Book· 1938· Thriller
Rebecca: 1 recorded work traces back to it, and it draws on 1 recorded source.
Works that record this one as a source, with the evidence a contributor gave.
Hitchcock's first American film adapts du Maurier's novel closely, with Joan Fontaine as the unnamed second Mrs de Winter and Laurence Olivier as Maxim. The main change was forced by the Production Code: in the film Rebecca's death is an accident rather than a killing.
The works this one is recorded as drawing on.
Rebecca's story runs along Jane Eyre's: a young, poor heroine marries an older, brooding master of a great house, a first wife overshadows the marriage, the house keeps a secret about her, and it ends in fire. MEDIUM, recorded on those parallels, which are the standard comparison between the two novels. Du Maurier was a massive, documented fan of the Brontë sisters—she even wrote a biography of their brother, Branwell Brontë. However, despite critics continuously pointing out that Rebecca fundamentally mirrored Jane Eyre from the very week it was published in 1938, du Maurier chose never to confirm that she purposely used Charlotte Brontë's blueprint.