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H itc h c o c k ’s W om en: R e c o n s id e rin g B lo n d e s a n d B ru n e tte s Megan Friddle Emory University

Film critics have devoted a significant amount o f time and energy to excavating the figure of the “Hitchcock Blonde.” This archetype is defined as an icy, reserved, attractive and extremely (often artificially) blonde woman, and illustrated most fully by the characters Madeleine in Vertigo (1958), Eve in North-bj-Northmst (1959), and Melanie in The Birds (1963). The Hitchcock Blonde is known for her smoldering sexuality, a quality fully revealed only in private. She is also supremely feminine, well-dressed, impeccably groomed, and always in full makeup. The figure o f the Hitchcock Blonde is often invoked by critics as an example o f Hitchcock’s sexism, or at the very least his desire to objectify women in his films.1 The Hitchcock Blonde is also the female figure to whom the most critical attention has been turned in Hitchcock studies. But the icy Hitchcock Blonde is a figure present almost exclusively in his American films o f the late 1950s and 1960s, and, therefore, not a useful cipher for his attitudes toward women in general. Though blonde actresses appear throughout Hitchcock’s oeuvre, the most interesting and complex characters are often brunettes.

Many of Hitchcock’s screenplays contain copious notes on costume for his actresses. Edith Head, costumer for many of his American-made films, noted that Hitchcock included costuming directions down to silhouette, garment, and color choices.2 To suggest that the hair color o f his female characters is simply the result o f happenstance— or a natural occurrence__ ignores Hitchcock’s extraordinary attention to detail in his films, particularly his focus on shadow and light, and the extensive color symbolism o f his American films. His casting choices were clearly made with the same precision.

The casting o f actresses in lead roles also concerned Hitchcock in terms of audience identification. Hitchcock knew from very early on that a significant portion o f his film audience consisted o f women. He understood that in order to be successful, he needed sympathetic female characters to whom male

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viewers might be attracted, and, perhaps more importandy, with whom female viewers could identify, particularly since his films move between traditional film genres, blurring the distinctions between mystery, thriller, spy film, and romance. While the Hitchcock Blondes o f the 1950s and 1960s represent a certain post-war version o f femininity that was remarkable in its artifice and tenuous performadvity, the female characters— blonde and otherwise— who people his earlier films often provide much less rigid examples o f womanhood. It is challenging to make sweeping generalizations about the female characters from across Hitchcock’s filmography due to the large variety o f characters that people his films; however, in his later films, one common thread is that many o f the Hitchcock Blondes have information withheld from them, and are simultaneously punished for the secrets they hide beneath their impeccable facades. The brunettes, on the other hand, keep and communicate important knowledge, for which they are frequently rewarded rather than punished.

In this article I argue for a re-imagining o f Hitchcock’s leading female characters, with an emphasis on a new archetype, the “Clever Brunette.” Sometimes mousy-brown in her hair color, sometimes nearly raven-haired, the Clever Brunette is observant, smart, tenacious, and often willing to sacrifice her traditional feminine qualities in order to prevent others from coming to harm. The Clever Brunettes 1 examine all emerge from the middle portion of Hitchcock’s film career, from films that were shot in black and white. These leading brunette characters include Iris Henderson from The Lady Vanishes (1938), the second Mrs. de Winter from Rebecca (1940), and Charlotte “Charlie” Newton from Shadow of a Doubt (1943). I also briefly discuss blondes from two o f Hitchcock’s early films, other brunettes in secondary roles who possess important knowledge, and the construction of femininity through costume, make-up, and fashion in Rear Window and Vertigo. By focusing on a wide variety o f women from Hitchcock’s British and American filmography, 1 hope to complicate the figure of the Hitchcock Blonde and direct critical attention toward the Clever Brunette.

E a rly H itc h c o c k B lo n d es: I n n o c e n c e a n d F e m in in ity

In The Women Who Knew Too Much, Tania Modleski argues for more nuanced readings o f Hitchcock’s films in response to a body of feminist criticism that accuses Hitchcock o f sadistic treatment o f women. She rejects the “monolithic” picture o f “male cinema” presented by Laura Mulvey because it offers only a position of “paralyzing nihilism.”3 Modleski observes that Hitchcock’s films “reveal the difficulties inherent” in the processes o f male and female socialization and “implicate the spectator in these difficulties as well.”4 She states her position as follows:

what I want to argue is neither that Hitchcock is utterly misogynistic nor that he is largely sympathetic to women and

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their plight in patriarchy, but that his work is characterized by a thoroughgoing ambivalence about femininity.5

While 1 agree with Modleski’s observation regarding Hitchcock’s ambivalence about femininity, I counter with the argument that his depictions o f women often present realistic social consequences and force viewers, both male and female, to experience the terror and anger o f his female protagonists. Hitchcock’s films do not present a utopian view o f the world as it could be; rather they reveal the world as it is.

