Carty, Victoria. "Textual Portrayals of Female Athletes: Liberation of Nuanced Forms of Patriarchy?" Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies 26.2 (2005): 132-172.

In Victoria Carty's article, she explores the portrayal of female athletes in today’s media by looking at print ads and television and radio commentary within the context of the radical feminist and post-feminist discourse. Carty states that while radical feminists embrace women’s increased opportunities to participate and thrive in competitive sports, they argue that the commoditization and subsequent exploitation of female athletes’ sexuality not only diminishes their athletic accomplishments but also reinforces the strength of the patriarchal system. On the other hand, post-feminists do not accept the objectification of women, but instead choose to work within the male-centered system that their radical feminist counterparts abhor. By choosing to use their sexuality as strength, post-feminists work to change the system from within by using the attributes that were once deemed as impediments to their advantage. Carty ultimately argues that female athletes and their supporters must ignore the oppressive qualities of commercialized competitive sports and instead use sports to their advantage.

While the film itself does not center around sports (although it is interesting to note that Dr. Peterson is characterized as a frustrated gymnast and avid swimmer during her introduction to Dr. Edwardes), the article becomes relevant to Spellbound if one approaches the work environment of Green Manors as a place not of competitive athletes, but of competitive intellectuals. Obviously there are differences between physical and mental competition, but in many ways the environments created by the competitive attitude are remarkably similar. The treatment of Dr. Peterson played by Ingrid Bergman is extremely similar to the atmosphere that Carty argues many female athletes encounter in today’s culture. While it appears that Dr. Peterson attempts to obscure her sexuality by wearing glasses and a baggy and unflattering lab coat in her work environment, a move that would find favor with radical feminist ideology, she also builds and nurtures strong relationships with her male coworkers, which according to post-feminists is one way to reinforce one’s heterosexuality and appear less threatening to the in-control males. Dr. Peterson constantly is forced to play within the boundaries that society has set up for her, case in point is her later encounter with the hotel detective. While she is portrayed as a strong female through out the film, she can never escape the behavioral expectations that force her altar her action and strategy in order to conform to the laws of men.