I. Introduction

`Woman - Fuck - Fuck - Dirt - Dirt - Death'. A man having associations like these and building a word string from `woman' to `death', even if creating it in a game-like atmosphere during a psychoanalytical talk, clearly must have a problem with women.

P.E. Marlow in Dennis Potter's `The Singing Detective', who builds this word string, has a serious problem with and a certain attitude towards women. He often encounters women in a mean and unpleasant, even almost hostile way. And there are a number of women who act in 'The Singing Detective'. Some seem to play only small roles in this multi-layered detective novel; others deal with the sick P.E. Marlow every day. Still others have tremendously influenced Marlow during his childhood days and are therefore still alive in Marlow's thoughts and hallucinations. Besides all these circumstances, the question is why Marlow behaves like that in the hospital ward and why these images and attitudes towards women are coming up in his mind. Several extreme past-time experiences have strongly affected P.E. Marlow and reinforced his negative attitude towards women. In my term paper I will show that these experiences have left significant marks in Marlow's memories and that they are the explanations for his extraordinary view of women in general.

Furthermore, this term paper will analyse the importance of women for the play, how they are presented and how they are regarded. As a consequence of the analysis and characterizations, the connections between Marlow and certain women in the play will become evident. As well, it will be easier to comprehend that women partly function as role models and stereotypes. As some critics might have interpreted 'The Singing Detective' as a male-dominant and 'masculine novel' quite often, they could postulate that women are being reduced to playing stereotypical roles, which they are forced to accept in a male-dominated world. However, not all women in Potter's novel represent the 'weak gender' through the whole story as is subliminally illustrated at first glance in many scenes of 'The Singing Detective'. Some women show their true strength and individuality in significant scenes. In order to illustrate this, I will examine two main female characters in order to reveal their strength and/or weakness. Thereby, I will show that there are strong women in the television drama as well as there are weak ones.

II. Presentation of women in 'The Singing Detective'

In movies, women are frequently presented in stereotypical ways. Playing their 'assigned roles', they are often strongly dependent on men, who traditionally play the main roles in films. However today, a strong female character dominates many movies. Women in leading business positions make their way up to the very top with tremendous success. Other booming female roles in today's films include the clever and sensitive woman who knows what is going on psychologically in others' minds long before her male colleagues (e.g. in a crime movie) even think about these matters. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see that traditional female roles still exist in many modern movies. The sequel 'The Singing Detective', based on Dennis Potter's novel and script, was broadcasted in November and December 1986. Both the film and the written version are full of female stereotypes. In a typical film noir setting, they are portrayed as lower than men and are often presented as mere supplement to the dominant, finely characterised male protagonists. It is therefore not surprising that many prostitutes appear in 'The Singing Detective' representing male notions of women as sexual objects.

Eckart Voigts-Virchow contributes to this notion in his book "Männerphantasien. Introspektiven und gebrochene Wirklichkeitsillussion im Drama von Dennis Potter" by pointing out that "Auffällig viele Prostituierte bevölkern die Männerwelten Potters: Lili, Armanda, Sonia heißen sie in The Singing Detective".

Furthermore, Voigts-Virchow clarifies the impression of women as the 'weak gender' and seducers of men:

Auch sympatischer gezeichnete Frauen Potters erweisen sich tatsächlich meist als das 'schwache Geschlecht', das 'ewig lockende' Weib, das durch seine sexuellen Triebe und seine sexuelle Ausstrahlung auf den Mann definiert ist.

Even Dennis Potter himself is aware of the fact that his illustrations of females are strongly male oriented. Marc Lawson, who interviewed Dennis Potter for The Irish Times in 1993, wrote in his article 'Skin, suffering, lechery and God' that "Potter insists that he wanted to examine the ogle-and-grope process of male behaviour towards women" . Male behaviour towards women is undoubtedly one of the permanently displayed themes in the play. In every scene with one of the numerous prostitutes in 'The Singing Detective', the woman is illustrated like ranking far below the male character of the same scene.

