Rear Window — Lisa and the Female Gaze

One could say that Lisa is not the only female figure in the movie under Jeff’s voyeuristic gaze, as Jeff spies on other single women in the film, including Ms. Lonelyhearts and Ms. Torso. We could see Ms. Torso as an interesting foil character for Lisa. Maybe the first thing to say is that Ms. Torso at the beginning of the film is readily fitted into her name under Jeff’s gaze. As her name suggests, she is merely torso, a part of the body, without any agency. She represents a big part of voyeurism and male view of women. When Jeff is calling about his work in the introductory scene, his gaze almost always lingers on Ms. Torso, and his watching session becomes the first of several entertainment / hobby watching sessions in the following the days. Later, Jeff is joined by the recently married man across the apartment, who is also watching her as an escape from his wife. We heard Stella says that Jeff would rather watch Ms. Torso on the other side of the apartment rather than touching Lisa in the same room, which implies that there is comparison between the two characters. There is also a lot of similarity between Ms. Torso and Lisa in the film. One similarity is the performative nature of both Ms. Torso and Lisa. Ms. Torso repetitively dances (literally performs) in her room, treating her room as a stage. Even thought it is not Ms. Torso’s original intention to perform for Jeff, Jeff definitely took advantage of the open window frame that frames her daily performance, in which Jeff becomes a literal viewer of such performance. On the other hand, we see Lisa showing up, modeling the latest fashionable dresses, and asking Jeff if she looks good. In addition, in the conversation between Lisa and Jeff, we see a resemblance between Lisa and Ms. Torso’s apartments. Jeff directly define Ms. Torso’s apartment is as popular as Lisa’s, while it seems that Lisa admits the similarity and understands the danger of “juggling wolves” and also that fact that Ms. Torso doesn’t love any of them. The last thing would be that the ending of Ms. Torso and Lisa is similar, as neither of them might have picked the most “prosperous wolf”, but there is a somehow happy ending for the two.