The Femme Fatale Trope | History, Definition, & Examples
- Melchior Antoine
- Sep 27
- 8 min read
Updated: Sep 29
The femme fatale trope features heavily throughout history in Biblical, Classical, and modern literature and film. It centers around an attractive female who lures unsuspecting men with her beauty and sex appeal, only to destroy them. Here is a formal definition of the term:
A femme fatale refers to a sexually attractive woman who is likely to lead to the destruction of any man who succumbs to her seduction.
In classical Greek and epic literature, there are numerous examples of femme fatales. Circe, for instance, is a beautiful witch in The Odyssey, who tricks men with her beauty and hospitality before poisoning them via the food she feeds them and turning them into pigs.
The trope doesn’t necessarily have to be literal or an actual woman. We also have in The Odyssey, the example of the Sirens. These were mythical mermaids or sea creatures whose song attracted men at sea, driving them crazy with desire and attraction, causing them to smash against the rocks.
The most famous examples of femme fatales in the Bible include Delilah, who seduced and tricked Samson into giving up the secret of his strength, and Salome, who trapped King Herod into beheading John the Baptist with a dance.
Salome has two of the main features of the femme fatale: sexual attraction and deception. Her story can be found in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew. She is the daughter of Herodias and stepdaughter of Herod Antipas. She wowed Herod, the king of Judah, with a dance performance so sexy on his birthday that he promised her anything she asked afterward.
Encouraged by her mother, Herodias, Salome requested the head of the prophet John the Baptist, who had spoken out strongly against the marriage between her mother and Herod. Herod, distressed though he felt to do it, had John beheaded in prison, and Salome delivered the head to her mother on a platter, an image which became a popular theme in European art. In this article, we examine more examples of femme fatale throughout the history of literature in the Bible, classics, and cinema.
1. The femme fatale as a literary archetype
Writers have long been attracted to the concept of the femme fatale as a literary archetype. The word is French for “deadly woman.” The idea of a woman who is attractive but who eventually leads to a man’s downfall has much potential as a literary concept.
It is certainly more interesting than the concept of the passive woman who doesn’t know how to take the initiative. More than that, it has a high level of symbolic value. We can see that in The Odyssey with the Sirens whose beautiful song leads to nothing but death. It gives the impression of forbidden and deadly beauty.
A good example of this is John Keats’ famous poem “La Belle Dame sans Merci” (published in 1819):
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan
. . .
I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried—‘La Belle Dame sans Merci
Thee hath in thrall!’
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gapèd wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is French, and it more or less translates into “beautiful woman without mercy.” Here, the femme fatale is a woodland or forest fairy being used as a symbol for probably more than one thing or concept. It could be the seductive power of poetry, the brevity of life, or frustrated love. The poem tells the story of a knight-at-arms who is seduced by a forest fairy for a brief tryst, and who then seemingly abandons him to waste away and die.
The true symbolism or meaning of the poem may well be a combination of the biographical facts of Keats’ life, as well as a general theory on the relationship between the poet and his poetry. It could mean that a career in poetry promises a life of success, only for the poet to die young and poverty-stricken. Keats, when he wrote the poem in 1819, was broke, sick, and dying from tuberculosis. He died at the young age of twenty-five in 1821.
This may help explain the morbid descriptions included in the poem. For example, the other victims, such as kings, princes, and warriors of the dame, are described as “death-pale.” We see many of the characteristics of the femme fatale in the mysterious fairy.
She first comes across as harmless and attractive and succeeds in seducing her victim. The fairy is first described as, “Her hair was long, her foot was light, / And her eyes were wild.” The reference to wild eyes could be seen as a hint of the danger she poses.
The poem has a lot of sexual or sensual suggestions, and outright descriptions of the sexual act, such as “She looked at me as she did love, / And made sweet moan.” The knight-at-arms finally comes to a sad end. The fate of the other victims suggests what happens to the knight-at-arms recounting the story. They are portrayed as having “starved lips” that are “gaped wide.”
The poem ends with the knight “palely loitering” near the winter lake, where “no birds sing.” This can be seen as the knight waiting for death at the prime of his life, which would mirror Keats’ own biography. We can interpret the poem as a femme fatale representing the promise of success and life fulfillment, only for it to be cut short by early death.
2. The ambivalent morality of the femme fatale
The femme fatale is not always an immoral person leading men to their destruction. In the case of figures like Lady Macbeth, we have a woman who convinces her husband to murder his own king; however, we see that she soon regrets the decision and goes insane from a guilty conscience. There are several examples where femme fatales play a positive role in a narrative in both Biblical and classical literature. In the case of Delilah, we have a clear-cut example of an “evil” femme fatale who leads to the death of the protagonist.
