Out of all her works, it is in The Talented Mr. Ripley that Patricia Highsmith makes it glaringly apparent that, to her, the most liberating thing of all is to be a man. For it means the ability to muck about as one pleases. And not as a housewife, which was the only way a woman could loll around back in the day…even though enforced domesticated labor hardly constitutes the 1950s/1960s female stereotype of “looking cute and eating bonbons all day” that reigned during the era when Highsmith was living and writing. So no, being a housewife didn’t count as “mucking about.” Ergo, the only way to be truly free (even to this day) was to be a man of privilege. Giving one the ability to, like Richard “Dickie” Greenleaf—and later, Tom Ripley as Dickie—roam aimlessly throughout Italy (and other select parts of Europe). No questions asked. Or rather, there wouldn’t have been if Tom wasn’t so quick to murder a man (two, in fact). 

Through the lens of Dickie, de facto Tom, Highsmith relishes the lazy days spent idling about on beaches (sun-soaked or not), at cafes or in hotels. Days spent only faintly pretending to be an artist (which was rather gauche for a man of affluence to be—or attempt being—at that point). And, most days, Dickie doesn’t even bother with that. Tom even less so…though he does take to letter writing as though it’s an affair as grand as crafting a novel. Something that Marge Sherwood, in contrast, is actually trying to do. And clearly, it’s no coincidence that there’s far more judgment cast on her for “claiming” to be a writer and writing every day to back it up versus Dickie asserting that he’s a “painter” and only intermittently devoting himself to creating a rather hideous quadro. The double standard couldn’t be more obvious—and Highsmith is deliberate in making it so. The underlying point being that men like Dickie and Tom can continuously fail upwards under the pretense of being “artists” who are just “finding themselves,” while Marge, a diligent and talented writer, has to deal with the skeptical expressions on people’s (namely Italians’) faces when she says as much. This aspect of Marge’s life is played up with particular explicitness in Steven Zaillian’s TV adaptation of the novel, titled simply Ripley. 

Zaillian, in his rendering, drives home the point Highsmith more subtly made about Marge being treated differently for her artistic proclivities and pursuits in the seventh episode of the series, “Macabre Entertainment.” In it, Marge (portrayed by Dakota Fanning) is finally the one to be scrutinizingly questioned by the Italian authorities from Rome who suspect “Dickie” of murdering Freddie Miles. After Inspector Ravini (referred to as Lieutenant—or Tenente—Roverini in the book) already “drops by” her remote casa in Atrani (renamed from “Mongibello,” also fictional and also modeled after Positano), he sends another lower-level officer to return there and summon Marge to Rome for further questioning. Upon entering Marge’s quaint but charming space, the officer barely hides his expression of judgmental disgust over “how she lives.” That is to say, in a manner “unbecoming” of a “lady” because the house is unkempt, with pictures and papers strewn all over her main dining table. All in service of strategizing and writing her novel about Atrani, of course. 

But the critical officer doesn’t see it that way, can’t imagine that anything she’s doing “by herself” could have worth. The only thing that could, as far as a misogynistic Italian (or even non-Italian) man like him is concerned, is being a “loyal wife” to a man like Dickie. Unfortunately for Marge, Dickie isn’t interested in her like that. Something the book makes very clear. Alas, both adaptations—1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley and Ripley—can’t let it stand that Marge and Dickie aren’t romantically involved. It just wouldn’t compute in any major Hollywood production. No matter how “gritty.” So it is that one of the defining differences in the novel is Marge’s firm position in the friend zone with Dickie, even though he’s well-aware of her affections for him. 

In any case, if this officer had showed up unannounced at Tom or Dickie’s apartment (well, any apartment of Dickie’s is technically Tom’s), and it had been in disarray, no judgment would have been passed. “Confirmed bachelors” (that old euphemism) are “allowed” to live in such a manner. But a “marriageable” woman like Marge? Certainly not! Which is why she has to spell it out for the officer that, “I can’t just drop everything and go to Rome right now.” “‘Everything’?” he repeats mockingly as he continues to look around the room. Marge, disheartened by his comment, only lets the offense show on her face for a split second before she indulges him with the explanation, “My work. The book I’m writing.” He stares again at the table, then makes a swirling motion at the stacks of photos and papers. “This?” he asks. “Yes,” she confirms vehemently. The officer remains unmoved, reminding her that “this is a police investigation.” In other words, one’s art is hardly a “real job” to begin with, let alone a valid reason to evade “important police questioning.” Thus, the Marge of Ripley is strong-armed into going with the officer to speak to Inspector Ravini. 

The Marge of the book has a less antagonistic rapport with Roverini, coming across as more gleeful and urgent about telling him whatever she can. In this sense, Highsmith depicts her as much more of a “good little woman,” docile and willing to go along with whatever might magically result in Dickie’s return. His “re-materialization,” as it were. Highsmith’s rendering of Marge is in keeping with her own misogyny, for it was no secret that the author found women to be rather, let’s say, “unpleasant” company compared to men and their “raw intellect.” The contempt expressed through Tom for Marge is, in this regard, a straightforward manifestation of Highsmith’s contempt for women, intensified by the fact that she was grudgingly attracted to them sexually. As Phyllis Nagy put it during an interview about Carol (a.k.a. The Price of Salt in book form), “The unwholesome truth about Pat is that she was a lesbian who did not very much enjoy being around other women. So the attempt to dabble with one man seriously and perhaps a few others along the way was to just see if she could be into men in that way because she so much more preferred their company.” And yes, would have preferred the increased social status and respectability it might have lent her to be a man. 