Hitchcock’s early British films o f the 1920s and 1930s and his American films of the late 1950s and 1960s both feature a number o f blonde female protagonists a n d /o r romantic leads. This similarity appears to lead easily to the conclusion that Hitchcock preferred blondes, or that there was a certain kind o f blonde woman who typified femininity for him. Although Hitchcock frequently spoke about the blonde actresses he chose for later films, including Grace Kelly, Kim Novak, Eva Marie Saint and Tippi Hedren, the roles played by these women differ significantly from the blondes who appeared in his earlier films.

The female protagonists in The Lodger (1926) and Blackmail (1929), two of Hitchcock’s earliest films, bear a remarkable resemblance to one another. They are blonde, petite, and working-class. They both exude a kind o f innocent sexuality, and they are both placed in dangerous situations to which they must respond and act. For both women, the arts and show business play an important role, as do costumes and fashion. These early films may mark the beginning o f Hitchcock’s fascination with the Blonde, but later blonde characters differ in two important ways. First, the “Hitchcock Blonde” o f Rear Window, Vertigo, North-bj-Northwest, and The Birds is a wealthy woman, often spoiled by her moneyed upbringing, as compared to the working-class girls of the earlier films. Second, later blondes are sophisticated, often sexually, and not afraid to use sex— or the possibility of sex— to get what they want.

In The Lodger, the female protagonist, “Daisy,” is the daughter o f a working-class couple who own a boarding house. She works as both a performer and a model. Like many o f the performers in the show “To-Night Golden Curls, Daisy is a blonde. Since “the Avenger,” the murderer roaming the streets o f London, seems to prefer blondes, Daisy is marked as both vulnerable and a possible victim from the very beginning o f the film.

The dangerous romance that develops between Daisy and “the Lodger” does so seemingly as the result o f his obsession with her blondness. At several points in the film, the Lodger examines or actually caresses Daisy’s hair, exclaiming over her golden curls. In his essay “The Lodger and the Origins of Hitchcock s Aesthetic,” Richard Allen describes the scene where Daisy and the Lodger play chess together:

We return to the couple, [and] the Lodger is stoking a raging fire with his poker. He puts the poker down and impulsively

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reaches to caress Daisy’s hair. “Beautiful Golden Hair” he says, and they look into each other’s eyes before they nervously pull back and the camera withdraws to a less intimate distance.6

The Lodger’s attraction and anxiety over Daisy’s hair replays again when they first kiss and at the conclusion o f the film.

In Blackmail, the female protagonist, “Alice,” is a shopkeeper’s daughter and, as Tania Modleski notes, “one o f the first in a long line o f tormented blond heroines that Hitchcock features throughout his career.”" But unlike the “tormented blonde heroines” o f The Birds or Vertigo, Alice’s predicament stems from naivete rather than from overt risk-taking or sexual sophistication. In the course o f the narrative, Alice is caught between two difficult positions. First, she accompanies a man— who is not her boyfriend or husband— into his apartment, where he tries to rape her. In self-defense, she kills him with the kitchen knife he has left next to his bed. If she confesses to the crime and pleads self-defense, Alice must admit to a lapse in morality as well as murder.

Alice’s guilt is palpable throughout the film, for example when she wanders the streets o f London in a daze after committing the murder, and again during the chase scene, when the perspective repeatedly shifts to close- ups on a remorseful and agitated Alice. Modleski points to this theme o f women’s guilt— often sexual— as a primary preoccupation o f Hitchcock. But she stresses that:

while on the surface Blackmail seems to offer an exemplary instance o f Hitchcock’s misogyny, his need to convict and punish women for their sexuality, the film, like so many o f his others, actually allows for a critique o f the structure it exploits, and for a sympathetic view o f the heroine trapped within that structure.8

Later, Modleski suggests that Hitchcock’s "obsession" with tormented women “often takes the form o f a particularly lucid expose o f the predicaments and contradictions o f women’s experience under patriarchy.”11 His manipulation of audiences— male and female— through both suspense and camera work often results in the audience identifying with the tormented heroine: not simply observing her torment but experiencing it.

