Information about Femme Fatale

For other uses, see Femme fatale (disambiguation)

A femme fatale (plural: femmes fatales) is an alluring and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations. She is an archetypal character of literature and art.

The phrase is French for "fatal (or "deadly") woman." A femme fatale tries to achieve her hidden purpose by using feminine wiles such as beauty, charm, and sexual allure. Typically, she is exceptionally well-endowed with these qualities. In some situations, she uses lying or coercion rather than charm. She may also be (or imply to be) a victim, caught in a situation from which she cannot escape; the Lady from Shanghai (a 1948 film noir) giving one such example. Her characteristic weapon, if needed, is frequently poison, which also serves as a metaphor for her charms.

Her ability to entrance and hypnotise her male victim was in the earliest stories seen as being literally supernatural, hence the most prosaic femme fatale today is still described as having a power akin to an enchantress, vampire, female monster or demon. The ideas involved are closely tied to fears of the female witch.

Although typically villainous, femmes fatales have also appeared as antiheroines in some stories, and some even repent and become heroines by the end of the tale (see, for example, Bell, Book and Candle).

In social life, the femme fatale tortures her lover in an asymmetrical relationship, denying confirmation of her affection. She usually drives him to the point of obsession and exhaustion so that he is incapable of making rational decisions.

History

The femme fatale archetype exists, in one form or another, in the folklore and myth of nearly every culture in every century. ^[1] The early examples are Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess, and Lilith, Delilah, and Salome from the Judaeo-Christian Bible. In ancient Greek literature, the femme fatale is incarnated by the Siren, the Sphinx, Scylla, Circe, Lamia (mythology), Helen of Troy, and Clytemnestra. Beside them is the historical figure Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, with her ability to seduce the powerful men of Rome. Roman propaganda attacked Cleopatra as a femme fatale; resultingly, she became the legendary archetype of the attractions and the dangers inherent to the powerful, exotic woman.

In the middle ages, the idea of the dangers of female sexuality, typified by Eve, was commonly expressed in medieval romances as a wicked, seductive enchantress, the prime example being Morgan la Fay.

The femme fatale flourished in the Romantic period in the works of John Keats, notably La Belle Dame sans Merci and Lamia. Along with them, there rose the gothic novel, The Monk featuring Matilda, a very potent femme fatale. This led to her appearing in the work of Edgar Allan Poe, and as the vampiress, notably in Carmilla and Brides of Dracula. The Marquis de Sade greatly admired The Monk, for him, the femme fatale symbolised not evil, but all the best qualities of Woman, and Juliette is perhaps the earliest novel wherein the femme fatale triumphs. Pre-Raphaelite painters frequently used the classic personifications of the femme fatale as a subject.

In the Western Culture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the femme fatale became a more fashionable trope, and is found in the paintings of the artists Edvard Munch, Gustav Klimt, Gustave Moreau, and the novels of the Frenchman Joris-Karl Huysmans. In À rebours are these fevered imaginings about an image of Salome in a Moreau painting:

No longer was she merely the dancing-girl who extorts a cry of lust and concupiscence from an old man by the lascivious contortions of her body; who breaks the will, masters the mind of a King by the spectacle of her quivering bosoms, heaving belly and tossing thighs; she was now revealed in a sense as the symbolic incarnation of world-old Vice, the goddess of immortal Hysteria, the Curse of Beauty supreme above all other beauties by the cataleptic spasm that stirs her flesh and steels her muscles, - a monstrous Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning.^[2]

In fin-de-siecle decadence, Oscar Wilde re-invented the femme fatale in the play 'Salome': she manipulates her lust-crazed uncle, King Herod, with her enticing Dance of the Seven Veils (Wilde's invention) to agree to her imperious demand: bring me the head of John the Baptist. Later, Salome was the subject of an opera by Strauss, was popularized on stage, screen, and peep-show booth in countless reincarnations.^[3]

Femme Fatale have also existed in the east. In Chinese myths, stories and history, certain concubines have been accused as being responsible in part for the weakening and downfall of dynasties, by seducing her lover into neglecting their duties or twisting him to her will.

Another enduring icon of womanly glamour, seduction, and the presumed moral turpitude of the early twentieth century, was Mata Hari, an alluring oriental dancer, accused of German espionage and put to death by a French firing squad. As such, she realised the femme fatale archetype, and, after her death, became the subject of much fantastical imagining and many sensational films and books.