After the broadcasting of the six-part sequel in 1986, public discussion emerged about how Potter betrays the 'good taste' defined by society and if the illustration of women in the TV version was too offensive and humiliating. Potter, in a 1986 profile article for The Listener 'A man with a lash' , told Peter Lennon that

[…] his own idea of a 'betrayal' of good taste […] was the Rolling Stones song 'Hey young girl, Lie on the floor like a young girl should'. […] 'I always find that offensive, about women and about the way men react to women.'

Of course, many critics and female viewers felt deeply offended by the images of prostitutes, nudity, sex and violence and typical macho behaviour of men in a public TV serial. Additionally, Therese Lichtenstein explains the cause for the strong reactions about the serial by mentioning that

Though The Singing Detective also received rave reviews, both in England and on its PBS broadcast in the U.S., in 1988 […], it is important to remember that TV shows literally enter the home, the sacred, private space of the family, and in doing so they reach, at least potentially, a larger, more heterogeneous public than the cinema does. Within the framework of current television, and in the broader conservative cultural and political contexts of Britain and America, The Singing Detective is stylistically and conceptually radical.

One reason why Potter's illustration of women is perceived as harsh and offensive is because of the use of female stereotypes. By portraying women as ever-seductive humans, who are acting as prostitutes for men's mere optical pleasure and corporal satisfaction, Potter chooses some of the most negative images of women - images, female viewers understandably do not want to see in any film or TV serial.

However, the presentation of women in 'The Singing Detective' is not easy to describe. Are the female characters, judged by their appearance, really what they seem to be? Or is their weakness and stereotypical behaviour just a superficial male perception, allowing them to keep their illusions of being superior to women? I will discuss the question whether women in 'The Singing Detective' are strong or weak later in my term paper. In order to compare different female characters and their roles for the play, I will now take a closer look at four major female characters in this television drama.

II.1. The sex object: Nurse Mills

Nurse Mills is the stereotypical sex object in the 'Singing Detective'. Seen through the eyes of P.E. Marlow in the hospital ward, she is presented as an angel-like character. She is the kind of nurse many men in hospitals presumably dream of and stories about attractive female hospital personnel are frequently written and told. The choice of Joanne Whalley as the young and pretty Nurse Mills for the film version even reinforces the erotic impression conveyed by the written version because she is a youthful and attractive woman with big 'innocent' eyes and a soft voice. When Nurse Mills first appears in the play, she is specifically described as "an attractive young nurse" . From the first moment, Marlow is impressed by her look and soon begins to make compliments like: "Your eyes are not for seeing, Nurse Mills. They are for being looked at" . But her erotic charisma only excites Marlow because he is looking at her with his image of women as either dirty and mean or an angel-like amusement for men. A way of seeing things, which is still massively present at this stage (beginning) of the television drama. Although there are only male patients in the hospital ward, it is not indicated that any other character perceives Nurse Mills's look in a similar way.

However, Marlow's reactions towards Nurse Mills even get more extreme. Because of his severe skin disease, Marlow is greased by Nurse Mills with a special ointment for the purpose of healing daily. When this action is presented to the viewer/reader for the first time, Marlow is incapable of holding back an erection while the ointment is applied around his genitals. The whole scene is filmed and described in much detail for the viewer to understand Nurse Mills's erotic effect on Marlow:

Nurse Mills: All right. Relax. We can start now.

Marlow's face fills the screen, showing comical anxiety and sexual disturbance. Swoop in soaring violins, Mantovani style - the stop them dead, as -

Marlow: (Voice over, whispered intensity) Oh cock do not crow, Poor cock do not stir

- and swoop the violins back in again, exactly where they had been interrupted. Polythene fingers dip into soft and slippery ointment as the violins quiver.

[…]

Nurse Mills: (Matter of fact) Sorry. But I shall have to lift your penis now to grease around it.

Marlow's face is suddenly a cinema poster, so to speak, for The Agony and the Ecstasy. Very briefly held, then crash in music -

[…]

Marlow: (Off) I'm - ah - nurse. I'm very sorry. It - that's the one part of me that still sort of functions. I do beg your pardon.

