Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption portrays a culture where people believe men are violent and sexual, while women are natural targets of men’s violent and sexual impulses. One protagonist, Andy Dufresne, at first suffers due to these gender stereotypes but eventually manipulates them to escape from prison. Andy is convicted of murdering his wife Linda and her lover Glenn Quentin. The prosecution argues the murders “could be understood, if not condoned” supposing Andy had killed Linda and Glenn in a jealous rage; by claiming a husband murdering his unfaithful wife is understandable, the prosecution suggests men’s violent impulses toward women, based in the desire for exclusive sexual access to women, are natural and widespread. Yet because the ironic, self-controlled Andy does not display stereotypical, violent masculine emotions on the witness stand—no rages, no outbursts—the prosecution convinces the jury that Andy is an unnatural, cold-blooded, premeditated killer. Once in Shawshank prison, Andy suffers from gender stereotypes again. Homosexual sex in Shawshank is heavily gendered: while stereotypically masculine, violent prisoners assault other men, actual gay men are expected to “play the female” and male rape victims bleeding through their underwear suffer jokes about their “menstrual flow.” Prison rapists target Andy due to his slightness and “fair good looks”—implicitly feminine qualities that make Andy a target for masculine sexual violence.
Though Andy suffers wrongful conviction and sexual assault for defying gender stereotypes, he eventually manipulates stereotypes to secure his freedom. When he starts hanging contraband pin-up posters in his cell, everyone—even his friend and fellow prisoner Red—assumes he wants them for stereotypically masculine, sexual reasons: as visual aids for his fantasies. Thus no one thinks to look behind the posters—behind which Andy successfully hides the hole he is digging in his cell wall. Andy’s initial victimization and subsequent escape from prison show how gender stereotypes distort the truth—and how those who recognize the distortions can manipulate stereotypes to their own ends.
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Gender Stereotypes, Sex, and Violence Quotes in Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption
It was that last fact that militated more against Andy than any of the others. The DA with the political aspirations made a great deal of it in his opening statement and his closing summation. Andrew Dufresne, he said, was not a wronged husband seeking a hot-blooded revenge against his cheating wife; that, the DA said, could be understood, if not condoned. But this revenge had been of a much colder type. Consider! the DA thundered at the jury. Four and four! Not six shots, but eight! He had fired the gun empty . . . and then stopped to reload so he could shoot each of them again!
And then there are the sisters.
They are to prison society what the rapist is to the society outside the walls. They’re usually long-timers, doing hard bullets for brutal crimes. Their prey is the young, the weak, and the inexperienced . . . or, as in the case of Andy Dufresne, the weak-looking. […] Most often what the sisters take by force they could have had for free, if they wanted it that way; those who have been turned always seem to have “crushes” on one sister or another, like teenage girls with their Sinatras, Presleys, or Redfords. But for the sisters, the joy has always been in taking it by force . . . and I guess it always will be.
Because of his small size and fair good looks (and maybe also because of that very quality of self-possession I had admired), the sisters were after Andy from the day he walked in. If this was some kind of fairy story, I’d tell you that Andy fought the good fight until they left him alone. I wish I could say that, but I can’t. Prison is no fairy-tale world.
It rips you up some, but not bad—am I speaking from personal experience, you ask?—I only wish I weren’t. You bleed for awhile. If you don’t want some clown asking you if you just started your period, you wad up a bunch of toilet paper and keep it down the back of your underwear until it stops. The bleeding really is like a menstrual flow; it keeps up for two, maybe three days, a slow trickle. Then it stops. No harm done, unless they’ve done something even more unnatural to you. No physical harm done—but rape is rape, and eventually you have to look at your face in the mirror again and decide what to make of yourself.
I glanced into his cell and saw Rita over his bunk in all her swimsuited glory, one hand behind her head, her eyes half-closed, those soft, satiny lips parted. It was over his bunk where he could look at her nights, after lights-out, in the glow of the arc sodiums in the exercise yard.
But in the bright morning sunlight, there were dark slashes across her face—the shadow of the bars on his single slit window.
