Lesbians Behind Bars
'Caged' (1950) and the history of the Prison Lesbian trope
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Contemporary audiences are well-acquainted with media about women in prison, from the smash hit Orange Is The New Black to its Australian equivalent, Wentworth. Such narratives have a century-long history and are inextricably intertwined with the lesbian imaginary.
In her 2008 article “Containing “Deviant” Desire: Lesbianism, Heterosexuality, and the Women-in-Prison Narrative,” Ann Ciasullo discusses this history and explores how lesbian archetypes figure into such stories. Ciasullo traces “women-in-prison” narratives back to the 1920s, emerging in movies, television shows, novels, and psychological research over the next several decades. A central figure in these stories, the “prison lesbian” represents the foundational anxieties and moral function of these narratives.
Women in prison became a cultural obsession around the mid-20th century, acting as an object of fascination for both scholars and the general public. Psychologists argued that criminality in women was directly related to lesbianism, and this became the common perspective in popular media. As historian Estelle B. Freedman writes, following WWII, “women's prison became synonymous with lesbianism.”
The most visible representation of this widely-accepted idea, women-in-prison movies took off during this post-war era. Many had an over-the-top quality to them, and in the 70s they were closely associated with sexplotation films, but one movie stands out as a highly influential – and in some ways distinct – entry in this genre.
Released in 1950, John Cromwell’s Caged is often considered the starting point of the women-in-prison trend. The film follows Marie (Eleanor Parker), a pregnant 19-year-old sent to prison for assisting her now-deceased husband in armed robbery. Caged purports to be a serious film – it was nominated for three Oscars – that nonetheless employs the genre’s most common tropes and contains the requisite amount of melodrama.
The typical plot of a women-in-prison film is as follows: a young, naive woman is sent to prison, receives a shocking initiation into life there, and must toughen up in order to survive. The woman either returns to her normal life by the end of the film – often rescued by a benevolent man – or becomes like her fellow inmates and is thus beyond saving. These films most often concluded with the first ending, tying up any subversive loose ends.
Caged follows this narrative almost to a tee. Marie is shocked by the destitution and brutality she witnesses in prison, and her prison initiation is a rude awakening. (The prison initiation portion of the film also includes a shower scene, which Ciasullo counts as one of the most common ingredients in these stories.) Marie and the rest of the incarcerated women are stripped of their femininity upon arriving in prison – they take away Marie’s wedding ring, the women aren’t allowed makeup or appealing clothing, and Marie’s head is shaved. These circumstances push the women closer to lesbianism, which itself is a form of punishment, at least in the eyes of the state and the filmmakers.
Caged features one of the most significant elements of the women-in-prison film: the prison lesbian. Marie’s cell block is run by the sadistic matron Evelyn Harper (Hope Emerson). Harper does favors for the women in exchange for money, adorning her room with expensive furnishings and using her influence to keep the inmates under her thumb. When she first meets Marie, she lecherously invites her to sit on her chair, telling Marie “I could get you anything you wanted.” She loves nothing more than throwing the women into solitary confinement, sometimes resorting to violence when she does so.
In one memorable scene, Harper dresses up in a garish imitation of a feminine woman and brags to her girls about the fancy date her man is taking her on that evening. This display doesn’t do much to convince us of her heterosexuality (for one thing, Harper doesn’t look right in those clothes), but rather serves as another form of sadistic punishment, with Harper reminding the women of the feminine delights they no longer have access to.
Indeed, Harper’s un-feminine appearance and physically large presence are clear visual markers of her sexual deviance. No one would describe the 6’2” Hope Emerson as a typical, dainty lady, and in this case, her unusual size adds to the character. In an 1895 study of women prisoners, the researchers took women’s measurements, concluding that the most “masculine” of these women were born criminals rather than victims of circumstance. Whether a warden, matron, or inmate, the prison lesbian can be identified by her masculine body, and Harper is the prototype for such a figure. As Jack Halberstam writes in Female Masculinity, “Hope Emerson’s [...] sadistic performance [...] became the standard model for women's prison films.”
But Harper isn’t the only prison lesbian found in this correctional facility. She exists in stark contrast with the superintendent, Ruth Benton (Agnes Moorehead). Benton is a sympathetic figure hoping to reform the prison. When Marie first meets her, she cries into her shirt. In opposition to Harper’s drab uniform, Benton dresses in a sharp suit – a more appealing outfit that is no less lesbian-coded.
As Patricia White writes in the 1995 collection Out In Culture: Gay, Lesbian, and Queer Essays on Popular Culture, Harper and Benton represent two “different tropes of lesbian seduction–nurturance and dominance,” both attempting to exert influence over their charges. White suggests that “this feminist drama opposes two “dyke” types in a struggle for control over the young heroine.” She also notes that Moorehead’s whole career as a supporting actress has queer undertones, in addition to the fact that Morehood herself was often described as queer.
