Who was the Anti-heroine in Daphne Du Maurier's famous novel REBECCA Actually Based on?

What history reveals is that she was a tragic woman named Jeannette Louisa Ricardo and her story has never been adequately told.

When Daphne Du Maurier first published her novel Rebecca, in August of 1938, she exemplified the practice that writers compose their best work when they write what they are familiar with, or emotionally connected to in some way. She performed this process naturally, long before the expression, “write what you know” came into vogue for writers struggling to create a viable or engaging story-line.

But Du Maurier did that very thing — she wrote what she knew, or what she thought she knew. And as with most writers, she used patterns and dynamics from her actual life to create the story of Rebecca De Winter, the tragic anti-heroine in her smash-hit novel, Rebecca. She even gave the character Rebecca a similar looking name as she had herself, with its implication of familial nobility.

Daphne Du Maurier is similar to Rebecca De Winter, in that in many European languages, families of noble birth have names which are preceded by a preposition, such as de, da, di, which mean “of” or du, des, del, which means “of the.” So, it is interesting to note how the fictional character Rebecca was similar in name to Du Maurier’s name in that one minute respect. The question is, why would Du Maurier do such a thing? Was she trying to identify with the glamorous character of Rebecca De Winter? Or was she making it known that the character and she herself were both from the same social strata?

What most people might not know is that the woman who was based on the character Rebecca was a lovely Englishwoman in her own right. She was two years older than Daphne Du Maurier, a woman named Jeannette Louisa Ricardo, who went by the nickname, Jan. And significantly, Ricardo was the first fiancee of Du Maurier’s husband Major Frederick Browning.

As more historical details are made available in the public domain, on Du Maurier’s life, from various biographers, some might say Du Maurier was flamboyant and even careless in the way she used this real woman’s persona to cannibalize for her novel, which in many respects was clearly quite autobiographical.

It is believed that Ricardo ended the engagement with Browning two years before Browning would marry Du Maurier on the rebound. It is also rumored that Browning had never been forthcoming about those details, that he never got over the heartache of losing his stunning first fiancee, with some claiming that Browning was actually devastated by the breakup.

In the novel Rebecca, there are many parallels to Du Maurier’s actual persona and history. The young blond wife in Rebecca was socially awkward, introverted and unsophisticated in much the same way Du Maurier was, particularly when she was younger and known to be extremely shy, almost to the point of being antisocial. Du Maurier was also married to a much older man, just like the nameless wife’s character in the novel.

*Major Browning was 11 years older than Du Maurier when they married in July of 1932 when Du Maurier was 25 and Browning, 36.

What many now believe is that Du Maurier constructed an idealized version of at least one aspect of her dream-self, portraying that character as the doomed yet wildly independent Rebecca De Winter. Du Maurier even went so far as to create a similar sounding name for the fictional character as she had herself.

The other side of the coin is that the nameless blond wife of Maxim De Winter appears to be an unconscious representation of Du Maurier’s true weak identity, her hidden persona, as it was projected onto the blank white page. But it is the ghostly, charismatic character of Rebecca that seduces the readership and it is the persona of the woman Rebecca was based on that I find equally fascinating, and tragic.

Jan Ricardo was born in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire in July of 1905 to a life of wealth and privilege, just as Du Maurier would be two years later in 1907. Ricardo’s father, Lieutenant-Colonel Wilfrid Francis Ricardo and her mother, Norah Bell, named her after her grandmothers, Jeannette Bennett Bell, and Louisa Jane Perry Ricardo. Ricardo’s father’s great uncle was the famous economist and politician, David Ricardo, who worked in Parliament. Other Ricardo family members served in Parliament as well.

“Although Jan Ricardo’s ancestors’ were Sephardic Jews from Portugal who moved to Holland and then to England in the 18th century, she, her parents, and siblings were practicing Catholics and moved in upper-class Catholic social circles. Both Jan and Rebecca, described as strikingly attractive, dark-haired, mercurial young women, were associated with London, glamour, modernity, and the excitement of the Roaring Twenties.”

