Gender, Evilness and Body: Cultural Construction of the Femme Fatale Image

This study discusses how the femme fatale image is constructed socially, politically and culturally.
Femme fatale character which is the subject of works produced in many different literary and visual
fields particularly painting, literature and cinema from the 19th century to these days, includes
intellectual lines that enable us to discuss the gender regime and body policies of modern society. The
construction of femme fatale has emerged as a product of the anxieties, fears and reflexes that the
patriarchal structure has developed against female subjectivity that is more involved in public space
with modernization. Through the discussions conducted around this image, traditional ideological tools
that identify women’s body with mystery, evilness and disaster have been reproduced and with these
tools gender-based regulatory policies targeting women were tried to be given discursive legitimacy. In
this respect, the femme fatale character has been represented as a feminine-other refered in a negative
manner in the gender regime of patriarchal society. Firstly, the historical, political and cultural
environment in which femme fatale image emerged was discussed and then the femme fatale
representations in two works produced in this environment (Salomé and Pandora’s Box) were analyzed
as samples.