The Seduction of Femininity: A Critical Scrutiny of Oscar Wilde’s Salomé

Abstract

This study covers how the femme fatale image is constructed socially, literarily and culturally. The femme fatale character, which has been the target of works in a variety of literary and visual fields, including painting, writing, and film, from the nineteenth century to the present, incorporates conceptual lines that enable us to explore the gender regime and body policies of contemporary society. The construction of the femme fatale originated as a result of the patriarchal structure’s anxieties, fears, and reflexes toward female subjectivity, which has become more prevalent in public life as a consequence of modernization. Traditional ideological tools that associate women’s bodies with mystery, cruelty, and tragedy have been replicated as a result of the debates surrounding this image, and gender-based regulatory policies targeting women have been used to gain discursive legitimacy using these tools. In this regard, the femme fatale has been portrayed as a feminine-other who is negatively associated with patriarchal society’s gender regime. The dialogue between context and text will be used to analyse the plays. This research is historically contextualized by taking into account Victorian women's ideology. The historical and cultural context in which the femme fatale image originated was first analysed, and then the femme fatale representations in Oscar Wilde’s one-act play Salomé, which was created in this context, were studied from a feminist discourse as a sample. The current inquiry mirrors another dimension of women’s serious vicissitudes they had to put up with back then which imperceptibly laid the foundation for reawakening women all around the world of their natural and basic rights they have been deprives for centuries under patriarchy. The feminist theory will be utilized to examine Wilde’s play.