![]() In both novels a vulnerable young woman takes up residence in a forbidding country house, but as if stating a preference, Du Maurier appears to take the name of her diabolical housekeeper Mrs Danvers from that of the accountant Danvers who “manages the estate” in Uncle Silas. Yet Bronte’s influence may wend its way through the pen of Sheridan Le Fanu, whose Gothic thriller Uncle Silas (1864) offers an appreciably darker retelling of Jane Eyre and one in which Bronte’s Irish blood comes to the surface. If the second Mrs de Winter seems to be frozen within her predecessor’s shadow, we may fancy that this corresponds with some inevitable admission of inadequacy on Du Maurier’s part at following in Bronte’s footsteps. Daphne Du Maurier’s Rebecca (1938) is often presumed to be a retelling of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre(1847), and whilst this is not necessarily untrue, it is hardly uncomplicated. ![]()
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