In Rebecca, the narrator is never named. What is the significance of this and what does it say about the narrator?

In Rebecca, the heroine is the
narrator, but she is also nameless. We know her only as Mrs. DeWinter after she marries
Maxim DeWinter, although Rebecca was the prior Mrs. Dewinter. By not giving the narrator
and heroine a name, the author symbolically illustrates that the heroine is living under
the shadow of the prior Mrs. DeWinter and until she can be rid of Rebecca’s ghost, both
literally and figuratively, she will not be able to thrive and her marriage will be
doomed. Also, the narrator was an ill-treated orphan, and until she marries and takes on
the name of her husband, she is a non-entity (a Victorian thing). The lack of a name
also illustrates the insecurity of the narrator in the beginning of the novel, trying to
live up to Rebecca's memory but not really understanding until the end that this is not
a good thing.

As the novel progresses, the reader slowly
learns that while it appears that Maxim loved Rebecca passionately and his new wife can
never replace her, this is very far from the truth. Mrs. Danvers, the evil servant who
was and still is psychotically devoted to her dead former mistress, has hidden the fact
that Rebecca was a purely evil woman that Maxim did not love. Mrs. Danvers hides
Rebecca’s true evil with her own evil.