Marlow strongly reacts to Nurse Mills's subtle eroticism and despite his unambiguous excitement the nurse obviously does not realize her sexual charisma. In the film version, she is on the one hand polite and friendly, but on the other, she has got her job to do and she simply does what has to be done as an emotionless routine and care:

Nurse Mills: Ooh - I'm sorry - Oh you poor thing -

She does not seem to realize how incredibly erotic this makes her look and sound. Marlow closes his eyes a moment, as though submitting to his sense of sexual excitement, and then visibly forces such thoughts away, in a desperate, voice-over gabble -

[…]

Within the curtained-off bed space, Marlow's lower limbs are now covered with the sheet, and Nurse Mills is greasing his chest. Normally cool, even clinical, she now looks flustered, her eyes swivelling away.

Nurse Mills: It's all right - I - I understand.

Marlow: It seems to have a will of its own -

Nurse Mills: We don't need to talk about it, do we?

This formal conduct of a good-looking, erotic woman in a situation where a man is highly stimulated by her presence and her acting is the stereotypical behaviour of a woman who does not realize her effects on men.

For the story, Nurse Mills represents the stereotypical image of a nurse appearing pure and innocent but with the special erotic touch many men dream of in their 'hospital fantasies' and which Marlow experiences in his own mind and with his body.

II.2. The prostitute: Sonia

The stereotypical image of a prostitute is presented in 'The Singing Detective' by the character of Sonia. In the film version, the typical attributes of a prostitute are illustrated more convincingly compared to the written version. In the scene with Mark Binney, Sonia shows up in black sexy underwear, only wearing a long coat on top. But, however, even Binney is not really sure what he should think about her. He supposes that she "maybe is just one of the whores. Maybe." . Binney encounters Sonia not only as a prostitute willing to be paid for sex; he suspects her of being a Russian spy on the detective story level.

Both Binney (in the detective story) and Marlow (in his hallucination on hospital level) enlist Sonia's prostitution services. The difference is that in Marlow's imagination, Sonia is just a prostitute without the fictive Russian spy attributes, which are only part of Marlow's re-written detective story. However, the important thing to notice, especially in the scene with Marlow, is the presentation of a prostitute as a dirty woman without conscience. Both Marlow and Binney ask Sonia the same question after having had paid sex with her: "Doesn't it disgust you, what you do? Being paid to stretch yourself out, and let a stranger enter you?" Here, Sonia's response signifies slightly different illustrations of a prostitute. In the scene with Binney, Sonia, acting as a suspected Russian spy, does not answer the question, whereas in the equivalent scene with Marlow, she answers as a 'regular' prostitute. Especially at this stage, Sonia is portrayed as a stereotypical whore who does not care about morality or her doubtful profession, pointed out by her answer:

Sonia: You expect me to do it for nothing?

Marlow looks at her.

Marlow: Of course not.

Sonia: I mean, how long does it take? What does it matter?

Marlow: You really think that?

And it sounds more like a plea than a question.

Sonia: Christ! That's what you wanted, ennit?

In his hospital ward, Marlow seems to absorb his remark. Then -

Marlow: Yeh.

The presentation of prostitution as a disgusting and filthy aspect of our culture is obvious in this conversation. However, a clear distinction has to be made between the two scenes which both include Sonia as a prostitute. At first glance, she encounters Binney as a whore in the same way as she encounters Marlow. But in Binney's case, she can repress her 'dirty acting' by playing the Russian spy role as a second part additionally to her part as a prostitute. Therefore, in the fictional detective story, she just does the 'job' for her goals as a Russian spy. She even has the courage to rebel against Binney when he wants to pay her in advance for her 'services', which also marks her diversity from a 'regular prostitute'.

In Marlow's hallucinations, things are more obvious to uncover. Here, Sonia plays no double role, she is just what the reader/viewer perceives: an unimportant little helpless prostitute. She certainly affirms this impression by answering Marlow's question in the way described above.

Another cliché included in the dialogue between Sonia and Marlow is also apparent: men, who pay women/prostitutes for sex and their mere physical satisfaction, are well aware of what they are doing while a professional prostitute simply does not care about the dirtiness of this act. Therese Lichtenstein contributes to this speculative notion in her essay by writing:

Small wonder that in The Singing Detective, sex is never represented as mutually pleasurable for men and women. It is passionless, guilty, often paid for in one way or another, and often related to death and violence.

