Like Manderley, it was hidden in woods and could not be seen from the shore. A photograph shows Menabilly as unexpectedly plain, with an unreadable facade. Du Maurier fell in love with it and wrote about it before she ever lived there (uninhabited, its windows blinded by ivy, she saw it as 'asleep', waiting for her). Manderley was partly inspired by a real house in Cornwall, Menabilly. And by the end, we have been twisted too into a queasy collusion with the murderous Maxim de Winter. Like the narrative itself, Manderley is all twisted paths with no straight avenue in sight. Mrs Danvers, the housekeeper, with deviant devotion, keeps Rebecca's personal effects enshrined in its West Wing. It is fused with Rebecca, its most complicated ghost. The house is a love object, yet there is reason to hate it. Manderley is as powerful as any character du Maurier created.

Forster writes especially well about the way in which one house dominated du Maurier's life - as it does Rebecca (1938). That was her secret - she was a creator of atmosphere.' But to define that atmosphere is less straightforward. And several of them do.Īccording to her biographer, Margaret Forster, du Maurier used to make lists of what she hoped to achieve. She wanted the novels to continue to haunt us beyond their endings. She did not want to put her readers' minds at rest. Du Maurier was mistress of calculated irresolution. Why is it that du Maurier still has such a hold? Why do so many women writers (with the exception of PD James, who voted Rebecca as 'worst' novel) want to write about her? After spending the past weeks submerged in the novels, I can volunteer one thing, and it is not an answer, more the beginning of a question.

Daphne du maurier