Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier: do you believe that Rebecca truly was a psychopath?

I finished Rebecca 2 days ago and loved it. The character that grabbed my attention most was Rebecca herself.

What made Rebecca so interesting was that the only detailed descriptions we have of her are from 2 people who are obsessed with her and hence completely unreliable:

Maxim murdered her, which immediately rules out anything he says . He an obvious interest in the protagonist believing Rebecca was evil and deserved it.

(Side point that claiming their wife is evil/insane is a common tactic used by abusive husbands to excuse their abuse. Whilst insane women do exist, abusive husbands are rather more common, and Maxim was proven to be one of them by his treatment of his second wife.)

Mrs Danvers was obsessed with her and her description of how Rebecca didn't actually like the men she saw could very easily have been Mrs Danvers' wishful thinking, or even Rebecca giving her that impression to keep her loyal.

To be clear, Rebecca was a horrible person – she was cruel to Ben and mistreated her horse. But there is a massive chasm between someone who can be mean, and someone insanely evil.

So what does everyone think? Was Rebecca evil?

*****

Personally, I have a theory:

We know that Rebecca told Maxim something that disgusted him only a few days after marriage. We know she is extremely promiscuous and emotionally volatile.

So Rebecca was married to her new husband. They are happy, but then she tells him something that horrifies him.

What if she was confiding something in him, not wishing to turn him against her, but to be open with her new husband? She sees his rejection and quickly offers to be a good wife and manage Manderly if he allows her to look for love elsewhere. He agrees.

So what did she tell him?

Well it would have to be something terrible but something that would embarrass him to even be connected with it. So something taboo.

Obviously many women are promiscuous because they want to be and they enjoy it, without any other reason. But some women are promiscuous as a result of sexual abuse suffered at a young age.

What if this happened to Rebecca? At the hands of a close relative. And she confided in Maxim, who was disgusted by what he saw as incest.

So that was something i immediately wondered when I read the book. Thoughts?