Psychiatrist, Midge Wood In Vertigo By Dr. Constance Hitchcock

Cinema and particularly Hithcock’s films use the image of woman in glasses as a signifier for the uncanny nature of the less-than-ideal female, the one with the threatening gaze. Miriam in Strangers on a Train, Ann Newton in The Shadow of a Doubt, Midge Wood in Vertigo and Dr. Constance Peterson in Spellbound offer excellent examples. Dr.Constance Peterson in a Psychiatrist usually an anomaly in a male dominated profession in the 1940s- which demands acute observation and male gaze - excels in it. The Freudian “bisexuality” ingrained in her character-the embodiment of both masculine and feminine in one individual as noted by Tania Modleski (qtd in Ditewig-Morris 1) is a fascinating character for analysis just like Miriam. A thorough analysis of these characters force us to come to the notion that the women in glasses challenged the patriarchal convention and hence Tania Modleski posited about Hitchcock’s “thoroughgoing ambivalence about feminity” where he seems afraid of women in glasses (qtd in
Ditewig-Morris in her article corroborates Tania Modleski’s notion that a recurring and curious semiotic binary exists in Hitchcock’s work when he presents “woman-in-glasses” which signify an aberrance in female spectatorship and also the auteur’s quiet admiration for