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Sometimes Graduate Coursework Gets Weird

My PhD is in Shakespeare and Disability studies. But because gtraduate school is an absolute clusterfuck and there was exactly one course in early modern literature offered and exactly zero courses in disability studies, my coursework year ended up being a mishmash of stuff that was kinda fun, but absolutely irrelevant to my primary focus. I didn't even come out with any papers that I could publish--although I came out with a couple that were VERY fun and that I am proud of. So what you're getting in this post is possibly my favorite paper on theory I've ever written, and it's on Clarice Starling, Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. Enjoy!

A Structural Examination of Clarice Starling in Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal

As a female detective written by a male author, I would expect Clarice Starling to come under heavy critical scrutiny. However, the majority of critical focus on Starling has been on Jodie Foster’s portrayal of the character in Johnathan Demme’s 1991 film adaptation of The Silence of the Lambs (Staiger, Cragin, Szumskyj 7). Starling’s character in Hannibal, Harris’s third novel dealing with the titular cannibal, has been largely rejected by fans and ignored by critics (Szumskyj 200-201). Thanks to Foster’s portrayal, Starling entered the public consciousness as a female detective icon in a filmic context, and her larger structural arc in the novels has been little commented upon.

The structure of Harris’s novels deserve scrutiny because the structure largely informs the process which leads to Starling becoming Lecter’s lover—a relationship decried by fans as being largely unbelievable and disappointing (Szumskyj 200-201). Early detective novels featured a clear triangular structure, placing the detective, villain and victim squarely in their own categories with little to no overlap, and Stephen Fuller argues that Harris works to maintain these distinctions in Silence before fully collapsing them in Hannibal (822). This essay argues that rather than completely collapsing the traditional structure, Harris creates a structure for his characters that is based in two non-generic, non-permeable binary structures which are then overlaid by a permeable, disputative super-binary over which Starling and Lecter’s character arcs chiasmus. A structural examination of Starling’s character throughout Silence and Hannibal is revealing because it allows readers to distance themselves from the prevailing psychoanalytic critical trend of pathologizing Starling’s character and her relationship with Lecter, demonstrating a reading of Starling that offers an alternative explanation of her strengths as a female detective and relationship with Lecter, absent of Freudian pathologizing.

As I have previously alluded, Starling has been primarily viewed in terms of Freudian psychoanalysis. Fuller dismisses both Lecter and Starling as suffering from “a crippling neurosis” (822), while Robert Benton’s analysis of Starling examines psychoanalyzing not only a serial killer, but also what is unresolved in Clarice’s analysis (457). Even critics who argue that Demme’s film is ultimately feminist do so through a Freudian lens. Diane Dubois, arguing that Starling appropriates and ultimately reverses the idea of the male gaze in order to ask the audience to reevaluate their role as viewer (300), is engaging heavily with Laura Mulvey, and the idea of the male gaze as a Freudian (and therefore male-dominated) method of filming (306). Dubois and Janet Staiger also take up the conflation of Jodie Foster’s Star Persona with Starling’s character and the portrayal of homosexuality in Demme’s film, arguing that Foster—whose sexuality was questioned by the gay community in response to the portrayal of Jame Gumb (Staiger 282-83)—created the iconic images that popular culture ties to Starling (Dubois 302-303). Because this essay is focusing on Harris’s novels rather than Demme’s films, Foster’s star persona has little bearing on the main thrust of my argument, except to acknowledge that the critical trends created by Demme’s film—the use of psychoanalysis, pathologizing Starling and her sexuality as well as her relationships with other male characters—have also impacted the little extant criticism focused on Harris’s novels.

