Femininity, Stereotypes, and Destruction Theme Analysis

The Natural’s two main female characters are presented as opposites. Iris, the young grandmother Hobbs rejects, is innocent, kind, and maternal, often dressed in white to emphasize her goodness and purity of character. In contrast, Memo, Hobbs’s primary love interest, is cruel, shallow, and materialistic, and frequently wears symbolically sinister colors like red or black. In other words, Iris represents the “Madonna” stereotype of femininity—an archetypal figure of purity and salvation—while Memo is the “whore,” a figure of sin and deceit. These figures represent distinct paths for Hobbs’s life, imbuing Hobbs’s choice of a love interest with towering, life-altering significance. While this construction seems to provide women with more power, it can also be seen as a strategy that places extra responsibility on women—exonerating Hobbs, in a way, from the consequences of his decisions. Ultimately, The Natural diminishes the role of women and female power by relying on simplistic stereotypes and suggesting their destructive potential for men’s lives.

Traditionally, the “whore”—represented by Memo—leads the male protagonist astray, while only the “Madonna,” Iris, has the ability to redeem him. In The Natural, Hobbs is given a choice between these two figures, though it is implied that he makes the wrong decision. Iris’s presence in the baseball stadium instantly heals Hobbs, who is suffering from a batting slump, likely prompted by Memo’s bad influence (Pop Fisher warns Hobbs that Memo has a tendency to create bad luck for men who pursue her; indeed, Bump Baily, her previous boyfriend, dies early on in the novel). Inspired by Iris’s mysterious appearance in the bleachers, he wins a crucial game. Throughout the novel, Iris is portrayed as a maternal figure who develops feelings of tenderness for Hobbs: she tells him that “she hates to see a hero fail,” and remarks that she was inspired to see him play in order to show him that people believe in him—and to help him “regain his power.” Iris represents redemption and vitality for Hobbs, but he does not choose her: Hobbs is repulsed by the fact that Iris is a grandmother (having had a daughter as a teenager) and thus rejects her. In choosing to walk away from Iris and all she represents, Hobbs walks away from the Madonna figure who could valorize and redeem him.

In returning to Memo, though, Hobbs is ultimately led down the wrong path, strengthening the connection between Memo and the ruinous whore in the Madonna-whore dichotomy. He becomes corrupt, accepting a bribe that Memo pushes him toward without understanding that her interest in him is purely self-motivated, and only realizes that she has deceived him once it is too late to turn back. Meanwhile, Iris continues to support Hobbs, even though he accidentally injures her with a foul ball before learning that she is pregnant with his child. Hobbs is touched by her devotion and begins to see her a viable partner again. After the game, though, acknowledging that he is ruined, Hobbs realizes that he will not be able to support Iris as a husband and father to her child. By choosing Memo over Iris—and repeatedly rejecting Iris despite her unwavering support of him—Hobbs is led toward ruination, confirming the two characters’ opposite symbolic roles.

Malamud’s description of women in the novel adheres to a strict binary: women are either saints or sinners, Madonnas or whores, as embodied by Iris and Memo, respectively. The only other woman who is detailed at length is Harriet Bird, who, like Memo, proves dangerous and deceitful. Like Memo’s dark clothes, Harriet’s sinister nature is symbolized by the black veil she wears to shoot Hobbs, neatly shelving her in the “whore” category. Furthermore, her actions, like Memo’s, irrevocably alter the course of Hobbs’s life, placing him on a path to corruption and suggesting the destructive impact of women on men’s futures.

For Malamud, women are a source of either danger or salvation, and though they hold some power over the narrative—determining Hobbs’s fate, pointing him toward redemption or corruption—they are little more than two-dimensional. Iris, Memo, and Harriet are stereotypes, meant to represent female innocence, treachery, and hysteria respectively. Thus, women are more or less sidelined in the narrative, made into simplistic symbols of Hobbs’s divided emotions: his lust for pleasure and indulgence (satisfied by Memo, and to a certain extent, Harriet, a woman he finds highly desirable) and his desire for a stable, secure life (satisfied by Iris). Though Memo, Harriet, and Iris represent different paths for Hobbs’s life, his encounters with all of them seem to prompt his own collapse: even engaging with Iris results in ruination, since he is driven back to Memo, who provokes his corrupt decisions at the end of the novel. In many ways, these women are implied to be responsible for the dismal outcome of Hobbs’s life, though his own misguided actions—such as rebuffing Iris—are arguably just as impactful. By narrowly connecting Hobbs’s destiny and devastation to female figures, however, Malamud suggests that Hobbs is only partially responsible for his own downfall, making women a source of reprehensible, destructive power in the novel.

As a novel steeped in 1950s attitudes, The Natural hardly deviates from traditional gender roles, since its female characters—depicted in terms of simplistic stereotypes—are only significant for their relationships to Hobbs and how they influence his morality and life choices. Moreover, they are characterized as figures who prompt Hobbs’s undoing, drawing him away from a road to success. As a result, the novel confirms a narrow, patriarchal vision of femininity and female power even as it unsettles other common tropes, like the myth of the American dream.