We Didn't Start the Fire
A look into the ending of the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
The following newsletter contains MAJOR SPOILERS for the novel Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier, so if you haven’t read the book yet… what are you doing, read it! It’s so good! Come back here once you’re done.
Last week, we had a blast discussing Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier on The Novel Tea podcast. I absolutely loved reading this book and loved discussing it with Shruti even more. The story is so gripping, and things are left just ambiguous enough, that there can be many analyses of the characters in this novel.
Much is unsaid in the last chapter of Rebecca which leaves readers to interpret what happens in their own ways. A few things are for certain, Mrs. Danvers is gone, Manderley is burning, and Maxim and the narrator will never return here again. Other things are revealed as the book develops which leads us towards different theories, and some of these theories are definitely more popular than others. Here’s a compiled list of the theories that I came up with, ranked from most likely to least likely.
The hills rose in front of us, and dipped, and rose again. It was quite dark. The stars had gone.
“What time did you say it was?” I asked.
“Twenty passed two,” he said.
“It’s funny,” I said. “It looks almost as though the dawn was breaking over there, beyond those hills. It can’t be though, it’s too early.”
“It’s the wrong direction,” he said, “you’re looking west.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s funny, isn’t it?”
He did not answer and I went on watching the sky. It seemed to get lighter even as I stared. Like the first red streaks of sunrise. Little by little it spread across the sky.
“It’s in the winter you see the northern lights, isn’t it?” I said. “Not in the summer.”
“That’s not the northern lights,” he said, “that’s Manderley.”
I glanced at him and saw his face. I saw his eyes.
“Maxim,” I said. “Maxim, what is it?”
He drove faster, much faster. We topped the hill before us and saw Lanyon lying hollow at our feet. There to the left of us was the silver streak of the river, widening to the estuary at Kerrith six miles away. The road to Manderley lay ahead. There was no moon. The sky above our heads was inky black. But the sky on the horizon was not dark at all. It was shot with crimson, like a splash of blood. And the ashes blew towards us with the salt wind from the sea.
— The last page of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
Theory 1: Mrs. Danvers Started the Fire
Near the end of the novel, after Maxim is officially charged as not guilty of killing Rebecca, something peculiar happens. Mrs. Danvers ups and leaves Manderley with almost no warning.
“He thinks Mrs. Danvers has cleared out. She’s gone, disappeared. She said nothing to anyone but apparently she’d been packing up all day, stripping her room of things, and the fellow from the station came for her boxes at about four o’clock. Frith telephoned down to Frank about it, and Frank told Frith to ask Mrs. Danvers to come down to him at the office. He waited, and she never came. About ten minutes before I rang up, Frith telephoned Frank again and said there had been a long-distance call for Mrs. Danvers which he had switched through to her room, and she had answered. This must have been ten past six. At a quarter to seven he knocked on the door and found her room empty. Her bedroom too. They looked for her and could not find her. They think she’s gone. She must have gone straight out of the house and through the woods. She never passed the lodge gates.”
This passage is crucial to the idea that Mrs. Danvers started the fire. Not only did she ship out her own belongings before setting the place aflame, but she also staged leaving the estate with eyewitnesses to claim that she was not in the house that evening. The biggest clue here is that she was never seen passing through the main lodge gates, which leads me to believe that she was staking out in the woods nearby, waiting for the perfect moment to set fire to the home of her beloved Rebecca. However, it’s important to remember what the narrator said at the beginning of the novel:
“Mrs. Danvers. I wonder what she is doing now. She and Favell.”
This suggests that Mrs. Danvers was never seen or heard of again and is probably alive and well.
Theory 2: Mrs. Danvers Started the Fire (again)
In the Rebecca movie (2020), Mrs. Danvers flees the scene after setting fire to Manderley and heads straight to the ocean to mirror her fate with Rebecca. Here, she is confronted by Maxim, curses him with an unhappy life, and jumps to her death.
