The mid-nineteenth-century femme fatale is different from historical figures such as Cleopatra, Salome, Helen of Troy, or the sirens because she does not always bear a sexuality that is blatantly predatory; instead she represents the social and cultural changes, the myriad problems faced by Victorian society. In the 1840s, the femme fatale is introduced as a middle-class, educated woman who enters mainstream Victorian culture without being detected as dangerous. At first, this stealth is a necessity because of the power and repressive force of patriarchal thinking. She is young and attractive, yet dangerous specifically because she so convincingly blends into mainstream society and, until the plot develops, usually other characters regard her as innocuous due to her reticent manner and modest physical appearance.
A vivacious, buxom femme fatale, like Lydia Gwilt, makes a strenuous effort to conceal her magnificence and sexual prowess, using these qualities only once, when she catches her victim in a vulnerable moment and attempts to seduce or destroy him. In Armadale, Lydia makes desperate efforts throughout the novel to disguise her identity, yet she startles Ozias Midwinter with her dazzling beauty when he first meets her. Lydia’s striking red hair, sensual lips, and stunning figure threaten to give away her true identity as the once-married woman found guilty of poisoning her husband. Beauty figuratively connects Lydia to her sexual past, a concern causing Mother Oldershaw to suggest that Miss Gwilt, with “[her] appearance, [her] manners, [her] abilities, and [her] education, can make almost any excursions into society that she pleases,” using skills other than her beauty to seduce her victims (199). Lydia therefore deemphasizes her physical exuberance that suggests she is a seductress in order to convince aristocratic men that she is a lady, “remarkably soft and winning” (125). A good education and respectable manners make her disguise as a domestic ideal complete, enabling her to exact revenge on the Armadale family and embezzle their fortune by first pacifying Armadale’s protector and best friend, Midwinter.
In this way, Victorian femmes fatales, like Lydia Gwilt, seem to resist their objectification as seductresses. Until she manipulatively exposes the vices or vulnerabilities of her male victims, the midcentury femme fatale carefully conceals the seductive nature of her sexuality.