“Few writers (Elena Ferrante comes to mind) have been so aware of how women excite one another’s imaginations,” Parul Sehgal wrote in her appreciation of du Maurier’s work. It is, after all, the power play between Mrs. Danvers and the new Mrs. de Winter for Rebecca’s affections in life and death, that gives Rebecca its fascinating, gender-bending take on the classic thriller.

Similar to Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley novels, Rebecca is a book about about homosocial (even homosexual) obsession. In Highsmith's The Talented Mr. Ripley, wherein readers first encounter the shapeshifting titular character, Tom becomes obsessed with playboy Dickie Greenleaf. When Tom realizes his feelings aren’t reciprocated, he plots Dickie's murder and the ultimate con: to become Dickie himself. In Du Maurier's Rebecca, the new Mrs. de Winter doesn’t have to worry about a threat in the flesh, because Rebecca is dead. Yet in the process of becoming the second Mrs. de Winter, she also finds herself becoming obsessed—and perhaps even falling in love—with the lingering memory of Rebecca.

Related: Poet of Apprehension: The 9 Best Patricia Highsmith Books

Du Maurier always described Rebecca as a novel about the all-consuming and dangerous power of jealousy. It was a topic the author may have known something about. Her husband, Sir Frederick Browning, had previously been engaged to a woman named Jan Ricardo. Du Maurier once came upon a bundle of love letters written by Ricardo to Browning, each signed with that sweeping “R.” Ricardo committed suicide later in life, and it is said that du Maurier was haunted by a lingering suspicion that Browning still carried feelings for his former lover.

Rebecca at 80: The Thrillingly Subversive Work of Daphne du Maurier

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