Monte Carlo is significant in Rebecca because it is where the unnamed narrator meets Maxim de Winter, her eventual husband. Monte Carlo has a rich history in gambling, wealth, and upper-class culture. It was officially established in 1866 after the development of its famous tourist-attracting casino which was built to improve Monaco’s economy. In the article by Paul Franke, “Nobody Came to Monte Carlo To Be Bored”, Franke informs the reader that Monte Carlo is particularly founded on gambling, entertainment, and luxury tourism. In Rebecca, Monte Carlo represents social hierarchy and wealth, something that the narrator particularly grapples with throughout the entire book, often feeling out of place and as if her upper-class peers are able to tell that she originates from a lower class. Interestingly, like the narrator herself, Monte Carlo started as an undeveloped, humble place, but was transformed for the desires of the wealthy into something almost unrecognizably grand and lavish. I think that Monte Carlo is very important in illustrating not only the narrator’s development, but the overall atmosphere she is placed in, the one we as the readers are immersed in; mapping Monte Carlo on COVE reveals how the real history of the settings in the novel tie into and establish the intimidating, grandiose atmosphere our narrator dives into head first and becomes lost in— as well as being almost a cautionary foreshadowing of the drastic changes she goes through in the novel and the roots they have in Maxim’s very English way of dominating and overtaking things.
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00961442221089863
https://www.montecarlosbm-corporate.com/the-company/history/
https://www.montecarlosbm.com/en