Jan Ricardo’s early life in London is difficult to track, but there are clues here and there. She was first introduced into London society as a seven-year-old bridesmaid at the wedding of an aristocratic couple who were friends of her parents, in July of 1912. As a young woman Ricardo attended numerous debutante dances and weddings of her wealthy friends and became known as a gracious and captivating social butterfly, all during the Jazz Age of the twenties.

Two noteworthy newspaper announcements appeared in the London Times in 1929. The first announcement shares that the anticipated wedding of Major Frederick Browning and Miss Jan Ricardo will be postponed. The second announcement states that the marriage will not take place, a sudden and odd turn of events, to say the least.

Major Browning, who was nicknamed both “Tommy” and “Boy” would go on to marry Daphne Du Maurier some two years later. But shortly after their engagement was announced, as Du Maurier was rummaging through Browning’s things in his home, she found a cluster of intimate letters held together with a satin ribbon hidden in the back of a desk drawer. Old love letters to Browning from his first fiancee, Miss Jan Ricardo, of London.

As is common with young insecure women, Du Maurier began to obsess and fixate on the letters, asking Browning about them. In time she became convinced that Browning still loved Jan Ricardo. She became irrational and jealous in much the same way the nameless blond wife becomes obsessed with the character Rebecca, in Du Maurier’s novel of the same name.

Du Maurier became further captivated with Jan Ricardo’s confident and sloping handwriting, and her distinctive tall, and elegant “R” with which she signed her last name, Ricardo. Du Maurier’s handwriting has been described as “tiny” chicken scratch that was not particularly attractive. It seemed Du Maurier compared herself to Ricardo in literally any way she could and she always wound up lacking.

Ricardo’s distinctive penmanship would become the basis of the idiosyncratic handwriting in the novel Rebecca, with the large R which is seen all throughout the book, appearing on stationary letterhead, address books, dinner napkins, and embroidered on pillow cases, and handkerchiefs.

So much of Du Maurier’s life is infused in the novel Rebecca that it becomes obvious she has written a novelized account of her own early marriage to Frederick Browning. Even the mythic mansion Manderly is a clear reference to an actual mansion Du Maurier loved and lived in for over 26 years. The mansion was a place she leased, and restored at great expense, called Menabily which is essentially, Manderly in almost every detail. It was a mansion that she fought to own, litigated over and ultimately was evicted from by the Rashleigh family who had owned the house and acreage since 1589.

In the end, though, the character of Rebecca became the construct of a busy, ambitious writer. Du Maurier did rely on the workings of her imagination, to a degree, when she crafted the character, but she relied on other things to come to her conclusions about the character and how she would present it. She used the letters Jan Ricardo had written to Browning, she used Ricardo’s own distinct physical characteristics, and coloring, and she relied on another more dangerous source of information — gossip!

Du Maurier engaged in a relentless campaign of information seeking. She asked all her London friends about Jan Ricardo, people who knew her, people who had merely seen her on the street shopping, friends and neighbors who had interacted with her, because they moved in many of the same social circles of the London aristocracy. Du Maurier scoured the newspapers and society columns for any mention of Ricardo in print, and she collected those snippets of information secretly, including photographs, in a secret stash in her private office, much like a stalker might collect newspaper clippings of their beloved.

It is highly likely that while engaged in that process, Du Maurier’s obsessive behavior was revealed to Jan Ricardo at some point, as a warning by mutual friends, as they knew so many of the same people.

What I believe Du Maurier was able to determine as a result of her obsession was that in comparison to Ricardo, she was lacking.

Many fans of Du Maurier often remark on how “Beautiful” she was, but in reality she was not beautiful at all. Her coloring was attractive. She had pale blond hair (which she lightened with hair dye) and large blue eyes, and was quite slender, but from looking at photographs, Du Maurier, even when young, could hardly be described as traditionally beautiful. She further had a mannish gait and was reputedly extremely uncomfortable in dresses and high heels.

