Awesome / Rebecca

• After a lifetime of being bullied by servants as unimportant and useless, the heroine stands up to Mrs Danvers and starts actually managing the house. The crowner is when towards the end of the book, she orders a new hot lunch and Mrs. Danvers says this is not how Mrs. De Winter did stuff. Cue the response from our narrator: "I am Mrs. De Winter now" and this is how she runs things.
• When Maxim really starts freaking out, the heroine helps him cover every track of the murder, and remains much more level-headed than him.
  • The Chief of Police is reasonable about the investigation. He realizes that Rebecca must have goaded Maxim into killing her to be spared the painful death of ovarian cancer but there's no proof, and besides which Rebecca made Maxim's life a living hell. So he suggests casually that Maxim and his wife go to Switzerland, so that they can lay low until the heat dies down. They take his suggestion.
• Maxim is the king of delicious snark and Dissonant Serenity, but his reaction to being accused of his wife's murder takes the palm. The heroine isn't quite happy about it.
• Mrs Danvers herself gets a moment of awesome when she refuses to uphold Jack Favell's allegation that Rebecca had been in love with him and Maxim killed her as a result. Because Rebecca never loved any of her paramours.
  • Also, her burning down Manderley, granting Rebecca some vengeance from beyond the grave.
• The prologue reveals that the narrator and Maxim escaped Rebecca's influence abroad, and they are spending a content if not happy life in other people's company.
• One for the creative team of The Musical: Manderley going up in flames is terrifyingly realistic. To carry that out in close proximity to wood, electric wires, and a room full of people, is no small feat.

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