Powerful Women, Threatened Men: The Femme Fatale Myth (Women's Power in Culture)

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.

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