Difficult to analyse, an ambiguous picture of the character Sonia is constructed in 'The Singing Detective'. By using different story levels, Dennis Potter expands the banal and commonly portrayed picture of prostitutes. Obviously, Sonia does not only play the role of a typical prostitute in the world of Marlow's hallucinations, but furthermore, in the scene with Binney, provides a role model for a more mysterious type of woman. Suspected of being a Russian spy, Sonia appears to be quite intelligent, only 'using' her body to achieve her goals, whatever they might be.

II.3. The female authority: The teacher

A completely different type of woman also has a great impact on P.E. Marlow. Since his childhood days in school, Marlow has never forgotten his schoolteacher. She is a strong female authority who teaches her pupils what is good and bad, right and wrong, always speaking in the name of God. She appears as an authority, put in place by God himself. Eckart Voigts-Virchow remarks about the teacher character:

Insbesondere die Figur der Lehrerin zieht Gott als moralische Instanz, als Über-Über-Ich heran, um den von ihr vertretenen Normen Validität zu verleihen. In der typischen Konstellation bei Potter bedrängt sie die männlichen Schüler mit ihrer Strafandrohung, nachdem sie einem Triebbedürfnis nachgegeben haben [...]. In ihrer Rede macht die Lehrerin [...] ihre Funktion als Verkörperung des Über-Ichs und als Zensorin der Triebe sowie ihre Instrumentalisierung Gottes deutlich [...].

Young Marlow (Philip) is intimidated by this female authority. The witnessed adultery of his mother and the permanent drill in school lead him to a rebellious action as he places his excrement on the teacher's table. John R. Cook in his book "Dennis Potter - A life on screen" adds: "When the child defecates on the teacher's table, he rebels against a patriarchal authority structure that represses as 'bestial' anything connected with the body."

Looking at the influence of the teacher's attitude imposed on the schoolchildren, Cook further explains: "Such a sense of patriarchal authority repressing as 'bestial' all bodily functions is explicitly invoked by the teacher, on first discovering the crime on the school table."

Having discovered the mess on her table, the teacher tries to find out who committed the deed and her intimidation, permanently referring to 'God', reaches a new level:

Old woman: Cows do it in the fields, and know no better. […] They are animals! […]

But we are not animals. God has given us all a sense of good and of bad. God has allowed us to tell the difference between the clean and the dirty. And God is going to help me now find out who did this thing!

The teacher character in 'The Singing Detective' is a stereotypical character for the old-school teacher. She is portrayed as hard, strict, rigid and allows no one to revolt against her authority. According to Cook, she has a "simple black and white view of a world of Good versus Evil"

In the film version, the teacher's authoritarian character is even emphasised. Her old-fashioned, grandmother-like clothing, her grey hair, her almost male stature, the hard tone of her voice during her speeches, her unattractive face and her readiness to even hurt the children make the viewers clearly realise what kind of woman she is and what the schoolchildren might feel. Not surprisingly, the teacher, later in the story, appears both in Marlow's hallucinations and young Philip's imagination as a frightening scarecrow.

II.4. Mother, unhappy housewife, adulteress: Mrs. Marlow

Although the character of Philip's mother, Mrs. Marlow would be regarded more a secondary character than a main one, she is the woman with the major impact on Marlow's attitude towards women. Mrs. Marlow has not much to say in the 'Singing Detective'. Nevertheless, her acting and the environment in which she acts give an obvious impression of her character. She is the typical unhappy housewife, who is not at all satisfied with her life and therefore tries to break out all the time. She has severe problems with her parents-in-law and feels imprisoned in the tiny house and village she is living in. All her discontent with her situation bottles up and breaks out in one scene where she cannot hold herself back and attacks her husband and her parents-in-law because she has the impression her authority is being undermined:

Mrs Marlow, made edgy, and already very unhappy with her situation in this tiny squabbling-box of a house, all but yells out -

Mrs Marlow: I'll decide that! That's for me to say! He's my son! Philip! No tea for you!

