BOOK CLUB Academiae Obscuriae – “Rebecca”

The Academiae Obscuriae Book Club returns to the shadows of great houses, where the dead are never quite gone. This time we read two novels about second wives and the ghosts who outlive them: Rebecca, by Daphne du Maurier, and A Sucessora, by Carolina Nabuco.

In Rebecca, a shy, nameless young woman marries the wealthy widower Maxim de Winter and follows him to Manderley, his imposing estate. There she finds that his first wife, the beautiful and adored Rebecca, still rules the house through its rooms, its servants (above all the chilling Mrs Danvers) and the silence of her husband. The more the new Mrs de Winter tries to find her place, the more she is crushed by the memory of a woman she can never equal.

A Sucessora, a Brazilian classic set in Rio de Janeiro, follows Marina, who marries the widower Roberto and enters a home still shaped by his late wife, Alice. Surrounded by her memory, by family pressure and by her husband’s silences, Marina struggles to build an identity of her own. The novel’s striking parallels with Rebecca have long fueled debate among readers and critics, and it is well worth reading in its own right.

Together, these two books invite a discussion of jealousy, memory, insecurity, class, marriage and the unsettling power of the past over the present.