Most of Marie’s fellow inmates are hardened criminals, with a few that don’t believe they belong there. Kitty Stark (Betty Garde), the queen bee of the block, makes a living stealing and tries to recruit Marie to her team (in more ways than one). Kitty also reads as a lesbian, having killed her husband and expressing no interest in men, in addition to displaying a sense of intimating dominance.
Kitty is out-dyked by the arrival of Elvira Powell (Lee Patrick), her rival and an even more lesbian-coded criminal. “She’s a cute trick,” Elvira notes when she first lays eyes on Marie. Elvira also tries to recruit Marie to join her squad, a proposal that Marie eventually accepts. She sidles up to Harper as well, not aware of the level of sadism she carries out. Despite their differences, Harper, Kitty, and Elvira all fall under the umbrella of what Halberstam calls “predatory butches.”
Marie spends most of the film trying not to be like the other women. She proves to Kitty she’s a competent swindler, but insists she doesn’t want to be a thief (or a lesbian). At her parole hearing, she tells a group of men “If I have to fall back in I’ll be like the others. And I’m not like them!” Later, Harper shaves Marie’s head after she starts a riot over a stray kitten, and Marie reaches the point of no return.
At this moment, Marie loses what’s left of her womanhood and her optimism about the future. With no men to save her, Marie officially goes to the dark side, joining Elvira’s den of thieves in exchange for release. There’s no indication that Marie has become a lesbian by the end of the film, but she’s aligned herself with the bad queers (as opposed to Benton’s promise of respectability), and there’s no going back.
What about the women-in-prison story creates such fertile ground for these lesbian narratives? As Ciasullo writes, the prison lesbian offers promises to viewers or readers. These promises range from “providing the occasion for a safe but titillating exploration of female homosexuality to reinscribing the (purported) stability of heterosexuality.”
Some of these morality tales were based on so-called scientific findings. The accepted explanation for homosexuality in the 19th century was the theory of inverts, which posited that homosexuals experienced an inversion of gendered traits, with lesbians having a compulsion to dress in men’s clothing and live like men and gay men suffering from the opposite affliction.
Some sexologists made a distinction between true inverts and pseudo inverts, with true inverts being “born this way,” so to speak, and pseudo inverts being a product of their environment. By separating the two groups, women-in-prison movies often reaffirm the preeminence of heterosexuality by the end. Caged differs in this way as Marie falls in with these deviant women, though this outcome is depicted as a tragedy rather than a triumph,
One of the fears about these lesbian inverts was that their “disease” could spread among other women. This is one of the dangers of so-called normal women entering the prison system. At the same time, women-in-prison narratives quite literally contain these prison lesbians, limiting their influence to inside the prison walls. Though their disease does sometimes spread to other inmates, including our innocent protagonist, most films of this sort resolve this contradiction by the end, indicating that the lesbian virus can’t (or doesn’t) spread outside the prison. As Ciasullo writes, the women-in-prison narrative “demarcates the limits of lesbianism, encloses the "true" lesbian behind prison walls, establishes the limits of desire, and above all, restores the (heterosexual) order.”
Of course, things go a little differently in Caged. Marie walks free, but not into the arms of a man. Instead, a power dyke takes her under her wing and introduces her to a new life – one that she can’t escape. As Superintendent Benton notes as Marie leaves, “she’ll be back.” Rather than aligning with the narrative Ciasullo describes, Caged concludes more like Halberstam’s characterization: “The innocent prison women–the femmes, in other words–in most prison films, enter prison as young ingenues but leave as street-tough dykes.” Though the film depicts lesbianism as a punishment and as a most undesirable fate, it also provides Marie with a means of escape.
Since stories set there first emerged, prison has remained a fruitful, evocative setting for ideas about gender, sexuality, and deviance to play out. In films made during the Production Code era, these ideas were more implicit than explicit, though the implications aren’t far from the surface. In recent years, prison dramas have become more direct in their discussions – or critiques – of the prison industrial complex, such as the many race and class disparities depicted in Orange Is The New Black.
To be fair, Caged also has an abolitionist streak, as it highlights the brutality of prisons and the fact that rehabilitation is rarely achieved (nor even the goal). But whether subversive or not, it’s still nearly impossible to disentangle lesbianism from these prison narratives, ingrained as they are in our collective consciousness. So many social norms and assumptions are contained within these fictional walls, often the sites where ideologies are negotiated and reified. Deny her as we might, the prison lesbian still haunts our pages and TV screens, offering promises of both deviance and delight.
Kira Deshler: Agnes Moorhead was ingenious as an actor, one of the very best ever, who was unforgettable in such films as "The Deep Sleep" (with Humphrey Bogard).
Thank you for sharing wisdom from the old movies, with progressive tendencies to eliminate prisons as non-rehabilitative, as well as tired-tropes held by the unknowing about lesbians.
You describe the tensions of the movie so very well! Thank you for sharing!