Du Maurier’s main flaw however, is a lower jaw which protrudes, a condition called “Prognathism” which is an extension or protrusion of the lower jaw, (mandible). This condition is also called an under-bite, and from photos, particularly as Du Mauier aged, it is apparent she suffered from this condition, as well as having a face that appeared angular, extremely melancholy, and almost masculine.

Daphne Du Maurier in her forties, circa 1950s, already with her habitual melancholy.

Jan Ricardo in comparison had a thoroughly feminine persona, an oval face, a pale roses and cream complexion, a fine nose, full red mouth, and high cheekbones, along with very nice dark hair. She enjoyed wearing formal gowns, Mink coats, and high heels. To put it simply, Ricardo looked like an aristocratic English Lady should look, while Du Maurier resembled a farmer’s daughter, sun-kissed from too many hours spent outdoors riding horses and working the land.

In interviews over the decades of Du Maurier’s career as a writer and novelist, she often made derogatory comments about her appearance and how ordinary and mundane she felt she looked. She joked about how she had no sense of fashion and was most comfortable in jeans, overly large sweaters and loafers. The reality is, she was being honest and truthful in her assessments. Du Maurier was an attractive woman, but she was never beautiful in the way Jan Ricardo was beautiful.

By using gossip and gathering information in this way, the danger was that Du Maurier began to resent Ricardo for the very physical attributes and qualities she lacked herself. She resented Ricardo for the legendary social poise, the vivaciousness and the confidence that Jan Ricardo seemed to possess in ample measure and for which she was known.

This lacking was conveyed to Du Maurier every time someone spoke of Ricardo in a complimentary fashion, having remembered seeing her at parties, political functions or charity events. Ricardo was consistently praised and described as witty, easily sociable, confident, beautiful and an excellent hostess. The fixation Du Maurier had must have become toxic in some way. Because in the end, Du Maurier turned Jan Ricardo into Rebecca De Winter, having completely given in to her dark side and the jealousy she was burdened with. In her own mind, Du Maurier must have continually come out with the short end of the stick, in comparison to Ricardo.

When writing the novel, did Du Maurier ever wonder that Jan Ricardo might be recognized as the basis for the character, Rebecca? Did she wonder that Ricardo would perhaps recognize herself as the character?

Did Du Maurier even care if that happened?

As readers, and researchers we need to ask ourselves these types of important questions, because the reality is, they matter. When using a real person as the basis for a characterization in a novel, is there some aspect of the morality of that which we should consider before we proceed?

Today, in 2022, in most countries, such a predicament could result in a legal situation, in a lawsuit. But in 1938 there were few such protections and the reality is that nothing could have been done about Du Maurier’s novel once it had been published, which would not have further humiliated Jan Ricardo in the process.

There were laws to protect individuals from libel or slander if an individual’s characteristics or known persona were used as a character in fiction, but then the person impacted would have to file a lawsuit. In the case of an aristocratic person like Jan Ricardo, that would be unlikely to happen, in order to spare her family name the embarrassment of exposure. Silence and avoidance would have been the preferred method of dealing with such a situation brought on by a book like Rebecca.

It was a dirty trick that Du Maurier pulled. The cruelty of it is astounding, really. The implications of which 95 percent of the readership of the novel in the UK and America would never fully comprehend. But all of those in the English Intelligentsia, the London aristocracy, and even the Royal Family would have seen right through.

The Royal family of England associated with all three families — the Du Maurier family, the Ricardo family, and the Browning family and Du Maurier was often expected to join her husband on formal dinners with the English Royal family, an obligation she was known to detest because of her well-known social anxiety while in large formal groups.

Everyone in high society in England would have known and whispered about the real story of Rebecca, and how it came to be.