The 2008 collection, Dissecting Hannibal Lecter, focuses primarily (though not exclusively) on Harris’s novels. As the title suggests, this collection focuses primarily on Lecter himself, although his relationship with Starling in Hannibal is an overarching focus. Within these parameters, however, Dissecting Hannibal Lecter follows the critical trends established by articles relating to Demme’s film with one major exception: the collection spends quite a bit of time focusing on generic conventions which explain Starling and Lecter’s relationship at the end of Hannibal. These arguments focus primarily around ideas of genre and psychoanalysis, from Peter Messent’s argument that positioning Hannibal as an American Gothic novel and reading Lecter’s relationship with Starling through the loss of Mischa (24-25) to Robert Waugh’s focus on the imago imagery, drawing parallels between Starling and Lolita as well as Lecter and Humbert Humbert (77). In addition to these essays never quite satisfactorily explaining Lecter’s relationship to Starling, Starling as a character is dismissed by Freudian pathology at best and relegated to Lecter’s equally neurotic, antagonistic sidekick at worst. It is here that I diverge from the major critical trends to focus on a structural reading of Starling in order to reclaim for the novels some of the strength and iconic status that fans found in Foster’s film portrayal of the character.

I previously stated that, rather than completely collapsing the boundaries between the detective, villain and victim in his novels, Harris creates a structure based on two non-generic, non-permeable binaries. The structural foundation of Hannibal and Silence are based on the typical male/female and teacher/student binaries, where male and teacher are dominant and female and student are non-dominant. These binaries are more widely applicable than generic structural binaries, and form the base of Starling’s world. She is a trainee in Silence, and even in Hannibal she views both Brigham and Crawford as teacher figures; after Brigham’s death Starling is arguably at sea with Crawford as her only socially (or personally) acceptable anchor. After Crawford’s heart attack (Hannibal 408) and death (Hannibal 543), extrapolating from John Goodrich’s argument that Lecter also functions as a teacher figure for Starling (43), Starling still has not moved on from her position as a student because she has come completely under Dr. Lecter’s tutelage in Hannibal. I will spend no time explaining this second foundational binary; living in a patriarchal society serves as all the explanation needed. Obviously these two foundational binaries alone are too simplistic to support the structure of two novels as dynamic as Silence and Hannibal; using these binaries alone does not permit Starling any character evolution. She is always female, and always a student in these two texts, and so in order to create complexity in her character via structure, Harris uses a more complex, genre-based super-binary.

In diminishing the separation of the detective-villain-victim structure, Harris creates a binary based on traditional generic classifications, but a binary that also allows for movement and argument. Both the dominant and non-dominant sides of this super-binary are composed of binaries themselves. The dominant side of the super-binary contains a detective/villain binary, and then non-dominant side is constructed by a villain/victim binary. I argue that this super-binary is created from a traditional generic convention, but also that the sub-binaries on the dominant and non-dominant sides of the super-binary are both permeable and disputative. By permeable, I mean that there is the ability to cross the bar both in the sub-binaries, but also in the super-binary structure; this is where we see character movement as well as Harris’s conflation of detective and villain as well as villain and victim roles. So in this structure, not only can a character’s place in the super-binary change, but the dominant side of the sub-binaries can also change. It is this permeability that leads to the disputative properties of the super-binary; depending on where in the text you place the binary and where Starling is in her chiasmus at that point in the text, the dominant side of a given binary (be it a sub-binary or the super-binary itself) can be argued as being either side.

The logical question to ask, given that I argue for a binary structure that can be manipulated to the point of total inversion, is how this structure is still a binary one. This is why the character chiasmus of Starling and Lecter is so critical to this structural model: the chiasmus serves to stabilize the entire structure, by maintaining oppositional movement in terms of character. The three elements of this structure can be visualized thus: The two foundational binaries (male/female, teacher/student) are the table that the hourglass of the super-binary rests on, and the chiasmus creates the bulbs of the hourglass, stabilizing the structure and maintaining distance even when the entire structure is inverted. Visually, the structure might look like this:

Figure 1

Such a structure takes into account not only genre, but the deconstruction of a traditional detective narrative structure, as well as the underlying assumptions of a patriarchal society without allowing for a lens that dismisses Starling as a pathologized woman in need of a “cure.”

