Women in Hitchcock Films: the Male Gaze

Many of Hitchcock’s works illustrate key characteristics of a classic film, such as the idea that the leading female character “is there solely to be looked at,” according to film theorist Laura Mulvey. This assertion is true to an extent in the universe of Hitchcock films, wherein the main female characters are often portrayed to serve no purpose other than pleasing the male viewer. These leading women are overtly sexualized throughout the films while, interestingly, other supporting female characters are devoid of any sexuality. The separation of these two groups of women is determined by their sexual appeal according to the male gaze, nearly always correlating to the ages of the women; younger women are sexualized while older women are not. These ideas are especially well-represented in two of Hitchcock’s films, in particular, North by Northwest and The Birds.

Mulvey’s point that the primary role of leading women in classic films is to please the male gaze, to be “on display,” is evidenced by both Eve Kendall and Melanie Daniels in North by Northwest and The Birds, respectively. In the former, the audience is first introduced to Kendall through the eyes of Roger Thornhill, the male protagonist, on a train as he is actively fleeing the police. From his initial interaction with her, Thornhill views Kendall exclusively in a sexual manner. It is not until after Thornhill and Kendall form a romantic relationship that the audience learns of Kendall’s role in the government scheme Thornhill has been involved with. Hitchcock deliberately does not provide the audience with this information until after Kendall’s role as Thornhill’s sexual partner has been established. Her high-power position as an undercover agent for the U.S. government is secondary in importance to her part in her relationship with Thornhill. 

Meanwhile, in the first scene of The Birds, Melanie Daniels meets Mitch Brenner in a pet shop. Although she does not work in the store, Melanie pretends to have expert knowledge when Mitch requests her help with finding love birds as a gift to his sister. Melanie is so eager to continue her interaction with Mitch — she values attention from the man so much — that she lies without reason. In this initial scene, Melanie is subservient to Mitch, who first spots her and looks at her without her knowledge before asking her for assistance. Through this interaction, Hitchcock makes the statement that women enjoy being looked at and sexualized by men. It is through this behavior that the director develops the narrative that the woman is at the disposal of the man, for him to observe as one would an object.

In addition to the Hitchcockian female protagonist existing to please the man visually and sexually, she is also portrayed as being lost without the man. In North by Northwest, Eve Kendall works as an undercover government agent on a mission to deceive Vandamm, an enemy of the country. Some may argue that in this powerful role, unlike many other lead female characters in Hitchcock films, Kendall is not at the mercy of her male counterpart. However, the director soon makes it apparent that Kendall will not survive without Thornhill’s help. She needs him to save her first by warning her not to get on the plane with men who are trying to trick her and second by physically pulling her up so that she does not fall to her death. This trope that the man — with no experience in her field of work — suddenly must rescue her, outsmarting other men to do so, is deeply sexist. At the end of the film, why does the female lead’s life depend on the male protagonist, Thornhill? In creating this arc, Hitchcock reaffirms the principle that the woman’s only use is as something to look at, that she is incompetent in all aspects of her life outside of her relationship with the male protagonist. Similarly, in The Birds, Melanie Daniels must be rescued by Mitch Brenner at the end of the film. The small town outside of San Francisco where Mitch’s family lives, Bodega Bay, has been under attack by birds, and Mitch, his mother, his sister, and Melanie seek refuge from these wild birds inside the house. At the end of the film, Melanie wanders upstairs into a room alone where she is met with an army of aggressive, brutal birds that nearly kills her. It is here that the familiar Hitchcockian storyline sets in: Mitch finds her and carries her away to save her. The man saves the woman when she is on the brink of death following her attempt to act independently, with free will. In North by Northwest, Kendall’s traditionally masculine job is an attempt at independence. In The Birds, Melanie attempts to have independence by walking up the stairs into a room alone. In both scenarios, while arguably vastly different from one another, the man comes to the rescue of the woman, saving her from herself. Once again, Hitchcock demonstrates the idea that the purpose of the woman is to please the man, to be looked at. When she tries to do anything other than that, she faces death and must be saved.

The younger women in the films, the female protagonists, are created for the pleasure of the male gaze. The older female characters, however, tell a different story. In both North by Northwest and The Birds, the male protagonists’ mothers provide a contrast to the leading female characters. In North by Northwest, Thornhill’s mother is supposed to frustrate the audience with her lack of understanding of her son’s predicament. She refuses to believe Thornhill’s story about being kidnapped and held hostage despite the audience knowing that Thornhill is telling the truth. Unlike the lead woman, Kendall, Thornhill’s mother is not sexualized at all. This role of the older woman is not the “screen surrogate” that Mulvey describes in her argument. Parallel to Thornhill’s mother is Lydia, Mitch’s mother, in The Birds. She is older than the female protagonist, Melanie. Lydia, like Thornhill’s mother in North by Northwest, is not created to be looked at by the male gaze. She is somewhat disconnected from reality, stemming from the loss of her husband, Mitch’s father. She, too, seems to be without purpose, which highlights Hitchcock’s opinion that older women are no longer sexually appealing to the male viewer. In one scene, Lydia explains to Melanie her sadness about losing her husband: she wakes up in the morning and thinks to herself, “I must get Frank’s breakfast.” Her life once revolved around serving her husband, but now that he has died she struggles to find meaning. This follows the logic that Hitchcock so firmly believes that a wife lives to please her husband.

The depiction of these older women as directionless and helpless reinforces the misogynistic trope that women over a certain age are no longer sexually desirable and therefore flounder aimlessly for the rest of their lives. The characters of Thornhill’s mother and Mitch’s mother illustrate the director’s idea that women are less valuable with age, while men, such as Thornhill and Mitch, are not. Overall, Mulvey’s theory that young women exist in the realm of classic films purely to be viewed by men is true, as evidenced by Kendall and Melanie. When these women do anything beyond this or are too old to be sexually desirable, they lose value and are discarded by the male viewer.