Rebecca by SparkNotes

Author:SparkNotes [SparkNotes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 20

Summary

Sitting in the library with Jasper beside them, husband and wife discuss the true story of Maxim's marriage to Rebecca. She was beautiful, charming, and brilliant, he says, but she was also wicked, selfish, and deceitful. Their marriage was a sham from the beginning: on their honeymoon in Monte Carlo, they stopped at the same vista where Maxim would later drive the heroine, and Rebecca told him that she would be a perfect hostess, a wonderful mistress of Manderley; but that in return, he would have to let her live her life as she pleased. Because he loved Manderley and his family name, and wanted to avoid scandal, Maxim agreed. And so for years, everyone believed that he had a perfect marriage, and Rebecca turned Manderley into the greatest showplace in England. But all the while, she was spending her days in London, where she galavanted with a shady group of friends, or in the boathouse, where she took her various lovers. She had a voracious sexual appetite; she and her cousin Jack Favell were lovers, but she also tried to seduce Beatrice's husband Giles, and even Frank. And because appearances were maintained all the while, Maxim allowed the debauchery to continue.

But eventually Rebecca pushed her husband too far. One night, he went down to her cottage on the beach with a gun, hoping to frighten Favell with it. He found Rebecca alone, and told her that he would divorce her if she did not break off her relationship with Favell and her other friends. Rebecca laughed, and told him that he would never be able to prove any of her infidelities in a court of law: he would have no evidence, and all the servants would be on her side, and so would all who knew the couple and attended their galas. Rebecca proceeded to tell him that she might tame her behavior anyway; she was pregnant with Favell's child, which everyone would assume was Maxim's child, and which she would raise as heir to Manderley. Upon hearing this, Maxim broke down, and he shot her. He carried her to her sailboat, locked her corpse below decks, and then took the boat out to sea, where he drove spikes into the hull and rowed away in the dinghy, letting the boat sink. Months later, a drowned female body turned up in another town; thinking that it might belong to the mysteriously vanished Mrs. de Winter, authorities asked Maxim to come look at the body. To quell all suspicion, Maxim identified the body as Rebecca's, even though he knew that Rebecca's body was still where he had left it, at the bottom of the cove.

When she has heard this story, the heroine embraces her husband, and tells him that their situation is not as bad as he thinks: no one knows the truth except for the two of them; Maxim can tell the police that he made a mistake with the earlier corpse, and there will be nothing to make anyone suspect foul play.

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