Looking at shrubs, the girl exclaims that shrubs are: slaughterous red, luscious and fantastic... something bewildering, even shocking... To me a rhododendron was a homely, domestic thing, strictly conventional... these were monsters... too beautiful I thought, too powerful; they were not plants at all." (70)

It turns out that these had been planted by Rebecca, her pride and joy. The lesson of an 'over-natural' and therefore deviant female sexuality is being mapped out.

Rebecca is powerful and superior in the eyes and imaginary world of the girl. She starts loathing her 'innocence' for she craves sensual appeal of Rebecca. She is so immersed in her amplified and glorified version of Rebecca that she cannot read into others' often negative description of Rebecca and connects everything to her puffed-up image of the dead woman. For example when Ben, a local boy, tells her 'You're not like the other one.... She gave you the feeling of a snake' (162), she completely ignores the negative connotations and instead equates the word snake with power and sensuality. Her feelings of inadequacy are further aggravated with Mrs. Danvers, the housekeeper's, stories about Rebecca. It is Mrs. Danvers who tells her that Rebecca "...was never one to stand mute and still and be wronged.'I'll see them in hell, Danny,' she'd say.... She had all the courage and spirit of a boy.... She ought to have been a boy.... She did what she liked, she lived as she liked. She had the strength of a little lion.... She cared for nothing and for no one." (253 -5)

The second Mrs. De winter develops such a deep sense of inferiority...

For once she feels as powerful and successful as Rebecca was in her imagination:
Everybody looked at me and smiled. I felt pleased and flushed and rather happy. People were being nice... It was suddenly fun, the thought of the dance, and that I was to be the hostess. (218)

This is when she actually felt like Rebecca and submitted to her superiority:

There was nothing quite so shaming, so degrading as a marriage that had failed.... Rebecca was still mistress of Manderley. Rebecca was still Mrs. de Winter... I should never be rid of Rebecca. Perhaps I haunted her as she haunted me. (242 -4)

But it is only near the end that she realizes that Rebecca was not a good person and that she was indeed a bad wife. All her false stories about Rebecca and her flawed images of her are suddenly pitted against the reality when her husband confesses:

She was vicious, damnable, rotten through and through. We never loved each other, never had one moment of happiness together. Rebecca was incapable of love, of tenderness, of decency. She was not even normal. (283)

However with her complicated relationship with Rebecca, Mrs. De winter finally comes to accept herself. She develops a better sense of self which helps her become a more confident adult. This results in a more satisfying relationship between Maxim and Mrs. De winter which is what the girl had always desired.

Reference

DU DAPHNE MAURIER (1938), Rebecca (London: Victor Gollancz; (1975) London: Pan).