Ultimately, it is important, I think, to consider the way that Du Maurier depicted Jan Ricardo in such an unflattering light, as the character, Rebecca. When the character was depicted as a predator and a sociopath who goes after what she wants with no thought to what might happen to others, how did that harsh distortion impact Jan Ricardo on a personal or psychological level? Was it life altering, and did it follow her to her grave?

These are valid questions that deserve an answer.

To some degree Du Maurier wrote the novel Rebecca as a way of performing an exorcism of sorts and to perhaps have the last word against a formidable woman she clearly considered herself less than, and therefore a threat to her ego and false pride.

Du Maurier was dominated by the glamorous ghost of Jan Ricardo in her husband’s former life and she could not forgive Ricardo for that reality. Du Maurier obsessed about it, and must have wanted in some way to gain mastery over how Ricardo made her feel about herself. How that ghost impacted her relationship to her husband, who she feared still loved Ricardo became the impetus, I believe, for writing the novel Rebecca, that Du Maurier once admitted became a “gloomy” and grim, “study in jealousy.”

Du Maurier didn’t just create the story-line, snatching it out of thin air, in many respects she lived it. This was not an impersonal conjuring, this was a personal connection and some might even say, an abuse of power on her part.

In the filmed 1940 version of the novel, the character Maxim de Winter admits that he has murdered Rebecca, but did so he claims, because he hated her. Maxim condemns his first wife Jan/Rebecca, as a seductress who was “the devil” and caused him nothing but misery and unhappiness. His second wife, the nameless blond woman, (Du Maurier’s twin) is presented as a saint of beguiling womanliness. She is portrayed as a rescuer, a patient long-suffering caregiver who reads aloud, loves the outdoors, and sketches, the kind of eager to please woman most men would want as a kind of servant/wife, despite her awkward social presentation and lack of sophistication, confidence or style.

The nameless wife becomes determined to save her husband Maxim from the legacy of the evil Jan/Rebecca, and does what she can to help Maxim evade the punishment that would normally be given to a man who callously murders his wife. In the film this is done by striking Rebecca, after which she falls in the boathouse and: “…struck her head on a heavy piece of ships tackle,” which killed her.

At the time Rebecca De Winter is murdered, it is conveyed that she is dying of some form of mysterious cancer. She is poisonous in other words and being punished for her sins, namely her sexual sins, her wantonness, or sexual interest in men. By demonizing Jan/Rebecca, Du Maurier denies her the satisfaction of having won in the end. And the nameless blond wife, (or Du Maurier) is revealed as the true victor, and defender of womanly decency.

You see, good girls are not sexual, but bad girls are sexual and they must be punished, at least in the literary world, and in the world of cinema. The misogyny of Du Maurier using Jan Ricardo as the basis for the character Rebecca is unmistakable.

While doing research for this essay, I read the book Myself When Young: The Shaping of a Writer, by Du Maurier, published in 1977 when Du Maurier was 70-years-old. The book was originally published under the title Growing Pains: The Shaping of a Writer, but she didn’t like the original title and changed it sometime later. In one interesting passage, Du Maurier writes from the perspective of the child she used to be, and reveals an astonishing woman hatred.

The passage is particularly revealing: “Evil women were more terrible than evil men. Witches were worse than wizards. Wizards were just old men with cloaks and a wand. But witches did not have to be old, they were sometimes beautiful, and then you could not tell until it was too late.” (pg 11).

The literary dynamics employed in the writing of Rebecca were revealing wish-making on the part of Du Maurier, and her true, unconscious rage toward Jan Ricardo, as her husband’s first fiancee, probable lover and “evil” seductress.

What is truly known of Jan Ricardo and how can it be proven that she was not adversely impacted by the novel and subsequent film? History shows us that Jan Ricardo is mentioned again in the Times Newspaper in April of 1937, as Du Maurier was feverishly working on finishing her novel. Rebecca was published the following year, in 1938, and the film premiered in 1940 with actor Lawrence Olivier and actress Joan Fontaine to resounding success and worldwide adulation.

