10 replies to this topic

[Revelator]

I recently contributed an article to Artistic Licence Renewed arguing that Tiffany Case is Fleming's best female character. I won't reprint the whole thing here, but I will summarize my reasons.

First, she's funny and tough. There's more humor in Tiffany's wisecracks than there is in the first three Bond books put together. She's happy to talk back to Bond and she brings out his latent humor too, as in their long discussion about marriage on the Queen Elizabeth. "So you're one of those old-fashioned men who like sleeping with women. Why haven't you ever married?" Tiffany asks. Bond says his ideal wife would be "Somebody who can make Sauce Béarnaise as well as love," and she replies "Holy mackerel! Just any old dumb hag who can cook and lie on her back?" Later on she sends to Bond's cabin a bowl of sauce and a note from the chef saying: "This Sauce Béarnaise has been created by Miss T. Case without my assistance."

Second, Tiffany has a complex character, shaped by inner conflict. She is a tough, independent operator but also has a suppressed vulnerability. In her first meeting with Bond, she's mostly cold and scornful ("Do you mind if I smoke?" Bond asks. "If that's the way you want to die" she responds), but after he leaves she wonders "about the man who had suddenly, out of the blue, found his way into her life. God, she thought to herself with sudden angry despair, another damn crook. Couldn't she ever get away from them?" Because of a traumatic past, she is distrustful of men and afraid of being hurt. There is a poignance in seeing her inner struggle when she begins falling for Bond--we know Bond is not the type who would hurt her, but she can't be sure. This is demonstrated after their dinner in New York, when he takes her back to her hotel:
 

Then she turned in the entrance and faced him.
"Listen, you Bond person..."
It had started as the beginning of an angry speech, but then she paused and looked straight into his eyes, and Bond saw that her eyelashes were wet. And suddenly she had flung an arm round his neck and her face was against his and she was saying "Look after yourself, James. I don't want to lose you." And then she pulled his face against hers and kissed him once, hard and long on the lips, with a fierce tenderness that was almost without sex.
But, as Bond's arms went round her and he started to return her kiss, she suddenly stiffened and fought her way free, and the moment was over.
With her hand on the knob of the open door, she turned and looked at him, and the sultry glow was back in her eyes.
"Now get away from me," she said fiercely, and slammed the door and locked it.

 

Bond has to prove himself to Tiffany, something he's never been called upon to do before. He realizes he must be more than a lover; his presence must also be be therapeutic. Occasionally he makes mistakes and upsets her by bringing up her relations with the mob, but he perseveres until they end the book on a note of happiness.

By contrast, Fleming's other female characters are less vivid:

* Vesper is one-dimensional, and only comes alive in the last quarter of the novel, when her desperation makes itself known.

* Solitaire is perhaps the most cardboard of Fleming's heroines. She begins as a damsel in distress and doesn't progress much beyond that.

* Gala Brand is more interesting--she's not impressed with Bond, being a true professional--but we don't see much of her character beyond her patriotism.

* Tatiana Romanova is a better character--we spend a couple of chapters looking at the world through her eyes and get a sense of her ordinariness and sense of vulnerability--but her personality isn't unique.

* Honeychile Ryder is a very good heroine, a child of nature whose innocence and determination come across vividly. She does however go through a "sex kitten" phase during captivity in the mink-lined prison.

* Pussy Galore inherits Tiffany's gift for wisecracks, but doesn't appear long enough to become anything more than a lesbian caricature of Mae West. Tilly Masterton is better drawn, but Fleming's contempt limits her development.

* Domino is one of Fleming's very best heroines--fiery, wilful and vengeful (as we see in her destruction of Largo and "to hell with you" attitude) but also with a contemplative, wistful side (as we see in her long story about the Players cigarettes sailor).

* Vivienne Michel might possibly outrank Tiffany as Fleming's best heroine, but she has unfair advantage--she gets to narrate an entire book about herself! No wonder we get to know her character--fanciful, plucky, and a bit similar to Ian Fleming's, to be honest--so well.

* Tracy di Vicenzo is basically a rewrite of Tiffany--a sensitive, depressive soul with a sad backstory and a hot-and-cold temperament--but she becomes less interesting after being cured by the psychiatrists.

