For His Eyes Only: The Women of James Bond

Published in 1963, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (forthwith referred to as OHMSS)¹ was Ian Fleming’s tenth James Bond novel and the second part of his “Blofeld Trilogy,” which is bookended by Thunderball (1961) and You Only Live Twice (1964). With OHMSS, Fleming sought to overcome the negative reviews of his preceding novel, The Spy Who Loved Me (1962), in which Bond plays a small role in the narrative. Bond marries in OHMSS, only to see his wife murdered on their wedding day by villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld and his aide Irma Bunt in the final pages of the novel. Fleming “took as much trouble as ever” in writing OHMSS (Pearson 308) and believed the novel to be “his best yet” (Lycett 409).

In 1969, the novel was adapted into a film directed by Peter Hunt. OHMSS starred George Lazenby in his only outing as James Bond. Early in the film, Bond becomes betrothed to his future wife, Contessa Teresa “Tracy” di Vicenzo, played by Avengers (1965-68) star Diana Rigg. He must first complete his mission, which requires him to travel to a mountain retreat where Blofeld is conducting experimental treatments to cure allergies of female “patients.” Bond works undercover as a genealogist in order to access the retreat and in the process has sex with three women in one night. Michael Rogers writes that OHMSS helped bring Bond “into the Swingin’ Sixties” (123). Indeed, the free sex depicted in Bond’s visit to Blofeld’s retreat incorporates the 1960s culture of unrestrained sexuality, and it serves as Bond’s de facto bachelor party before his marriage to di Vicenzo. Although the film was a close adaptation of Fleming’s novel, it received poor critical reviews and is considered a box-office failure. However, scholars like Jeremy Black contend that OHMSS “is one of the richest and most interesting Bond films” (140).

This chapter will examine OHMSS, a film that is considered an outlier in the Bond canon. Both the film and its source novel offer a significant departure from the typical treatment of women in the franchise. This has arguably impacted the reading and reception, particularly of the film. This chapter aims to explore the representation of women in the film, who play vital roles in the narrative and demonstrate considerable autonomy, which, at times, works to emasculate their male counterparts. For, as Lisa Funnell notes, di Vicenzo herself represents a “threat to Bond’s heroism through the ‘domestication’ of Bond and his libido” (“From English” 70). I will argue that both the novel and film versions of OHMSS break generic conventions by depicting strong female characters (di Vicenzo, Bunt, and Moneypenny) who are more interesting and actively involved in the development of the narrative than their male counterparts (Bond, Blofeld, and M). The depiction of di Vicenzo and Bunt radically reverses gender roles in the Bond canon in a way that makes OHMSS an aberration in the series.

BOND GIRLS, BAD GIRLS, AND SECONDARY GIRLS

Tracy di Vicenzo is not a typical “Bond Girl,” a term that is itself problematic as it has conventionally been used to describe every woman appearing in the Bond franchise, including “Bad Girls” (i.e. villains) and “Secondary Girls” (i.e. relatively unimportant characters in the narrative). In early discussions, the Bond Girl is largely defined in relation to Bond. Eleanor and Dennis Pelrine argue that Bond’s women “are not true sexual objects” but rather “a series of love ‘em and leave ‘em episodes,” going so far as to describe the “Bond Girls” in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton 1964) as “contestants” vying for Bond’s affection (152, 89). The Pelrines describe Bond Girls as being “passionate, when [Bond] wants them to be […] regardless of the unfortunate backgrounds which might have made them a might frigid” (59). Kingsley Amis notes that Bond is never unkind to women since he does not physically and verbally abuse them (41). However, Bond does not necessarily respect women either as he “collects almost exactly one girl per excursion abroad” (36). Amis claims that Bond is “protective, not dominating or combative” to women (42), and he seeks “not to break down Bond-girl’s defenses, but to induce her to lower them voluntarily” (49). Through his defense of Bond, Amis draws attention to some problematic notions of gender, sexuality, and power in the franchise that work to build up Bond at the expense of the women around him.

Recent criticism has offered more definitive assessments of the Bond Girls. Christine Bold argues that the early films “limit women’s initiatives” by “playing down the threat of alternative sexualities” so that “they represent desirable women as unknowing, helpless dupes” (214). Robert A. Caplen claims that Bond Girls “present neither strong nor capable female characters” because they merely constitute “sexual stereotypes” (61). Michael Denning connects the Bond Girl figure to a similar “enabling mechanism,” and argues that in Herbert Marcuse’s sense of “desublimation,” the objectified sexuality of Bond Girls “becomes the master code into which all discourses—commercial, political, philosophical, even religious—are translated” (“Licensed” 73). To fulfill their role as an “enabling mechanism,” Bond Girls, according to James Chapman, must be sexually and ideologically “out of place” (Licence 26). Tony Bennett and Janet Woollacott contend that Bond Girls serve as objects against which Fleming constructs Bond’s sexuality, arguing that their image constitutes a “model of adjustment, a condensation of the attributes of femininity” needed to accommodate Bond’s “new norms of male sexuality” (“Moments” 24). These critics see the “Bond Girls” as less important and integral to the narratives in which they appear.

Some scholars have argued that Bond Girls actually have agency and do not merely serve as companions for Bond. Lisa Funnell writes that the Bond franchise has “registered and interrogated…feminist gains” since the release of Dr. No (Terence Young 1962) through the depiction of strong and capable female villains (“Negotiating” 200). In addition, Daniel Ferreras Savoye claims that Tracy di Vicenzo “signifies the end of Bond’s career as a secret agent” (169). This signification, for Savoye, results from Bond’s “irresistible appetite for sex [as] a statement of individualism as well as freedom” (Ibid.). OHMSS seems to be an exception to the rule that Bond quickly loses interest in a Bond Girl once they have had sex.

