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This September, the Meme from the The Classic Club is for members to pick a Classic a Clubber has read from the big review list, link it to the Clubber’s review and offer a quote from the post describing their reaction to the book. What about the post makes you excited to read that Classic in particular?

When I read the Meme I knew immediately whose review I was going to link to without referring to the review list mainly because I had already read it when she posted it on her blog. I had been so impressed with Jillian’s review of Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier because as I commented on the post, it clarified for me in a stark way, the origin of the  expression ‘Rebecca’s Apparel’.  Jillian’s synopsis:

Rebecca‘A girl who is never named is in Monte Carlo training to be a companion for a rich woman when she meets Maxim de Winter, the master of Manderley who is mourning his recently deceased wife, Rebecca. The narrator is clumsy, gauche, orphaned and ill-fitted for his world of marble and dinner parties, but she strikes an interest in him, and after several weeks, he proposes. She moves into Manderley to become the mistress of the sprawling estate — to tell Mrs. Danvers what to serve for dinner, to write letters to friends with Rebecca’s pen, from Rebecca’s desk, and to sleep in Rebecca’s bed beside Rebecca’s husband……………’.

In effect, this unnamed girl, apparently unfit, wears Rebecca’s Apparel. Does she fit in?

As I commented on Jillian’s post, the concept of ‘Rebecca’s Apparel’ under  Organisational Behaviour referred to managers who are reluctant to delegate duties to their deputies or next-in-line, so much so that in the absence of the managers, these deputies become unfit to put on ‘Rebecca’s Apparel’. because they do not have the requisite skills and competencies to do so or have not been trained by the bosses to fit in. Of course, the new Mrs. Maxim de Winter might not be fit to put on Rebecca’s Apparel; she is of a lower class.

‘Du Maurier was writing right in the midst of the Modernist era, but her story is a straightforward, old-fashioned Gothic thriller. That means a beautiful setting, tangled woods, and lots of supernatural electricity in the read. There, there, and there!’

Reading Jillian’s brilliant post, I was struck at how the various disciplines interweave. I also love thrillers, Gothic or modernist, and so must read Rebecca at all cost. This means that my CC list is sure to be up by 1.

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