Starling positions herself within this structure during her first and third meetings with Lecter. Prior to the meeting, Crawford asks if Starling’s counselor’s license is current, and she replies that it is (Silence 3). While Starling is still arguably a new counselor, she has experience (Silence 3) and therefore could talk to Lecter as a peer in terms of the field of psychology. Starling had the opportunity to split herself along lines of expertise in her fields and place her relationship with Lecter outside of generic conventions of Detective/Villain. Instead, Starling replicates with Lecter her first move with Jack Crawford: she opens communication by presenting herself as an available student. She sends Crawford a note on her qualification for the academy (Silence 2), and she challenges Lecter to literally test her qualifications in psychology (Silence 17). Starling’s third meeting with Lecter opens in a similar fashion. Starling tells Lecter, “It was strange going in there. Something I’d like to talk to you about,” (Silence 58), which positions Starling even more firmly in her role as student in the foundational binary, while simultaneously inverting the super-binary—albeit briefly—to place Starling as detective in a non-dominant position of non-knowing in direct contrast to Lecter’s dominant position as teacher and person of knowledge. Starling and Lecter cement this inverted super-binary as well as the student/teacher foundational binary during this second meeting when Lecter asks Starling if he can address her by her first name, and immediately upon Starling’s consent, dictating that she refer to him formally, by his title (Silence 60).

John Goodrich, in his essay “Hannibal at the Lectern,” examines these first two encounters between Starling and Lecter, characterizing the first meeting as “something of a seminar” (40), and the second as “straight business” (42), while using fencing metaphors to communicate the feel of these scenes to the reader. I agree with Goodrich in his characterization of Lecter and Starling as a student/teacher relationship, however the fundamental assumption made is that Lecter assumes a role as a teacher in order to help Starling, whether that be help on her case, psychological help, or simply helping her overcome her own perceived limitations (45). Goodrich’s assumption—that Starling needs help, and that Lecter provides it for a paternalistic reason—demonstrates the necessity for the male/female binary to underpin the super-binary structure. Starling, like contemporary female readers, lives in a patriarchal system, and critics show a tendency to assign all the agency in initiating the student/teacher binary to Lecter. If Harris had written a patient-psychiatrist novel where the only structural binary involved were the student/teacher binary, then perhaps Lecter could justifiably be credited for the initiation. However, because we are working with a super-binary structure based on genre as well as the student/teacher binary, we must give Starling—who, as demonstrated, has a history of making herself available to teachers she deems worthy—credit for the agency she shows in dictating the type of relationship she and Lecter have. Starling is consistently reminded that she is on the non-dominant side of the male/female foundational binary, but at least with Lecter, Starling makes a choice to place herself on the student side of the binary, and allow her generic place in the super-binary (detective, even if she is a trainee) to confer on her extra authority when she needs it. We see her actively take that authority when she keeps the press out of Rapsail’s storage unit (Silence 54-56).

With the super-binary beginning as inverted, Starling’s chiasmus with Lecter seems to be inverted as well. Because this essays reads Silence and Hannibal as a complete narrative, however, Starling’s point of beginning for her character arc must always be on the detective side of the super-binary. Starling’s journey in Silence is indisputably one in which she moves from a place of not-knowledge to knowledge, which, on first viewing, would seem to directly contradict the established structural framework. At this point it is important to keep in mind that Starling’s character arc crosses Lecter’s at a nonlinear point in narrative time. Starling ends The Silence of the Lambs on a high note; she has stopped Buffalo Bill, she’s a rising star with the FBI, and her personal life is going quite well. Lecter’s life is also on the upswing at the end of Silence, because he has managed to escape custody, change his face and prepare to go spend his life in freedom. The moment where Lecter’s arc crosses over has to be just after his escape (Silence 364-367), and for Starling the chiasmus moment has to be early in Hannibal, when she returns to the old shell of the asylum where she first met Lecter and she realizes just how disparate her dreams have become from her reality (Hannibal 84). To fully explain this chiasmus’s stabilizing effect on the super-binary, we have to back up briefly and discuss Starling’s effectiveness as a female detective. Critics of both the film and novels have argued persuasively that Starling’s effectiveness as a female detective is—in frequent contrast to Will Graham’s methodology—her ability to empathize with the female victims rather than the serial killer victimizing them (Garret 7-8, Hawkins 262, Dubois 300, Messent 23-24, etc.). I will spend little time on Starling’s female detective skills in Silence, that ground is well-trod. What I wish to draw attention to is how those same skills affect Starling’s position structurally in Hannibal.

