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Angela Devas, in her piece How to be a Hero: Space, Place and Masculinity in ‘The 39 Steps’, “articulates the characteristics necessary to become a filmic hero” through an examination of Richard Hannay and his actions.
Devas argues that Hannay is, from the beginning of the film, established as a masculine hero. When the audience first is introduced to him in the music hall during Mr. Memory’s first performance, he stands out from the crowd as well dressed, handsome and tall. His question “How far is Winnipeg from Montreal?” immediately identifies him as an outsider, a wanderer. This disconnection from place is reinforced with his relationship to his apartment. Devas notes that he is “living in a borrowed flat” and, more importantly, “his name. . . is not engraved on the front entrance” but rather scrawled on a piece of paper. His lack of connection with the domestic environment is evidence of his independent masculinity. This masculinity is repeated in his displays of physical prowess, most notably when he escapes from the train on the bridge to Scotland. His daring flight, in which he perches perilously from the girder of the gigantic bridge, illuminates his capacity not only as a physical specimen of masculinity but also as capable of dominating nature and his environment. In becoming a part of the bridge, Hannay connects with its power over the landscape and the audience is again led to a realization of Hannay’s masculine power and domination.
Devas’ piece sheds light on Hannay’s role as a masculine hero in The 39 Steps. Not only is he the savior of state secrets and the love interest of the beautiful Pamela, he represents an ultimate image of filmic masculinity and herodom.
In their book After Hitchcock, David Boyd and Barton Palmer write about the “misidentification” of Hitchcock’s protagonist in The 39 Steps. Rather than suggesting that the protagonist is simply randomly suggested to “malevolent forces,” Boyd and Palmer argue that Hannay is misidentified as a spy in order to serve as a “barrier to his romantic fulfilment.” This initial misidentification as an agent or spy leads to his own pursuit towards those who would misidentify him in what Hitchcock terms the ‘double pursuit.’
Before the introduction of Annabelle to his life, Hannay lives as an independent, if transient, being. Through his association with her, his identity becomes misconstrued. Interpreted by her enemies as a spy, this group of malevolent agents threaten his independent lifestyle. Boyd and Palmer argue that Hannay’s quest to retrieve the secrets is really a journey to reclaim the identity that was stolen from him. He must engage in Hitchcock’s ‘double pursuit’ in order to realign the perception of his identity with the reality. They go on to assert that this entire tale of misidentification is further poignant for its function as a barrier to Hannay’s “romantic fulfilment.” This returns to what many authors comment on – his natural fulfilment of stereotypical masculine desires. By misconstruing and, in effect, thieving Hannay’s independent identity, the enemy agents launch him on a quest to regain it which finds him fulfilling his stereotypical identity as the masculine role in a romantic relationship.
Boyd and Palmer present an interesting perspective on the motivation and goal of Hannay’s journey. Rather than a purely masculine quest, Hannay is simply trying to reassert his personal identification and in doing so finds the identity that, by filmic convention, he is destined for.
H. Mark Glancy in his book The 39 Steps gives us another interesting view on Hannay’s masculinity and, more specifically, its progression throughout the film. Interestingly, he notes Hannay’s ‘crisis of masculinity’ at the beginning of the film and views his hero’s quest as a journey to reclaim that lost masculinity. By tying the reclamation of his masculinity into the retrieval of critical state secrets, Glancy argues for the importance of masculinity to Hannay’s character and the film.
In establishing Hannay’s move toward masculinity, Glancy argues for two very different settings within the film. First, he notes how Hannay is stifled within the urban, industrialized setting. Glancy feels that this setting invokes a ‘crisis of masculinity’ and that it is only “by leaving the city, and hunting and being hunted in the wild” does he reclaim that masculinity. Glancy’s creation of these two significant zones allows for a dichotomy of purpose between the two – whereas the urban, industrialized zone doesn’t allow for the rugged manliness necessary for the main character, his release into the wild is the perfect setting for him to regain that primal sense of masculine self. This regaining, Glancy argues, is given critical importance due to its necessity in order to also save the nation. By intertwining the two and making it impossible to have one without the other, the film makes a sharp statement on the importance of masculinity.
H. Mark Glancy puts forth in an interesting idea in his book The 39 Steps – he argues that the city stifles masculinity and that it is only upon escape to a country setting that the true primal power of the masculine character can be unleashed. He also comments on the importance of this masculine discovery as he notes its necessity in solving the greater issues of the state. Without the natural rediscovery of masculinity by Hannay, he would be unable to foil the plot and his homeland.
In Warriors in Flight: John Buchan’s War Novels, Maria Noelle Ng explores John Buchan’s novel The 39 Steps on which Hitchcock’s film is based. She discusses the novel’s ‘hero-on-the-run’ subgenre and how it affects both the narrative arc of the story and the reader’s sympathies towards the character of Hannay. Although Hitchcock adapted Buchan’s story, these assertions hold true for the Hannay of Hitchcock’s film as well.
