Femme fatale was one of the popular motifs of the Fin-de-siècle literature and art, and was already present in the antique and biblical texts. Reasons for the increase in popularity were mainly changes in society; predominantly the ones connected with the fight for women’s rights. The real women who shook the foundations of bourgeois society therefore got their reflection in literary heroines, who were much more bloodthirsty and lethal.
Frequently, femmes fatales are main characters in the novels of French writer Marguerite Vallette-Eymery, who is more known by her pseudonym Rachilde in the literary world. Her heroines as femmes fatales are lethal for men, who are seduced by them and then discarded, when women become bored of their company. Femmes fatales imagined by male writers usually exclude the female gaze, which is presented in Rachilde’s heroines and which indicates how femmes fatales are not only evil seductresses, but also the prisoners of society’s rules and expectations.
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