But during the spring of 1937, London newspapers were busy announcing the wedding of Jan Ricardo to the wealthy and respectable Ian Constable Maxwell, also a military man from a Scottish Catholic family known to be well connected aristocrats. Strangely, one of the guests at the wedding was Angela Du Maurier, Daphne Du Maurier’s older sister, with whom she had a sometimes competitive and strained relationship.

Word may have gotten back to Jan Ricardo that Du Maurier was writing a book and basing one of the characters on her. Perhaps Jan Ricardo knew Angela Du Maurier, or was friends with her and was hoping by inviting her, Angela would then invite her sister Daphne, too, as her guest, and Du Maurier and Ricardo could finally meet.

What is known of the wedding is that Du Maurier did not attend, but her older sister Angela did. The Du Maurier sister, probably also got Daphne Du Maurier entirely up to speed on the woman who used to be her husband’s fiancee, telling her how she looked, the kind of sleek dress she wore, how she did her hair, who else attended and what the general reception was.

What is further known is that the following year, in 1938, when the book was published, Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell, did indeed read it. This fact has been confirmed by numerous sources. While reading the novel, Du Maurier’s rival immediately recognized herself as the inspiration for the title character, the ghostly and sinister sociopath, Rebecca De Winter. She also recognized the blond, mousy introverted wife as Daphne Du Maurier. It is likely that everyone in Ricardo’s family, immediate, and extended, along with her wide assortment of friends, and acquaintances saw the connection as well.

What could this have done to Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell? How could this reality have impacted her? It must have been extremely troubling. To be depicted in such damning terms could not have been easy for any Englishwoman in 1938.

While the character Rebecca is a poisonous woman of deceit and cruelty, and never has a child, Jan Ricardo Maxwell did give birth April 26, of 1942 to a beautiful daughter, also named Jeannette.

No traces remain of the silenced voice of Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell, aside from a newspaper ad she placed in which she asked for applicants for the position of a maid. But we can presume from Ricardo’s unique, large and unforgettable penmanship, that she had a strong sense of herself and her own individuality. Perhaps she was a great reader, with favorite literature? Perhaps she held a large correspondence, as the character Rebecca was reputed to have done? Perhaps she was dedicated to various charities, as women in her position were often expected to do?

Ricardo’s voice may still survive in private letter collections and it would be fascinating to see if that is the case, but currently, few people know the real story of how this hugely popular novel, and film, impacted the woman it was based on — Mrs. Jeannette “Jan” Ricardo Maxwell.

What history further documents is that less than one month after Jan Ricardo Maxwell’s mother, Norah died at the age of 64, on July 6th 1944, Jan herself dies, too, August 4th, 1944.

On that hot day in August, Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell, for unknown reasons, hurled herself in front of a moving train and was killed almost immediately, her body likely mangled and her legendary beauty destroyed forever. There would be no open casket funeral for her. She was 39-years-old and left behind her husband Ian, and their two-year-old daughter, Jeannette Constable Maxwell. And like Rebecca in Du Maurier’s novel, her life ended in violence and in tragedy.

But why did Jan kill herself less than a month after her own mothers death? Was she close to her mother? Did she feel she had lost the one support she had in life, the one person who could help steer her in a stable direction?

The suicide of Jan Ricardo Maxwell would have been huge news in London society at the time. It would have spread like wildfire and Daphne Du Maurier would have been informed. The fact is, even in 1944, sources claim that Du Maurier still looked for any information she could find on Jan Ricardo Maxwell, as she was still very much obsessed.

Did the suicide impact her? Did Du Maurier care? Did she say anything to anyone? Did she send condolences to the grieving Ricardo family? Or was it just something she shook her head over and forgot the following week? Did the suicide of the woman she based her novel Rebecca on make her feel she had finally won? Did Du Maurier feel any manner of regret?

