Am I the only one who noticed this book essentially begins with, "it was a dark and stormy night." Despite that, what a fun read. I felt I was travelling back to a simpler, more naive time and place. It's small town Americana where you can leave your doors open and everyone knows your name. Mayberry with a psycho Otis. (Otis was the fat town drunk for you young folks)
We have to judge the book by the standards of the time. Psycho took on two major taboos: mental illness and the role of women. What I found interesting is how the men, except for Arborgast, were very passive. The action all came from women. Mary stole the money, Norman's mother did the killing, Lila solved the mystery. Talk about your women's movement. As for the mental illness part, sadly I think the portrayal did little to diminish the stigma associated with the mentally ill. Pyscho, the movie, was the Jaws of its day. No one wanted to shower, no one wanted to be around "crazy people" and no one wanted to stay in hotel rooms.
I also found it interesting the way Bloch told us who the killer was pretty early on both in the actions of Norman and the persona of the mother. Even if you somehow missed she was dead all along, you knew they were in it together. So Psycho is not a whodunnit. I can't say it's any kind of "dunnit." It's a "here's what happened" narrative.
Getting back to the women in the story. In the hotel peeping Tom scene, Norman blames Mary for teasing him as he watches her undress. It didn't happen, but that's how he imagines it, right. So he kills her. He kills her because it's her fault. Here's the thing. She's just stolen some money. So does Bloch make it okay to kill Mary because she's been a "bad girl" even though it may not be in the way Norman sees her? When you think about it, Mary's stealing the money is irrelevant to the story other than to get Lila and Arbogast on the trail. Because, I have to say the idea of the private detective tracking down the money to keep everything quiet was a bit hard to swallow. Then again, different standards for the time.
Dialogue a bit stilted and formal, but a fun read. No longer scary I have to say, but I remember being a small boy watching the movie for the first time. I didn't shower for a week.
I hadn't thought about the social implications for the time period. I was so focused on the killer and the structure of when and how details are revealed that I didn't notice that it was the women who took action in the story. Very interesting.
ReplyDeleteGood point on the social implications and the role of women in the time period. I do believe that it was acceptable (in the context of the time) to kill Mary because she was a "bad girl," although her decision to return the money (redemption and repentance) created sympathy for her as a victim. Post World War II, the government sponsored advertising aimed at convincing women their place and happiness lay in the home--usually with modern appliances and great but impractical shoes--not the workplace they were encouraged to join during the war years. That ideal for women crept to the movies and literature of the time, producing what we now think of as stock fifties characters.
ReplyDeleteMary was a double victim of that standard. She would have been looked down on because of her unmarried and working girl status, and desire to be a good fifties wife was her motive for theft. She was a suspicious woman, making her murder justifiable (once again, in context of the time.)
You're absolutely correct in that Bloch has made it okay for Mary to be killed because she isn't the "good girl". Even viewed through the lense of the time period when the book was written, it's pretty clear that the bad girls get killed and the good girl gets to live at the end. Not much different from the movies in current times where the independent woman is dissed by the hero and the accommodating woman gets the guy.
ReplyDeleteNorman's mother was a bad girl. She abused her son and denied him the ability to live a whole life when she herself did what she wanted and even had a boyfriend.
Nice insight on the women taking action during the story. I agree with you that this is a note on society that shows what would happen, according to this lense, if the women were allowed to run free and go around "acting" and "doing things".