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Summary: Unraveling The Unknown Women Of Hitchcock

2563 Words11 Pages

Ward 1
Dr. Bruns
ENGL 390: Studies in Film (Hitchcock)
28 April 2015
Unraveling the Unknown Women of Hitchcock Unknown means something that requires discovery, clarification or identification. To call Norma Bates, Judy Barton and Rebecca De Winter unknown is only the beginning of figuring out who these women are. Of these three, two are deceased and one is simply extremely mysterious. Despite what little is known about them, they each dominate the films they star in. Hitchcock seems to have a great interest in these women and the intrigue that they cause. Delving into Psycho, Rebecca and Vertigo should shed some light on who these mysterious women of Hitchcock are. Norma Bates may not physically be more than a corpse with gaping …show more content…

The reverse is true in what Modeleski calls “a cruel reversal of the Cinderella myth” (43) and he tells her to change into anything else, that anything would be better. It is almost as if Rebecca was reincarnated by the new Mrs. de Winter dressing up as one of Rebecca’s many disguises as the perfect woman and wife (Hanson 79-83). The third was when Maxim was describing the night of Rebecca’s death. The camera follows where the late Rebecca was moving and seemed to bring the past to life. The audience can feel Rebecca’s presence. Her intentions, what she might have sounded like and what she might look like all of a sudden become clear. Maxim’s description of Rebecca gives her such a liveliness that it seems like she’s in the room. What the audience now knows, if they so choose to believe Maxim, is that Rebecca was elegant, beautiful, intelligent, and evil. She revealed herself as a fraud four days after she married Maxim. Rebecca took a flat in London and would leave Manderley and her husband often for days at a time. She met friends and brought them back to Manderley. Judging by Maxim’s disapproval, it can be interpreted that these friends were actually lovers such as Favell. Rebecca thought that it was all a great joke that she had duped everyone as the perfect wife and was carrying another man’s child. The bastard child would one day inherit Manderley and there was nothing Maxim could do about it, except kill her. According to Maxim, he accidentally caused her death but no one would believe him so he got rid of her to the bottom of the

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