The shadow of incest hangs over the story and, as it progresses, the film becomes readable as an allegory about familial sexual abuse. Shadow of a Doubt is a very dark film in which the narrative suspense is based on the ways in which patriarchy enables, supports and covers up for men like Uncle Charlie. But as the story progresses, young Charlie begins to have doubts about her uncle and to regret her unthinking allegiance to him, especially when an FBI Agent arrives and tells her that he may be the murderer they’ve been pursuing. When young Charlie insists that she and her uncle are alike, and perhaps even share some kind of mystical connection, we feel that this is because he represents something that she desperately wants and is denied. Little wonder that she finds her handsome, well-travelled uncle so exciting.įor both Charlie and her mother, Uncle Charlie represents a chance to vicariously experience some glamour and freedom. Young Charlie is bored out of her mind, having graduated from high school with no prospect of going to college, she’s waiting around for someone to marry her so that she can embark on the same kind of life that has left her mother a hollowed-out, anxiety-ridden wreck. Shadow of a Doubt is unflinching in its representation of the dullness and drudgery of women’s lives in small-town America during the period in which it’s set. As the film progresses, it’s revealed that the FBI are on Uncle Charlie’s trail and that he may or may not be the psychopathic killer of several wealthy widows. Charlie is therefore ecstatic when her mysterious Uncle arrives for a visit, but it’s apparent from the outset that Uncle Charlie is not in the slightest bit innocent and that he’s exploiting his niece’s fixation on him for ends that are not immediately clear. This crush isn’t too surprising considering the awful boredom of the life that she’s living in a small town with her painfully “average” family, including a benign but emotionally absent and useless father, a drudge of a mother and two younger siblings.
The film’s protagonist is Charlie, a young woman somewhere between adolescence and adulthood, who has an innocent crush on her Uncle Charlie, her mother’s younger brother for whom she was named. Although by no means an intentionally feminist film, Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt(1943) is a film that has a lot of interesting things to say about women, the family and patriarchy.
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