Structure
Rebecca's Tale is set in the summer of 1951 in England. The action is centered in Kerrith and the surrounding area, including the district near Manderley. The book is narrated in the first person in the style of du Maurier; however, unlike the original book, the narrator changes with each of the four sections. Part one is told from the perspective of the septuagenarian Colonel Julyan, who had led the initial inquests into Rebecca’s death. Part two is told by Terence Gray, an original character whose ongoing investigations are driven by a mystery from his own past. Part three is an extract from a journal kept by Rebecca, detailing the events of her early life. The final part is told by Ellie Julyan, the Colonel's youngest daughter who cares for her father at home.
The narrative shifts produce a very different structure from the original Rebecca, as well as a more postmodern tone that emphasizes the various narrators' unreliability. Also, the book is sometimes placed in a separate genre: while Rebecca is classified as a Gothic novel (du Maurier detested its categorization as a romance), Rebecca’s Tale is often considered a mystery.
Read more about this topic: Rebecca's Tale
Famous quotes containing the word structure:
“Man is more disposed to domination than freedom; and a structure of dominion not only gladdens the eye of the master who rears and protects it, but even its servants are uplifted by the thought that they are members of a whole, which rises high above the life and strength of single generations.”
—Karl Wilhelm Von Humboldt (1767–1835)
“The verbal poetical texture of Shakespeare is the greatest the world has known, and is immensely superior to the structure of his plays as plays. With Shakespeare it is the metaphor that is the thing, not the play.”
—Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)
“Each structure and institution here was so primitive that you could at once refer it to its source; but our buildings commonly suggest neither their origin nor their purpose.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)