Mr Marlow: Oh now Betty - doosn's say -

Mrs Marlow: (Yell) You gutless bugger!

Gran: I've never heard the like! Not in all my born days! Ted - bist thou going to put up with that or - I'd smack her one, that I 'ood!

Mrs Marlow: (To Gran) Shut up! Keep your nose out of it. You interfering old cow!

During the play, Mrs. Marlow slowly seems to loose her footing and becomes more and more tense, unhappy and impatient, unable to find a way out of her present life. Because of all this, Mrs. Marlow commits adultery and betrays Philip's father with Raymond Binney. Her adultery is one of the major and most important themes in the 'Singing Detective' because Philip witnesses her sexual encounters with Raymond in the forest. His mother's adultery influences Philip's attitude towards women dramatically, as I will elucidate in the next chapter.

III. How women shaped P.E. Marlow's attitudes

As I have stated in my introduction, Marlow's strange, problematic, multilayered and sometimes even hostile attitude towards women must have its reasons. The adult Marlow has a completely distorted view of women. Having been influenced especially by the authoritarian teacher and the adultery of his mother, Marlow has no distinct vision of women. He either idealises them or judges them as prostitutes. Therese Lichtenstein explains:

Women, however, do not escape any more lightly. The young Philip's disillusionment with his mother, her transformation, for him, from pure and 'virginal' to adulterous 'whore,' develops into a tendency to class women into these two-dimensional categories.

Eckart Voigts-Virchow partly explains Marlow's reaction towards Nurse Mills and describes his situation as follows:

Selbst eine Figur wie Nurse Mills [...], die sexuelle Attraktivität und verklärende Idealisierung [...] verknüpft, vollzieht in der Kontrastierung mit den strafenden Müttern, die durch die anderen Krankenschwestern verkörpert werden (Night Nurse, Nurses White, Malone), eine typische Phantasie 'affirmativ-reaktionär verträngte(r) Sexualität

Nurse Mills represents the kind of innocent and virgin-like women which Marlow cannot manage not to idealise. On the other side, another woman in the play, Nicola, Marlow's ex-wife, is the character who has to face all of Marlow's mistrust and bad notions of women. When she visits him in the hospital for the first time, he calls her "bitch", "filthy little slut", "disgusting tramp", "two-bit, rutting whore", "heartless bitch" and "stinking bag of filth" , descriptions which are definitely of the worst kind. On the one hand, Marlow wants to sleep with Nicola again, on the other hand, he suspects her of having sex all the time with different men. This notion also indicates the discrepancy between the two images of women in his mind.

However, especially his notion of sex as a dirty and forbidden act is a result of young Philip witnessing his mother's adultery in the forest. Seen through the eyes of a child, Mrs. Marlow's sexual encounter with Raymond Binney in the forest appears as an assault. He thinks that Binney hurts his mother ("Wos him a-doing? Wos him doing to our Mam? Mum! Mum! Shall I go and fetch our dad?" ) and he is severely intimidated by the scene. By realising what his mother has actually done, he slowly begins despising his mother for her adultery and his attitudes about sex begin to take shape, as Therese Lichtenstein points out by saying that "As a result, his [Marlow's] attitudes toward women combine adoration and hate, alienated identification and misidentification, and an uncomfortable symbiotic dependency."

In the hospital, Dr. Gibbon tries to uncover the nature of Marlow's complex and during one of the first sessions, Marlow's distorted impression about women becomes clear:

Dr Gibbon: You don't like women. Do you?

Marlow: Which sort do you mean? Young ones. Old ones. Fat ones. Thin ones. Faithful ones. Slags? Sluts? Try to be more specific.

Some sessions later, Dr. Gibbon discovers that Marlow's behaviour is the result of a combination of his childhood trauma (witnessed adultery) and a guilt complex because he blamed another boy for the 'filthy thing' he had placed on the teacher's table and the other boy (Mark Binney) has been punished instead of him. Interestingly, Mark Binney is the son of Mrs. Marlow's lover, Raymond Binney. Additionally, Marlow feels partly responsible for the suicide of his mother because he revealed to her what he had seen in the forest.

