Feminization

Linderman says “masculine identity is bound up with feminine identity…men identify with women and become feminized in that identification” (52). Scotty’s feminization begins in Midge’s apartment. Not only is he wearing a corset, and castrated by his reliance on his walking stick, but he seems completely comfortable in a very feminine spaces surrounded by lingerie.

 

The camera really starts directing his identification and conflation with the feminine in Scotty’s own apartment when Madeleine tells him of the mission. Here, in a series of shot/reverse shots, Madeleine and Scotty are graphically matched, merging their two persons into one individual; their shared position begins the process of the “dream becoming his” (Deutelbaum 209).

 

This type of completion is what Scotty has been looking for, but scared of. Finally, he is allowing himself to fall in love, but he is losing his own person in the meantime, merging with this mystery woman. Is this an overt commentary on love that Hitchcock himself is presenting to us? The prospect of love only seems to be to lose yourself in another.