How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
"That's what I do to Jasper […] I'm being like Jasper now, leaning against him. He pats me now and again, when he remembers, and I'm pleased, I get closer to him for a moment. He likes me in the way I like Jasper." (9.131)
Jasper, as you probably remember, is the dog. So, what does this have to do with sex? Well, Mrs. de Winter is thinking about the way Maxim touches her without passion. This probably extends to their sex life as well.
Quote #2
I've come into this room time and time again and seen him, in his shirt sleeves, with the two brushes in his hand. "Harder, Max, harder," she would say, laughing up at him, and he would do as she told him. (14.23)
Wait a second: this doesn't really have to do with sex. It's just about Maxim brushing Rebecca's hair. But still, there something sexual about Mrs. de Winter's description, isn't there?
Quote #3
"She looked beautiful in this velvet. Put it against your face. It's soft, isn't it? You can feel it, can't you? The scent is still fresh, isn't it? You could almost imagine she had only just taken it off. I would always know when she had been before me in a room. There would be a little whiff of her scent in the room." (14.27)
The Production Code Administration at the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America deemed this aspect of the scene, where Mrs. Danvers gives Mrs. de Winter a tour of Rebecca's room, too sexually suggestive to stay in Alfred Hitchcock's film version. Why do you think this might be?
Quote #4
"She would take them bathing from the boat, she would have a picnic supper at her cottage in the cove. They made love to her of course; who would not? She laughed, she would come back and tell me what they had said, and what they'd done. She did not mind, it was like a game to her. Like a game." (18.135)
Mrs. Danvers is confirming Maxim's claims that Rebecca was sexually promiscuous. We don't see any reason she would lie, unless Rebecca was lying to Mrs. Danvers. Notice that Mrs. Danvers' claim comes conveniently before Maxim's, so Mrs. de Winter is already primed to believe it when he tells her.
Quote #5
"[Rebecca] sat there, laughing, her black hair blowing in the wind; she told me about herself, told me things I shall never repeat to a living soul." (20.35)
Well, we wish he would tell a soul, because these inquiring minds want to know! Since Mrs. Danvers has already told Mrs. de Winter that Rebecca had affairs, it's easy for Mrs. de Winter (or readers, anyway) to assume a sexual context.
Quote #6
"If I had a child, Max," she said, "neither you, nor anyone in the world, would ever prove that it was not yours. It would grow up here in Manderley, bearing your name. There would be nothing you could do. And when you died Manderley would be his. You could not prevent it. The property' s entailed. You would like an heir, wouldn't you, for your beloved Manderley?" (20.77)
Max is quoting Rebecca, and telling Mrs. de Winter his motive for murder. If we believe him, Rebecca is claiming she plans to pass off another man's child as Max's. There isn't any Maury Povich running around with his who's-the-daddy DNA kit, so if she was pregnant, she would have been able to do this easily. "Entailed" means that Manderley can't be sold, and Maxim has no control over who gets it. It will automatically go to his first-born son.
Quote #7
He ran his fingers through my hair. Different from his old abstracted way. It was not like stroking Jasper any more. I felt his finger tips on the scalp of my head. Sometimes he kissed me. Sometimes he said things to me. (21.56)
See, we told you that quote from Chapter 9 had to do with sex. Maxim isn't absently petting Mrs. de Winter like a dog any more. Now that his murderous secret is out, so too, it seems, is his sexual passion for Mrs. de Winter.
Quote #8
"I wonder what you have been doing. Leading Frank Crawley up the garden path?" (23.114)
Favell seems to keep sex on the brain at all times. We love his euphemism for adulterous sex – leading up the garden path. We'll have to use that one. Favell's comments allude to what Mrs. de Winter already knows: there was some sort of hanky-panky between Frank and Rebecca.
Quote #9
"Love-making was a game with her, only a game. She told me so. She did it because it made her laugh. It made her laugh, I tell you. She laughed at you like she did at the rest. I've known her come back and sit upstairs in her bed and rock with laughter at the lot of you." (24.121)
Hmm. This kind of talk from Mrs. Danvers makes us wish we could talk to Rebecca and find out about her real views and feelings concerning sex.