Did her difficult and well known perverse relationship with her own father, the actor Gerald Du Maurier dull any feeling of guilt or responsibility she might otherwise have felt for Jan Ricardo Maxwell? Or was Du Maurier so morally dulled by her own strange and exhausting history that she could not conceive she had even done anything wrong?

Daphne Du Maurier with her father Gerald, the famous actor, 1926, when Daphne was 19 and still living at home.

Did Du Maurier, (a woman many people suspected of having a sexual relationship with her own father) engage in that most convenient of defense mechanisms known as projection? When Du Maurier created the myth of Rebecca/Jan Ricardo Maxwell, being a common whore who slept with servants, and a practitioner of incest, was it merely so Du Maurier could transfer the guilt of her own sins onto a fictional character based on a living woman whom she was jealous of and probably disliked?

In another passage of Du Maurier’s revealing book, Growing Pains: The Shaping of a Writer, Du Maurier admits to a bizarre flirtation with her much older cousin that had incestuous undertones that even her father seemed to recognize.

She was 14 when the strange relationship began, writing: “So how was it that on a summer holiday at Thurlestone, in the midst of paddling and shrimping, aged fourteen just, I glanced up one day to see my thirty-six-year-old cousin Geoffrey, who had divorced his first wife and was staying with us in company with his second, whom he had lately married, look across the beach at me and smile? My heart missed a beat. I smiled back. But why? Where was the difference? I had known cousin Geoffrey all my life, he was fun, he was amusing, D (Du Maurier’s father) and he were the greatest friends and companions, for there were only twelve years between them. So why, why that particular smile? I knew instinctively that we shared a secret. The smile was ours. As the August holiday progressed so did the understanding, and this was something that must not be told to others. He would wave to me from the golf course, a special wave that D did not see, and after lunch, when we all lay out on the lawn like corpses to catch the sun, rugs on our knees, Geoffrey would come and lie beside me, and feel for my hand under the rug and hold it. Nothing, in a life of seventy years, has ever surpassed that first awakening of an instinct within myself. The touch of that hand on mine. And the instinctive knowledge that nobody must know.” (Pg 61).

Later, Du Maurier reveals her father’s apparent concern when her cousin Geoffrey takes her on a walk.

“The holiday came to an end, and the morning he left he said, “Come and have a last look at the sea.” I followed him. We did not speak. Then suddenly he turned to me. “I’m going to miss you terribly, Daph,” he said. I nodded. Then he looked up at the cliff above, and we saw D staring down at us. “There’s Uncle Gerald spying,” he laughed. “We’d better go.” (Pg 62).

Clearly, Du Maurier was motivated by sexual impulses that can only be described as unnatural. The question is, why would she be so motivated? Was she the victim of incest? Was that part of why she alluded to incest in her novel, Rebecca?

I suppose none of us will ever know how Du Maurier responded to the news of Jan Ricardo Maxwell’s suicide, unless of course someone from the Du Maurier family, or the Ricardo family were to share Du Maurier’s letters, or Jan Ricardo Maxwell’s letters, diaries or other written statements that may exist.

But I suspect that Du Maurier was indeed shaken by the suicide. How could she not have been, knowing as she did, that it was she who had callously used the identifiable persona of a high status woman who was connected to her so closely, and in such a tangible, documented and emotionally charged way?

A 1967 photo of the old Stevenage railway station in Hertfordshire, England where Jan Ricardo, the woman Du Maurier based the fictional character Rebecca on, committed suicide in 1944. Ricardo threw herself in front of a speeding train, leaving behind her husband and two-year-old daughter.

Though Du Maurier tried for years to quell the persistent rumors that the details in her fictional novels were in fact deeply connected to her real life history, it becomes clear, upon investigation, that there are countless similarities between her novels and her real life. This includes, obviously, her novel Rebecca, and her excellent novel, The Parasites which she published in 1950, when she was 43.

