veryone knows she is a well-mannered high society lady. This is before she barks orders at her companion, telling her the coffee is “stone cold” and to immediately tell a waiter. In her actions she is domineering and abusive to the hired help, another character aspect she thinks is part and parcel of being high class. Once again it shows her lack of class, but this scene is intended to define character and it does. It demonstrates the paid companion being dominated and made to feel inadequate and servile by a manipulative older woman. This is exactly the position that the paid companion will be in later at Manderley, as she is dominated by and feels inferior to Mrs. Danvers. Hitchcock does more than shape narrative by giving us this perspective of the relationship between Mrs. Van Hopper, he also does it through extensive use of eyeline match. Hitchcock’s cinema is psychological cinema and his characters are drawn on human logic, emotion and id-like forces. He uses eyeline match extensively here to setup character and foreshadow future narrative. For examp
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