Furthermore, Marlow combines sex and death in a bizarre way. While an older patient in the hospital, George, is having a heart attack, Marlow tells him a story about a sexual encounter with a blonde woman during the war. The sounds of the adultery scene mix with the sounds of the machines with which the doctors try to save George's life. Raymond's orgasm and George's death happen simultaneously and create a drastic merging between sex/orgasm and death in Marlow's mind. Therese Lichtenstein introduces an interesting fact about this scene:

Such associations between sex and death are familiar in Western cultural history: in France, orgasm is called 'la petite mort,' and the verb 'to die' appears often in English Jacobean drama as a synonym for coitus. For Philip, sexual climax represents a deathlike loss of power, and an intolerable melting of the boundaries between men and the frightening figures of women.

In the hospital, Marlow realises that Dr. Gibbon has discovered his complex by feigning boredom to the doctor's accusations that Marlow would regard "sexual intercourse with considerable distaste - or what is more to the point, with fear". However, by provoking Marlow to think about himself, his childhood and his attitude towards women, Dr. Gibbon, in the end, succeeds in healing both Marlow's psyche and, as a consequence, his skin disease.

IV. Women in 'The Singing Detective' - strong or weak?

As women are - most of the time - presented as weak characters that are always dependent from men, it is important to take a look behind the superficial stereotypical illustrations of females in 'The Singing Detective'. The question is whether the men in the play are really strong and powerful or if some strong women only let the men think they were the tough ones. In order to analyse women's strength or weakness, I will take a closer look at two females in the play: Sonia and Mrs. Marlow.

Sonia is an important character for the story because she acts both on the hospital level in Marlow's hallucinations with the Marlow himself and, on the detective story level, with the 'fictional Binney'. She has sexual encounters with Marlow and Binney in Marlow's imagination but represents two different roles, mere prostitute and Russian spy/prostitute, as I have shown in the characterisation in chapter II.2. Mrs. Marlow is an important character for P.E. Marlow. She is a 'real' character and by committing adultery and suicide, she is decisively responsible for his childhood trauma and everything that developed concerning his notion about women.

Mrs. Marlow is portrayed as mother who is not at all willing to play the stereotypical role of the obsequious housewife. As a wife, she is unhappy with her whole situation. She does not regard her husband, Philip's father, as a real man, which becomes obvious in the strange conflict scene in the house of her parents-in-law when Mrs. Marlow cries out towards her mother-in-law in a shrill tone: "I would! I would! If your son was any sort of man - " . Philip's father is a calm and sensible kind of man. On the one hand, Mrs. Marlow seems to dream of a strong man who really treats her as a women but one the other hand, she enormously dislikes her life as a housewife, a life that a strong man possibly might expect her to do.

In order to escape, she makes plans to move to London. The big city represents freedom, unlimited possibilities and an interesting life for her. Although being well aware of the fact that she would have to leave her husband and make Philip unhappy, she keeps her goal in mind all the time. She is kind of selfish and thoughtless, not realising that the rural life in the Forest of Dean is the life Philip cannot give up or leave behind. However, her strongest attempt to make her boring life more exciting and to start something new is her adultery with Raymond Binney, her husband's best friend. But even with this betrayal, Mrs. Marlow is not sure what she really wants. Even during the sexual encounter in the forest, she is not able to free herself from outside pressures. She does not love her husband any more, but she also does not love Raymond Binney. Therefore, she is unsure, even while making love to her lover, whether she really wants this to happen or not ("Oh, what are we doing - ? What do we think we're - " ). Because of this inner insecurity, she forces Binney to stop only short time after they had started making love. He appears to be willing to take Mrs. Marlow as his wife and start a real relationship with her, whereas she cannot think alike ("It can't be. It'll never happen." ).

