Novel Houses

摘要

'Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again. It seemed to me I stood by the iron gate leading to the drive, and for a while I could not enter, for the way was barred to me. There was a padlock and chain upon the gate…Then, like all dreamers, I was possessed of a sudden with supernatural powers, and passed like a spirit through the barrier before me. The drive wound away in front of me, twisting and turning as it had always done, but as I advanced I was aware that a change had come upon it...'. So runs the famous beginning of Daphne du Maurier's novel Rebecca. Most of the narrative is located in a fictional country house, Manderley, in Cornwall, sometimes claimed to be based on an actual house known to the author, Menabilly. The advantage of a fictional house over an actual one is that it has its own life, relating to an imagined story, it can take any form the author wishes. The beginning of Rebecca is so effective because the reader is already from the first words moving forwards on a dream of motion, as in a film, through the overgrown woods, into the central location for the narrative.