Delilah (whose story is told in Judges 16) has all the characteristics of the classical femme fatale. She is portrayed as seductive, playful, and treacherous. Samson is a hero of the Israelis and a Herculean figure with extraordinary strength, which he uses against the enemies of Israel, namely the Philistines. For instance, the Bible says that he killed a 1000 Philistines with the jawbone of an ass.
The secret of his strength lies in his uncut hair, which Delilah (who is also a Philistine) uncovers after being paid by the Philistines. Before that, Samson plays a kind of dangerous game with her, by lying to her each of the three times she asks for the secret of his strength. He finally relents after being almost nagged to death (literally, according to the Bible), Judges 15:
Then she said to him, “How can you say, ‘I love you,’ when you won’t confide in me? This is the third time you have made a fool of me and haven’t told me the secret of your great strength.” With such nagging she prodded him day after day until he was sick to death of it.
Samson, the hero who slew a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, is brought down by nagging. She cuts his hair while he sleeps. The Philistines then capture and blind him. It would be useful to compare Delilah as a femme fatale to another female hero in the Bible — Judith from the Book of Judith.
It recounts the story of Judith, an attractive Jewish widow who saves her besieged city, Bethulia, from the Assyrian army by assassinating the general of the army, Holofernes. Judith pretends to flee the city, infiltrates Holofernes's camp, gets him drunk, and then beheads him in his sleep before returning to the city with his head.
This leads to the Assyrian army fleeing and the city being saved. The story has been described as apocryphal and may have been inspired by another story from the Book of Judges about another Jewish heroine, Jael, who destroys another enemy general by luring him into her tent and piercing his head with a tent pin.
Nevertheless, what is pertinent about these two stories is that both women — Delilah and Judith — can be seen as righteous femme fatales from the perspective of their people. Delilah is a heroine who saved her people, the Philistines, from a dangerous foe just as Judith saved her people, the Jews, from a dangerous enemy. However, from the viewpoint of the Bible, Delilah is an irredeemable she-devil.
Penelope in The Odyssey is in a similar situation to Judith. She is universally viewed as the dutiful and loyal wife. However, in Book 22 of The Odyssey, we see her participating in a scheme against the suitors by luring them into the room where they are killed by her husband, Odysseus. The key difference between “righteous” femme fatales (Persephone and Judith) and traditional femme fatales is their sexuality.
Judith is a widow who doesn’t succumb to the wooing of Holofernes, similar to Penelope, who remains loyal to her husband. Salome and Delilah, on the other hand, both use their sexuality overtly to trap the men who fall victim to them.
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3. The femme fatale in modern cinema
In modern cinema, the femme fatale rose to prominence in a genre of film known as film noir, which was defined by its pessimism, fatalism, and menace and which developed in the 1940s and 1950s. The quintessential femme fatale of that cinematic era would be Double Indemnity (released in 1944), featuring the character of Phyllis Dietrichson, played by the actor Barbara Stanwyck.
In the movie, Phyllis Dietrichson seduces and manipulates Walter Neff, an insurance representative, into helping her murder her husband to collect his lucrative insurance policy. Phyllis is a stereotypical and immoral femme fatale in this tale. A more recent example of a femme fatale in modern cinema is the character of Amy Dunne, played by Rosamund Pike, in the 2014 film, Gone Girl.
She, too, is an evil or immoral character, but with more complicated motivations. She is a perfectionist, whose morally gray and writer husband (Nick) has become, in her eyes, mediocre, which is made worse by the fact that he's cheating. We feel some sympathy for Amy when flashbacks show her growing up under the pressure to fulfill the role of Amazing Amy, a fictional character in a children's book series created by her parents.
Amy makes her husband pay for his cheating and disappointment by faking her death and leaving clues to make it seem like her husband killed her, which works as the news and the general public treat Nick as the prime suspect in the disappearance of his wife, turning him into a reviled public figure.
Her plan goes wrong when she gets robbed while in hiding. She comes up with a Plan B, which involves seducing an ex-boyfriend, killing him, and then framing him for kidnapping and rape. She then returns to her husband, portraying her return as an escape from an evil ex for the media and the world. In the end, she gets her way, forcing Nick to play the role of the ideal high-achieving husband, even as he knows she’s a manipulative liar and killer.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2025, September 27). The Femme Fatale Trope | Definition & Examples. EminentEdit. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/femme-fatale |
