If you’ve enjoyed the Fatal Attraction exhibition, why not check out some of literature’s best-know and most powerful femme fatales? Download here.
Euripides, Medea (431 BCE)
Daughter of kings and sun gods, Medea wreaks a terrible revenge on her husband Jason after he abandons her in a strange land.
Shakespeare, Macbeth (1606)
‘Look like th’ innocent flower, But be the serpent under ’t.’ Lady Macbeth is the mastermind behind her husband’s rise to the throne.
John Keats, ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ (1819)
Keats’s knight is soon led astray in this short poem by the mysterious stranger who seems to drain the life from him.
Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Lady Audley’s Secret (1862)
Lady Audley plays the role of the perfect Victorian woman, but she knows what she’s doing and she plans to play the system for her own gain, even if it means murder.
Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla (1872)
More than 20 years before Dracula, there was Carmilla!
Arthur Machen, The Great God Pan (1894)
A string of men have met untimely ends and all of them seem to be connected to Helen Vaughan, whose heritage may be disturbingly supernatural.
Daphne DuMaurier, Rebecca (1938)
The narrator is living a romantic dream when she marries dashing Max de Winter and moves to his Manderley estate. But the place is haunted by the presence of his former wife, Rebecca.
Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep (1939)
The archetypal hard-boiled detective tale, Philip Marlowe is hired to investigate the misdeeds of the wealthy and dangerous Sternwood sisters.
Gillian Flynn, Gone Girl (2014)
Flynn’s novel took the publishing world by storm with its page-turning crime thriller plot, and heroine who is full of rage at the pressures of modern life and marriage.
Who is your favourite femme fatale in the Fatal Attraction exhibition and why?
Have you learned something about femme fatales that you didn’t know before?
Let our curator, Dr Laura Eastlake know for a chance to win a copy of your favourite book from our list!
Email: Laura.eastlake@edgehill.ac.uk Twitter: @VictorianMasc
Posted on 6 August 2020 under At Home Activities, Exhibition, General news
