{"id":1915,"date":"2026-10-06T09:36:49","date_gmt":"2026-10-06T09:36:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/06\/taylor-swifts-new-video-marks-her-ghostly-return-to-daphne-du-mauriers-rebecca\/"},"modified":"2026-10-06T09:36:49","modified_gmt":"2026-10-06T09:36:49","slug":"taylor-swifts-new-video-marks-her-ghostly-return-to-daphne-du-mauriers-rebecca","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/06\/taylor-swifts-new-video-marks-her-ghostly-return-to-daphne-du-mauriers-rebecca\/","title":{"rendered":"Taylor Swift\u2019s new video marks her ghostly return to Daphne du Maurier\u2019s Rebecca"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2020, Taylor Swift told us<\/a> she read<\/a> Daphne du Maurier\u2019s Rebecca<\/a>, the 1938 bestseller about a young bride haunted by the memory of her husband\u2019s glamorous first wife. Swift described how it inspired her while she was writing Tolerate It for her ninth studio album Evermore, which came out the same year. <\/p>\n

The song was about trying hard to impress an older partner and going unappreciated. Swift explained that she\u2019d identified with the book\u2019s narrator, known only as Mrs de Winter (the successor of Maxim de Winter\u2019s late first wife, Rebecca): \u201cShe\u2019s trying so hard [\u2026] to impress him and he\u2019s just tolerating her.\u201d<\/p>\n

Six years later, Swift returns to Manderley \u2013 the fictional Cornwall estate in which Rebecca is set \u2013 with her new single Patient Zero and its self-directed music video<\/a>, which was unveiled at the VMAs<\/a> (the MTV Video Music Awards). It\u2019s the latest entry in the genre of Swift gothic<\/a>, a strand of her music that takes on doubles, hauntings and darkness. Gothic doubles pop up in the music videos for Anti-Hero<\/a> and Out of the Woods<\/a>, for instance.<\/p>\n

Swift says her new video was inspired by \u201cgothic ghost stories<\/a>\u201d and it\u2019s evident that Rebecca is one of them. But this time, rather than playing du Maurier\u2019s insecure new bride, Swift haunts the narrative as Rebecca.<\/p>\n

A house, a husband, a ghost<\/h2>\n

Last year, Swift told interviewer Stephen Colbert<\/a> that Rebecca has everything she looks for in a novel:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201c\u2026an old British mansion covered in moss or ivy \u2026 a mysterious relationship \u2026 a murder that has happened in the past \u2026 the idea of a ghost, or an actual ghost \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The music video for Patient Zero has almost every trope on that list. Dakota Johnson plays Colin Farrell\u2019s wife, shadowed everywhere by Swift, who wears the same clothes, mirrors her movements, and repeatedly knocks drinks out of her hands as the relationship falls apart. Swift turns out to be the ghost of Farrell\u2019s first wife, who he poisoned. <\/p>\n

The haunting in du Maurier\u2019s novel is not so literal, but the second Mrs de Winter is obsessed with \u201cRebecca, always Rebecca,\u201d seeing evidence of her everywhere she looks. Her jealousy is only deepened by the other characters, who like to tell her how \u201cdifferent\u201d she is from Maxim\u2019s late wife.<\/p>\n

\n<\/figure>\n

When Maxim throws a fancy-dress ball, she gets a costume made and is delighted when she sees herself, \u201cthis self that was not me at all\u201d, in the mirror. At the party, she finds her husband horrified because Rebecca wore the very same costume. In trying to escape comparison, she walks right into it.<\/p>\n

Patient Zero mirrors this scene when, at a party, Johnson\u2019s character takes a drink and turns to find Swift\u2019s ghost behind her, wearing an identical dress. The shock (and a little poison in her wine) causes her to collapse at the ghost\u2019s feet. In the car home, the husband compares the two women directly: \u201cI thought you were different.\u201d She asks: \u201cDifferent from whom?\u201d<\/p>\n

A rose for Rebecca<\/h2>\n

In du Maurier\u2019s novel, the second Mrs de Winter fears that she isn\u2019t enough like Rebecca. She projects her envy onto a woman she\u2019s never met, imagining that Rebecca wants Maxim \u201calone in the house again\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n<\/figure>\n

But Rebecca never gets to speak for herself. We learn about her through the narrator\u2019s insecurity and the mouth of the man who killed her. When Maxim confesses to the murder, the narrator assures him everything will be fine, because \u201cRebecca can\u2019t speak, can\u2019t bear witness\u201d. She is quick to help him cover up the murder when he tells her that he \u201cnever loved Rebecca\u201d, and after this she feels the ghostly presence disappear:<\/p>\n

\u201cShe would never haunt me again. She would never stand behind me on the stairs, sit beside me in the dining-room\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Swift seems to ask: what if Rebecca was never a rival at all? Patient Zero imagines the story from the perspective of the dead wife, and through that lens, where the ghost is a protector, Rebecca\u2019s sudden absence reads as horror. The novel\u2019s narrator is left alone with a murderer, believing they\u2019re so in love that she\u2019s in no danger of sharing Rebecca\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

Hitchcock\u2019s 1940 film adaptation<\/a> flinched from this possibility. Due to the Hays Code<\/a> \u2014 strict guidelines of moral censorship which governed Hollywood\u2019s output from 1934 to 1968 \u2014 Rebecca\u2019s death became an accident, silencing her all over again. Swift reinstates the killer husband in her music video, and with it, a new ending: the second wife leaves a rose on the headstone, a thank-you from one victim to another, and walks away unscathed.<\/p>\n

With Patient Zero, the woman who once sang about being tolerated returns to make the two Mrs de Winters into unlikely allies and give Rebecca what du Maurier never did: a witness who believes her.<\/p>\n

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

Emma L. Davies’ PhD is funded by the AHRC South, West and Wales Doctoral Training Partnership. <\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2020, Taylor Swift told us she read Daphne du Maurier\u2019s Rebecca, the 1938 bestseller about a young bride haunted by the memory of her husband\u2019s glamorous first wife. Swift described how it inspired her while she was writing Tolerate It for her ninth studio album Evermore, which came out the same year. The song […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1915\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/redzine.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}