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Why does Daphne du Maurier never give the latest Mrs. de Winter a name? She is one of the very few characters in Western literature to have no name. What is the effect on the reader, to never know this important character's name? Does the fact that she has no name make her unimportant, or does her anonymity make her stand out in your mind?

You know, the first time I read the book it didn't even occur to me that Mrs. de Winter didn't have a first name. I think the fact that it is written in the first person makes it less likely that do hear a name. How many of us ever say our own names in regular conversation?

I think it has more to do with emphasizing how she feels less important that Rebecca...

I think she remains unnamed as to emphasize that she is an "intruder" in Rebecca's place. It is easier to convey that someone is taking another person's place if we are not given that person's name. For example the protagonist is always talking about how it's Rebecca's chair, Rebecca's coat that the items cannot be then called oh this is now susan's chair... it shows Rebecca's lingering presence haunting manderly 

In my opinion, the fact that she remains nameless enforces her insignificance and inferiority in comparsion to Rebecca. The fact that she is only referred to as 'Mrs De Winter' also builds up the link between herself and Rebecca... almost as if her likeness to Rebecca is increasing as the novel progresses.

Actually there are many situations where women do not have a personal name in literature, for example the narrator of The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman. We often assume a woman has a name when actually her identity is given only through her title and her married name. I am sure that Du Maurier was emphasising the fact that the narrator is impressionable and destined to 'become' whomever society moulds her to be. Her title of Mrs De Winter is so alien to her that she puts the telephone down when she is called with the title.