Not to say that Highsmith didn’t act like one regardless. In the same NPR interview with Nagy, she also stated, “Pat herself, I always like to say, was like the studio boss of lesbians in that she was right there chasing women around couches and throwing them down onto beds and four-posters and gauzy things. And I thought at first that she was probably just, you know, pumping up her own reputation as a lesbian stud. But in fact, her peers, the women that she chased, many of whom actually did remain friendly with her, confirmed those stories.” And yet, Highsmith, like a typical philandering cad, never actually wanted to settle down with any of these women (which is often why she would pursue married ones) because, per Nagy, she “famously did not like to live with people or have that kind of attachment that most reasonable people, after a time, expect that there will be this form of commitment.” Tom and Dickie are both like that in their own ways as well. Not just because they’re men, but because they’re men being presented through Highsmith’s idealized image of what men can do. Which is to say, whatever the fuck they want. Including getting away with murder. 

However, Tom, because he was not born a man of privilege like Dickie, initially thinks he won’t be able to get away with his crimes, continuing to wait for the other shoe to drop even after Dickie’s father, Herbert Greenleaf, buys into the fake will that Tom wrote as Dickie. Insisting that “Dickie” would like to leave all his income and possessions to his dear friend, Tom. Very dear, indeed. For just as in the movie and TV show, eyebrow-raising speculation about the “nature” of their friendship comes into play. And Tom is happy to invite the speculation from Marge so that she’ll finally get the hint that Dickie is no longer “interested” in her. Not that he ever was. Getting that message across at last is a triumphant moment for Tom. And his disdain for her doesn’t merely reflect Highsmith’s own for women in particular, but for people in general. After all, her misanthropy was even less of a secret than her sexual orientation. A misanthropy that shines brightly through the “character” of Tom. The natural extension of that misanthropy is the romance of “fleeing to Europe” when the opportunity miraculously presents itself to him. Accordingly, Highsmith’s own scorn for the U.S. would result in her moving to Europe (with a stint in Italy, naturally) for the rest of her life starting in 1963, eight years after the publication of The Talented Mr. Ripley. Evidently, Ripley must have served as some source of inspiration. Or perhaps unleashing her dormant desires onto the character gave her the motivation to finally flee from lusterless America in real life. To disappear, or at least be less likely to encounter so many dolts. 

Toward the end of the novel, Highsmith writes of Tom, and the delights of misanthropic solitude, “Maybe he’d never go back to the States. It was not so much Europe itself as the evenings he had spent alone, here and in Rome, that made him feel that way. Evenings by himself simply looking at maps, or lying around on sofas thumbing through guidebooks.” At last, all that uninterrupted leisure time Tom was never afforded before he became Dickie. Leisure time that he never could have secured without taking it by force. And this is where Highsmith also leads into the idea that it is, in the end, only things that can’t disappoint you. People always will. Thus, she continues, “He loved possessions, not masses of them, but a select few that he did not part with. They gave a man self-respect… Possessions reminded him that he existed, and made him enjoy his existence. It was as simple as that.” 

One can imagine Highsmith feeling the same as she ascended the ranks from “Texan daughter of divorced artists” to “sought-after, celebrated New York author.” In the days before that happened, it would be easy to imagine her having similar thoughts as Tom about the joke of trying to earn money “honestly.” Something she makes no bones about when writing, “…it had been impossible to make a beginning at acquiring anything of his own on forty dollars a week. It would have taken him the best years of his life, even if he had economized stringently, to buy the things he wanted. Dickie’s money had given him only an added momentum on the road he had been traveling.”

For Highsmith, the “momentum” on the road she had been traveling (complete with graduating from Barnard) came from, of all queens, Truman Capote. Were it not for his endorsement of her acceptance at the Yaddo retreat in 1948, where she began work on her first novel, Strangers on a Train, her entire life trajectory might have been different. She might have been relegated to being a copywriter or something. The horror. It would be like Tom having to face himself as, well, himself again. Much more content to roam the Earth as Dickie, but forced to go back to being Tom as a matter of logistics. 

Even so, regardless of what identity he assumes in his continued travels through Europe and beyond, Ripley’s sentiments are the same as Highsmith’s, who once said, “I choose to live alone because my imagination functions better when I don’t have to speak with people.” Needless to say, so does Ripley’s, who lives out the stories he makes up to cover his tracks by first practicing them alone in whatever lavish room he’s managed to secure. Relishing the kind of solitude and lolling around that women were not (and are not) given the same easy access to. For even “idle” female courtiers (a.k.a. courtesans) were expected to fuck for their supper. Much like the stay-at-home girlfriends of the present.