My critical analysis on The Maltese Falcon

For my choice novel I chose The Maltese Falcon, it was recommended to me by numerous people who said it was a fantastic book, to my surprise they were right. In this book you follow Sam Spade, a detective who recently has been given a case that ends up being much more complicated than he ever could imagine. The author, Dashiell Hammett, creates such a vivid scene of what is happening throughout this book that I could really visualize what was happening. What I wanted to focus my critical analysis on was Hammett’s way of expressing his main women characters through writing. In The Maltese Falcon there are only three women characters who all have very different personalities, all of which are very stereotypical of how men see certain women.
The three characters are Effie Pernie, Spades assistant. Brigid O’Shaughnessy, the very sexual client and possible suspect, and Iva Archer, Spades partner’s wife and also his lover. Each woman has a very different personality than the other and as I was reading I realized that each personality is it’s on stereotype. Effie is referred to by Sam as “boyish” and is often described as having a male voice and besides being referred to as a she once every few sentences it’s very hard to remember she actual is a women. Brigid is the object of Spade’s attention in the entire book, and although he knows that she is a possible suspect Brigid continues to get Sam’s help because of her sexuality. Iva is mentioned very few times however she is the “all accepting” woman who believes every word Sam says.
I connected this to Toni Morrison in not of how she talks about race but how race can be related to sexuality and sexisms in great American Literature. Morrison says, “American literature has been clearly the preserve of white male views, genius, and power, those views , genius , and power are without relationship to and removed from overwhelming presence of black people in the United States.” With each of these characters Sam has power over all of these women, it’s subtle for some but it does exists in The Maltese Falcon. In the end of the book (sorry to ruin it) Spade ends up sending Brigid to jail because of her involvement in the crime. So even though he’s in love with her he says “I hope to Christ they don’t hang you, precious by that sweet neck” Even just how Sam talks to Brigid you can tell he’s talking down to her, as if she weren’t to the level as he were. One of Morrison’s last thoughts of Romancing the Shadow is “Whiteness, alone, is mute, meaningless, unfathomable, pointless, frozen, veile, curtained, dreaded, senseless, implacable. Or so our writers seem to say.” In the end, without any of his women, Sam is left alone as a white man. A white man who is supposed to be all powerful, but in reality he has nothing without his other characters, as Toni Morrison says.