In Silence, Starling functions as a female detective by inhabiting the gray space in the separator bars of the binary structures. She uses both the traditionally masculine forensic and weapon skills learned at Quantico in conjunction with her distinctly feminine ability to empathize with female victims to occupy both dominant and non-dominant mindsets in order to solve the crime in front of her. Starling both maintains and collapses the super-binary structure in Silence. Ordinarily this would be cause for a deconstructionist argument, however once again, Lecter and generic conventions maintain the integrity if the binary structure even while Starling is testing the permeability of the separator bars. At no point does Lecter claim an institutionalized label of “detective,” the closest Lecter gets to being a detective is as an armchair sleuth, and even then he is more psychiatrist than sleuth, particularly when he deals with Margot Verger (Hannibal 458-461). So the distinction between Lecter’s particular brand of villainy and Starling’s admittedly deconstructionist construction of her own personal style of detection causes sufficient tension and distance to maintain the permeable structure of the binary.

In Hannibal, however, Starling consciously steps away from the more masculine detective strategies. In deciding on her strategy to find Lecter, Harris writes of Starling, “Starling was weary of technique. Faith in technique was the religion of dangerous trades,” (Hannibal 255), while at the same time she “began to credit her own visceral reactions to things, without quantifying them or restricting them to words” (Hannibal 255). Starling is rejecting the institutionalized, quantifiable, masculine way of detecting in favor of a more traditionally feminine, intuitive manner of detecting. This functions in a number of different ways in our super-binary structure. First, this section of the text is a nice literary parallel to the first time Starling had to command feminine power in a male-dominated environment: removing extraneous personnel from the coroner’s office when she was called to print a floater (Silence 82). In both these instances, Starling inverts the generic binary; women are frequently the victims of serial killers and so are frequently seen by patriarchal forces as either victims all the time, or potential victims. By inverting the binary, Starling is highlighting situations in which women possess power or intuition that men do not. Krendler actually acknowledges this inversion of power dynamics, as well as the implied threat to him when he decides that Starling has to be discredited before she uncovers his role in giving Lecter to Mason Verger (Hannibal 381). What is slightly different in Hannibal is that at this point in the novel, Starling seems to be changing her focus from victim to killer.

Readers at this point are aware that Verger want to feed Lecter to his pigs in revenge, and readers are aware that the net is closing around Lecter. So there is a sense of dramatic irony in Starling’s choice of focus and methodology. When Starling sets up her methodology in Hannibal, Donnie Barber has not been discovered as a new Lecter victim, nor is she (or Lecter) aware of Verger’s plot. There is a real sense that Starling and Lecter might view themselves as playing out the dominant side of the super-binary, albeit with Starling focusing on a more feminized version of the detective dominant. The reality of the narrative, however, is that Starling is actually sleuthing out Verger’s plot, while being squarely aligned with the victim and using her strengths as a female detective to once again empathize with a victim in order to solve a crime. At this point in the novel readers have a sense of dual structural vision. Starling sees herself and Lecter structured as the dominant half of our super-binary, fighting it out for control in a move that ideally would end with Starling’s redemption with the Bureau. For readers, however, knowing that both Verger and Krendler are in play, the super-binary looks more like this:

Starling

Lecter/Krendler/Verger

Verger/Lecter/ Krendler

Starling

And the overlaid chiasmus can only send Starling further out of favor with the FBI, while Lecter (assuming he avoids being eaten) is at a very low risk of suddenly being sent into a downward spiral. Once again, we have Starling in a position of being both dominant and non-dominant, based on the strength of the two foundational binaries that she cannot get away from. And also again, the strict categorization of Lecter, Verger and Krendler allow the super-binary structure to maintain its integrity while still being permeable. One critical reason why the binary structure has to be as complex as it is, is to accommodate the shift in narrative in the latter quarter of Hannibal, after the detective sections of the narrative have closed. Before I discuss the last few chapters of Hannibal, I will address Starling’s solo raid of the Verger’s farm.

