Figure Of Femme Fatale Research Articles

The Femme Fatale in Text and Image: Analyzing Gender, Power, and Representation in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Vampire” and Philip Burne-Jones’s Painting

This paper examines the connection between Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Vampire” (1897) and Philip Burne-Jones’s painting of the same title, focusing on their portrayal of femininity and the interaction between text and image. Kipling’s poem, often viewed as a response to Burne-Jones’s depiction of actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell, presents a warning about the destructive allure of female beauty, highlighting themes of male disillusionment and betrayal. Burne-Jones’s painting emphasizes the femme fatale figure, portraying a sexually dominant woman overpowering a helpless man. Both works suggest that beauty conceals danger, leading to male ruin. Using Foucauldian and feminist frameworks, the paper critiques the politics of representation, arguing that the portrayal of women often reflects patriarchal anxieties, reducing them to passive objects in male-dominated visual culture. Critics like Linda Nochlin and Griselda Pollock are cited to challenge these depictions. The paper concludes that the female vampire theme reflects cultural fantasies rather than truths about femininity, contributing to ongoing discussions on how art and literature shape gender perceptions.

Dangerous Femininity: Looking into the Portrayal of Daphne Monet as a Femme Fatale in Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress

The phrase “femme fatale” is a well-known figure in the literary and cultural representations of women. Associated with evil temptation, the femme fatale is an iconic figure that has been appropriated into folklore, literature, and mythology. In the twentieth century, the figure finds space in literary and cinematic endeavours, particularly in crime fiction and noir thrillers. The progenitors of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction popularised the figure of a sexually seductive and promiscuous woman who betrays men for material gain. Walter Mosley, an African American detective fiction writer, adapted the hard-boiled formula popularised by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but altered it to address socio-political issues concerning the condition of African Americans in the post-World War II era. Mosley followed Chandler’s lead in weaving a quest narrative around femme fatale Daphne Monet in his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). The purpose of this paper is to look at Mosley’s treatment of the femme fatale figure in this novel. The methodology employed is a close analysis of the text, as well as an analysis of the figure of the femme fatale in its function as catalyst for men’s behaviour. The purpose of this study is to examine how the femme fatale was created, specifically what elements contributed to Daphne Monet’s transformation into a femme fatale.

Looks that kill: Double Indemnity (1944) reimagined in postmodern neo-noir and television

ABSTRACT This article examines the transformation of the femme fatale figure from classic noir to neo-noir film and to contemporary television. Exploring the reasons for this transformation and its implications yields fresh revelations about the new femme fatale. Using Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (1944) as the focal point, we examine the intertextual allusions to this classic in two postmodern neo-noir films – Lawrence Kasdan’s Body Heat (1981) and John Dahl’s The Last Seduction (1994) – and in one of Netflix’s earliest original television series, House Of Cards (2013–2018), created by Beau Willimon. In addition, this article queries in what ways these filmic reincarnations offer a revolutionary re-envisioning of the femme fatale figure. Unlike the classic femme fatale, the new femme fatale ‘gets away with murder’, thus posing a monstrous threat to the capitalist and patriarchal economy in which she operates. The subversive potential of these neo-noir films lies in their parodic and witty undercutting of societal norms, especially at the height of today’s #MeToo Movement.

THE SEDUCTIVE FEMININE BEAUTY IN DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI’S SONNET “LILITH” AND PAINTING LADY LILITH

The Pre-Raphaelite movement was established in 1848 not only as a rebellion against the principles in art of the Royal Academy but also as a reaction to the values of the VictorianAge. Drawing heavily from Dante Gabriel Rosetti's depiction of the sexually attractive and seductive female character as a femme fatale, all other members of the Pre-RaphaeliteBrotherhood – such as Victorian poets, painters, designers and illustrators – began portraying female figures in their works as seductive femme fatales, which was indeed in total contrast with the Victorian idea of woman as “the angel in the house.” Hence, especially, in poetry and painting, female beauty and sexual yearning had a significant place. Given that, the leading Victorian poet-painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882), a vehement founding member of the Brotherhood, used female figures extensively, and thereby the concept of feminine beauty dominated his poems and paintings. Especially, through his widespread use of unconventional female figures like fallen women and prostitutes, Rossetti manifested his explicit opposition to the Victorian ideals. Furthermore, by emphasising seductive feminine beauty in his works, he tried to break the sexual taboos in Victorian poetry and art. Therefore, he was marginalised in the Victorian Age; yet still, he became the best representative of art for art's sake movement. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to examine the depiction of women both in Rossetti's sonnet “Lilith” and painting Lady Lilith with reference to his ballad “Eden Bower.” Moreover, this paper analyses how Rossetti introduces his femme fatale figure, and hence, concludes that through his unconventional portrayal of woman and her beauty, Rossetti brings a new insight not only to the depiction of women in Victorian poetry and art but also to the condition of women in the Victorian Period in general.

