The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale: The Kiss of Death [Hardcover]

This book examines the rise of the femme fatale as a prominant fictional type in late nineteenth-century British culture. As a stereotype she has been 'fabricated', that is to say constructed as a 'figure in the carpet' of the fin-de-si?cle. The book argues that Rider Haggard's She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed , Bram Stoker's female vampires and Conrad's destructive Malayan or African women, even Hardy's Tess , are all caught up in a series of late nineteenth-century contexts: biological determinism, imperialism, race, theories about female sexuality, degeneration and evolutionary theory.List of Illustrations - Preface - Acknowledgements - Historical Perspectives - Theoretical Perspectives - Dracula: A Social Purity Crusade - Rider Haggard's Black Widow - The Shadowy Embrace: Conrad - 'Something More to be Said': Hardy's Tess - Afterwords - Endnotes - Bibliography - Index

'This is an impressively intelligent work of investigation, which makes good use of late Victorian imperial history and criminology.' - Chris Baldick, Times Literary Supplement