Lecture Notes for The Incredible Shrinking Man, Richard Matheson
Last updated 4.15.02

In the post-World War II United States, Scott Carey might indeed feel that he is shrinking. As a white male, he's no longer as "relevant,' doesn't have the same sense of purpose he might have had during the War. And while he was gone, women's roles were changing. During the War, women worked in factories doing "men's work" while  caring for their families. So great was the government's need for these workers that they were even given state funded childcare to encourage their workforce participation.

After the war, these women were fired, their jobs given to returning men. But the men still felt as if there was no place for them Housing shortages meant there was literally no place for them. And you can fire the women, but you can't really put the genie back in the bottle.  While wives, mothers, and daughters were happy to see their men return home safely, they also felt resentment for these people who were now almost strangers, returning home and assuming authority over them. These men had to renegotiate their position in the family. The changing nature of work also made men feel as if there was no place for them. Now, middle class white collar jobs require people to do things that don't produce tangible products. Instead of building a house or healing the sick or telling someone the law, a middle class professional might advertise a product or write memos all day.

Women in this novella are represented as predatory creatures who are partly to blame for Scotts plight.  Its partly Lous fault, according to Scott, that theyre in this predicament. It was Lous fault they left Los Angeles to come back north so Scott could work for his brother, because shes a security bug, and unreasonably demands that her husband be able to make a living wage to support her and their daughter. Scott is on Martys boat when he is sprayed with the fatal substance that makes him shirnk. Later Scott feels unmanned when Lou must go to work to support the family that he cannot, and he spends his days peeping at the baby sitter hired to care for Beth.

Later Lou is compared to the female black widow spider who menaces him in the basement.  In fact, Scotts house is one big gynocracy, where in his mind all women are out to get him.  Lou and her daughter (often Scott doesnt refer to Beth as his daughter) seem to be out to get Scott according to his own paranoia. Beth nearly gives him a fatal ride back to the doll house. Even the cat who nearly kills him is allied with the female world (cats are generally associated with women). Ultimately the women who are supposed to take care of him cause him to get lost in the cellar. Beth lets in the cat who chases him outside.

Size does matter. Scott notices that as he shirnks in size, he becomes less of a man. Lou pays him less respect, his daughter doesnt respect him, and the world really doesnt respect him. When people can reasonably mistake him for a 12 year old boy, he falls prey to a great many dangers.  A gang of kids try to beat him up. When he runs out of gas and needs a ride back to town, he narrowly escapes the clutches of a pedophile.

While Louise can still see Scott, he doesn't have to challenge his ideas about masculinity and hence, continues to shrink. The smaller he gets, the more childlike and dependent he appears. Louise dresses him like a little boy, and must go out and work because he can't provide for his family any longer. The smaller he gets, the more he yells at Louise to vent his frustration. At one point, he shares some happiness with a female midget, but this happiness is fleeting. Her diminutive stature gives Scott the illusion that he's still what he          believes to be a man, and when he begins to shrink again, this illusion is shattered.

Only when Scott is no longer visible to Louise can he begin to challenge his ideas about gender. The cat chases him from the doll house upstairs, his last contact with  domesticity, with Louise's world, outside into the cold, and ultimately into the basement, which for him is a sort of domestic jungle. Here he must find food, learn to make tools, and fight creatures bigger than himself.  It is also here that he must manipulate Louise's new tools to ensure his own survival. He is no longer at the top of the food chain.

In some ways, Scott is now the epitome of masculinity. He lives by his wits and his hands.  He's a sort of rugged individualist. And Scott's nemesis is a spider, a sort of emblem of woman.  Her mouth in close up resembles a vagina dentata. But in other ways, he's going into uncharted territory. The film ends with Scott leaving the basement and going out into a far more vast world. As he looks up at the stars, he contemplates his own insignificance in the cosmos while also feeling more connected to the world.  His illness has dissolved the illusion that he's a completely separate being.

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