Ng argues that upon the death of Annabelle (or Buchan’s original Scudder), Hannay becomes the archetypal ‘hero-on-the run,’ the masculine cruasader pursued by enemies known and unknown. She notes that this role serves a dual purpose: both to drive the plot forward and to engage the sympathy of the reader. Hannay’s brazen pursuit of a relatively new and personally insignificant event highlights his masculine drive and allows the narrative arc to continue. As the reader (and later audience) is exposed to his genuine pursuit of what he ascertains to be in the best interest of his country. This selflessness easily employs the sympathy of the reader. Ng goes on to elaborate on the significance of the story to World War I. Published in 1915, Ng argues that “Although the Great War is not explicitly mentioned” it is an underlying assumption of the novel and “reflects the attitude of the British at the beginning of the war.”
Ng’s piece, although focused on Buchan’s novel, examines the character of Hannay and the timing of the book in an interesting way. She illuminates how his masculinity supports the narrative arc as well as his easy procurment of reader sympathies. This character and his story, Ng argues, are an implied component of the First World War.
In Robin Wood’s Hitchcock’s Films Revisited, she comments on the Richard Hannay’s “particular version of masculinity” as she illuminates the psychoanalytic subtext in his behaviour. By examing his interactions with ‘the Father,’ the bullet and his pipe, Wood explores the Freudian implications of his props and discusses how they reflect on his masculinity.
In his encounter with the clergyman on the Flying Scotsman, Wood notes that he avoids identification and thus ‘castration’ or the loss of his masculinity. Were the clergyman to identify him, as the audience suspects he may in the film, Hannay would be stripped of his power of shrouded identity, just as he would lose his identity through castration. In the same way, he is saved from the bullet by Margaret’s inadvertent gift of the hymnbook. This reinforces his role as the dominant man who keeps his woman in a helpful, subservient role. His masculinity is reinforced by her, if even inadvertent, subservient help. Wood uses these examples to support the masculinity of Hannay’s actions. She questions, however, his use of the distinctly benign pipe as a gun in order to intimidate Pamela. Because Pamela never sees the pipe, she assumes it as a gun when Hannay presents it as such through his dialogue. To see it through Freud’s eyes, this prop is somewhat phallic and, when it turns out to be an innocuous pipe rather than a powerful gun, it affects the audience’s view of Hannay’s masculinity negatively. The discovery of Hannay’s presentation of the powerless pipe as something more potent is seriously emasculating for the hero.
By examining Hannay’s behaviour in Freudian light, Robin Wood gives us a new and unique perspective on the portrayal of Hannay’s masculinity in The 39 Steps.
In his book Male Myths and Icons, Roger Horrock makes mention of Alfred Hitchcock and his portrayal of masculine figures in a number of his films. Interestingly, Horrock is of the opinion that Hitchcock does not elevate the masculine figure in these pieces – rather he writes that Hitchcock’s primary interest lies in the exposure of “male perversity.”
While Horrock notes that women “are the victims in Hitchcock films” rather than men, he does not use this as evidence for a dominant, strong male stereotype. Rather, Horrock notes the psycotic flaws Hitchcock introduces in many of his amle characters. Vertigo concerns itself with necrophilia, Frenzy with rape and the well-known Psycho with psychosis. This image of man as a flawed and dangerous character suggests that it would be “farcical to suggest that Hitchcock simply permits. . .an uncomplicated identification” of his male protagonists as the relatable, stereotypical male role. Rather, Hitchcock attempts to reveal the darker perversity of men. Although they retain their power, especially over women, it is of important note that these characters are not idyllic emblems of masculinity as is seen in The 39 Steps. Hitchcock is interested in and has the capacity too expose a perversity of the male psyche through a number of his later films.
Unlike The 39 Steps, other works of Hitchcock have exposed a flawed and disruptive male character. Roger Horrock exposes this trend, revealing Hitchcock’s ability and desire to show men as morally and socially perverse, disrupting the masculine stereotype applied so flawlessly in The 39 Steps.
In his book Everything you Always Wanted to Know about Lacan: But Were Afraid to ask Hitchcock, Slavoj Zizek comments on the pre-established harmony between Hannay and Pamela. Zizek argues that English films of the late 1930s (of which The 39 Steps is a member) aimed to fit within the confines of the classic narrative, and consequently that their plot was only useful as a device to bring the protagonist and his female interest to a successful conclusion.
Zizek has found that English films of the late 1930’s seem bound to “Oedipal story of the couple’s initiatory journey,” a classic narrative of two people bound by fate to fall in love with one another. The couples of these films are bound by fate or, in the case of The 39 Steps, a pair of steel handcuffs and mature together through a series of ordeals towards the “fundamental motif of the bourgeois ideology of marriage.” This fundamental motif is played out in The 39 Steps as Pamela and Hannay are first bound together against their will and then, as they overcome obstacles together, become closer to each other. Just as Hitchcock has given us the stereotype of masculinity and painted a picture of the strong, dominant man, so has he shown us the classical ideal of two unwilling people coming together through a period of uncertainly and trials.
