she begins the novel as a paid companion to Mrs. Van Hopper, a wealthy American woman. In Monte Carlo, she meets and marries the older, wealthy Maxim de Winter, and becomes "Mrs. De Winter," mistress of Manderley.





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Kevin, Liverpool, England.

What is the significance of rebecca de winter in the novel "Rebecca" by Daphne Du Maurier?
She was Maxim's first wife whom he hated and who was a devious, cruel woman.
Reply:I know WHO she is...she was Max DeWinter's vivacious, sexual, callous, driven and cunning deceased first wife. She's so captivating that the first person character (Max's 2nd wife) who is writing the book never mentions her own name.





The backbone of the story is Max's 2nd wife's search to find her own place against the backdrop of Rebecca's history, which is so vivacious that our pov character seems a shadow, herself.





It's so hard to say what Rebecca was. She is different things at different times because at all times she is viewed through the mistaken point of view of the 2nd Mrs. DeWinters. The 2nd Mrs. DeWinter thinks that Rebecca was Maxim's true love (but she wasn't); Mrs. Danvers seems to think Rebecca was an ideal human being (but she was far from it) and the pov character is unaccountably captivated by the myths of Rebecca that threaten to strangle her marriage.





But I never understand significance questions. I need more specific questions to understand what is being asked.