In addition to the reoccurring character o f the innocent blonde, The Lodger and Blackmail also introduce the trope o f the “room at the top o f the stairs,” which, according to Modleski, is associated “with sexuality and with danger and violence to a woman” (18). The Lodger’s room is placed directly at the top o f the stairs leading from the front door, and Daisy experiences a strange— and possibly dangerous— altercation with the Lodger here. In Blackmail, Alice is convinced to follow Crewe up to his studio at the top o f a flight o f stairs, and it is here that he tries to rape her. Both films rely on musical cues to

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enforce the importance of the stairs as a space o f transition and often danger. The camera work also places special importance on the stairs with dramatic single-angle shots and the manipulation o f perspective.

Ultimately, Hitchcock’s blonde heroines in The Lodger and Blackmail transcend the danger and violence to which they are exposed. Though the female characters are tormented in the course o f the narrative, the films return again and again to appearances and artifice. As Allen notes when describing the moral ambiguity o f The ledger.

Hitchcock is not interested in exploring motivation. Depth in Hitchcock’s film is a matter o f surface, as it were. Ambiguity resides not in the motivations o f character but in visual narration, in the legibility o f appearances. The pleasures of narrative suspense are not subservient to moral insight [...] but become an end in themselves.10

The legibility o f appearances continued to be a primary fascination for Hitchcock throughout his directorial career, particularly in mysterious female characters who are not who they say they are. Daisy and Alice are not interested in subterfuge. In contrast, Madeleine/Judy from Vertigo and Eve from North-by-Northwest engage in complex scenarios o f false identity and manipulation, for which they are punished by the men in their lives.

I n tr o d u c in g th e C lever B ru n e tte

Three o f Hitchcock’s films from the 1930s and 1940s provide striking examples o f the bildungsroman(a)''1— a woman’s coming of age story: The Ladj I anishes, Rebecca, and Shadow of a T)oubt. All three films feature a brunette in the leading female role. The films differ considerably, in both their settings and genre designations, but all show the complex alliances and choices available as a girl moves into adulthood. An important aspect o f the traditional bildungsroman is the struggle between the needs and desires o f the individual and the existing social order.12 This theme appears throughout Hitchcock’s oeuvre; in fact, almost all o f his films with female lead characters feature a plot line where the woman moves from innocence to experience in the course o f the film.

The first example, The Lady Vanishes (1938), is prefigured by Hitchcock’s 1935 “spy film” The 39 Steps. Compared to his early silent and talkie films made in Britain, the presence o f blondes and representations o f women in general become more complex in The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes. In these two films, Hitchcock shows women who have transcended the roles o f ingenue, temptress, and mother. Both films utilize “lady spy” characters (Arabella and Miss Froy), and in The Lady Vanishes Hitchcock introduces Iris Henderson, the amateur “girl spy” whose detective work leads to a sexual or emotional transformation— a “coming of age.”

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The Lady Vanishes opens on Iris’s final days as a bachelorette in the fictional eastern European country of Bandrika. She has decided to leave the homosocial world o f her female friends (both o f whom happen to be blonde) and return to London to marry her fiance. In the course o f the train ride back to England, Iris befriends an elderly lady named Miss Froy who subsequently disappears. Iris enlists the help o f Gilbert, a dashing young music scholar who had kept her awake the previous evening with a performance o f traditional Bandrikan song and dance in his hotel room. Iris initially dislikes Gilbert, but he is one o f the few people on the train who believes her when she insists that Miss Froy isn’t a figment o f her imagination.

As Iris unravels the mystery o f Miss Froy, she discovers a complex political plot revolving around espionage and government secrets. At every turn, the male characters— except, for the most part, Gilbert— tell Iris she is imagining things, when in fact she is simply the only person observant enough to begin to unravel the mystery. In The Lady Vanishes, the supporting characters do not want to believe Iris because her insights would call into question their political and personal alliances. In this way, the film becomes a spy mystery, as well as a romance, and a political drama. By the final scene Iris has become wiser about love, her government, and her position as a woman in the world. As a result o f her transformation on the train, she marries for love, rather than out o f social obligation, and plans to take up a life o f further adventure with Gilbert. Though Iris often refuses to obey the rules, and her refusal to bow to male authority on the train marks her as an unusual woman, marriage is one form of authority she does not wish to avoid. While this ending is not the stuff of feminist utopia (which 1 imagine might have required Iris to stay with her friends in Bandrika), it does allow Iris significant agency in her choices.

