Reimagining Delilah's Afterlives as Femme Fatale: The Lost Seduction by Caroline Blyth

Abstract

Reviewed by: Reimagining Delilah's Afterlives as Femme Fatale: The Lost Seduction by Caroline Blyth Brandon R. Grafius caroline blyth, Reimagining Delilah's Afterlives as Femme Fatale: The Lost Seduction (LHBOTS 652; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2017). Pp. 198. $91.99. Caroline Blyth's monograph explores depictions of Delilah in art and film, arguing that, instead of filling in the narrative gaps in a variety of ways, these "various interpretive afterlives … more often than not follow the lines and contours of the classic femme fatale" (1-2; emphasis original). Using primarily fin-de-siècle paintings and noir and neo-noir film, Blyth argues for the figure of the femme fatale as a "product of sociocultural discourses" (emphasis original), which demonstrate male fears of female agency and sexuality. While B. finds little warrant for it in the biblical text, Delilah has frequently been portrayed as the embodiment of these male anxieties. The first chapter lays the theoretical groundwork for understanding the figure of the femme fatale. B. first provides an overview of the figure in fin de siècle art, beginning with Gustave Moreau's two paintings depicting a hyper-sexualized Salomé. Along with this emphasis on sexuality, B. notes how fatale women of this epoch were portrayed as subverting "dominant gender roles and discourses" (p. 16), frequently combined with associations with the animal or the foreign. B. attributes the popularity of the femme fatale in this era to the "sense of terminal decline" felt by the European population (p. 21), with particular anxiety surrounding the role of women. She finds a similar portrayal, connected to analogous feelings of anxiety, in the femmes fatales of hard-boiled detective fiction (1920s–1940s), and the 1940s Hollywood films noir, which frequently used these novels as source material. [End Page 307] This figure blends sexuality and violence, while also disturbing culturally defined gender roles. While she is a compelling figure, the femme fatale seldom made it out of a film noir alive, serving as a "cautionary tale" (p. 36). The femme fatale returned in the '80's and '90's with a vengeance; this time, due to changes in audience expectations, the femme fatale was sometimes allowed to live to seduce another day. The second chapter visits the "gap-ridden" picture of Delilah in Judges 16. The first instance of unknowability B. detects is in the interpretation of Delilah's name. She identifies proposals ranging from "dangling curls" to "weakened," "helpless," or a play on the Hebrew word for "night." However, "uncertainty will always prevail" in attempts to interpret Delilah's name (p. 57). This theme of "unknowability" continues into the ambiguity regarding whether Samson and Delilah were sexually intimate, how Delilah felt about Samson, and her racial identity. We have hints, however, that Delilah refused "to conform to any of the social functions typically prescribed for biblical women" (p. 67), most notably motherhood, and she further disrupts gender norms through her conquest of Samson the warrior. B. notes these ambiguities to argue that interpreters have consistently filled in these narrative gaps in ways that transform Delilah into a femme fatale. The next chapter moves from the text itself to Delilah's portrayal in culture. B. argues that Delilah has been turned into a femme fatale in works as diverse as Milton's Samson Agonistes; paintings by Rubens, Moreau, and others; and operas and more contemporary music. But B. is most interested in portrayals of Delilah in film, starting with Cecil B. DeMille's 1949 biblical epic Samson and Delilah. In Hedy Lamarr's performance as Delilah, B. finds "the classic fatale woman of film noir, who ensnares her prey with her sexual allure" (p. 123). This view of Delilah is encouraged by Lamarr's physical appearance as well as by her off-screen "nuance of sexual scandal" (p. 124), including multiple marriages and divorces, and her notoriety from playing "the first completely nude part in movie history" in the 1933 film Ecstasy (p. 124). B. further notes that Lamarr's costuming evokes both 1940s Hollywood and an exotic glamour that emphasizes her foreignness. To further stress Delilah's role as femme fatale, DeMille adds the character of Miriam, a rival for...