Though we do hear the narrator wondering about Mrs. Danvers’ life at the beginning of the novel, Rebecca, there is no evidence that she is actually alive. As the 2020 movie portrays, there is a possibility that she ends her life after burning down Manderley. I don’t love the 2020 movie interpretation of her jumping off a cliff because it doesn’t track with Mrs. Danvers’ character for me. She would be acting out of pure emotion, and in this moment, she would be overcome by anger and grief. The anger is taken out by setting the estate on fire, but the grief would lead me to think she would be sitting in Rebecca’s old room, holding her belongings, and letting the falling, burning timbers take her away.
Theory 3: Jack Favell Started the Fire
Jack Favell was Rebecca’s cousin and her most frequent lover. After Rebecca’s death, it seems that Favell and Mrs. Danvers have become friends through secret meetings when Maxim is not around. Once Rebecca’s body is found, Favell and Mrs. Danvers may have been working together to ensure Maxim’s exoneration, but when this fails, they decide to move their belongings, burn the place down, and run away together.
Jack Favell would have no problem sneaking into Manderley as he has so many times before to meet with Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers. Favell may have planned a safehouse far away (which could have been the long-distance call that Mrs. Danvers took before escaping), and Mrs. Danvers creating a scene with her leaving would have been the perfect distraction.
Theory 4: Rebecca Started the Fire
Daphne Du Maurier took inspiration from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë, and though there is no real madwoman in the attic, there is a paranormal essence throughout the story. Until we find Rebecca’s body near the end of the book, I did find myself questioning whether the narrator was being haunted by the ghost of Rebecca.
It is interesting to read this book through the lens of Rebecca being alive, not in body, but in spirit. Her memory is the most haunting element of the book, and her presence is always felt in Manderley, through flowers, clothes, decisions, and routine. Could this felt presence have the ability to I don’t know, maybe knock over a lit candle and set the place on fire, as a final act of vengeance?
Theory 5: Maxim Started the Fire
If you listened to our episode about Rebecca on The Novel Tea podcast, you’ll know how this theory sprouted, and though it is the unlikeliest theory, it is probably my favorite one.
I fell into a strange and broken sleep, waking now and again to the reality of my narrow cramped position and the sight of Maxim’s back in front of me. The dusk had turned to darkness. There were the lights of passing cars upon the road. There were villages and drawn curtains and little lights between them. And I would move, and turn upon my back, and sleep again.
At the end of Rebecca, Maxim is racing back to Manderley with a hunch that something is wrong. After speaking with Frank Crawley on the phone, he mentions that Mrs. Danvers is mysteriously packing up her things and acting suspiciously. Maxim decides to drive through the night, while his wife slept in the back of the car, having nightmare after nightmare in a broken and disturbed sleep.
After facing the possibility of a lifetime in jail, and confessing his sins to his wife about Rebecca, I don’t think that Maxim could have ever happily lived in Manderley without the ghost of Rebecca’s memory haunting him forever. It’s crazy but possible that during the narrator’s sleep, Maxim made a few stops on the way to Manderley to talk to his friend, and potential accomplice, Frank Crawley. We already know that he spoke to Crawley over the phone once, to find out that Mrs. Danvers was packing up and leaving, but is it possible that Maxim and Crawley’s conversation was more than that?
Frank Crawley always stayed loyal to Maxim, and if Maxim had second thoughts about returning to Manderley, he could have convinced Frank to burn the place down so that Maxim and the narrator could finally move on and live happily together.
Do you have a favorite theory on the ending of Rebecca? Are there other theories you have that didn’t make this list? I’d love to hear about it! Leave a comment below.
Very interesting theories. No cliff-jumping, the bay at Polridmouth (a beach I know well, and the setting for the boathouse below Menabilly, where Du Maurier lived) doesn't have high enough cliffs! Although you can easily wade out, into the tide.....
I always understood the plot to be signalling that Mrs Danvers had despaired at learning that Maxim had been allowed to go free, because she believed he had killed her beloved Rebecca (as he had). So she ended her life and destroyed his Manderley, in one night. She burns the shrine to Rebecca - and sacrifices herself.
Love these theories! I definitely think it was Mrs. Danvers 🔥☄️☄️☄️