Charlie, the teenage female lead in Shadow of a Doubt, follows in the steps o f her brunette predecessor Iris. Charlie, like Iris, is working through a mystery, as well as forging her sexual identity as a woman. Her relationship to Uncle Charlie, her namesake, is dual, a mirror image (as elucidated first by Truffaut and later by Mladen Dolar) in the filmed scenes. Charlie is also clearly attracted to her uncle, and the events depicted in the film show a kind of Freudian undoing of this attraction. Uncle Charlie’s use o f his niece’s bed adds an extra element o f awkwardness to the dynamic o f attraction and disgust. While at first her Uncle Charlie represents an escape from the life that she knows, Charlie soon comes to realize that her uncle’s exoticism hides a dark secret.

Though Tania Modleski does not take up Shadow of a Doubt at length in The Women Who Knew Too Much, she does single out young Charlie as a typical Hitchcock heroine, for her knowingness, and for her complicated relationship to her mother. Modleski suggests Charlie is typical because “her close relationship to her mother arouses in her a longing for a different kind o f life than the one her father offers them and because she seems to possess special incriminating knowledge about men.” 13 Her journey through the course o f the

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film is one that requires questioning the adult life that has been set out for her, as well as unraveling her uncle’s mystery. In the final scenes o f the film, the two Charlies must either kill or be killed in order to continue: because o f the knowledge they possess, they cannot both remain living. Throughout the film, young Charlie— like Iris before her— is a character imbued with a great deal of agency. She has privileged knowledge about her uncle, and she acts based on this information when she urges her uncle to leave.

In the book Hitchcock Motifs, Michael Walker examines the m otif o f the Blonde, the Brunette, and their relationship to one another in Hitchcock films. While acknowledging the work o f Molly Haskell and Tania Modleski, Walker notes that most critical attention focuses on Hitchcock’s icy, sophisticated blondes, and few critics examine the brunettes. Walker argues that Hitchcock’s first concern was to have “heroines who through their characterization appeal strongly to women” 14 and that intentional use o f hair color was one way to control this element o f appeal. Using Iris and Charlie, as well as the second Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca—whom he categorizes as a “mousey brown” brunette— as his examples, Walker also suggests “an ideological coding: for the brunettes, the blacker the hair, the stronger the personality.” 15 O n the question o f blonde vs. brunette, Walker surmises, “ [o]ne feels that someone like Charlie in Shadow of a Doubt needs to be brunette; blondeness would make her a little too exotic for the role o f a small-town girl.” 16

Like Hitchcock’s other films told from the perspective o f young female protagonists, Shadow of a Doubt ends on an ambivalent note. Sarah Berry, in “She’s Too Everything,” locates this ambivalence in the question o f whether a woman must lose her sense o f self when she marries. Though Charlie has escaped the murderous clutches o f her uncle, her romance with the detective is not an unqualified good. Toward the end o f the film, Charlie’s mother describes losing touch with her brother after she married: “you sort o f forget you’re you. You’re your husband’s wife.” Berry describes the way Hitchcock frames Charlie’s reaction to her m other’s words:

The lingering close-up on Charlie’s face indicates the “shadow o f a doubt” cast over the institution o f marriage not only by her m other’s regretful comments, but also by her horror at the wife-murders o f which she suspects her uncle. 17

For Charlie, as for Iris, the “happy ending” o f marriage and family is one of ambivalence.

In addition to featuring similar “Clever Brunette” heroines, The Lady Vanishes and Shadow of a Doubt also share another unique element. In both films music— or rather a single melody— serves as a form o f privileged knowledge. Though Iris is barred from being the keeper o f that (potentially deadly) knowledge in The Lady ]/ anisbes, it is Charlie’s own intelligence that leads her to identify the “Merry Widow” waltz as the key to her Uncle’s secret in Shadow of a Doubt.

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The third coming-of-age story from this trio o f films is Hitchcock’s gothic adaptation o f Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca (1940), which includes several complex female characters. Many of Hitchcock’s early British films feature female characters that defy or trouble traditional notions o f feminine sexuality. These include characters like Daisy and Alice in The Lodger and Blackmail, who are not afraid to acknowledge their desire even if it leads to disastrous consequences, as in the case o f Blackmail. Films such as The 39 Steps and The Lady Vanishes offer female spy characters that represent a turning away from traditional notions o f femininity and the female roles o f wife and mother.

