After Beatrice and her husband depart, Maxim is eager to take Mrs. de Winter on a walk with him. The approaching rain storm doesn't stand in the way, as he instructs Robert to go and find her a raincoat. With Jasper, they scurry across the lawn into the woods. On their walk, Mrs. de Winter self-consciously asks Maxim about her hair, and other insults Beatrice made against her. Maxim replies earnestly with, "'Beatrice can sometimes be infernally unintelligent'"(109). The couple then arrives at what Max calls "Happy Valley." Happy Valley is a beautiful, nature filled valley that is covered with magnificent flowers.
Happy Valley opens Mrs. de Winter up. She finally feels welcome and in place: "There I was an interloper, wandering in rooms that did not know me, sitting at desk and in a chair that was not mine [at the estate]. Here [Happy Valley] it was different. The Happy Valley had no trespassers" (111). All while Mrs. de Winter is day dreaming, they continue walking until they reach the beach. As they arrive at the beach, Maxim notices that Jasper has run away. Mrs. de Winter hears him and goes after him, but Maxim screams for her not to go. Why does he not want her to continue on? Is there something he's hiding beyond the beach? Perhaps a body?
Mrs. de Winter finds Jasper with a man who had "the small slit eyes of an idiot, and the red wet mouth" (113). Jasper keeps running from her, so she asks the man for a piece of rope. He seems to be illiterate, so she rushes into cottage on the beach in hopes of finding a piece. She notes how particular the cottage is, how orderly, and how untouched it seems to be. She finds a piece of rope and exits the cottage to find the man watching her closely. He says, "'She's gone in the sea, ain't she?' 'she won't come back no more" (115). I wonder who she is? Rebecca?
After she meets back up with Maxim, they get in a heated discussion about the cottage. Maxim isn't happy that the door is open in the first place, or the fact that Mrs. de Winter entered the cottage. It must have something to do with memories from his past: Rebecca! In fact, he says, "I will never go near that bloody place [the second beach] or that God-damned cottage" (118). Is this possibly the place that Rebecca died? On their way back, they come out on a path that Jasper wanted to originally take, as it was routine to him. Maxim wanted to avoid it.
As they return to the house, Maxim demands tea time. Frith helps Mrs. de Winter take off her rain coat, when he notices that she has dropped her hanker chief. She picks it up and shoves it in her pocket. It is not until later when she is cleaning her fingers that she realizes it is Rebecca's. It has her lipstick stain on it, and has kept the last scent: "And then I knew that the vanished scent upon the handkerchief was the same as the crushed white petals of the azaleas in the Happy Valley" (121).
It's apparent that Happy Valley played a huge role in Rebecca's life. Perhaps she and Jasper would go on walks, daily, to the cottage and spend time there? Kind of, she was killed there. Well, sort of. Right outside of Happy Valley. Or, perhaps the cottage is somewhere that her and Maxim would escape the busy lifestyle of Manderely, and the memories he made there haunt him to return? No, he just shot her there, so I'm sure the cottage haunted him.
Vocabulary:
rivulet (111)- a small stream
Literary Devices & Important Quotations
Characterization
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