Powerful Women, Threatened Men: The Femme Fatale Myth: Women's Power in Culture
By Edith Zack
4.5/5
()
About this ebook
The femme fatale is a male topos in which masculine traits are attributed to a woman. Thus, she is powerful, initiating, and independent; yet being also beautiful and erotic she is associated with seduction and corrupting forces which lead men to their own destruction. Though this topic had existed since the beginning of humankind, her image was presented almost obsessively at the turn of the twentieth century. In fact the femme fatale is a vital sign of the emergence of a new feminine image since the 1850s; a consequence of social, political and cultural circumstances.
"Fascinating!!! Brilliant ideas!"
(Elvin Gerhardt)
"The history of feminism from an artistic point of view..."
(Catherine Boise)
"This writer is a person of brilliant insight, sometimes wild and heretical but always challenging"
(Steven Baum )
Edith Zack
Edith Zack was born in Slovakia in 1947 to Holocaust survivor parents and came to Israel with them in 1949. She holds a PhD in musicology from Bar Ilan University together with Edinburgh University. Zack has lectured in the music departments of Bar-Ilan University and Beit Berl College, as well as giving music therapy in a number of frameworks for problem youth. As a scholar, she is an expert on women in music and the semiotics of music; she has given lectures in Oxford, the Sorbonne, Helsinki, Mexico, the USA, the Vatican, and has published articles in major professional journals. Her first novel 'Travels with Vera' was published in 2011. www.edithzack.com
Related to Powerful Women, Threatened Men
Related ebooks
Femme Fatale: Cinema's Most Unforgettable Lethal Ladies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Femme Fatale Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsGlamour Puss - a Tongue-in-Cheek Guide to Being a Powerful Woman: Manipulative, Chic and Sexy Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Femme Fatale Hypothesis Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5On Men, The Art of Winning Over and Keeping Your Beloved Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Deserve It: A True Story of Learning to Say No in Order to Say Yes to Big Love Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Alpha Female Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSummary of Bruce Bryans' Never Chase Men Again Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsConfessions of 400 Men: True Revelations of Lust, Fidelity, Feelings & Fantasy Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It's Not Him, It's You: The Truth You May Not Want - but Need - to Hear Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Look Stunning: A Practical Guide About How To Be Beautiful: Secrets Of Femmes Fatales, #6 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Femme Fatale Online Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSedna; Loving the Unloved: The Divine Dark Feminine, #1 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Psycho Bitch: A Love Story Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFemininity Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Powerful and Feminine: How to Increase Your Magnetic Presence & Attract the Attention You Want Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Adventurous Feminine Mystique Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5Health & Beauty Habits: Secrets Of Femmes Fatales, #3 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hook High Quality Men: 19 Secrets To Charm A Guy Worth Keeping Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Lindy: Recovering Alpha Female: Inspiring Grace and Self Acceptance in the Mind and Body Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Spiritual Seductress:The High-Powered Women’s Guide to Devour the World through Spiritual Guidance Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Beauty Defense: Femmes Fatales on Trial Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnlock Your Potential: The Ultimate Guide on How to Become a High Value Woman for Lasting Success and Fulfillment Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Man Whisperer: A Gentle, Results-Oriented Approach to Communication Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5He Loves Your Style: Secrets Of Femmes Fatales, #2 Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Social Science For You
My Secret Garden: Women's Sexual Fantasies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Come As You Are: Revised and Updated: The Surprising New Science That Will Transform Your Sex Life Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Like Switch: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Influencing, Attracting, and Winning People Over Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Just Mercy: a story of justice and redemption Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Art of Witty Banter: Be Clever, Quick, & Magnetic Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Explain Everything About the World Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All About Love: New Visions Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fervent: A Woman's Battle Plan to Serious, Specific, and Strategic Prayer Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A People's History of the United States Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Body Is Not an Apology, Second Edition: The Power of Radical Self-Love Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Denial of Death Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Human Condition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Fourth Turning Is Here: What the Seasons of History Tell Us about How and When This Crisis Will End Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I Don't Want to Talk About It: Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5You're Not Listening: What You're Missing and Why It Matters Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Powerful Women, Threatened Men
2 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Powerful Women, Threatened Men - Edith Zack
Powerful Women, Threatened Men;
The Femme Fatale Myth
Edith Zack
image001.jpgCopyright © All rights reserved to the author of this book, Edith Zack
zacked@zahav.net.il
This publication, as a whole or in part, may not be photocopied, translated, stored in a digital or optical database, or distributed by any means including electronic mail, without prior written permission from the author.
Contents
The Literary Model
The Psychological Model
The Historical Background
The Masculization of Art
Feminist Criticism
Conclusion
Bibliography
For many decades, the image of the feminine fascinated creative artists in several fields. Their portrayals were often reflections of life experiences, and thus could be indicators of the perception of gender in western culture.
Every era has its special feminine imagery, modelled according to the aesthetic and philosophical views of the time; the Baroque, for example, tended to emphasize woman’s heroic and patriotic sides, while the 19th century started to see women as individuals.