Trying to be strong and change her life, Philip's mother chooses the wrong methods. Leaving her husband, she makes both him and Philip sad. Committing adultery with a man she in fact does not want to live with only confuses her more and causes Marlow's traumatic attitude towards women and sex. Finally, she loses her maternal authority and Philip no longer follows her instructions. She feels negatively influenced by all people around her including her husband, her parents-in-law and her lover. When Philip reveals his knowledge of her adultery to her in a London subway station, she presumably commits suicide by jumping in front of an incoming train. With her suicide, which is presented to the reader/viewer later in the book as an accident, she ultimately gives up and displays her weakness.

Sonia is superficially presented as a weak woman. As a prostitute, she seems to be dependent on men and money in the same way. Particular Binney's way of talking to her when she wants to be paid in advance, has the potential to make her appear as worthless and small:

Binney: (Seemingly delighted) Oh, you bitch. Oh, you greedy, suspicious, great big beautiful bitch. […]

[…]

Binney: Oh, no. No, no. Listen you little tart. It takes a shopworker a month to earn that sort of money. Ten. I agreed ten. And think yourself lucky.

This dialogue between Sonia and Binney is at first glance male-dominated and women-despising, trying to show the prostitute as a powerless and weak woman. But it is only in the scene with P.E. Marlow in his hospital hallucinations that Sonia really represents a little, unimportant whore. In the conversation with Binney, the long contradiction 'greedy, suspicious, great bit beautiful bitch' already indicates that Mark Binney in fact is obsessed by Sonia's erotic and appearance. She plays games with him and he does not realise it. She "stares back at him, expressionless" but "her eyes are glittering" . When Binney slaps her in the face because he is feeling provoked by her, she "does not move, does not speak. And then, calmly, holds out her hand again." Immediately after Sonia has resisted this humiliation, she gets her will and Binney pays the amount she wanted to receive. Her triumph in this scene is a clear sign of strength. But Sonia shows her superiority even more effectively by tearing and chewing the bank notes and then by spitting them out at Binney's feet, after having opened her fur coat wearing only underwear on beneath it.

Sonia does not want to be paid by a nasty man like Binney. For her, money does not empower men to buy her body and soul. Although she eventually sleeps with Binney, she is doing this with a clear consciousness and, if she is indeed a Russian spy, because she pursues certain goals. At any point of her encounter with Mark Binney, Sonia has psychological control over him. He even seems to feel this when he asks her: "What are you trying to do? Make me feel small?" . The answer to this question is undoubtedly 'yes'. Of course, Sonia is trying to make Binney feel small because she has the courage and strength to stand up to him. She wants to teach him a lesson about how a woman is not willing to be paid for sex by a nasty, macho-like man.

Finally, when Binney thinks he has uncovered her Russian spy identity and tries to get an explanation from her, she even uses physical force, stereotypically associated with men, to free herself and breaks his nose "with a crisply precise nod of her head" .

V. Conclusion

Potter's 'Singing Detective' is not at all a male-dominated television drama. Undoubtedly, P.E. Marlow as the main character is a man; however, the story is all about his mental illness, his attitude towards women and the healing process and all these themes are tightly linked with female characters. Marlow's mental illness is a result of the childhood trauma provoked by his mother's adultery, which leads to his notion of sex as a dirty act. Having lost confidence in his mother and in all former virtues, young Philip Marlow is unable to distinguish between 'good' and 'bad', 'wrong' and 'right' and therefore rebels against the authority of the schoolteacher, whose gender is - not surprisingly - female.

Marlow's harsh categorization of women into two extreme groups becomes obvious in the hospital ward where he idealizes the attractive young Nurse Mills due to his notion of women as either whores or virgins. With the help of Dr. Gibbon, one of the few really important male characters in the drama, Marlow succeeds in leaving his distorted attitudes behind. His view is being cleared and sharpened during the play and in the end, Marlow is even able to reconcile with his ex-wife Nicola. Writing about Marlow's changed attitudes, Therese Lichtenstein notes:

Finally, by the end of the series, Philip's identity is better integrated, and he is better able to trust his wife, Nicola - able to overcome his feelings that since she is not a virgin she must be a whore.

