Contributed by Jonathan Yardley, the longtime Washington Post book critic emeritus, this analysis of Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier explores how it may have been influenced or inspired by Jane Eyre. Almost from its inception in 18th-century England,  Charlotte Brontë‘s gothic novel has been adored by readers; critics, not so much.

For the fastidious ladies and gentlemen of the quarterly reviews and academe, its central conventions — nature red in tooth and claw; haunted castles atop windswept moors; defenseless young women at the mercy of strange, obsessed men with terrible secrets; bondage, imprisonment, sexual torment and ambiguity, raging fires — are simply too too. Read More→