"An empty house can be as lonely as a full hotel."

The chapter starts off with Mrs. Van Hopper getting ill, making it impossible for her to leave her room. This opens the opportunity for the narrator to leave and have some freedom that she is so seldom accustom to experiencing. The narrator goes to the restaurant in the hotel where she sits alone to have her meal. She nocks over the vase of flowers on the table and makes a mess in front of the man sitting at the table next to her, Mr. de Winter. He insistently invites her to sit with him, where they awkwardly work their way into a conversation. Foreshadowing!

She tells him all about her life, from her childhood to her current employment. Both of her parents had passed on, her father from a bad case of pneumonia. When asked, she reveals that she is not a friend of Mrs. Van Hopper, rather an employee. Mrs. Van Hopper pays her a yearly salary of ninety pounds to be her companion. Mr. de Winter then takes her on a wild night out. They travel the mountains to a cliff that oversees the ocean. When they arrive, Mr. de Winter goes into a dream like state, where the narrator says that he's unresponsive. I wonder if something significant happened here before? Did someone die there, or was there a happy occasion that occurred there (wedding, etc)? "I was there some years ago, with my wife" (40).

After leaving the cliff, Mr. de Winter talks to her about their day together and thanks her for such a great time. He talks little about Manderley, in fact, the only thing we find out is about the flowers around the premises. Why is it so secretive? It seems as though Manderley is such a sensitive topic to him. Through the narrator's observation, the point is brought up that we don't know why he's left for the time being. Did Mr. de Winter kill someone at Manderley and is escaping the crime scene? When the narrator returns to the hotel, she reads through the book of poems he let her borrow. She also discovers that someone drown in a bay by Manderley: Rebecca. Did Mr. de Winter kill Rebecca?! Nailed it!

Finally, the quotation, "An empty house can be as lonely as a full hotel" (25) is such a symbolic item in this chapter. From this quotation, it seems as though Mr. de Winter is exceptionally lonely and his famous home is only beautiful to the naked eye. It also may be the first clue that the narrator may be moving in and to fill the emptiness at the Manderely estate.

Vocabulary-
despondency (24)- low spirits caused by loss of hope or courage

Literary Devices & Important Quotations
Characterization