Furthermore, the midcentury femme fatale is complex, like Tess, but different from the archetypes of dangerous women portrayed in popular fiction in the late nineteenth century. Though Tess demonstrates some predatory actions, I argue that her motives are different from those of the femme fatale, simply because she does not seek or plot revenge against her male victimizers, nor is she ambitious or driven by power and greed. Like the midcentury femme fatale, Tess only wishes to be self-governing, but not as a result of plotting the destruction of her enemies.
Images of women that both threaten nineteenth-century dominant ideology and weaken conventional representations of women illustrate the significance of the femme fatale. The hegemonic power structure codifies characteristics of dangerous women; yet categorizations of women really only allow Victorian society to oppress, exploit, and objectify women. Images of fictional dangerous women lead to more serious disruptions within the dominant power structure when middle-class Victorian women create new opportunities for themselves as writers, artists, and professionals who question the so-called respectability of marriage. This transformation of women’s opinions, values, and attitudes marks the age of the late nineteenth-century New Woman.
Though this work concentrates on the midcentury femme fatale, marriage and gender inequality are two central issues against which both the fictional femme fatale and New Woman struggle in order to improve their socioeconomic status. While in midcentury fiction the femme fatale surreptitiously conceals her past and generates new schemes to undermine patriarchal power, the New Woman turns to journalism and popular literature to promote political and cultural agitation and to transform public opinion of the social conditions of women. Unlike the femme fatale, the New Woman is a revolutionary who wants to change the structure of society, while the femme fatale does not struggle for such change. She simply uses the hegemonic power structure to her own advantage. In this way, the femme fatale is aloof and refuses to commit to a social cause, whereas the primary concern of the New Woman is social and economic independence.