Appendix 3.1: Analytic methods - 6 films from 1954
which she presents herself to the audience by enacting a
swashbuckling story and then helping her mother in the
kitchen, we are already alerted to her narrative significance
by the Converstaion between the hero, Rob Roy, and his mother,
Margaret, about ’settling down’. The film cuts from this
conversation to Helen Mary's performance at the inn, which is
completed by Rob's arrival. Both Edie Doyle and Helen Mary
are thus offered to the audience in relation to the male
heroes in each film. The same is true of all the other
characters in this group.
In group 3 the principal mode of presentation is through
appearance and location, though location tends to predominate
over appearance in so far as these two can be separated. Only
about half the characters offer themselves via their speech,
and none by their actions. None of the characters in this
group is qualified through definitions given by other
characters. This absence is also true of the figures in group
4 where, once again, the primary mode of definition is through
appearance and location, a small minority being also defined
by their action - for example the cleaner and many nurses in
Doctor in the House and the performers in The Glenn Miller
Story.
Narrative Development and Narrative Resolution
The striking absence of developed characters between the ages
of the mid twenties and the mid fifties, noted above, becomes
even more significant in terms of the definitions of women
offered in these characterisations once the diegetic
experience of central and major characters (groups 1 and 2),
to whose point of view audience access is constructed, is
considered. For all except one of the ten characters in these
two groups narrative development entails a change in sexual
status: that is to say that they are initially represented as
single young adults and by the close of the narratives they
are either married or promised to, committed to marry, a
particular man. In seven out of ten cases the man is a
central male character, usually the 'hero' of the film. The
exception is Margaret in Rob Roy the Highland Roque who is Rob
Roy's mother and dies during the course of the narrative.
Thus, in these six films, women end up married or dead. In
addition, of the five group 1 and 2 characters who are defined
as having an occupation, only two maintain their occupation
beyond the point of marriage. One of these is Maggie in
Hobson's Choice who begins the film as the single daughter
managing her father's business and ends as the married partner
managing the same business now jointly owned by her husband
and her father. The other is Joy Gibson in Doctor in the House
who is a nurse, and is still a nurse at the close of the
narrative, though by now her definition as a future doctor's
wife predominates.
SUMMARY
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