The Women of Joel and Ethan Coen

            Joel and Ethan Coen are unique in that both brothers typically work as a team when directing, writing, and producing their films, but even as a pair, they exhibit a certain style throughout their films.  They deal in similar characters, situations, music, and theme as their film careers progress.  One of the major recurring details of many of their films is a strong female role.  These strong characters come in a variety of types from feminists, to police officers, to the elderly, to children, to women who can’t get pregnant, and women who can’t seem to stop having children.  O Brother, Where Art Thou, The Big Lebowski, and Intolerable Cruelty are three very different films that exemplify how the Coen’s female characters navigate through a man’s world in very different ways to obtain their desires.

O Brother seemingly portrays three men escaping from prison in order to find a treasure that will soon be covered by the flooding of a reservoir.  Based on Homer’s Odyssey, O Brother depicts similar struggles endured by Odysseus through the eyes of its character Ulysses Everett McGill, but in a very different fashion.  Set in the mid to late thirties, O Brother allegorically uses a one eyed man to represent the Cyclops, three singing women to for the Sirens, and the Baptists representing Homer’s Lotus Eaters (Rowell, 244-5). 

            Unlike the Odyssey, O Brother, revolves not around the journey, but around Penny, Everett’s ex-wife.  His reason for breaking out of prison is to stop her from wedding her fiancé.  Set in the backdrop of the nineteen thirties, women had little choice but to find a man to support them.  Basinger points out in Woman Chases Man (1937) that Miriam Hopkins has to prove herself in some form of masculinity by telling a potential employer that she left her fiancé to pursue a career in a man’s world (451).  So too does Penny by divorcing her husband after he goes to prison for fraud when he attempts to practice medicine without a license.  With seven children, she is forced to seek someone who will provide for her family.  She subsequently tells her children that their father was killed by a train.  Upon their reuniting, Everett attempts to steal her away from her new fiancé by telling her that he has traveled far to be with his wife and daughters to which Penny replies, “Vernon (her fiancé) here’s got a job.  He has prospects.  He’s bona fide.  What are you?”  He tells her that that she can’t marry him, and she says, “I can, I am, and I will tomorrow.  I got to think about the little Warvey gals.  They look to me for answers.  Vernon can support them, and buy them lessons on the clarinet.  The only good thing you ever did for the gals was to get hit by that train” (O Brother, Where Art Thou).

            Here, Penny is doing what she can to survive in a world that oppresses women.  The Coens like to point out that even when men think that they run the world, women still do a fair amount of controlling.  Everett later exclaims, “Woman is the most fiendish instrument of torture ever devised to bedevil the days of man” (O’ Brother Where Art Thou).  He knows that he will have to conform to her wishes if he stands a chance to win her over.  Later he tells her, “I want to be what you want me to be.”  She refuses his advances until he is proven to have prospects.  Even though Penny finally has all the control at the end, she is shown walking her seven children, each holding onto a length of twine that hearkens back to the chain gang at the beginning of the film.  Even though she has some power, she is still imprisoned by her gender (Rowell, 256-7).

            The Coen’s female character in The Big Lebowski, Maude, is a very strong and independent character that prides herself on the absence of men in her life.  It does help that she comes from money, and it is very interesting when it is revealed that her father has no money of his own.  Jeffery Lebowski assumes that her father has all of the money judging from his house, accomplishments, and position of authority, yet the money belonged to Maude’s mother.  Maude gives her father an allowance because he likes to present himself in a particular fashion, but he is at the mercy of the foundation run by her.  Her emasculated father also parades around his young trophy wife and porn actress, Bunny, as a badge of honor until she demands too much of his money.  Maude despises Bunny, not because she is married to her father, but because she goes against everything that Maude believes in.  Maude doesn’t believe in needing to obtain a man by means of sex, yet for the purposes of having a child, she is ultimately left no choice.

            Maude also resorts to stereotypical assumptions of men when talking to Jeffery.  She assumes that men have a problem with the word “vagina,” but don’t have a problem referring to their own male member with a variety of slang names.  When asked if he liked sex, a puzzled Jeffery refers back to the conversation about his rug.  She has a difficult time baiting him into making sexual advances towards her, which seems to dispel her assumptions about him as a man.  Even after dropping Jeffery’s robe and standing naked over him, saying, “Jeffery.  Love me,” he replies, “My robe.”  It would appear that he is somewhat uninterested in sex outside a drug induced hallucination when he is drugged by Jacky Treehorn.