Harris gives his readers a nice sense of narrative symmetry, in terms of beginning the novel during a botched drug raid and ending the detective sections of the novel with a vigilante rescue of a serial killer by a disgraced FBI agent. Starling in this section of the novel is very much back to the Starling we recognize from Silence, half action-hero and half hostage-negotiator. She has used her feminine detective skills to get here, and once again her masculine skills allow her to subdue the villains. However, we also get a parallel here between Starling and John Brigham at the beginning of Hannibal. Evelda takes a deadly potshot at Brigham from beneath her baby’s blanket (Hannibal 13), foreshadowing the shot Tommaso takes at Starling with the tranquilizer gun in the barn (Hannibal 475). At that moment, Starling is aligned with both Brigham and her trainee self from Silence. This dual alignment is significant because it acknowledges both where Starling the Detective’s character began, as well as where she has come to and how she must necessarily end. Benjamin Szumskyj argues that canny readers should not have expected a “happily ever after” for Starling, and suggests that a less brilliant writer than Harris would have killed Starling (208-209). My counter argument to Szumskyj is that Harris had it both ways in Hannibal; Starling is double-tapped by a tranquilizer gun, which in a world not under Harris’s authorial control should have killed her. The fact that Starling herself conspicuously double-taps one of the hit men in the barn, and the narrative parallel with John Brigham, says that readers witness the symbolic death of Agent Clarice Starling in the Verger’s barn. The body carried away and cared for by Lecter is named Clarice Starling, but the consciousness that emerges is no longer FBI Agent Starling.

The final section of Hannibal sees our long-suffering super-binary structure once again inverted, and Starling in two new places on it. For this section of my argument, I remind readers that this is a structural analysis of Starling; the narrative reminders and critical focus on Lecter recreating Mischa literally in Starling’s place are periphery to an analysis of Starling herself. That being said, critics of the novel are deeply divided on the effectiveness of Starling’s fate. While Szumskyj argues that Starling’s fate is “a stroke of genius,” and fits it into his own binary structure (civilized/barbaric) (209), S.T. Joshi argues that the ending is “really too preposterous,” suggesting that Starling ought to have been able to resist “hypnotic control” (129). Neither critic suggests the idea of Starling experiencing a symbolic death, however. Arguably, the polarization of critics on Starling’s fate comes from the difficulties of trying to reconcile the drastic changes in Starling’s character, even with the influence of the cocktail of drugs Lecter is plying her with. Positing the death of Agent Starling allows Clarice to transition to an entirely new place in our binary structure: She joins Lecter in the villain category, both dominant and non-dominant in the super-binary structure. In permeating that final boundary through her symbolic death, Starling inverts the super-binary structure because she and Lecter together are going to have no trouble evading police—nobody even bothers to search for Starling after the shootout at the Verger barn except Ardelia Mapp (Hannibal 499-500)—and the two of them have similar tastes and minds. Together, they create a place in the text where Villain is dominant in the villain/victim sub-binary, as well as being dominant in the villain/detective sub-binary, which is of course the non-dominant sub-binary by the end of the novel.

The stabilizing chiasmus of course has now come to its logical conclusion; however Lecter’s arc is structurally straighter than Starling’s. Lecter has come to a place of knowledge and complete power by the end of the novel. Arguably, Agent Starling’s arc came to a close at her symbolic death on the Verger farm; she was not in a position of power, her lack of knowledge caused her to be shot, her career was over and her self-identity was on the verge of a crisis. She had moved from a place of confidence, power and potential in Silence to her “death” three quarters of the way through Hannibal. That leaves the new consciousness named Clarice Starling simply on par with Lecter; she goes (very quickly) from a place of powerlessness and not-knowledge to a place of knowledge. This Clarice, however, does not get a separate chiasmic arc because she is still tied to the foundational binaries. At no point in either The Silence of the Lambs or Hannibal does Starling and Lecter’s relationship move past a student/teacher binary. It is a sexual relationship by the end of the novel, however even after the relationship takes on a sexual component, Starling is still positioned as a student to Lecter. We are told that Starling learns to speak Italian, and that she is constructing a memory palace similar to Lecter’s own (Hannibal 542). It is safe to say that Starling is not taking classes at the Sorbonne, so we must assume that the structure of student to teacher still underpins Lecter and Starling’s relationship.