In the novel The Parasites, the reader sees much of what Du Maurier was experiencing herself after her long marriage to Frederick Browning. Weekend visits and a growing sense of distance, melancholy and dissatisfaction on the part of one of the characters husbands’ is displayed for the readership.

After a blow up one rainy night, with raindrops trickling down the living room window panes, the husband hisses that his wife and her two siblings are all “parasites” and it disgusts him how they “feed” off of one another. Daphne Du Maurier had two siblings and the similarities between the three siblings in the novel The Parasites and Du Maurier’s own family of actors and artists is unmistakable to the shrewd researcher of the Du Maurier family history.

The novel Rebecca was instantly popular, racking up incredible sales. Most critics liked the ultra-romantic qualities and the Gothic tone the book had. But there were just as many critics who declared the text to be a bit too similar to another famous work. This accusation was especially common in America. The book then, and even today is often compared as a blatant copycat to Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë with its identical dynamics and plot twists.

Shortly after Du Maurier published Rebecca, she was accused of plagiarism by two women writers who said she had stolen their stories. “First was Carolina Nabuco, the Brazililan writer of A Sucessora. In 1941 she publicly accused Du Maurier of stealing her story, which centered on a dead first wife (this time named Alice). The New York Times Book Review wrote a lengthy, scathing piece headlined “The Long Arm of Literary Coincidence,” excoriating du Maurier: “So numerous are the parallels,” it declared, “that one may find them on almost each page.”

Du Maurier was forced to go to court and defend the writing of her book, and ultimately she did win the case, but it has been revealed that she was petrified of being questioned about the connection to Jan Ricardo as the basis for the character Rebecca.

In a biography about Du Maurier, the writer Tatiana De Rosnay uncovered quite a lot. “She found and hid photographs of Ricardo, writes Tatiana de Rosnay in the du Maurier biography Manderley Forever. Her curiosity turned to jealousy, then fixation. Though there’s no evidence Browning and Ricardo ever met in person again, Du Maurier remained convinced her husband was still attracted to his gorgeous old flame — or worse, that he was still in love with her. When Du Maurier would later defend Rebecca in court, she dreaded any questions about her behavior in regard to Ricardo: “I was so terrified of that coming up in the box and making publicity that I was nearly off my rocker,” she later said, according to de Rosnay.”

The second writer to accuse Du Maurier was again a woman writer. “That novel was Blind Windows by Edwina MacDonald — who indeed had filed charges that brought Du Maurier to America for the first time to defend Rebecca. Much like A Sucessora — and Jane Eyre too — the work features a young narrator who hastily marries a wealthy older man, moves into his manor filled with servants, and becomes increasingly jealous of his first wife (here, Della). But since no one could prove Du Maurier ever read Blind Windows, the case was thrown out of the New court.

Shortly after her husband Frederick Browning had a well-known “nervous breakdown” in 1957, he was found to have three mistresses all residing in London. One that Du Maurier particularly disliked, whom she called “the Snow Queen,” telephoned her one day. This woman angrily chastised Du Maurier and told her that Browning’s breakdown was her fault because she was a bad and unloving wife. Browning would eventually “retire” in 1959, having been expelled from his military duties with the Royal family for some unexplained reason.

Browning later died of a heart attack in 1965 after years of alcoholism and essentially living alone in London. Browning passed away suddenly, in Du Maurier’s presence in her beloved Menabily, after which she was forced to move from the residence to a nearby house a couple of years later, which was also on the Rashleigh property.

It has been reported that Du Maurier became extremely depressed shortly before she died in April of 1989, writing alarming and despairing letters to her friends, letters that were filled with regret for things she had done in the past. But regret for what, or for whom? Her unhappy failed marriage to Frederick Browning, whom she had nicknamed “Moper” and the ways she literally shunned him, cutting him off sexually, or regret at what she had done to Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell?