In Rebecca, Hitchcock presents a number o f even more unusual women, both seen and unseen. Truffaut and McGillian note that Hitchcock played with images o f female sexuality from the very beginning o f his career. Both authors make a point to include Hitchcock’s anecdote about his 1924 trip to Germany where a trip to a nightclub turned into a rather public display o f lovemaking in the bedroom o f two women. McGilligan notes:

Sapphic overtones can be detected, right from the first film Hitchcock directed, The Pleasure Garden, which, as Truffaut noted, features a scene o f two girlfriends “who really suggest a couple, the one dressed in pajamas, the other wearing a nightgown.” (Yes, Hitchcock told Truffaut, that scene was “inspired” by the Berlin incident.) The lesbian feeling between Rebecca and Mrs. Danvers was the boldest conceit o f his first Hollywood foray— and trousered ladies turn up regularly in other Hitchcock films.18

The element o f suspense in Rebecca hinges on the slow revelation of the incidents surrounding the death o f Rebecca de Winter. Though at the beginning it seems that her husband Maxim is grieving the loss o f his beautiful young wife, this is not the case. Ultimately, viewers discover that Maxim is distraught over her sexual infidelities and his part in her death, and cannot bear to reveal the truth to his new, innocent wife.

The women in Rebecca all fail to reproduce traditional feminine desire. In the opening scenes o f the film, the future second Mrs. de Winter (whose first name is never revealed) is serving as a paid companion (“friend o f the bosom”) to an older woman. After a whirlwind romance full o f brooding looks and miscommunication, Maxim de Winter proposes marriage. His future wife retorts with the strangely impenetrable “I’m not the kind o f person men marry.”19 Scant attention is paid to this remark at the time— we know she is an orphan, without financial security— though viewers soon learn that Maxim must have a strange affection for queer women.

By the end o f the film, Maxim reveals that his previous wife was not only beautiful and accomplished, she was also subject to “sex perversions.” The dialogue in the film as it was released makes Rebecca’s relationship with her cousin, Favell, relatively visible— though not fully explicit— as well as her

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pregnancy with a child that is not Maxim’s. The other “perversions,” however, are not addressed. The transformation o f “the second Mrs. de Winter” occurs as the result o f this revelation o f Rebecca’s true nature. Though he tries to protect her, and maintain the youthful innocence that he loves about her, Maxim cannot protect his new wife forever. In fact, his revelation comes just minutes after his wife tries to kill herself over what she perceives as his lingering love for Rebecca, and her failure as a wife. After he tells the full story o f Rebecca’s death, Maxim looks at his wife and laments,

it’s gone forever, that funny, young, lost look I loved. It w on’t ever come back. 1 killed that when I told you about Rebecca. It’s gone... in a few h o u rs... You’ve grown so much older.20

But the second Mrs. de Winter cannot stay a child forever. With the knowledge she acquires as the result o f Maxim’s revelation, the inept child-wife begins to transform into a highly competent woman. In the trial to acquit Maxim o f Rebecca’s murder, his wife’s well-timed faint saves him from incriminating himself.

Though the second Mrs. de Winter may not be “the kind o f person men marry,’ it is Mrs. Danvers, Rebecca’s personal maid, who presents the most overt resistance to normative female sexuality'. In her essay “Adaptation, Censorship, and Audiences of Questionable Type,” Rhona Berenstein quotes from the correspondence between Joseph Breen, head o f the Production Code Administration (PCA), and David O. Selznick, the film’s producer, about the code violations o f the film. Berenstein is particularly interested in Breen’s focus on “sex perversion” and his concern over the unseen Rebecca’s sexuality. The issue o f incest is handled separately, and Berenstein argues for an intentional imprecision in Breen’s language:

there exists a compelling suggestion in Breen’s correspondence that the primary form of perversion exhibited by Rebecca is decidedly nonheterosexual... [In his correspondence, Breen] implies but refuses to articulate the film’s lesbian desires.21

In addition to his concern over Rebecca’s “perversion,” Breen wrote at length about the scenes in the film set in Rebecca’s bedroom between the second Mrs. de Winter and Mrs. Danvers. A later letter from Breen to Selznick reads:

it will be essential that there be no suggestion whatever o f a perverted relationship between Mrs. Danvers and Rebecca. If any possible hint o f this creeps into this scene, we will of course not be able to approve the picture. Specifically, we have in mind Mrs. Danvers’ description o f Rebecca’s physical attributes, her handling of the various garments, particularly

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the night gown [in the first bedroom scene with Maxim’s new bride].22

Viewers o f the film in its final version will easily recognize the anxiety and discomfort in the scene in question, as well as Mrs. Danver’s rapturous description o f Rebecca’s nightgown. Selznick and Hitchcock may have changed the dialog sufficiently to please the PCA, but the specter o f Rebecca and Mrs. Danver’s “sex perversions” persist throughout the film.