Review: When Banana Ruled, by Mathilde Damoisel

Review: <i>When Banana Ruled</i>, by Mathilde Damoisel

L.A. Confidential as a Re-Creation of American Noir Tradition

&lt;p&gt;Elementy literatury hard-boiled i filmu noir są obecne we współczesnej literaturze i mediach wizualnych, ale motywy i postacie z klasycznych tekstów noir zostały odkryte na nowo. Artykuł udowadnia, że film L.A. Confidential może być postrzegany jako odtworzenie amerykańskiej tradycji noir, a powieść Jamesa Ellroya zaklasyfikowana jako literatura hard-boiled. Autor analizuje postacie detektywów przedstawione zarówno w książce, jak i w filmie oraz bada dzieło w kontekście retronoir, skupiając uwagę na postaci femme fatale, roli miasta i sposobie przedstawienia brutalności.&lt;/p&gt;

Images of the femme fatale in Two Short Stories by Emilia Pardo Bazán

SCHOLARS have explored many aspects of Pardo Bazan's writings that examine the plight of women in nineteenth-century Spain, in particular the ways that her fictional works employ unique narrative designs and contestatory strategies to subtly question the hegemony of patriarchal culture. In this study I will focus on a curious pair of stories from Pardo Bazan's corpus of short stories that seems to do just this but in an unusual way, by engaging with the paradigmatic figure of the femme fatale. Pardo Bazan repeatedly employs innovative representations of the femme fatale in her later novels, tellingly the titles of her last three published novels are: La quimera (1905), La sirena negra (1908) and Dulce dueno (1911). In an important study of a femme fatale figure from this last novel Dulce dueno Susan Kirkpatrick asserts: Women who adopted the contestatory stance of feminism were obliged to contend with the active and generally negative reinscription of feminine difference in to intervene in the cultural conversation about the significance of gender (Gender 119). This dynamic seems especially relevant in the stories that I analyze in this study, since the femme fatale is normally interpreted as a misogynistic archetype, although, as I will show, Pardo Bazan's representations of these female characters highlight their inherent power and require that the reader actively interpret their roles in the stories. While I do not believe that the female characters in these stories are archetypal femme fatales, I do believe that they engage with this literary model, and therefore a closer analysis of how these characters are shaped can elucidate our understanding of the tales. In Erika Bornay's study las hijas de Ulith, in which she analyzes the representations of the femme fatale in Western European literature and art, the key characteristics of this paradigm are highlighted: una belleza turbia, contaminada, perversa. Incuestionablemente, su cabellera es larga y abundante y, en muchas ocasiones, rojiza. Su color de piel pone acento en la blancura, y no es nada infrecuente que sus ojos sean descritos como de color verde. (...) En lo que concierne sus mas significativos rasgos psicologicos, destacara por su capacidad de dominio, de incitacion al mal, y su frialdad, que no le impedira, sin embargo, poseer una fuerte sexualidad, en muchas ocasiones lujuriosa y felina, es decir, animal. (114-15) As I will show in the following pages, the representations of women in the short stories analyzed here consistently reference certain aspects of the paradigmatic femme fatale, especially their assertive stares and their long flowing locks, which underscore their search for subjectivity and physical allure. On the other hand, other typical traits, specifically the femme fatales' animalistic sexuality and their controlling nature, are not present in Pardo Bazan's characterizations. Much has been said regarding the femme fatale's presence as a representation of male anxiety about women's changing roles in society in the fin de siglo. As Jess Sully notes: The exotic, sexually promiscuous 'otherness' of the femme fatale threatens to destabilize the established cultural order (47). Likewise, Virginia Allen asserts that the femme fatale's rejection of motherhood is one of her most threatening qualities since by denying his immortality and his posterity it leads to the ultimate destruction of the male (193). Indeed the femme fatale figures studied here align with this aspect of the model--they have no children and do not have carnal contact with their partners, thus eliminating the possibility of producing offspring. Along these same lines, Teresa Gomez Trueba shows how hegemonic cultural phenomena of the period were tied into artists' concerns regarding the many changes that were taking place in society during the turn of the century: Al tiempo que se echa mano de la ciencia para demostrar de manera infalible la inferioridad intelectual de la mujer, el artista decadente del fin de siglo representa su angustia y su temor ante la amenaza de los nuevos tiempos que se avecinan a traves de la imagen de una poderosa, perversa y devoradora mujer fatal, presente en infinidad de manifestaciones del arte finisecular (2). …

