An evening with Dr. Lecter, part 2

Question 2: One thing of special interest in this novel is that here, finally, we have a female detective who exemplifies law enforcement. Starling isn't Nancy Drew and she's not Rachel Innes; she has all the weight of the FBI and the federal government behind her. Sort of. Harris's book purposely raises many issues about gender.

In any case, Chapter 12 is one of the book's richest chapters, both in how issues about women arise and in the other issues that come up. Please comment substantively on what you find of interest in this chapter. The more details, the better.

The first thing of note in the chapter is where Clarice is sitting in the police cruiser as the party makes its way to the funeral home. We are told she is riding “in the back of a sheriff’s department cruiser, [and] had to lean up close to the prisoner screen to hear the deputy at the wheel as he explained these things to Jack Crawford” (71). Clarice is being disregarded in many ways here; she is being transported like a prisoner and not even given the courtesy of the men trying to speak up so she can get pertinent information.

On the following page, as Clarice makes her way through the deputies that have gathered near the funeral home, we see her treated as little more than an object over which to have conversation. This is not unlike the way Buffalo Bill later talks about his female victims. One of the man casually comments to the other “I’d put her on like a Mark Five gas mask” (72). These are not the type of lewd comments they would make about their male co-workers, and were they not busy being pigs (joke fully intended), they would both realize these types of comments are inappropriate in a professional setting.

Interestingly, this dismissal of Clarice as even being human enough to treat with respect comes on the heels of the narrator allowing us to see that Clarice is nearly as clever as Lecter himself in some ways. She “looked at these men as the cruiser pulled into the lot, and at once she knew about them” (71-2). The paragraph continues detailing the specific details of the men’s lives Clarice could pick up just be looking at them once. She, like Lecter, has a powerful ability to read people in a split second, and this contributes greatly to her abilities as a detective.

Crawford deals a heavy blow to Clarice when he deals with the Sheriff. Rather than discuss the case openly, he tells the Sheriff that due to the nature of the crime, there are some things that would be better left “just between us men” (73). As she deals with her embarrassment, she glances at the picture of Saint Cecilia hanging on the wall. This is apt imagery as Saint Cecilia is listed in the Catholic Encyclopedia online as “virgin and martyr” and is also said to be an only child who sang to God as she was dying. Clarice is both virgin and martyr – virgin because of her youth and inexperience, martyr because she would rather be put through constant tribulation and persecution than give up on the FBI. As she finds herself in the midst of this agony, she simply looks at the image of the Saint and smiles – her own version of singing to God.

When Clarice realizes that if she wants the room cleared out so she can work, she will have to do it herself, she searches within her for a source of strength. What she uncovers is her mother pulling together and being strong after her father’s death. Though Lecter has already accurately pegged Clarice as “desperate not to be like [her] mother” (20), she still finds some comfort in that part of her history. Even after she finds her voice and clears the men out of the room, she is not seen as having any control or power. The way Crawford reflects on the situation shows Clarice as taking on little more role than a servant in the way that so many southern mothers seem to. “Crawford saw that in this place Starling was heir to the granny women, to the wise women, the herb healers, the stalwart country women who have always done the needful, who keep watch and when the watch is over, was and dress the country dead” (75). As is said, this role is certainly one that is needful and perhaps even respected some, but it is not powerful.

As three officers arrive at the end of the chapter, Clarice “was interested to see how fast he [Crawford] got them into a male bonding mode” (82). The card passing, hand shaking, smiles all around, “good ol’ boy” routine seemed like nothing more than an exercise in masculine posturing to Clarice until she realized “it worked on her too” (82). It is not long after this realization she is perhaps not set apart from the men as much as she has felt previously that she is able to stand up and confront Crawford about his actions in the funeral home (87).