Rebecca

Rebecca’s bold handwriting, with its towering “R,” is a recurring symbol in the novel of the first Mrs. de Winter’s undying powerful personality. The image of Rebecca’s signature, “the tall and sloping R dwarfing the other letters” (33), is especially utilized to convey the frightening dominance of the narrator’s predecessor. The insecure narrator compares herself to the imagined first wife when she views Rebecca’s slanted, almost brutal handwriting, “stabbing the white paper, the symbol of herself, so certain, so assured” (43). The sense of the dead Rebecca’s presence is perpetuated as the narrator notices “how alive was her writing though, how full of force” (57). Although the narrator attempts to destroy Rebecca’s continuing influence by cutting the title page containing her handwriting out of the poetry book, when she looks at the tiny pieces of the page, “Even now the ink stood up on the fragments thick and black, the writing was not destroyed” (57). The narrator sets fire to the fragments with a match, but “the letter R was the last to go, it twisted in the flame, it curled outwards for a moment, becoming larger than ever” (57), before crumbling to dust. The evil strength of Rebecca seems finally eradicated and the narrator feels hopeful about her upcoming marriage: “A new confidence had been born in me when I burnt that page and scattered the fragments.