Popular Culture Review Vol. 12, No. 1, February 2001 | Page 104
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Popular Culture Review
Americans of their senses and their ability to fight back. This notion of seduction
is repeated in a scene later in the novel in which another woman who works for the
Communists comes to Mike’s apartment. Linda Holbright seduces Mike, and he
suspects that she is after information: “If she was going to, she should have asked
me then. Any woman should know when a man is nothing but a man and when
he’ll promise or tell anything. I knew all those things too and it didn’t do me any
good because I was still a man” (80).
Initially, then. One L onely N igh t seems to construct the Communist woman as
one who uses her sexuality to undermine American vigilance; yet, this isn’t in fact
what is actually going on in the novel. Mike assumes that Ethel has betrayed him
by revealing his true identity to the Party; he believes Linda has come to his
apartment to get information. In both cases he is wrong. Ethel has fallen in love
with Mike and has given up her belief in Communism after they have made love.
After being shot by a Communist Party hitman, she tells Mike, “After.. .1 met you
I saw...the truth” (118). She has gone to the FBI to expose the workings of the
Party. Similarly, Linda has come to Mike’s apartment to offer her virginity to him
and nothing more. Mike’s assumption that the evils of Communism come in the
form of a seductive woman is incorrect and clouds his ability to effectively
investigate the case.
Thus, despite the charges of misogyny that are frequently leveled at Spillane’s
fiction. One L on ely N igh t paints a portrait of the Communist woman as victim
rather than as evil seductress.- The image of the woman Communist as misguided
found expression as well in sociological studies of Communism written in the
Fifties.
In a book entitled The A pp ea ls o f C omm unism, Gabriel Almond suggests that
the adoption of Communist politics amongst middle-class young people usually
resulted from “rebelliousness and emotional instability” rather than from ideological
commitment (214)."' Particularly, Almond focuses on case studies of young
American women who have joined the Communist Party, concluding that most of
these women are misguided. One woman, Frances, has Joined the party in order to
becomes promiscuous and thus “show contempt for the ordinary laws of society”
(291). Almond states that “the Communist doctrine of sex equality helped her to
reject her femininity” (291). One L onely N igh t similarly portrays Ethel and Linda
as rebellious girls who, once they have found their femininity through sexual
relations with Mike, reject the Party and its doctrines. Thus, the real seducer in the
novel is not a woman, but an ideology that corrupts young women.
The novel’s rejection of the association of femininity and Communism is further
underscored in the character of Velda. Velda is the most fervent anti-Communist in
the novel. Mike professes ignorance on the subject of Cold War politics stating,
“More about the trials and the cold war. Politics. I felt like an ignorant bastard for