Gender Roles In Rear Window

Gender roles and marriage- a thematic approach

Alfred Hitchcock was a successful English film director and producer. He was often known as “the master of suspense.” He filmed psychological thrillers, one of these thrillers include “Rear window” which in mostly all of his films, he portrays women to look and act a certain way. Two significant themes portrayed throughout this film include marriage and the gender roles within the film.

Rear window is about Jeffries, a man who is isolated in his own apartment, stuck in a wheelchair with a broken leg and has nothing better to do but gaze out his “rear window” into his neighbours private lives. Most of the gazing Jeffries does is attributed onto females. Nearly every window represents the type of relationships Jeffrey could have down the track, he's viewing marriage in its various stages, also what could be Jeffries life in the future with Lisa who wants to marry him. There is Miss lonleyhearts who is alone and depressed, the newly weds who pull down the blinds and are completely in love with each other, the bickering couple straight across from Jeffries window; mr and Mrs Thorwald.

As jeff looks through his rear window into his neighbours apartments, he

Hitchcock can be very stereotypical of both marriage and how women and men both should act. However, Hitchcock never showed a happy marriage. Both marriages shown had a lot of conflict and with mr and mr thorwald, both individuals weren’t happy so it ended in marriage. It seems as if Hitchcock didn’t believe in marriage ever working out because both marriages didn’t seem to work, and other characters were alone. For the gender roles in this film, it’s a very 1950’s idea of how women are perceived as. Back then women were the ones who cooked and cleaned and the men just worked. This is may be based on Hitchcock’s on marriage and love, and also how he viewed men and women or how it was like back in the