The femme fatale: independent women or still slaves
Disclaimer!!! This is just my opinion and if I said something wrong on not true, feel free to correct me just please not be hateful, and English is also not my first language, and this is a way for me to work on it as well, so sorry if it's bad; in this essay I will talk about murder, gender norms, stereotypes, tw:man, beauty standard, objectification of women, etcâŠafter saying this, I hope that someone will maybe actually enjoy my essay, bye <3
â A femme fatale, often called a meneater or a vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly trapsâ. This is at least what first came up when I started my reaserch on the topic.
So what we can understand thanks to this, is that a femme fatale is simply a woman who uses her charms to gain whatever she wants from men. I would say pretty cool, but to state this we need to see its origins and understand the purpose, benefits and downs of it.
For starter, itâs an old archetype that we can find in many cultures around the word. In China, for example, thereâs Daji(ćŠČć·±).She was the favourite consort of King Shou of Shang(ćç)and is considered a classic example of how a singular beautiful woman can be the downfall of a dinasty or kingdom if I dare. In the story she was killed by an old fox spirit who possessed her body. King Zhou was so infatuated with her, that he started to neglect his duties and take part in the spirit grousome antics.  âDajiâ, was in fact best known for her interest and enjoyment for torture. The couple would often be found laughing and entertaining themselves, while watching victims dance and scream in agony, since they were beigin burn to death. This method, Paolao (çźç),was in fact Daji invention.
Or in western cultures, like in the Bible. Delilah for example, who nags Samson into telling her where he gets his powers, to then wait till he fell asleep naively on her lap, so she could shave his head eventually causing his death. Even Eve, who just shares the apple with Adam, without any hidden agenda under it, since she still doesnât understand her sexuality and the âpower that lies within itâ, and thus cannot use it willing for her benefits, still get called, either way a seductress, whose intent was leading Adam out of the Eden.
Ironically one of the first âmeneaterâ was actually Lilith, Adamâs first wife who was kicked out of the Garden of Eden because she wouldnât cooperate and obey him.
Or Sirens, whose calls, led sailors to their imminent death;Â
As well the medieval idea that women with extraordinary sexuality were easier to be taken over by the evil and become witches and, in Germany poetry, still in the medieval timeframe, with Frau Minne, a woman that lured and trapped men in birds cages.
This females figures(the femme fatale), became more popular during the 19th century due to the numerous books and poetry pieces, obviously written my males, that talked about women that killed men with their dangerous sexuality.
For example the novel âNanaâ, written by the French author Emile Zola. He tells the story of this girl(18 at the start of her career and narration), that goes from a simple âstreetwalkerâ to a well known and requested high-class prostitute, and how she destroys every man that tries to persuade her. She was an actress in a company, that was actually really bad at both singing, dancing and even acting, but she managed to lour people in just thanks to her âdangerous sexualityâ⊠(I would recommend this book because it shows really well this phenomenon, the only disclaimer is that it can get a little heavy to read, itâs not a fast read. But hey, beauty is pain)
Still regarding the Victorian era, we should also talk about  the rise of females murderers and the fear surrounding the new lifestyle women were adopting. To explain this, we have for example, at mid-century, the phenomenon of females becoming more and more active in public spaces and needing less help from men. In fact the dangerous women of this period were the ones that worked hard for and by themselves, threatening the patriarchal structures that men treasured/ and treasure, plus the gender norms. Obviously I donât even need to explain how this is such nonsense , since if men were to live in autonomy we wouldnât bat an eye, but if women only try, we get called cunning and spoiled bitches.
To go more in depths with this concept, we need to know how aristocratic men also created two types of women: âthe angelâ and the âfallen Angelâ. The first one was the type of woman who followed all the etiquette rules and represented her real role in the family (the slave). The best example of this perfect Victorian woman is in the poem âThe Preserved Angel in the Houseâ by Coventry Patmore; this angel preserved the traditional moral values and put her entire soul into making the house a place where both her husband and son would like to spend their time instead of entertaining themselves in other places.Â
While the âfallen womanâ, was who didnât follow the Victorian rules to be a perfect woman( better said a virgin sex toy or a housekeeper); it refers to a loss of innocence, in fact women social status was always connected to her sexual status.Â
Basically if you didnât act like the stereotypical docile woman, you were viewed directly as a âwhoreâ.
Extract from Patmore book:
Man must be pleased; but him to please
Is woman's pleasure; down the gulf
Of his condoled necessities
She casts her best, she flings herself.
