What could be a motif for Rebecca in Rebecca?

What an interesting question! Of course, Rebecca in this
excellent novel is a rather fascinating character, because she never once appears in the
flesh, rather living on in the imagination of the unreliable narrator that tells us this
story and also in the memories of other characters, such as Mrs. Danvers. When I first
saw this question, my immediate response was to link the house of Manderley with
Rebecca, and having thought about it, I want to stick to this initial response. The
house of Manderley is somewhere where the narrator never feels comfortable. It is marked
by Rebecca's indelible presence and routines, and she is always made to feel lacking or
wanting when she compares herself to the way Rebecca was and how she managed Manderley.
In addition, if we look at the way Manderley is introducted when the narrator first
arrives there, there is a distinct sense of fear and doom in the way it is described.
Note how even the drive, as described in Chapter Seven, gives this
sense:

The
drive twisted and turned as a serpent, scarce wider in places than a path, and above our
heads was a great collonade of trees, whose branches nodded and intermingled with one
another, making an archway for us, like the roof of a church. Even the midday sun would
not penetrate the interlacing of those green leaves, they were too thickly entwined, one
with another, and only little flickering patches of warm light would come in
intermittent waves to dapple the drive with gold. It was very silent, very
still.

The drive is compared
to being a serpent with its obvious allusion to evil, temptation and deceit. The trees
keep the drive from light and warmth, plunging it into a kind of darkness, which could
be metaphorical of the darkness that the narrator endures for most of the novel. The
character of Rebecca seems so bound up in the character of Manderley itself, that it is
only natural to think of Manderley as being a kind of motif for Rebecca herself. I
always think of "The Fall of the House of Usher" and the way that the deaths of Roderick
and Madeline result in the "death" of the house itself, and the same could be said with
Manderley's end. When the phantom of Rebecca is finally killled off, Manderley dies with
her.