Marnie as the Hysteric and a Nomadic Subject in Hitchcock's Marnie

Abstract

The controversy over whether Alfred Hitchcock is a misogynist has continued, as the depictions of women in his films have been particularly problematic. However, depending on the reader's perspective, Hitchcock's employment of misogynist elements in his works can be read as a tactical strategy to reveal and challenge phallocentric ideologies. Hence, this paper presents the perspective that Hitchcock's Marnie (1964), one of Hitchcock's most controversial works, which portrays the male protagonist's patriarchal violence against an unstable, mysterious, and potentially dangerous woman who refuses to remain an exchangeable property between men, is revealing, rather than appropriating, sexism and misogyny, the normative patriarchal privileges. In attempting to reread Hitchcock's Marnie as a feminist text, this paper highlights the fact that Marnie makes an issue of misogynistic sexual politics, paradoxically, by obviously dramatizing them. In particular, noting that Hitchcock interrogates the "woman" within misogynistic contexts or frames, this paper attempts to elaborate on how the main female character of Marnie can be regarded as positively subversive, particularly in feminist Deleuzian terms. In order to read Mamie as the hysteric and a nomadic subject, a subversive and transgressive character who performs Deleuzian "becoming-woman:' this study examines how Marnie attempts and struggles to escape from the hegemonic patriarchal domination of striated space by drawing lines of flight.