Abstract:
The prejudiced attitude of the English novelist Daphne du Maurier’s
contemporaries towards her novel Rebecca, 1938 and their inattentive
reading of the novel established the motive for this research. Critics of the
time thought it had no sufficient merit for systematic study and placed it
among lowbrow popular literature. It was shunned by chief critical studies,
and du Maurier was condemned as an idle dreamer. Their claim rested on
shaky assumption that it was a romantic novel. The aim of the researcher is
to conduct a critical analysis of the novel to refute their allegations and
confirm it as a worthy piece of literary creation by clarifying the depth and
mysteries it contains. To achieve that aim, the pluralistic or eclectic
approach, which maintains that effective criticism requires the use of all
methods, is employed. The researcher has questioned the conventional
methods used in the assessment of literary works underlining their
inadequacy to offer a concrete conceptual definition for this purpose.
Accordingly, the two claims of the research title have been addressed. The
discussion of the traditional definitions of romance has proved the nonromanticism
of the novel in that sense. It is still confirmed as a romantic
story as seen from its author’s perspective and her perception of romance
abstracted from her article on romantic love, hence the ‘genuine romantic’.
The second segment, ‘typical British contemporary novel’, is predicated on
the researcher’s arguement against the aforementioned accusation that
Rebecca is a stale piece of fiction. This has been disproved through testing
the novel against the British literature in the 1930s. The study is hoped to be
a beneficial contribution in the literary and academic provinces and to profit
other researchers to carry out further related studies.