Mrs. Danvers is an important example o f the “Clever Brunette” in a supporting role. Other brunettes in secondary roles who hold or provide important knowledge include Anne and Barbara Morton in Strangers on a Train, Stella in Rear Window, and Anne in The Birds. Though these secondary brunettes are often less sympathetic or more one-dimensional than Hitchcock’s brunette heroines, they still play important roles in the plot trajectories o f their respective films as problem-solvers, agitators, and keepers of privileged knowledge.

D re s s in g th e “ H itc h c o c k B lo n d e :” R e a r W in d o w a n d V ertigo

Hitchcock’s films Rear Window (1954) and Vertigo (1958) also explore issues o f femininity and female subjectivity, through the lens o f post-war anxieties about gender and marriage. In both films, Jimmy Stewart plays characters that have become disabled in the course o f their work, and blonde actresses feature as Stewart’s love interests. These two actresses— Grace Kelly and Kim Novak— might appear to represent the quintessential icy “Hitchcock Blonde,” but each offers commentary on the roles and strictures enforced through femininity and marriage. Though Rear Window takes a guardedly optimistic view o f love and marriage, Vertigo is oppressively dark in its conclusion.

Rear Window is often cited as one o f the best examples o f Hitchcock’s masterful use o f suspense and perspective; by the end of the film, viewers have become complicit in the voyeurism of Jimmy Stewart’s injured photo journalist “L.B. ‘J e ff jefferies” and convinced of the guilt o f his neighbor Lars Thorwald. The film also offers a complex vision of femininity and marriage, as illustrated by (effs girlfriend/fiancee “Lisa Fremont” (Grace Kelly) and his nurse “Stella” (Thelma Ritter), a blonde and brunette, respectively. Jeff spends the film in a wheelchair, begrudgingly relying on Lisa and Stella to care for him and serve as his proxy in his "investigation" o f what he believes to be Thorwald’s murder o f his ill, bed-bound wife. Throughout the film, Lisa and Stella act as powerful sources of both knowledge and action, yet must camouflage some o f this agency so as not to antagonize Jeff, particularly in Lisa’s case. Lisa’s interest in fashion— captured most strikingly in the visual contrast o f her elegant cocktail dresses and peignoir set to Jeffs blue pajamas— serves as a distraction for both Jeff and the audience, undermining (or perhaps just obscuring) her power and agency. Though there are moments in the film where Lisa appears to be in real danger, she is able to save herself

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through quick thinking, and the assistance o f Stella and Jeff. In fact, seeing Lisa’s willingness to face danger convinces Jeff o f his love for and commitment to her.

Hitchcock provides perhaps the most striking and complicated example of the “Hitchcock Blonde” in Vertigo. “Madeleine” (Kim Novak) is the quintessential archetype: impeccably dressed, with white-blonde hair, red lips, an aura o f mystery. She is irresistible in her helplessness to Jimmy Stewart’s detective character “John ‘Scotty’ Ferguson,” who has been sent to follow her and unravel the mystery o f her frequent disappearances and amnesia. He falls madly— obsessively— in love with her, and his guilt when she falls to her death drives him to literal madness. Yet Madeleine was/is not what she seems. When Scotty meets a young actress named Judy, he is struck by her resemblance to Madeleine. Though her clothes are quite different, and her eyebrows and mousy brown hair mark her as distinct from Madeleine, Scotty becomes fixated on her, eventually, in his madness, making her over to appear the facsimile o f Madeleine. When the truth finally comes out, that Judy was simply performing Madeleine as part o f a complicated murder plot, Scotty is driven to destroy the woman who has been both the object o f his desire and the destroyer o f his fantasy. As Judy/Madeleine, Kim Novak performs the perfect vision o f Hitchcock Blonde femininity as Madeleine while simultaneously undoing the very artifice she has been forced to construct in her role as Judy— a Clever Brunette. Unfortunately for Judy, her cleverness is not enough to save her. She attempts to resist Scotty’s attempts to make her over as Madeleine, but his perverse desire is too strong for her. The film ends with Scotty, unable to reconcile the truth with his reality, reenacting Madeleine’s death with Judy in her place.

