The Birth of a 'New Woman' in the Western. Becoming a Heroine in 'The Wind' (Victor Sjöström, 1928)

Abstract

Taking as point of departure the aesthetic aspects and contexts of the production of the film that promoted the transformation of the dominant discourse on identity, this article presents a countercurrent reading of Victor Sjöström`s The Wind (1928) with the intention of reconstructing the cultural space of the female spectator. The analysis focuses on a structure of meaning that runs through the text with which they parody, within the symbolic territory of western, the narrative resources in the study of the theoretical relationship between cinema and women. From the beginning, the narrative situates in a self-conscious way the resources of the point of view and the image of the woman in the origin of the feminine conflict with the wind. Through the analysis of how the gaze circulates, we understand as a vehicle of the desire of the characters, and also of the discursive figures, we can perceive a metafictional reflection sense of sense the mythical vision of the woman in the distant west to which the protagonist travels. This reflective trait and its passive gaze allow us to inscribe this identity trajectory on femininity in the symbolic constellation of the Hollywood universe configured by the Gothic heroine and the contemporary investigative woman. Beyond the usual reading that places the woman in the role of the victim, our starting hypothesis is in the twilight and atypical, the protagonist’s relationship with the wind is visible, in the gothic and expressionistic way, a fantasy which can be interpreted as the feminine resistance to heroic epics of western.