Women In Hitchcock's Hollywood Film

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Robert J. Corber opines that “Miraim represents the sexually “deviant” woman demonized by cold-war political discourse because she refuses to restrict her sexuality to the privatized space of the nuclear family. The subject of her own desire, she circulates freely among men. She returns the male gaze rather than submitting to it passively and refuses to function as an object of Guy’s desire and his alone. The scenes in which Bruno follows her at the amusement park are constructed in such a way as to excuse her murder”(115). The scene is shot from the point of view of Bruno making sure that spectator identifies with Bruno who seems both attracted and repelled by her. Miriam actually allures Bruno to take her through her gestures and she stares straight at…show more content…
Miriam is one who priviledged of freewheeling and gets the due credit in the end. In Hitchcock’s Hollywood films we cannot find a Henry James’ Daisy Miller type American woman who are voluble, opinianated, passionate, flirtious, unselfconscious and natural in Hitchcock’s oeuvre. Hithcock presented reticent type women except little Ann Newton (Edna May Wonacott) who is an voracious reader and likes to share her observation with others in Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and the insipid partygoer Mrs.Cunningham (Norma Varden) in Strangers on a Train (1951) who giggles like a school girl when she becomes an object of demonstration of strangling. The other reticent types include Emma Newton (Patricia Collinge) and her silently observing daughter Charlie (Teresa Wright) both in Shadow of a Doubt, silently perspicacious and modestly eloquent Constance Petersen in Spellbound (1945), loyal and retiring Ann Mortan (Ruth Roman) in Strangers on a Train (1951) or her eager sister Barbara (Patricia Hitchcock) (Pomerance 107 -108). Hitchcock’s celebrated “Hitchcockian” blonds are more poised than expressive except Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) in Rear Window. But in Psycho Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is modest and
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