The struggle for power between men and women is a frequent feature of Hitchcock s films. In the article ‘“She’s Too Everything’: Marriage and Masquerade in Rear Window and To Catch a Thief” Sarah Berry argues that Rear Window represents marriage as “a struggle for control in which the women find that they must camouflage their equality in order to win a proposal.”23 She concludes: “Marriage thus acts to contain women within traditional norms o f femininity.”24 Berry notes that the moment at the end o f the film when Lisa pulls out her fashion magazine leaves open a reading o f this containment as ironic. On the other hand, she suggests,

In later films like Vertigo (1958), femininity has a double edge, because it represents both the power exerted over women and the power they assume by manipulating their self-presentation in order to elude control.25

Lisa seems in control o f this manipulation in Rear Window and utilizes it to her own advantage, but Judy is undone by her performance o f “Madeleine” in Vertigo.

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Berry suggests that costume is one o f the most important parts of Hitchcock’s exploration o f gender. She remarks that it is “central to Hitchcock’s representation o f this subversive masquerade, since clothing is used not only to indicate the heroines’ shifting ‘presentation o f self,’ but also to associate femininity with clothing and performance.”26 Christian D ior’s “New Look” aesthetic o f cinched waists, pencil skirts and crinolines— the predominant style in the postwar era— emphasizes a theatrical performance of traditional femininity. These silhouettes initially appeared in 1947, just as American men returned from war and their wives gave up jobs to return to the home. Berry sees the “New Look” style clothing, with its emphasis on breasts and hips, as “designed to reinforce gender difference and traditional social roles.”27 This silhouette also necessitated restrictive undergarments that contrasted sharply with the looser look favored in the preceding two decades. Both Lisa and Madelcine/Judy wear costumes exemplifying the defined waist and exaggerated hourglass figure of this style. However, unlike Judy in \/ ertigo, Lisa performs this femininity in Rear Window with a knowingness that gives her power.

In “Torturing Women and Mocking Men: Hitchcock’s Rear Window” John Fa well concurs with Bern,', refusing to see Lisa’s attention to clothing as a sign that she is obsessed with fashion and therefore superficial. He suggests,

Rear Window explores the way men underestimate women [...] the way a woman’s seeming delicacy masks a strength perhaps greater than a man’s, the way style may be a manifestation, not o f a more superficial person, but a more mature and competent one.28

After all, it is because o f Lisa’s quick thinking and agility that Jeff is able to confirm his suspicions about Mr. Thorwald. Sadly, by the time we meet brunette Judy in Vertigo, she has given up control over her performance as well as her clothing, and therefore any chance at subversive forms of femininity.

Hitchcock’s heroines are more than just women assaulted and abused by the men in their lives— and by the male gaze o f the films’ audiences. The girls and women who populate the films o f Hitchcock’s middle period— particularly in The Ladj Vanishes, Shadow of a Doubt, and Rebecca—come to recognize the complex social and familial networks in which they reside. When confronted with situations that require action, these women consider the many possible consequences o f their choices, and act ethically and empathetically based on knowledge obtained through their awareness and excellent investigative skills. N ot simply “tormented heroines,” Hitchcock’s women recognize the role and artifice o f femininity, and manage their knowledge in important ways.

The “Hitchcock Blondes” of Rear Window, Vertigo, Mamie, Psycho, and The Birds deserve greater examination as complex culturally situated women, and not just Hitchcock’s fetishes, or repeated examples o f the same motif. The brunettes in these films, though not the central figures seen in earlier

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Hitchcock work, can provide important commentary on femininity and relationships between women, particularly through their interactions with the blondes who often upstage them. The dynamic between Lisa Fremont and Stella (Jeffs nurse) in Rear Window deserves further attention, as does the relationship between Marion and Lillian Crane in Psycho— especially Lillian’s performance o f the Clever Brunette — and also the triangle between Melanie and the two brunettes, Anne and Lydia, in Ybe Birds. Post-war America was a place where anxieties about gender roles collided with major cultural and economic changes. Hitchcock mined these tensions in his depictions of women. We should give the filmmaker and all his female characters the complex analysis they deserve.

