Female Innocence In The Innocents

Modern horror films are often flooded with a multitude of intricate designs and special effects. The over-use of these elaborate strategies can often consume a film. Although, among Jack Clayton’s The Innocents (1961), this not the case. This horror film utilizes no special effects to convey its tantalizingly psychological horror. The film functions as a Gothic horror film evoking uncertainty in which is embodied within the loss of and breakdown of the female innocence. The Innocents explores liminal space in it entirety. The film utilizes the binary of natural/unnatural and is rife with repetition to portray this collapse of innocence. More specifically, the film functions as a female Gothic film. Through the element of necessity of the female

In the first scenes of the film, viewers learn the fate of the previous governess. Ms. Jessel’s story ends in her unfortunate death, therefore bidding the question as to whether this may also be the fate of Ms. Giddens. In Helen Hanson’s chapter “Narrative Journeys of the Female Gothic Heroine” from her book titled Hollywood Heroines: Women in Film Noir and the Female Gothic Film, Hanson addresses the idea that a common element of the female gothic is the central woman’s issue of being a “likeness of the woman of the past.” As also discussed in lecture, the predecessor held the same position of the protagonist, setting the bar for the newcomer. The current female protagonist must then attempt to fill this role whilst avoiding the fate of the prior woman (usually death). So, in the introduction of Ms. Jessel’s history immediately, it becomes known that Giddens may have to come to face the same

Throughout the film, Giddens is presented with the issues of the supernatural. Ghosts appear out of nowhere and the children are supposedly possessed. The directors seem to couple every moment of unnatural occurrence with one of the natural. This is introduced early on through the vast landscape of the estate and can be most prominently noticed in the scene of Flora intriguingly watching a spider eat a butterfly. In this moment, Giddens is shown skeptically judging Flora in the background. Is the possessed, is she not? Pure questionability. The natural is coupled with the supernatural. Again in another scene of Ms. Giddens comforting Miles in bed, the supernatural occurs in which the wind slams a window shut and blows a candle out. Immediately following this is a shot of a water-droppled white rose. The repetition of the white rose may be a symbolic natural element for Gidden’s purity. The white rose appears early in the film, Giddens accidentally causes a few petals from a white rose bouquet to fall in which Mrs. Grose responds “That’s alright, Miss, it’s always