Nicola is one of several strong women in the play. She is the one who has to deal with Marlow's hostility during the healing process. But she nevertheless supports him and in the final scene, Marlow leaves leaning on Nicola "along the corridor to freedom" -

a freedom which finally allows Marlow to see women as who they are without prejudices, mistrust or even fear. Sonia contributes to the picture of strong women in the play by unmasking superficial male dominance and power. Using her feminine charms and making men her puppets, her character forces the reader/viewer to rethink about stereotypical male and female roles in 'The Singing Detective'.

But not all men in the play are weak as well as not all women are strong. Mrs. Marlow in vain tries to be strong and, at the end, breaks under this pressure. Her husband, Philip's father, is not a finely illustrated character in the play. He mostly acts in the background, not talking much, living his calm and peaceful life. His wife's attempt to break out and move away from him is not necessarily because he does not contribute to their marriage. He is maybe only too passive with a wife who vigorously tries to change at least her and Philip's life. But Philip likes his father and when Mr. Marlow picks up his son on his return from London (after Mrs. Marlow has died), he shows strength and willingness to care for Philip. And Philip, who formerly was almost completely influenced by his mother, accepts the offer and takes his father's hand.

Women in 'The Singing Detective' have proved their ability and readiness to live their lives independently from men. Stereotypical female behaviour, which at first glance appears to dominate great parts of the television drama, is neither the basis for the development of the story nor for Marlow's healing. The main character himself learns not to classify women into the two extreme divisions 'whore' or 'virgin'.

P.E. Marlow learns to think about women, sex and real feelings in a different way and changing his attitudes heals him. With him, readers and viewers of 'The Singing Detective' should be cured from looking at the shallow façades of superficially portrayed stereotypical women in a male-dominated world and from accepting this very world as their reality - a rather phoney reality with a hierarchy between men and women which is not valid any more in modern societies.

VI. Works cited

Primary Text:

Potter, Dennis. The Singing Detective. London: Faber & Faber, 1986.

Secondary Texts:

1) Cook, John R. Dennis Potter - A Life On Screen. Manchester University Press, 1995.

2) Lawson, Mark. "Skin, suffering, lechery and God." The Irish Times (24.2.1993):10.

3) Lennon, Peter. "A Man with a Lash". The Listener (20.11.1986): 14-15.

4) Lichtenstein, Therese. "Syncopated Thriller. Dennis Potter's Singing Detective." Artforum 5 (May 1990): 186-172.

5) Voigts-Virchow, Eckart. Männerphantasien. Introspektiven und gebrochene Wirklichkeitsillusion im Drama von Dennis Potter. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1995.

Voigts-Virchow, Eckart. Männerphantasien Introspektiven und gebrochene Wirklichkeitsillusion im Drama von Dennis Potter. Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 1995.

Ibid 1. 148.

Ibid 1. 149.

Lawson, Mark. "Skin, suffering, lechery and God." The Irish Times (24.2.1993): 10

Ibid 4. 10.

Lennon, Peter. "A man with a lash." The Listener (20.11.1986): 14-15

Ibid 6. 15.

Lichtenstein, Therese. "Syncopated Thriller: Dennis Potter's Singing Detective." Artforum 5 (May 1990): 168-172.

Ibid 8. 170.

Potter, Dennis. The Singing Detective. London: Faber & Faber, 1986. 15.

Ibid 10. 15.

Ibid 10. 17ff.

Ibid 10. 18ff.

Ibid 10. 46.

Ibid 10. 59.

Ibid 10. 182.

Ibid 8. 152.

Ibid 1. 165.

Cook, John R. Dennis Potter - A life on screen. Manchester/New York: Manchester University Press, 1995.

Ibid 19. 234.

Ibid 19. 233f.

Ibid 10. 138.

Ibid 19. 233.

Ibid 10. 69.

Ibid 8. 172.

Ibid 1. 148.

Ibid 10. 84.

Ibid 10. 115.

Ibid 8.172.

Ibid 10. 53.

Ibid 8. 172.

Ibid 10. 54.

Ibid 10. 69.

Ibid 10. 116.

Ibid 10. 117.

Ibid 10. 46f.

Ibid 10. 47.

Ibid 10. 47.

Ibid 10. 47.

Ibid 10. 48.

Ibid 10. 60.

Ibid 8. 172.

Ibid 10. 249.

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