In his book Everything you Always Wanted to Know about Lacan: But Were Afraid to ask Hitchcock, Slavoj Zizek comments on the pre-established harmony between Hannay and Pamela. Zizek argues that English films of the late 1930s (of which The 39 Steps is a member) aimed to fit within the confines of the classic narrative, and consequently that their plot was only useful as a device to bring the protagonist and his female interest to a successful conclusion.

Zizek has found that English films of the late 1930’s seem bound to “Oedipal story of the couple’s initiatory journey,” a classic narrative of two people bound by fate to fall in love with one another. The couples of these films are bound by fate or, in the case of The 39 Steps, a pair of steel handcuffs and mature together through a series of ordeals towards the “fundamental motif of the bourgeois ideology of marriage.” This fundamental motif is played out in The 39 Steps as Pamela and Hannay are first bound together against their will and then, as they overcome obstacles together, become closer to each other. Just as Hitchcock has given us the stereotype of masculinity and painted a picture of the strong, dominant man, so has he shown us the classical ideal of two unwilling people coming together through a period of uncertainly and trials.

Slavoj Zizek’s comments on the stereotype of the relationship between Pamela and Hannay strike a chord next to the classical portrayal of Hannay as a dominant male. In appropriate fashion, the classic man has fallen into the classic, stereotypical “bourgeois ideology of marriage.”