'Essentially, Another Man's Woman': Information and Gender in the Novel and Adaptations of John le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

This chapter explores the commodification and conflation of gender and information that are manifest in the novel and the television, radio, and film adaptations of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. Even though the core thematic focus of the adaptations often correlates with those of the novel—concepts of love, obsession, and rivalry—this chapter aims to show that the representation of material information is conflated with the representations of gender, in particular through the characters of Connie Sachs, Ann Smiley, and Irina. In the adaptations studied, this manifests slightly differently in terms of narrative but is a core principle that the texts rely on for their dramatic structures. Consequently, each adaptation adapts something of the gender and information politics of the last 30 years.