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The third chapter concentrates on the proliferation of femme fatale characters in popular literature, which coincides with an increasing feminist movement starting with the new Divorce Laws of 1857. Unsatisfactory married life leads middle-class married women to identify more with the fate of fallen women, proclaiming that marriage is a form of legalized prostitution.8 The difference is simply that fallen women, who seek better opportunities in marriage like their middle-class sisters, are often seduced, transgress cultural boundaries by invading male space (the public sphere), and inevitably are vilified and punished. Society stigmatizes such a woman for this transgression as a tainted and impure woman. Midcentury radical feminists and writers unabashedly challenge such standards, undermining social boundaries between the domestic and public sphere by pursuing male-dominated professions like writing, therefore thwarting domestic and marital conventions. They literally threaten public life defined as the professional, political, and social pursuits of men.
Furthermore, this chapter addresses the question of where the femme fatale originates and why she becomes so prevalent in nineteenth-century literature. For example, why is she of such importance to Victorian writers? What causes her to emerge during a period of social and economic change? Why is there no established “type” of the femme fatale? What cultural phenomena influence her characterization? By studying the peculiar behavior of “the Fatal Woman” and the darker aspects of her erotic sensuality, I provide a closer look at this period of time, particularly in 1857 when Madeline Smith is accused of murdering her lover L’Atelier. Smith’s trial attracted not only much controversy given her age, respectable family background, and physically diminutive size, but she also gained ample support among other Victorian middle-class women, who crowded inside the courtroom during Smith’s case proceedings. Such support of course did not stop conservative Victorian critics, namely, Mrs. Oliphant, from expressing their contempt for the femme fatale in sensation fiction. Taking such criticism even further, antifeminist critic, Eliza Linton, mobilized stereotypes of the Fatal Woman to discredit new female subjectivities.