* Kissy Suzuki is another of Fleming's best heroines: proud (witness her disgust with Hollywood racism), independent, and willing to take what she wants. Her keeping the amnesiac Bond might seem selfish, but can anyone deny that she gave him a good life?

* Mary Goodnight is sadly almost bereft of character--she's resourceful and a little bashful, and that's about all one can say about her.

But enough of my gabbing--who do you think Fleming's best female character is? Do my assessments do justice to your favorites? Do tell! And should you wish to comment on the article, feel welcome.

[Dustin]

I think I have to agree that Tiffany is perhaps the most rounded and interesting female character Fleming created for the purpose of the girl at Bond's side. She is also the rare case to leave Bond behind for another guy, something one would wish had been explored more deeply.

But about her actual abilities I'm not so sure. Inside the pipeline network she's not much more than a gofer, not even trusted enough to really work independently - Wint and Kidd have an eye on the smuggling run - yet she apparently hasn't been able to spot and mark these two although it stands to reason they've been covering all the runs Tiffany arranged.

That said she's picking up the smashed-to-pulp Bond, thereby showing enormous courage and resolve even if she doesn't do such stunts on a regular basis. It helps of course that both Tiffany and Bond are then picked up by Leiter, not by the baddies, which would have been more likely.

My personal favourite of the Bond girls would perhaps be a draw between Tatjana and Kissy, for much the reasons you already stated.

But strangely enough, when I think of female characters in the Bond novels the first to come to my mind is neither of the heroines. It's the masseuse from the first scene of FRWL; her strange duty in the service of the dreaded SMERSH, the perfect male body she has to tend to, that both fascinates and revolts her, her sweating body working the hard unyielding muscles,the luxury of a short dive in the pool after her work is done and the way home then.

She is of course not a rounded character, we see her just in this single scene and learn only of her terror and her fascination. But in this we glimpse a real human being, a tiny clog in the huge deadly machinery of death and destruction that is SMERSH.

[Revelator]

If I remember correctly, all the diamond carriers are watched by the mob on principle, though you're right that she probably should have noticed Wint and Kidd by now (perhaps Fleming is more to blame than his characters). Tiffany also was responsible for devising the smuggling method used in Bond's case (the golf balls) and presumably others as well, which speaks well of her ingenuity. 

I found it interesting that Felix drove Bond and Tiffany straight to LA rather than to a trusted place in Vegas--I guess the town was entirely enemy territory!

I hadn't thought about Tiffany's rareness in rejecting Bond--the only other close examples I can think of are Gala (but she was never in a real relationship with him) and Tilly (ditto). Bond's remark about mixed marriages never struck me as a convincing reason for the break-up--Tiffany's lived in London before, after all. I wonder if she enjoyed a happy marriage with that marine.

The masseuse is a very memorable and plausible character, despite her brief appearance, and as you note, Fleming expertly uses her ordinariness to show the kind of organization Smersh is and the kind of man Grant is--Fleming gets inside her head and shows her mixed fascination and repulsion for Grant's body and face. One of the very best walk-on characters in the books, and evidence that Fleming benefited from writing outside Bond's perspective.

[Professor Pi]

One thing that's surprising when reading the novels is how well drawn the Bond women are and the depth of Fleming's heroines.  They are not the same as their movie counterparts, especially Gala and Tiffanie.  He lived with Tiffanie and kept in touch with Gala via Christmas cards, two things we've never seen the cinematic Bond do.  I view each Bond heroine as teaching Bond something new about women after the treachery in losing Vesper--the innocence of Solitaire, the resourcefulness of Honey, the worldly cynicism of Domino--all leading up to him falling in love again with Tracy, and the maternal nature of Kissy.  He's basically learning to trust women again.  Sadly, the movie version of Tiffanie is way short of her literary counterpart.

[Dustin]

Well, in all fairness I believe the Christmas card thingy was an invention of Gardner if memory serves...

