Here I think it is necessary to compare the two films from the prewar and postwar period, Shadow of a Doubt and The Man Who Knew Too Much where the mother figure symbolize both the household and the image of America. At the same time “These two Hitchcock films show clearly how the domestic ideology that is evoked to counter the fear of the maternal desire for independence ends up evoking the thing it fears” (Michie 30). For a brief moment, the maternal figures in both films refuse to be vehicles for idealized fantasies about family, and instead articulate their own desires, that could threaten the domestic ideals they are supposed to convey. The veiled desires of an American wife and mother are exposed early in the narrative when Hank accidently
