Spellbound Gender Quotes

Dr. Fleurot tries to flirt with Constance by telling her that she's an unwomanly woman who doesn't know how to love. He is a big, fat jerk, and Constance tells him so—but still, the film isn't entirely sure he's wrong. The whole plot, after all, is set up to get Constance to experience love and get married. Dr. Fleurot is a sexist jerk, but the film is sort of on his side (which means that the film is sort of a sexist jerk, too).

World War II ended half a year before Spellbound was released. Ballantyne was a soldier, though he hated it. His discomfort with being in the army is part of his general failure to be a big old manly man hero. Swaggering Hollywood tough guys are supposed to be okay with violence, not panicked when forced to participate in it. It's significant too that Ballantyne eventually realizes that he didn't desert, but got a medical discharge. When he is restored to sanity, he's also restored to being an honorable fighting man.

Ballantyne often yells at Constance when she analyzes him. Supposedly, this is because patients always resent and attack their analysts, as they fear giving up their symptoms. But Ballantyne also expresses the film's nervousness at its own "wrong-way-round" gender roles. Constance is the boss with the knowledge. She's doing the saving; Ballantyne is the weak patient who depends on her. He feels that she's "smug" and lording it over him—which suggests that the film itself sees it as unusual, or wrong, to have a woman in a position of power.