The first Bond film was released just one year after Betty Friedan published her highly influential book, The Feminine Mystique, which is widely credited with sparking the second wave of feminism. Other texts such as Simon de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and The Kinsey Reports Sexual Behavior in the Human Male and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female, reacted against Freud’s phallocentricism in his famous “repressive hypothesis.” Freudian psychology remained prevalent, however, and, as Friedan demonstrates, many women turned to psychotherapy to cope with a lack of identity beyond their roles as mothers and wives (220-5). Bennett and Woollacott argue that the early Bond films responded to the Women’s Liberation Movement by attempting to counteract feminist progress in order to maintain a “phallocentric conception of gender relations” (“Moments” 28). OHMSS appears to be the exception to this rule as the film emasculates Bond and empowers female characters.

BOND’S (HYPER)SEXUALITY

Criticism has shown some consistency in describing Bond’s sexuality in psychological terms. Lycurgus Starkey argues that “Bond’s primary concern is the passion of an animal function” (17). The Pelrines similarly refer to the Bond narratives as “primitive, id level material, buried deep in the unconscious” (154), and Sue Matheson describes Bond as a “master animal” (66). But this seems fitting in light of M’s labeling of Bond as a “blunt instrument” in the novel OHMSS, or rather, a flat and undeveloped character, much like the typical Bond Girl, most of whom James Chapman has argued “are fairly two-dimensional” (Licence 95).

Bond’s “animalistic” sexuality permeates every aspect of the Bond universe. Jaime Hovey argues that the hyperbolic nature of Bond’s sexuality actually places Bond closer to the queer end of the gender spectrum, as Bond’s sexuality falls outside of heternormative sexual behavior (48). Bennett and Woollacott argue that the 1960s Bond films depicted women “freed from domesticity and allowed sexual desire without either marriage or punishment but only in terms of the compulsions of a ‘liberated’ male sexuality” (Bond and Beyond 228). Jeremy Black notes that Bond “represent[s] the values and self-image of manly courage” (xi), but Bond’s cover identity in OHMSS undermines the typically hyper-masculine image of Bond.

To prepare for this cover, Bond visits genealogist Sir Hilary Bray, whom he later impersonates wearing a kilt and glasses. This costuming works to symbolically emasculate Bond and serves as an important component of his cover as Bray, ostensibly sent to verify Blofeld’s claim to the title of Comte Balthazar de Bleuchamp. Bond’s attire and demeanor, as well as his feminized name, assisted in the film by a voice-over by actor George Baker, contrasts significantly with the heteronormative masculinity Bond normally exhibits. Fleming suggests that Bond’s exaggerated heterosexual activity is merely a “subconscious protest against the current fashion of sexual confusion” (qtd. in Zeiger 112). Bond’s impersonation of Bray in the film, however, comes off as very effeminate, especially for the typically hyper-masculine Bond. As Mary Ann Doane notes, “[m]ale transvestism is an occasion for laughter” (“Film” 138).

Bond’s effeminate cover story and ultimate vulnerability undermine what Bennett and Woollacott call “phallocentric conception of gender relations” (“Moments” 39). Once he has reached Blofeld’s compound, Bond finds himself surrounded by beautiful, sexually liberated women deprived of the company of men. Bond learns that the women have severe allergies for which they are receiving treatment. Various women of color are among the allergy suffers and the Pelrines note that Bond, like Fleming, enjoyed the company of “gorgeous and exotic females” (43). Caplen labels this collection of women in the clinic a “harem” (218). In reaction to Bond’s effeminate mannerisms, one of the women says “I know what he’s allergic to,” implying he is allergic to women. At dinner Bond lectures on genealogy as the women stare at him lustily, and Bond tells them that part of his own coat of arms refers to “gold balls,” that is to say, better than brass balls. All of the patients appear to be attracted to Bond and Ruby makes the first pass at him by writing her room number in lipstick on this inner thigh.

Blofeld’s compound is tightly guarded, and this security serves to highlight how issues of nation and nationhood are “transposed on to those of sexuality” (Bennett and Woollacott, “Moments” 19). The female patients have virtually no freedom to move about or communicate in private with anyone inside or outside the compound. Bond breaks out of his electronically locked room and puts his self-made skeleton key in his “purse.” Bond enters Ruby’s room and she says, “You are funny pretending not to like girls.” When Bond drops his kilt, Ruby giggles and says, “It’s true,” apparently referring to his “gold balls.” After they have sex, Bond returns to his room, looks into a mirror and says “Hilly you old devil” before he quickly finds another woman, who used a nail file to break out of her room, waiting for him. Bond employs the same line he had used with Ruby: “Usually I don’t, but you’re not usual. Coming here was an inspiration and so are you.” Bond attempts to get the second woman to talk about herself, but she replies, “I’ll tell you all about myself later in the morning,” reversing Bond generic conventions as well as societal gender roles. This precisely demonstrates Bennett and Woollacott’s observation that Bond represents a “reformed model of male sexuality” that “supplies the point of reference in relation to which female sexuality is to be adjusted” (Bond 127). In this “adjusted” sexual encounter, Bond is out-sexualized by a woman who refuses to provide her name, much like di Vicenzo in the novel, who during their first sexual encounter says she is “not interested in conversation” (30). Ruby and the other women in the clinic demonstrate Jane Gerhard’s claim that “[p]art of the revolutionary aspect of the ‘sexual revolution’ of the 1960s was the greater acceptance of women as agents with sexual desires” (81).