Slavoj Zizek’s comments on the stereotype of the relationship between Pamela and Hannay strike a chord next to the classical portrayal of Hannay as a dominant male. In appropriate fashion, the classic man has fallen into the classic, stereotypical “bourgeois ideology of marriage.”
In Toby Miller’s book Spyscreen, he includes an entire chapter on the The 39 Steps and examines how the portrayal of Richard Hannay reflects on the position of the film within the genre of spy fiction in the late 1930s. His analysis not only sheds light on the importance of the character for the film’s release at the time, but also examines the films attention to everyday life and normality in contrast to many other spy works of the time.
Toby Miller asserts that The 39 Steps is, relative to other spy film works of the time, a “conservative text” due to both it’s “faith in the ‘talented amateur’ and it’s abhorrence of the crowd” while still portraying very standard, everyday life. This is notable, he argues, at a time when most spy films were centred on the revelation of a secretive, hidden world of espionage. For Hitchcock to portray an everyman is notably different from the more extreme spy films of the era and this makes it, Miller argues, “not a case of spy fiction allegorizing or adequating to the real, but of contributing to it.” In other words, Hitchcock’s choice does not seek to escape any sense of reality, but rather revels in the capability of the everyman working within the confines of everyday life.
Toby Miller, like many critics of Hitchcock’s work, appreciates the role of the everyman in his spy films. Richard Hannay works within the confines of his own abilities and the resources of everyday life to rise to complete a task far above what could be expected of him. This portrayal is a reflection of Hitchcock’s conservative approach to spy films and flaunts the less realistic, overly dramatic spy film options of the time.
In Beyond Bond: Spies in Fiction and Film, Wesley Britton offers his opinion on the character of Richard Hannay as he relates to the beginnings of an interest in spy stories in general. Britton notes Hannay as an “unimportant archetype” in the historical development of spy novels and films.
Like many other writers, Britton recognizes the Hannay as the amateur hero. Unlike many other spy characters of the time, the Richard Hannay from The 39 Steps has no formal training in the art of espionage – he is an everyman who comes to foil an international plot against his country. This is not to say that he is not at an advantage – his lack of responsibilites or ties to his domestic space allow him the freedom to take on this new burden but the fact remains that he stands out by way of his lack of training. Interestingly, Britton notes that in Buchman’s later writings, Hannay becomes skilled, trained by “natives in South Africa.” This shift in Hannay’s character brings him more into line with the likes of James Bond. As the spy genre develops, it becomes necessary to sensationalize his character in a way that was absent from Buchman’s writing of the The 39 Steps and Hitchcock’s adaptation. It would seem that Hitchcock prefers the amateur spy, for even as Hannay develops, Hitchcock prefers to still portray an everyman surmounting fantastic obstacles, such as Roger Thornhill in North by Northwest.
Wesley Britton’s explanation of the development of spy characters allows us to illuminate Richard Hannay in the context of the general development of the genre. In doing so, we also reveal Hitchcock’s preference toward the amateur hero rather than the polished secret agent that was beginning to come into vogue.
In his book Hitchcock: The Murderous Gaze, William Rothman includes a fascinating chapter on The Thirty-nine Steps in which he elucidates the identity of the protagonist Richard Hannay. Rothman argues that Hannay is “exempt from having a self” and this lack of identity enables him to “face death without anguish” as he is free of any responsibility. It is his identity as a wanderer without an identity that gives him the freedom to pursue the mystery of Annabelle’s death and the concurrent plot.
Rothman argues that Hannay’s trip to Scotland is neither a “spiritual journey or a rite of passage.” He asserts that Hannay would not engage in a struggle for selfhood because “he is exempt from having a self.” From the first time the audience is introduced to Hannay in the theatre, he is marked as a n outsider and “outside the rigid system” by which we judge the other members of Mr. Memory’s audience. This transcendence of the limitations by which other characters hold to and are judged places Hannay in a totally different sphere. Rothman argues that this is a place where Hannay is “not a character.” His lack of identification through comparison with others combined with his easy acquiescence to Annabelle and willingness to help leave no way to clearly identify his character, Rothman argues. He is simply “reacting within a situation in which he is no more the author than we.” Hannay is a wandering force who happens to be drawn into this scenario and has the capability to see it through.
William Rothman’s chapter on The Thirty-nine Steps presents a unique perspective on the character of Richard Hannay. Rothman argues that because he has no explicable identity within the film, Hannay has the freedom to run off at a moments notice and defend the secrets of his country. It is only within this construct that his actions can be explained.