How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
I was like a little scrubby schoolboy with a passion for a sixth-form prefect, and he kinder, and far more inaccessible. (5.9)
Mrs. de Winter describes her early relationship with Maxim as kind of platonic. She likens herself to a schoolboy, and Maxim to "sixth form prefect," which is something like a senior class president. Interesting how she casts herself in a male role.
Quote #2
I remember that, for I was young enough to win happiness in the wearing of his clothes, playing the schoolboy again who carries his hero's sweater and ties it about his throat choking, with pride. (5.11)
Again, Mrs. de Winter puts herself in a male role when describing her take on her relationship with Maxim. What do you make of it? Why not a schoolgirl instead of a schoolboy? Would this have changed the image?
Quote #3
[Manderley] would know a period of glorious shabbiness and wear when the boys were young – our boys – for I saw them sprawling on the sofa with muddy boots, bringing with them always a litter of rods, and cricket bats, great clasp-knives, bows-and-arrows. (7.44)
Notice the emphasis on the male child: this is a thread throughout Rebecca. Manderley, we are told, can only be passed to Maxim's oldest son. We actually don't know what happens if he doesn't have one. Maybe it will go to Beatrice's son? In any case, the novel suggests that a married woman proves her value by producing sons. And this is the twentieth century!
Quote #4
"She had all the courage and spirit of a boy, had my Mrs. de Winter. She ought to have been a boy, I often told her that. I had the care of her as a child. You knew that, didn't you?" (18.118)
Mrs. Danvers is talking about Rebecca, of course, who is described as excelling in female roles, but taking on roles more socially acceptable for males as well. This includes, perhaps, her seeming willingness to have affairs, while Maxim (who maybe takes on the more traditionally female role?) broods and is powerless to stop her.
Quote #5
"'We could make you look very foolish, Danny and I,' [Rebecca] said softly. 'We could make you look so foolish that no one would believe you, Max, nobody at all.'" (20.75)
This supposed quote from Rebecca is interesting to us because it suggests that in a divorce proceeding, powerful women like Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers might have an advantage over a man like Maxim. Nobody will believe that she is capable of having wild sexual affairs, and that he is powerless to stop her.
Quote #6
"Maxim," I said, "can't we start all over again? Can't we begin from today, and face things together? I don't want you to love me, I won't ask impossible things. I'll be your friend and your companion, a sort of boy. I don't ever want more than that." (19.200)
This all goes down before Mrs. de Winter knows that Maxim killed Rebecca, when she's still worried that her bad costume choice has created an impossible rift between them. This time she very explicitly casts herself in a male. She goes as far as to suggest a platonic friendship with Maxim as a substitute for the passionate heterosexual love which she can't quite imagine them having.
Quote #7
"She looked very pale, very thin. She began walking up and down the room, her hands in the pockets of her trousers. She looked like a boy in her sailing kit, a boy with a face like a Botticelli angel." (20.67)
Maxim describes Rebecca as a boy just before he kills her. What's this all about? Is he trying to forget that he killed his wife? Is killing an angel-faced boy any better?
Quote #8
"She was not in love with you, or with Mr. de Winter. She was not in love with anyone. She despised all men. She was above all that." (24.119)
This line is often interpreted as suggesting that Rebecca might sexually prefer women over men, or that Mrs. Danvers would like her to. We can also read it more plainly: maybe Mrs. Danvers agrees with Rebecca and believes that romantic love is foolish.