Whodunit to Irene Adler? From “the Woman” to “the Dominatrix” – on the Transformation of the Heroine in the Adapting Process and Her Representation in the Sherlock Miniseries

One of the peculiar characteristics of the Sherlock Holmes fandom is that it has always had a tendency to blow innuendos in Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories out of proportion. One might argue that such is the case of Irene Adler, the most recognisable female character from the Sherlock Holmes canon. Although we are not given much information on her in the original story and she hardly speaks in her own voice, for the community of readers she has become the most significant woman that Sherlock Holmes had ever encountered. Thus, the creators who adapted her for the screen also treated the heroine of “A Scandal in Bohemia” symbolically, allowing themselves to freely portray her presence in their versions of the story. For certain reasons, Irene Adler has been interpreted in pop-culture differently at various times: as the woman who beat Holmes with her wit, the detective’s romantic interest, his nemesis or a femme fatale figure. This tendency seems to be pushed to the extreme recently and the adaptations of the heroine in question gravitate towards a sexually confident, overtly self-aware, as well as dominant (both sexually and mentally) rival to Holmes. The idea behind this paper is to investigate the transformation of Irene Adler’s character from the originally debatably scandalous adventuress to her modern portrayal as a dominatrix in the BBC miniseries, Sherlock. Hence, I will concentrate on this most recent take on the woman in the episode “A Scandal in Belgravia,” attempting to analyse in what ways the creators of the show go back to the roots and succeed in capturing the essence of Irene Adler’s figure, and conversely – in what measure does this adaptation epitomize the changes done to the character over the years of reinterpreting and diverting from its literary counterpart.

ARTHUR MACHEN AND THE HORRORS OF DEEP HISTORY

In what is surely his best-known“shocker” of the 1890s, Arthur Machen has one of his ubiquitous bachelor heroes (Clarke by name) try to warn another off his pursuit of the truth about a preternaturally dangerous femme fatale figure, a woman responsible for the hideous deaths of a number of English gentlemen. “I am,” he writes to his friend, “like a traveller who has peered over an abyss, and has drawn back in terror. What I know is strange enough and horrible enough, but beyond my knowledge there are depths and horrors more frightful still” (“Pan” 89). But to what “depths,” exactly, does the fearful Clarke refer? What “horrors”? And why, here as elsewhere in this text, do depth and horror seem so intimately interconnected? The tale in question, “The Great God Pan” (1890), bristles with multifarious horrors, to be sure. In the novella's opening episode, a mad scientist figure performs experimental brain surgery on a young woman (“a slight lesion in the grey matter, that is all,” he says to an over-scrupulous chum), causing her to “see the god Pan,” and reducing her to idiocy and death (“Pan” 62, 68). The bulk of the subsequent narrative concerns a sequence of seemingly unrelated tragedies – the mysterious death of one gentleman in London, a rash of particularly horrid suicides by a number of others, the demise of an English artist in Buenos Aires – which prove all to be connected to a single figure of monstrous evil, a woman who goes by the name of Helen Vaughn (among others). She is, it turns out, the offspring of the subject of the surgical experiment and Pan himself, and her own (forced) suicide at the end of the story leads to a gruesome tableau of bodily dissolution reminiscent of Poe's M. Valdemar (or, to update the reference, the gooey, B-movie slime Slavoj Žižek seems to have claimed in the name of the Lacanian Real).

The “Fatal Woman” Symbol in Tennyson

Lionel Stevenson has written persuasively of Shelley's influence on Tennyson and has traced the “high-born maiden” in Tennyson as a symbol of Shelleyan origin. By following the figure through Mariana, The Lady of Shalott, The Palace of Art, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, Locksley Hall, and The Princess, Stevenson has found that the maiden is transformed from a weary, isolated, usually suffering figure in the early poems into a “matter-of-fact literary stock-character” in the later poems, like Elaine in the Idylls; and he has suggested that the figure conforms with Jung's archetypal image of the anima. This is very convincing, but, it seems to me, Stevenson has forgotten that host of maidens—Lilian, Madeline, Margaret, Adeline, Rosalind, Eleänore, Kate—who, unlike Mariana, are not suffering damsels at all, but strong, often cruel, haughty ladies who capture the imagination of the poet and who command his devotion but give nothing in return. These maidens, who at first glance might appear to be nothing more than insensible and flirtatious women, occur with persistency in the 1830 Poems, Chiefly Lyrical, and continue to turn up, in suggestion at least, throughout the first part of Tennyson's poetic career. Like the isolated maidens whom Stevenson has pointed out, they are significant in a study of Tennyson because of the frequency with which they occur and because of the change which they underwent after the publication of the poet's first volume. They are, I believe, a variation on the femme fatale figure and draw their inspiration from Keats, especially from La Belle Dame Sans Merci.