Fatal Women

Abstract

On the pulp fiction covers of the 1950s the most familiar figure is the femme fatale. She is repeated with countless minor variations, the immodest icon for a period during which sex became one of the major ingredients in the paperback boom. This is the decade that saw the beginning, both in film and pulp literature, of a great outpouring of femme fatale plots.1 The changes taking place in the representation of women in crime fiction could also be observed in the pulp magazines of the era. Black Mask covers which in the 1930s had depicted women as helpless victims were by the 1940s picturing aggressive dames shooting. 45 s or even sub-machine guns, or stamping with spiked heels on a man’s hand.2 In the fifties, this iconography was made still more provocative in the cover art of the host of new paperback originals being published by Gold Medal, Lion and others.KeywordsGold MedalMale ViolenceFemale AggressionStrong WomanIndependent WomanThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.