The femme fatale has been portrayed as a sexual vampiress; her charms leach the virility and independence of lovers, leaving them shells of themselves. Rudyard Kipling was inspired by a vampiress painted by Philip Burne-Jones, an image typical of the era in 1897, to write his poem 'The Vampire'. Like much of Kipling's verse it was incredibly popular, and its refrain: A fool there was . . . , describing a seduced man, became the title of the popular film A Fool There Was that made Theda Bara a star, the poem was used in its publicity. On this account, in early American slang the femme fatale was called vamps, short for vampiress.^[4]

Jules et Jim fall in love with the same woman Jeanne Moreau in a classic French film by François Truffaut from 1962.

From the American film audience perspective, the femme fatale often was foreign, usually either of an indeterminate Eastern European or Asian ancestry. She was the sexual counterpart to wholesome actresses such as Lillian Gish and Mary Pickford. Notable silent cinema vamps were Theda Bara (who started the vamp craze), Louise Glaum, Musidora, Nita Naldi, Pola Negri, and in her early appearances, Myrna Loy.

Following the film noir fashion of the 1940s, the femme fatale flourished in American pop culture. The cabaret singer Gilda is the most famous femme fatale (credited with establishing the archetype's cultural prominence), from the eponymous Gilda (1946), was portrayed by the Spanish-American actress Rita Hayworth, who sexually manipulates her husband and his best friend. Other American cultural examples of such a deadly woman are in espionage thrillers and juvenile adventure comic strips, such as The Spirit, by Will Eisner, and Terry and the Pirates, by Milton Caniff. Today, she remains the key character in films such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct

A classically portrayed literary femme fatale is the "Justine" heroine of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. In opera, the femme fatale is usually played by a dramatic mezzo-soprano. More often in musical theater, the femme fatale is played by an alto. The femme fatale is sometimes the foil or the enemy of the ingenue or the damsel in distress.

Despite usually being portrayed in religion as symbolic of corruption and moral turpitude to justify societal misogyny, in contemporary times the femme fatale is symbolic of women of free will and unrestrained passion. She survives as heroine and anti-heroine, in Nikita and Moulin Rouge!, and video games and comic books. Elektra, a character from Marvel Comics, Catwoman from the Batman stories, and EVA from Metal Gear Solid 3. The woman ninja (the Kunoichi) is legendary for being a trained seductress and a martial artist. The protagonists of the American television program Desperate Housewives use sexual allure to get what and whom they want. A modern example of the archetypal femme fatale is Xenia Onatopp, the character from Goldeneye who seduced men and then murdered them by crushing them between her thighs.

The Velvet Underground band sing a song titled "Femme Fatale" in the The Velvet Underground and Nico album.

L'homme fatal

Men who are fatal include Don Juan, Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights, most of the heroes in Lord Byron's books (termed the "Byronic hero"), as well as such diverse characters as Billy Budd, Count Dracula, Tadzio in Death in Venice, Harthouse in Charles Dickens' Hard Times, Georges Querelle in Jean Genet's Querelle of Brest, James Bond, and Tom Ripley in Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley" novels.^[5]

See also

• Archetypal literary criticism
• Feminist film theory
• List of female supervillains
• Male gaze
• Succubus
• Warrior princess
• Gun moll
• Girls with guns

References

Bibliography

• Toni Bentley (2002) Sisters of Salome. Salome considered as an archetype of female desire and transgression and as the ultimate femme fatale.
• Bram Dijkstra (1986) Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-De-Siecle Culture, (1986) ISBN 0-19-505652-3. Discusses the Femme fatale-stereotype.
• Bram Dijkstra (1996) Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture, (1996) ISBN 0-8050-5549-5
• Elizabeth K. Mix Evil By Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale, ISBN 978-0252073236. Discusses the origin of the Femme fatale in 19th century French popular culture.
• Mario Praz (1951) The Romantic Agony. See chapters four, 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci', and five, 'Byzantium'.

External links

• The Femme Fatale Throughout History (History Television)
• The Femme Fatale in Film Noir
• High Heels on Wet Pavement: film noir and the femme fatale
• Marling, William: Hard-Boiled Fiction (Case Western Reserve University. Updated 2 August 2001.)