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Teachers & SchoolsWomen and Femininity
The Bourne Identity is mostly about dudes shooting each other. All the testosterone results in…well, let's say in a complex relationship with its female characters.
Marie St. Jacques is a good example of this complexity. She's the main female protagonist, and she's introduced through a long, abusive kidnapping sequence; she's then raped; and then she falls in love with her (initial) kidnapper. Bourne's rescue of Marie is supposed to erase and cancel out his initial violence—but does it? Or is the violence supposed to be part of the attraction? The book struggles to present Marie as a competent and strong woman, but do we ever forget her initial role as a victim? How does she fit into the novel as a whole? How do the other women?
Bourne has lots of surrogate fathers, but no surrogate mothers.
Femininity is important in the novel because there is so little of it.