Yet there are certain images which became almost stereotypical throughout the centuries. The most striking one of these is the femme fatale, which was endemic during the later decades of the 19th century. Her image is portrayed in art, poetry and the novel as well as in many other artistic forms, beginning in Germany early in the century, travelling to Victorian England and Symbolist and Decadent France later and reaching Scandinavia at the beginning of the 20th century.
Who and what then, is the femme fatale? She is a feminine image who appears almost obsessively in 19th-century male narratives as an irresistibly attractive woman who lives according to her free will. Unlike the traditional female of patriarchy, who is dependent on her husband physically as well as spiritually, the femme fatale acts like a man; thus, she makes her own choices in life and takes responsibility for it. Like men she is an independent entity; powerful, initiating and dominating. Yet, being also beautiful and erotic, this powerful woman is associated with seduction and corrupting forces, which are manifested within unbounded sexuality and barrenness. Often, her erotic power is combined also with exoticism; thus, the femme fatale appears in many of the 19th century’s texts as a woman whose origin is the Orient. All these features bind together attraction and danger. Hence, men who desire this sort of woman are risking their lives, as their desire often leads them to their own destruction.
A Male Topos
The femme fatale is a male idea; it became over the years a topos, an image of the feminine which contained a set of characteristics that seem to have their origin in texts. This is not to say that the new type of woman who took responsibility for her own life did not exist in reality. Yet, the way she is presented in works of art from the mid-19th century arose from a masculine style of thought about the feminine, which constituted a new vocabulary concerning the new Woman. This style of thought was represented in all sorts of narratives in individual works by Romantic male creators. Its roots lay in the psychological state of mind of the patriarchal male creator, which was undoubtedly the consequence of socio-historical matters affecting patriarchal society in Europe. In order to have a profound understanding of the femme-fatale topos and its function in the Romantic era, one has to trace it on a wider canvas. Thus, it will be examined from three different points of view, literary, psychological and socio-historical.
The literary account will examine the femme fatale as she appears in European narratives in the 19th century. The psychological account will deal with this feminine topos as an archetype, a set of images which existed in the collective mind of the human race throughout the ages, and became almost an obsession with male creators in the middle of the 19th century. This will naturally be related to C.G. Jung’s theory of archetypes.
In the social-history account the image of the femme fatale will be examined as part of the modern perception of gender roles at the turn of the century. The obsession of male creators with this image of the feminine will, thus, be related to significant changes in women’s status in European societies starting from the Industrial Revolution to the foundation of the feminist movement and the events of the first decades of the 20th century.
A feminist criticism section, which will deal with the different waves of feminism that effected the representation of the new image of Woman in culture, will follow the socio-history account. Feminism will, thus, be related to cultural criticism in general and opera criticism in particular. It will be argued that the operatic femme fatale although conceived by male creators, becomes a vocal authority that takes over the male’s text and establishes a new poetic language. This language presents Difference as a positive value; thus, the femme fatale that was traditionally perceived as demon and destructive will be interpreted as an alternative form of positive valued Otherness which is communicated in music.
The Literary Model
From the literary point of view, although the theme of the Romantic femme fatale was mostly significant in the 19th century, it occupied the minds of European creators from all spheres for more than a century; starting in Germany in the 1770s, through France and England in the 19th century and reaching Scandinavia in the first decades of the 20th century. Thus, during more than 130 years the literary image of the femme fatale went through a development which appears as the buildup and decay of femininity. This is to say, the feminine features of the fatal woman were accumulated within a pyramid, till they reached a climactic point of femininity and attractiveness in the 1850s, with a feminine image that was irresistibly beautiful and attractive, erotic, exotic, seductive and mystical. From this point till the turn of the century, a process of deformity and disintegration of the image took over; this irresistibly attractive woman, the embodiment of beauty and femininity, turns into a sexual cannibal and a hermaphrodite, an unidentified sexual object who is half male, half female, or male and female together.
The Duality of a Good and a Bad Woman: The Fatal Triangle
The Western male style of thought produces the literary femme fatale as a theme which involves an opposition. Often, the erotically fascinating but destructive woman is matched by another character in the drama who is simple and saintly. This creates a triangle model which is represented in many works of the 19th century dealing with the femme fatale (Zack 1997, p. 165): two females who represent the polarity of good and evil, and a dialectic male who moves between these extremes, trying to find his way between the two worlds (Figure 1.1).
image002.jpgThe triangle represents the nucleus of the masculine view of a new sort of Woman, a view that appears in the midst of the 19th century in opposition to the traditional patriarchal woman. In order to understand the typology of this new feminine image with all its complexities, one must study her functionality within the framework of the triangular construction, as it is presented in male narratives.
The fatal triangle appears already in the middle of the 18th century in the works of Wolfgang Goethe and of Matthew Lewis (which will be discussed below). Both Goethe’s male protagonists in Götz von Berlichingen, Götz and Weslingen, are confronted with a feminine polarity; the diabolic figure of Countess Adelheid on one hand and Götz’s sister Maria, who represents the traditional feminine world of patriarchy. In Lewis’s work (The Monk), monk Ambrosio is confronted by the satanic beauty Matilda on one hand and the virginal figure of