Response #4 Laamanen and Night of the Hunter

Charles Laughton’s Night of the Hunter is, among other things, an exploration of anxieties surrounding women and gender in the 1950s, and the changing norms and expectations around them. I will look at a particular aspect of Carl Laamanen’s essay “Preaching in the Darkness” to examine the dichotomy of traditional/new woman as represented in the film, and how this argument is both substantive and flawed using the example of how Willa’s dead body is framed in the submerged automobile.

                                       First, I want to look at Laamen’s argument that “by constructing Willa as the embodiment of the traditional fundamentalist woman, the film encourages us to read her death as the natural end of her complicity; for women to reverse the oppression of the patriarchal Church, the old, traditional image of the woman must die and be replaced by a new image of femininity” (14). However, Willa attempts to repudiate the imposition of a traditional family structure earlier in the film when she says that she does not want a husband, despite the pressures from Mrs. Spoon. Despite her reservations, she is vulnerable and lonely, and thus an easy target for the psychopathic Powell. To say that her death is the “natural end” for her complicity in her own oppression is simply inaccurate; although she does succumb to the pressures of patriarchal Christianity, as embodied by the Preacher, it begs the question of why Mrs. Spoon, who is far more invested in perpetuating this oppression, should not have been the one to die, or else why Willa would not have been characterized more similarly to her. Rather, Willa seems to me more representative of women who simply cannot escape from patriarchal Christian norms and values than a willing accomplice thereof.

                                       Going back to Carl Laamanen’s original argument, I want to pose this question: can the “old, traditional image of the woman” really “die and be replaced by a new image of femininity” when the image of Willa’s dead, submerged body is one of the most haunting and memorable scenes from the entire film? The camera starts on waving reeds on the bottom of river, like hair caught in a current, and slowly pans to the left, where Willa’s dead body is revealed in a white nightgown, her hair floating eerily in the current with the weeds. The deliberate movement of the camera, and the way it lingers on the movement of the water and Willa’s body, leave the viewer with the impression that the image of the traditional woman will haunt them for the rest of the film—an effect that Laughton achieves powerfully. It cannot fully override the image of the new woman, embodied in the figure of Miz Cooper, as it is this image that continues to haunt the viewer long after the film’s conclusion. The implication here is that the image of the traditional woman cannot fully die and simply be replaced by a newer, better version, contrary to Laamanen’s argument.

                                       In Night of the Hunter, Willa represents less the traditional woman in willing complicity with the patriarchy, but rather one who is trapped into its systems of oppression and domination. As such, her death is neither natural nor deserving; rather, through the camera’s framing of her and her death, the film leads the viewer to conclude that although some women manage to repudiate and resist, they will nonetheless be haunted by patriarchy’s omnipotence and its power to haunt the image of the new woman.