In 2020, a Netflix remake was made of the great 1940 Hitchcock masterpiece Rebecca, starring actor Armie Hammer, and actress Lily James. While watching a scene from the series, I was struck by the similarity between Jan Ricardo Maxwell, and a portrait of Rebecca used in the series. The Painting is said to be of Mrs. Hugh Hammersly, maiden name Miss Mary Frances Grant, painted in 1892, when she was 29, by American artist John Singer Sargent, often called the “leading portrait painter of his generation.” The resemblance to Jan Ricardo Maxwell is frankly unnerving and I wonder if that is why the painting was used in this series. 

This is a painting of Mrs. Hugh Hammersly, (formerly Miss Mary Frances Grant) painted by American artist John Singer Sargent in 1892 when she was 29-years-old.

As a lifelong reader and hugely dedicated fan of Daphne Du Maurier, (I was fifteen when I first read The Loving Spirit) I hero worshiped Du Maurier for the better part of the last three decades and have read nearly all her works. But recently, learning as I have, of the way she crafted the hit novel Rebecca, and that she callously modeled the deformed and maligned character after a real London Englishwoman, a contemporary who moved in Du Maurier’s own social circles, I have to admit I feel a sense of saddened surprise and incredible disappointment.

Du Maurier should have exercised more restraint and she should not have been so cruel.

There are literary tricks an author like Du Maurier could have employed that would not have made it so obvious the character Rebecca was taken from a real person, down to the height, hair color and the size of Jan Ricardo’s small feet. The character could have been shorter, or red-haired, or had a strange laugh, or some manner of idiosyncrasy that would have not made it so obvious who the character was modeled on. But instead, Du Maurier chose, intentionally I believe, to use every feature she could that was in fact identifiable with Jan Ricardo Maxwell’s known persona and appearance.

I’ve read Du Maurier’s novel Rebecca several times over the years, and I will always love it, as beautifully written as it is also atmospheric, something Du Maurier was known for, but I will never read Rebecca in the same way again. I will read Rebecca differently in the future, knowing as I do that other eyes read the book, and recognized herself on the pages. I will read the book knowing that Jan Ricardo Maxwell read it as well, wondering what must have passed through her troubled mind as she did so. Dismay? Horror? A deep sense of hurt or wonderment — why me?

I will never read Rebecca in the same way again.

It is possible and even likely that Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell felt haunted by the success of the novel Rebecca which was later made into a hit film. It is likely and even possible that this woman felt unjustly singled out and perhaps even exposed in some way. She was never given any form of compensation or acknowledged publicly in any way as the person the character Rebecca was based on. But “everyone that mattered” would have known the truth, the truth of the 1938 novel, and the truth of the 1940 film.

Ricardo’s peers, personal friends, family members, and acquaintances, and London high society in general most certainly would have known about the connection, and recognized Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell as the maligned and deformed character, Rebecca from the novel. The character who sleeps around, including with her cousin, engaging in incest, the character who tries to have sex with the servants of Manderley — a literary grotesquerie, with no redeeming qualities, (other than physical beauty) a hideous aberration, a moral abomination and a poisonous woman who literally decays from the inside out.

What did the legacy of the novel and film do to Mrs. Jan Ricardo Maxwell? How did it impact her psyche? How did it follow her? Did she hear the snickers, the malicious gossip, the whispers? The comparisons between Maxwell and the doomed character Rebecca must have followed her everywhere. Did the book destroy her personal life? Did the success of the novel and later, the film, isolate her socially, contributing to a sense of hopelessness and despair?

Did the book Rebecca turn Jan Ricardo Maxwell into a pariah? Is that why she threw herself in front of that train during the summer of 1944, only six years after the book was first published?

Was obliteration preferable to living in the sinister shadow of Du Maurier’s phantom character, Rebecca?

~Theresa Griffin Kennedy