Woman as a Black Bird: The Presentation of Femininity in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds (US 1963)

The author’s perspective on Hitchcock’s The Birds is a familial one, i.e., the increasing attacks of the birds symbolically represent the growing tensions in the psychic field between Lydia Brenner, her son Mitch, and Melanie Daniels. In Lydia’s inner world Mitch substitutes her dead husband. Thus, she considers Melanie as an intruder threatening her basic feeling of safety that is based on Mitch only belonging to her and not to another woman. Hitchcock describes Melanie in two different views. First, she is an attractive, self confident and autonomous as well as a self-critical and empathic young woman. Secondly, as an erotically desirable woman for Mitch, she is a threat for Lydia’s inner narcissistic system that might collapse if, in Lydia’s view, she will lose her son to Melanie. Thus, violent psychic turbulences arise when Melanie and Mitch emotionally approach each other. The turbulences are symbolized in the increasing attacks of the birds that reach climax in the almost deadly descent on Melanie in the attic of the Brenners’ house. In the last scene of the film the Brenners together with Melanie leave their home to protect themselves against further attacks of the birds. According to the author’s interpretation the scene is ambiguous. On the one hand Lydia might have accepted that Melanie and Mitch will become a couple, and might adopt Melanie as a daughter in law. On the other hand the end might also be understood as a submission of Melanie to the law of the Mother’s narcissistic universe. The above considerations are augmented by various aspects, e.g., with regard to Hitchcock’s relation to his female protagonist Tippi Hedren and the general image of women in his films, as well as with regard to the visual and contentual links of The Birds with the preceding films North by Northwest and Psycho.