"Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me."
That is the famous first line of Rebecca, book by Daphne Du Maurier that was released in 1938. I've never read a book by Du Maurier before, and I've never read a book with an unidentified heroine. first a little grating, but I believe the author's has a motive in it. We already knew how the ending in chapter 1, but as soon as we start reading chapter 2, we will start to understand what is happening.
"We can never go back again, that much is certain. The past is still too close to us."
The Unnamed, or the narrator, is a young orphan girl who works as Mrs. Van Hopper's companion while she is on vacation in Monte Carlo. A wealthy Englishman named Maxim de Winter, a widower in his forties, strikes up a friendship with the unnamed narrator, a gullible young woman in her early twenties. She decides to marry him after a fortnight of romance, and after the nuptials and honeymoon, she travels with him to his mansion in Cornwall, the lovely estate Manderley. The narrator later become The New Mrs. De Winter and the mistress of Manderley.
"We came to Manderley in early May, arriving, so Maxim said, with the first swallows and the bluebells. It would be the best moment, before the full flush of summer, and in the valley the azaleas would be prodigal of scent, and the bloodred rhododendrons in bloom."
There is an evil housekeeper in Manderley named Mrs. Danvers. She didn't like The New Mrs. De Winter, because she devoted to the late Mrs. Rebecca De Winter who died in accident last year. She makes repeated psychological attempts to undermine the narrator, implying quietly that she will never match Rebecca's charm, beauty, and sophistication. When these things are made, the narrator becomes envious.
