Who Is The Hero In Hitchcock's Rear Window

People like to watch other people and are often quick to make judgments of what they see. This is what L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries does Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rear Window”. Jeff is a wheelchair-bound photographer who is used to an active lifestyle. Because of his boredom, Jeff spends his time looking out his window and watching his neighbors go about their life. However, Jeff does more than watch, because he at the same time he is also making judgments about who his neighbors are and what they must be like. This leads to Jeff becoming obsessed with the disappearance of the wife of his neighbor Mr. Thorwald, because he believed that he murdered her. Although Jeff was correct in his suspicion that Mr. Thorwald murdered his wife, most of his assumptions

about his neighbors are proven wrong.

“Rear Window” is a film the presents a singular point-of-view of the outside world that tackles concepts like, gender roles, judging other people, and serves as a reflection of the suspicion and fear that gripped postwar America.

Hitchcock’s film is presented to the viewer from the point-of-view of L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries the hero in “Rear Window” who is unable to move around much, because he is trapped in a wheelchair. It is through the hero’s limited movement that dictates what he sees that the moviegoers see the movie. Essentially, the film is about “a man who does on the screen what we do in the audience--look through a lens at the private lives of strangers” (Ebert). Jeff, the central character in “Rear Window” is a wheelchair bound photographer who has to live a life of relative isolation because of an accident. All he can do is look outside and witness the events unfolding outside his apartment complex. Much like the audience, Jeffries is more content to watch others, than to look inside himself. This would have been the perfect time, because Jeff is a very busy man whose work entails looking at others, what they are doing, and taking pictures. So it can be assumed that he has very little time to think

when he is working, so the time alone would have been a time for Jeff to think about his life, but that is not what happens. Jeff is content to look at others, because he is a photographer by trade, whose work entails out of the ordinary observation skills. Jeff is a man whose life involves lots of action, so life in a wheelchair, even if it is only temporary, can be a problem. Since he cannot go out, it can get very lonely. Making the situation worse is that the Jeffries is only visited by two people, his nurse Stella, and his fiancée Lisa. This is the reason why Jeffries spends most of his time by his window, looking outside. The world that Jeff sees outside his apartment window is a contrast to his dark and somewhat depressing apartment. The apartment window that Jeffries spends most of his time in having a courtyard that it shares with the other tenants of the apartment complex. Since Jeffries is a famous photographer who spends most of his time outside, he never had the chance to get to know his neighbors. Nevertheless, there is a way by which Jeff is able to get to know his neighbors from this wheelchair-bound existence, through a telephoto lens or plain sight. What Jeff sees is also what the audience sees. This leads to tension building up all throughout the movie, because Jeffries only provides bits and pieces of information. Like Jeff, the viewer is left to make their own suppositions of what their neighbors are like and what they are doing. In many ways, this allows the viewer to think about certain concepts presented in the film like gender roles.
A theme that is discussed in the film extensively is male and female gender roles, and how they can reverse.

It is evident that the relationship with Jeff and Lisa is filled with tension. In the much of the film, it even seems that “their relationship is going to break down completely” (Condon and Sangster 191). The key to understanding this is that era in which the film was released was a time when society still valued male and female gender roles. One way of looking at the situation is that men and women were expected to act in certain ways. Women were supposed to be feminine, while men were supposed to be masculine. Jeff and Lisa are opposite sides of the stereotype, so to speak. Lisa is very feminine, while Jeff is ultra-masculine. This is where the tension between the two lay. Jeff is afraid of committing, because he feels that Lisa is too feminine for someone like him. Of course, Lisa is not as feminine as Jeff thinks, she is. In fact, in the relationship, it is she who takes control. Indeed, it is Lisa, who keeps the relationship together by exerting effort. She visits Jeff, often feeding him and talking to him to ease his loneliness. Jeff on the other hand is too caught up with what happened to him, and how it has kept him from doing the job that he loves most. Of course, adding to his distraction is his newfound hobby of spying on his neighbors and their private lives. To make the relationship work, aside from showing interest in Jeff’s obsession with what happened

to Thorwald’s wife, Lisa even goes to the point of entering the latter’s apartment to gather evidence. It is at this moment that Jeff and Lisa’s roles reverse, because it is Jeff, who is left helpless in the room, while Lisa bravely goes to the apartment, putting her life on the line. In the end, it is Lisa, who becomes the man in the relationship by doing what Jeff was supposed to do, confront Thorwald and exact a confession. Of course, he was not able to do this on his own because he is stuck in a wheelchair, but the incident is able to show him that Lisa is not as ultra feminine as he believed her to be. In fact, this is a point the roles are reversed, with Lisa becomes the savior and Jeff is the one in need of saving. This notion is fully embraced by Jeff at the end of the movie when he falls asleep while Lisa switches from reading “Beyond the High Himalayas” to “Bazaar” magazine (1:51:51-1:52:12). It is at this point that Lisa is able to get back to being what she wants to be, a woman.
Gender role expectations do not only present in the relationship of Jeff and Lisa, but also among his neighbors. In one of the earliest scenes of the film, when he is talking to Gunnison, he says “You've got to get me out of here...If you don't pull me out of this swamp of boredom, I'm gonna do something drastic...I'm gonna get married and I'll never be able to go anywhere” (0:5:59-0:6:14). It would seem that for Jeff, getting married is a sentence to a life of boredom. It is the reason why Jeff acts in a certain way to acting towards Lisa. He was dismissive of Lisa because he felt that being overly romantic with her would lead to a life that he did not want. As soon as he tells Gunnison that he needs to be saved from his boring life, the camera has Jeff looks out his window to the Thorwalds, with the husband coming home and attending to his invalid wife. This is what fuels Jeff’s fear that married life is “fearful, boring and oppressive” (Spoto 219). Since Jeff has been stuck in his apartment, it can be said that what he sees outside, among his neighbors are the possible futures that he sees for Lisa, each of which scares him. This is of course an example of the stereotypes that females had to endure. These are the gender roles that they had to play. For example, as previously mentioned, Jeff believes Lisa to be ultra-feminine, just like Mrs. Thorwald, who is constantly taking care of by her husband. One is the lady who lives with her husband and their dog who are always bickering. There is also the young dancer he calls “Miss Torso”, who invites many young men, but rebuffs their advances (Spoto 220). To Jeff, Miss Torso is a worldly woman who cannot be trusted. However, in the end, we find out that she is not what Jeff judged her to be. This is an example of what Jeff and what society, what thinks women should become. There are even comparisons between Miss Torso and Lisa, as well as “Miss Lonelyhearts”, the lonely spinster who is saved from taking her own life by the haunting melody played by one her neighbors (1:30:14-1:30:33). In reality, all of these women are possible futures that Jeff envisions either for himself or for Lisa. Of course, we know that the film does not stop there, because the ending that Lisa and Jeff have is different, because she is different from the other women in the neighborhood.