We must also assume that there is still a detective presence in the novel at the end for the super-binary structure to be maintained. Ardelia Mapp fulfills this function as a non-dominant, socially, and institutionally handcuffed sleuth looking for Starling. Mapp’s inclusion as a detective once again positions the detective as a clearly defined category that manages to remain in opposition, however weak, to the dominant forces of the villain/victims.

Early in this essay, I described the super-binary structure as an hourglass on a still table. In practice, it seems to function more as a perpetual motion machine, with characters and binaries constantly changing orientation and position, but still held in their structural motion. This seems a poetic way to explain Clarice Starling’s functionality as a female detective across Hannibal and The Silence of the Lambs, and it also serves to demonstrate a way to connect Starling and Lecter in a relationship without pathologizing one or both characters. By placing them in a complex, multi-layer structure, readers have an alternate manner in which to read a strong female detective, whose polarizing end has not been frequently enough discussed in a critical forum.

Works Cited

Benton, Robert J. “The Silence of the Lambs: Clarice Starling’s Analysis?” Psychoanalytic Review. 79.3 (1992): 457-461. MLA International Bibliography. Web. 23 February 2016.

Cragin, Becca. "Noirish Inversions: Investigation and Victimization in the Silence of the Lambs and Basic Instinct." Americana : The Journal of American Popular Culture, 1900 to Present 8.2 (2009)ProQuest. Web. 12 Feb. 2016.

Dubois, Diane. “Seeing the Female Body Differently: Gender Issues in The Silence of the Lambs.” Journal of Gender Studies. 10.3 (2001): 297-310. MLA International Bibliography. 12 February 2016. Web.

Fuller, Stephen M. “Deposing an American Cultural Totem: Clarice Starling and Postmodern Heroism in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal.” Journal of Popular Culture. 38.5 (2005): 819-33.

Garret, Greg. “Objecting to Objectification: Re-Viewing the Feminine in The Silence of the Lambs.” Journal of Popular Culture. 27.4 (1994): 1-12. ProQuest. Web. 12 February 2016.

Goodrich, John. “Hannibal at the Lectern: A Textual Analysis of Dr. Hannibal Lecter’s Character and Motivations in Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs.” Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris. Ed. Benjamin Szumskyj. Jefferson: McFarland and Company Inc. 2008. Print.

Harris, Thomas. The Silence of the Lambs. St. Martin’s: New York. 1988.

Harris, Thomas. Hannibal. Random House: New York. 1999. Kindle. 3 March 2015. Ebook.

Hawkins, Harriett. “Maidens and Monsters in Modern Popular Culture: The Silence of the Lambs and Beauty and the Beast, Textual Practice.” Textual Practice. 7:2 (1993): 258-266. MLA International Bibliography. 20 February 2016. Web.

Joshi, S.T. “Suspense vs. Horror: The Case of Thomas Harris.” Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris. Ed. Benjamin Szumskyj. Jefferson: McFarland and Company Inc. 2008. Print.

Messent, Peter. “American Gothic: Liminality and the Gothic in Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter Novels.” Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris. Ed. Benjamin Szumskyj. Jefferson: McFarland and Company Inc. 2008. Print.

Staiger, Janet. “Taboos and Totems: Cultural Meanings of The Silence of the Lambs.” Reception Study: From Literary Theory to Cultural Studies. Ed. James L. Machor and Philip Goldstein. New York: Routledge. 2001. Print.

Szumskyj, Benjamin. “Morbidity of the Soul: An Appreciation of Hannibal.” Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris. Ed. Benjamin Szumskyj. Jefferson: McFarland and Company Inc. 2008. Print.

Waugh, Robert H. “The Butterfly and the Beast: The Imprisoned Soul in Thomas Harris’s Lecter Trilogy.” Dissecting Hannibal Lecter: Essays on the Novels of Thomas Harris. Ed. Benjamin Szumskyj. Jefferson: McFarland and Company Inc. 2008. Print.

#clarice starling #hello clarice #thomas harris #hannibal #hannibal lecter #the silence of the lambs #academic writing

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