Some early scientists relegated women to a category somewhere above monkeys, yet below men, and the poet Milton observed that women are "a fair defect of nature"
However these were the pseudoscientific notions about female variability and vulnerability, and were used to justify sexism and discrimination in society. Perhaps out of such frustrations rose the concept of a woman who defied her stereotypical image and donned the garb of someone who is just the opposite of the popular concept, which was more or less forced upon her. The phrase femme fatale is French for 'deadly women' and was created to project a social democratic revolt against the oppressiveness of the Victorian age, where women were constricted in a corset and pushed into claustrophobic ideologies and a shrunken introverted world. She took an avatar of a female who has been created to break men's heart and to lead herself into a sunlight world. These femme fatales are allowed to have it all; power, sexuality, femininity and wealth, but they keep hankering for love and would often face a bad end because they defied the conventions. The astonished man, who had earlier created an ideal woman from his own wishful imagination, suddenly meets someone whom he cannot control or understand. He labels her as the 'bad woman'; the woman who must die or be banished because she is not the representative of his idealistic image.
Women in Hollywood- The femme fatale
Disillusioned with men and frustrated of a circumscribed life, this figure of a deadly femme fatale/ vamp- emerged as a central figure in the nineteenth century and became one of the most persistent personifications of modern female. "Who is she?" was the popular query. And the enigmatic answers would be: "She is the woman who never really is what she seem to be"
She is the black widow spider who eats her mate alive; she is ungovernable, threatening to male psyche, and a woman who challenges the patriarchal culture vehemently.
The femme fatale was a frequent character in 1940s films. Rita Hayworth as The lady from Shanghai (1948) is the most enigmatic example. She embodies the overpoweringly desirable, duplicitous and sexually insatiable femme fatale, who has been represented as a symptom of male anxieties about women. She is a creature who threatens to castrate and devour her male victim. This image of a sexual, dangerous woman is the psychological expression of a man's own internal fears of sexuality, and his need to control and repress it.
The femme fatale's appearance is always explicitly sexual with long dark or blonde hair worn loose on her back, long, sensuous legs, heavy make-up, sparkling jewelry and revealing clothes, as portrayed in Sunrise (1927). She is the 'woman of city', the urban female depicting the sexual pleasures of modern metropolitan life.
She represents an open challenge to the post war consensus of women feeling fulfilled only by their roles of wife and mothers.
Two of the most powerful screen portrayal, are Barbara Stanwyck's Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (1944) and
Lana Turner's Cora Smith in The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) in which both are frustrated wives married to dull and older men.
In Hollywood, the femme fatale's most characteristic role is a nightclub singer on the fringes of the underworld. She traps her victims through seductive dances and explicit display of sexual threat. Watch Ava Gardener in The Killers (1946) playing Kitty Collins as she is first glimpsed by her victim Swede (Burt Lancaster) singing " The more I know of Love" and you will see how she comes across as the apotheosis of a mythical femininity. She is sexy and feline, and has that dreamlike sensuality about her with her sloe-shaped eyes, curvaceous cheekbones, cleft chin, and full upturned mouth. All these features exude an open sexual invitation, and she is the ultimate femme fatale here.
The femme fatale often emerges from darkness into harsh light, or dissected by both to indicate certain instability.
The Good -Bad girl
However, Hollywood found a way to bring out the femme fatale from the narrow confines of the stereotype seductress who just doesn't resort to narcissism and duplicity to have her way. The femme fatale is also the beleaguered hero's helpmate sometimes. She is often shown as supporting him and believing in his innocence, or his ability to solve the problems. The figure of the good-bad girl combines the sexual stimulation of the femme fatale with the fundamental decency of a wife or a lover. She can appear to be cynical, wayward and obsessed with money, but this stems from disillusionment with men and the frustrations of a constrained life. read more