How often flings for nought, and yokes
Her heart to an icicle or whim,
Whose each impatient word provokes
Another, not from her, but him;
While she, too gentle even to force
His penitence by kind replies,
Waits by, expecting his remorse,
With pardon in her pitying eyes;
And if he once, by shame oppress'd,
A comfortable word confers,
She leans and weeps against his breast,
And seems to think the sin was hers;
Or any eye to see her charms,
At any time, she's still his wife,
Dearly devoted to his arms;
She loves with love that cannot tire;
And when, ah woe, she loves alone,
Through passionate duty love springs higher,
As grass grows taller round a stone.
Also, since men werenât doing enough just by existing , still in the 19th century,  thought that it was only fair that poor/low class females( from children to grown women), were the easy resources for menâs pleasure and exploitation; while the high class ones, were still only for their personal pleasure and needs, but this time just for their respective husbands. Iâm mentioning this because I really wanna make clear the concept of how women, especially women of colour, were always being viewed just as object and trophies to be shown, and never as human being, and how not taking sides in the whole feminism discourse itâs straight up stupid and  harmful (unless you are in a dangerous environment, then it would be ippocrate for me to say that )
Since I think I made clear how âfemme fataleâ, also means murderer, we should look into the history committed by women and how their beauty worked in that cases too. For example, the first recorded case where the woman won thanks to her charms, is in 336 before Christ in Greece. Here, we see how Phryne, a women who had many lovers, was put on trial for impiety( sacrilege, lack of respect for something sacred), and the penalty was death.When the cards started to look bad for Phryne, her attorney, who also was one of her lovers, pulled off her robe showing her bare body to the judges who pitied her and let her go. After this, she became the muse of so many artist and symbol of feminine attractiveness and the barest of defences in criminal history.
Or how women, especially in 800s, didnât have choices, if not kill their husbands, because poverty was raising and they needed to feed their children, or also because they were victims of domestic violence and, taking in mind the society they lived in, thought this was the only way to come out alive of their awful situation. I donât blame them, but obviously the public response to this was that women were starting to just go crazy and needed to be restricted(since they were definitely free before)
For the present time we then have for example, the book or film adaptation âGone Girlâ, that talks and shows what women can and will do in order to get what they want, or like in Amy Dunne case( the protagonist of âGone Girl), to seek revenge from her husband that treated her like wrongly, by faking her own death and blaming it on him. We can see thanks to this characters how the âfemme fataleâ refuses to submit and tries, even if with morally dubious ways, to seek justice and fairness.
Or with a little bit of humour, Jessica Rabbit, an over sexualised cartoon character in âWho framed Roger Rabbitâ, who literally says âIâm not bad, Iâm just drawn that wayâ, during the film.Â
We can also talk about the new TikTok trend where girl/young women dress up, live life in autonomy and organisation, donât take shit from anybody and fulfil their dreams.Â
And while I think itâs awesome that we are showing that realising ourselves without the need of a partner itâs possible, there lies some problem with it. I wanna in fact point out how dangerous it is that young girls think that, only over sexualising themselves, being skinny, white and the beauty standard will get them to that point.Â
Honestly, overall, what we should get from all of this, itâs how we had to make a name for a woman that itâs just a woman. What I mean by that is, when a man is intelligent, beautiful, charming, independent, hard working, and uses certain situations for his own benefits, itâs just a man who has his own life together. But when a woman does the same things, it becomes a whole issue because we are used to be portrayed as stupid, submissive, that do not work for themselves and need a man to survive.
Personally, I still love the femme fatale because it shows how women can and will use their own intelligence, looks and the male gaze for their own benefits, it feels so empowering and a splash of fresh air, but what really makes my blood boil is how itâs viewed as a bad thing, like man cannot stop themselves and thus be âsafeâ. Everyone has a brain of their own and when women use it, itâs a horrible, selfish and unacceptable thing, but when men think only with their lust, we baby them and call them victims as theyâre not objectifying us and the cause we are doing all of this in the first place. What the femme fatale does, is taking control in a word thatâs against her, and using everything that is built to hurt her, to hurt who wants to harm her.
It also has its downs because it mostly only works when the femme fatale is the beauty standard, that, not funnily enough, were obviously created by manâŠI think that we can see how we live in a word made to make men life easy, and how we really have a long way to go, but speaking up and not following all the rules that society impose towards us can and, in the long run, will make a really big difference.
These are my main favourite sources so you can guys can check them up as well:
Suddenly, she was everywhere. As the end of the nineteenth century neared, the archetype of the femme fatale silently took over the conser
femme fatale, (French: âfatal womanâ) a seductive and beautiful woman who brings disaster to anyone with whom she becomes romantically invo
According to an ages-old lex non scripta, beauty alone is an affirmative defense to any criminal charge, even premeditated murder. A seducti
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