ABSTRACT
This chapter speculates that Hitchcock films enact 'rituals of defilement", evoking and then containing the fear of women that lies at the heart of these rituals. Hitchcock films seek both to destroy and preserve femininity is not to admit to a failure to arrive at the correct interpretation of the films, an inability to decide once and for all whether or not Hitchcock is really a misogynist. Freudian theory, as we have seen, the individual at the cannibalistic stage wants to destroy the object by devouring it, but also wishes to preserve it and to assimilate it. Extreme rituals of defilement become the last bleak hope for patriarchy. Kristeva speculates that defilement reveals, at the same time as an attempt to throttle matrilineality, an attempt at separating the speaking being from his body. Drawing on the work of Mary Douglas, who considers defilement to be connected with boundaries and margins, Kristeva claims that the feminine/maternal is deemed a 'pollutant'.