            The role reversals in this film show how far Hollywood and society has come to view women.  Regardless of the sexually uninterested Jeffery, he still fears castration at the hands of the Nihilists.  Man’s worst fear is also reiterated in their conversation with Larry the car thief.  The male member is an extension of masculinity, but it is unclear if it has much sexual relevance for Jeffery.  Of course given the opportunity for sex, he doesn’t pass it up, but he doesn’t actively solicit it.  Maude on the other hand, knows that women only have to ask, but it isn’t until Jeffery is deemed suitable for procreation that she pursues the act.  He initially assumes that he got lucky until she reveals her true intentions.  “What did you think this was about, fun and games?  I want a child.”  She further exerts her independence by saying, "Look Jeffery, I don’t want a partner.  In fact I don’t want the father to be someone I have to see socially, or will have any interest in raising the child himself.”  This independence is in stark contrast to Bunny who owes a lot of money to known pornographers, and is owned, in a sense, by these people as well as her husband.

            The idea of leading men around by their penises is also examined in Intolerable Cruelty.  Marilyn marries Rex Rexroth for the sole purpose of exploiting his penchant for philandering.  She plans to “have [her husband’s ass] stuffed and mounted” (Rowell, 317).  However, it is understood by him that there is a mutual agreement between he and Marilyn that exists, making this type of behavior acceptable for both of them, yet she never indulges.  She hires a private investigator to obtain hard evidence against her husband as a means of divorcing him and keeping a sizable portion of his estate.  Marilyn’s is financially motivated and doesn’t appear to have much use for men unless there is some sort of payoff for her. 

The Coen Brothers depict her as a woman who is an expert at manipulating men until they present her with a challenge.  Rowels describes, “If husbands are routinely unfaithful cads or sexual perverts, women are financiers of sorts looking for ‘venture capitalist’ husbands” (318).  Rex Rexroth hires Miles Massey, a highly successful divorce attorney notorious for winning divorce settlements and leaving the opposition penniless.  Despite Rex Rexroth’s precarious position, he wins the case sending Marilyn out the door with nothing.  During the proceedings, she becomes aware that Miles is interested in pursuing her romantically.  She sets out to exploit this interest for her own personal gain again.  This time, she succeeds in marrying Miles and thwarting the prenuptial agreement they had both signed by tricking him into thinking that she was so rich that she didn’t need his money.  Her revenge lies in the settlement she is about to get in her divorce as well as his broken heart.

Women in this film are depicted as man eating and money hungry.  Sex is meaningless.  Marilyn friend Sara says, “Getting laid is like playing financial Russian roulette” (Intolerable Cruelty).  Sara is perpetually sick with a stomach ulcer and has difficulty enjoying her wealth.  Once a person has become rich, they become imprisoned by the wealth and condemned to celibacy.  It asks the question whether one could be happy with wealth alone.  When the Miles and Marilyn do get together each having significant wealth, love becomes difficult to believe when it has been completely absent throughout the film (Rowll, 324).  Traditionally, it has been thought that men will give love to get sex while women will give sex to get love.  In this film, women are willing to give sex and the illusion of love to get money and then throw the other two out.  It is woman taking charge and refusing to get screwed for something that requires more screwing to maintain it.  With money, one becomes self-sufficient and independent.    

The Coen brothers enjoy women of power in their films.  Holly Hunter’s character in Raising Arizona is a police officer who marries a convict and then demands that he steal a baby for her.  Francis McDormand in Fargo plays a pregnant police officer pursuing some very dangerous criminals.  Hailee Steinfeld is a strong child in True Grit pushing an old U.S. Martial across the country to find her father’s murderer.  The list goes on and on.  The Coens continue to include these characters in their films to make the point that regardless of time, circumstance, location, and age, women have power on some level in all situations.  In this regard, Joel and Ethan are broadening the possibilities for women in Hollywood.

Works Cited

Basinger, Jeanine. A Woman's View: How Hollywood Spoke to Women 1930-1960. Hanover,

            NH: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.

Coen, Joel, dir. The Big Lebowski. Writ. Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen. 1998. Film.

Coen, Joel, dir. O Brother, Where Art Thou. Writ. Joel Coen, and Ethan Coen. 2000. Film.

Coen, Joel, dir. Intolerable Cruelty. Writ. Robert Ramsey, Matthew Stone, and John Romano. 2003. Film.

Rowell, Erica. The Brothers Grim, The Films Of Ethan And Joel Coen. 1st. Lanham: Scarecrow

Press, INC., 2007.