[Revelator]

I view each Bond heroine as teaching Bond something new about women after the treachery in losing Vesper--the innocence of Solitaire, the resourcefulness of Honey, the worldly cynicism of Domino--all leading up to him falling in love again with Tracy, and the maternal nature of Kissy.  He's basically learning to trust women again. 

 

That's a wonderful observation and a new interpretation to me. It makes Tracy's death even more tragic, and his separation from Kissy--who had essentially become a wife--also tragic. After this cycle, Fleming seemed to have been left at a loss, since love and women play a very small role in TMWTGG.

I naturally agree with you on the depth of Fleming's women and how they've mostly been let down by the films, though I'll admit that the screen versions of Vesper, Solitaire, and Tracy have more depth than the originals.

[Professor Pi]

Well, in all fairness I believe the Christmas card thingy was an invention of Gardner if memory serves...

 

I think you're right.  I read the early Gardner books first before diving into Fleming my junior year of high school.  That was about 1984, then read the rest of the Gardners as they came out.  Those flashbacks Gardner gave intrigued me to go back to the Fleming source material.

[Dustin]

Most interesting idea to see Bond's evolvement over the books as a quest to find his faith in women again. Though one might argue Vesper, in the strictest sense, stayed faithful to her lover. Only when she fell in love with Bond she revealed her work for Redland - but she didn't actually betray Bond but their country. Bond was the one she couldn't betray.

Interestingly, Fleming himself made a voyage towards the end of his life that had a distinctly symbolical nature. In the summer of '63 Fleming used an assignment to interview one of his heroes, Georges Simenon*, to later try and visit his former love Monique, who lived nearby. She refused to see him, supposedly on the grounds that Fleming had betrayed her by not standing up to his domineering mother in the thirties when they were a serious item.

On the same trip to Europe, after sending his family forward to London - and after failing to see Monique - he met Blanche Blackwell, another woman that might with some justification claim more of Ian Fleming than she ended up with. Fleming toured with her through Bavaria and, in his own words, finished his 'last long walk' by her side.

It's of course impossible to tell, but one wouldn't be surprised if Fleming had felt he let these women down in some way.

*sidenote on Georges Simenon: while Fleming was a huge fan of his work and had read many of his books, Simenon admitted in fairly good temper he had read none of Fleming's; had in fact supposedly stopped reading novels altogether in 1928. Bang.

[clublos]

Very interesting to read everyone's thoughts here. I participated in a panel for SAMLA (South Atlantic Modern Language Association) in Jacksonville, Florida, two months ago, where I presented a paper on sexuality and Fleming's treatment of women, focusing on Tiffany Case (ALR also did a write-up of it). She is certainly one of his most fleshed-out leading ladies, for a Bond novel, but I also argue that her character shares tragic traits with Vesper, Vivienne and Tracy. It's interesting to also note that, save Solitaire and Tracy, all of the main women are professionals in their own right and display Fleming's own independent nature. It's a shame that he injected too much of his own prejudices and psychological trauma, prohibiting him from more fully developing their character.

[Revelator]

Dustin: The conversation with Simenon is a fascinating read. I'd be happy to post it if anyone here hasn't read it. I think you're quite right that Fleming thought he had let several women in his life down--Muriel Wright and Ann Fleming are two other examples. His late-in-life attempts to contact Monique and go touring with Blanche remind me of Bond's softening toward Vesper's memory and the revelation that he annually visits her grave.

 

Clublos: I really wanted to attend that panel, but a variety of things got in the way. My article on Tiffany for ALR is a very broad overview of the topics I might have discussed there. I hear the papers from the panel will be published and very much look forward to reading yours. I'm going to attempt submitting one of my own to Prof. Buckton, if I can find a narrower area of inquiry that doesn't overlap too much with your papers and those of your fellow panelists.

 

For anyone interested, the ALR overview of the panel can be read here.

 

 

[glidrose]

Is Tiffany Case Fleming's Best Female Character?

Not by a longshot. I think she's one of Fleming's most obnoxious creations. Lisl Baum is even worse, and insipid Vesper is poorly drawn. Tiffany is somewhere in the middle in terms of literary quality of characterization.

I'd pick Kissy and then Domino Vitale as Fleming's best drawn female characters.