N o te s

'M ich ael W alker, Hitchcock’s Motifs (A m sterd am : A m s te rd a m U P , 2005), 69-86. See the c h a p te r “ B lo n d es an d B ru n e tte s” in Hitchcock's Motifs fo r a full ac c o u n tin g o f b lo n d e s , b ru n e tte s, a n d th e ir critical recep tio n . Sarah B erry, “ ‘S h e’s T o o E v e ry th in g ’: M arriage an d M asq u erad e in Rear Window and lo Clatch a Ih ie f Hitchcock A n n u a l 10 (2001-02): 79-107. B erry’s article includes a len g th y discu ssio n o f H itc h c o c k ’s c o stu m e co lla b o ra tio n w ith E d ith H ead. ’T an ia M odleski, Ibe Women Who Knew loo Much: Hitchcock and Feminist Theory (N ew Y ork: M e th u e n , 1988), 9. 4M odleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much, 13.

Ib id ., 3. E m p h a sis in original. 6 R ichard A llen, “ ‘T h e L o d g e r’ and th e O rig in s o f I litc h c o c k ’s A esth e tic ,” Hitchcock A n n u a l (2001-2002): 62.

M odleski, The Women Who Knew Too Much, 18. 8 Ibid., 25. 9 Ibid., 27. 111 A llen, ‘“T h e L o d g e r’ an d th e O rig in s o f H itc h c o c k ’s A e sth e tic ,” 52.

T h e te rm buildungsromana is so m e tim e s u se d to d ifferen tiate b e tw e e n co m in g -o f-ag e novels w ith a fem ale p ro ta g o n is t fro m th o se w ith a m ale p ro ta g o n ist.

I take this d efin itio n fro m M .H . A b ra m s ’ dossary o f literarpi Ienr/s, 8th ed. B o sto n : T h o m s o n W a d sw o rth , 2005. 13 M odleski, The W'omen Who Knew Too Much, 13. 14 W alker, Hitchcock’s Motifs, 71. ' Ibid., 7 A s an aside: certainly this h o ld s tru e fo r M rs. D a n v e rs in Reheccd

18 Ibid., 76.

Sarah B erry, She s T o o E v ery th in g ’: M arriage and M asq u erad e in Rear Window and To Catch a ’Thief,” Hitchcock A n n u a l 10 (2001-02): 102.

P atrick M cG illian, A lfred Hitchcock: A l i f e in Darkness and l i g h t (N ew Y ork: R eagan B o o k s /H a rp e rC o llin s , 2003): 65.

R o b e rt Y anal c o n sid e rs th e su b te x t o f this dialog at so m e length in his article Rebeccas D eceiv ers, as well as th e re s p o n se o f M rs. V an H o p p e r, th e w o m a n to

w h o m th e seco n d M rs. d e W in te r serves as a paid c o m p a n io n . R o b e rt J. Y anal, “Rebecca’s D e c e iv e rs,” Philosophy and literature 24.1 (2000): 67-82. 20 A s q u o te d in M odleski, The W'omen Who Knew Too Much, 47.

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21 Rhona J. Berenstein, “Adaptation, Censorship, and Audiences o f Questionable Type: Lesbian Sightings in ‘Rebecca’ (1940) and ‘The Uninvited’ (1944),” Cinema Journal37. 3 (Spring 1998): 17-18. 22 Berenstein, “Lesbian Sightings,” 18. 23 Berry, ‘“She’s Too Everything,’” 79. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid., 80. 26 Ibid. 27 Ibid., 81. 28 John Favvell, “Torturing Women and Mocking Men: Hitchcock’s Rear Window,” The Midwest Quarterly AAA (2002): 100.

O th e r W orks C onsu lted

Dick, Bernard F. “Hitchcock’s Terrible Mothers.” ] Jterature/ Film Quarterly. 27.4 (2000): 238-49.

Dolar, Mladen. “ Hitchcock’s Objects.” In Everything You Always Wanted to Know about \Mcan (But Were Afraid to A s k Hitchcock). Ed. Slavoj Zizek. New York: Verso, 1992.

Leonard, Garry M. “A Fall from Grace: The Fragmentation o f Masculine Subjectivity and the Impossibility o f Femininity in Hitchcock’s Vertigo.” American Imago. 47.3-4 (1990): 271-91.

Pomerance, Murray. “The Consumer Perversity o f Roger Thornhill.” Quarterly Review of Film & Video. 17.1 (2000): 19-34.

Truffaut, Frangois. Hitchcock. Revised ed. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983.

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