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By providing an analysis of Lady Audley’s Secret in the fourth chapter, I examine those qualities that define the femme fatale and stress her complexity. In chapter 5, I show how the mid-Victorian Fatal Woman resists objectification as an exotic beauty in a discussion of Lydia Gwilt in Armadale. Unlike the historical femme fatale, Cleopatra, Lydia Gwilt in Armadale poses a central contradiction against the sexualized stereotype since Lydia conceals her fatality, conservatively dressing in “a thick black veil, a black bonnet, and a black silk dress” (125), a color figuratively suggesting a descent into darkness, an escape from the harsh realities of spinsterhood, poverty, and despair, while these heavy layers of clothing hide the truth about her identity, negating vanity and sexual experience otherwise symbolized by her beauty. The constant reference to “black” also alludes to Miss Gwilt’s future penitence and a promise of resurrection.
A closer study of her position within the hegemonic power structure helps define the deadliness of the femme fatale. Based on outward appearances, Lydia Gwilt defies the image of the sexually threatening woman, and this contradiction disrupts the stereotypical construction of the femme fatale. Even Midwinter, who recognizes Lydia as the Fatal Woman, still marries her, paradoxically convinced by her feigned helplessness and virtue. The male protagonist loses power by yielding to the sensations or desire he experiences in the presence of the femme fatale. Nevertheless, a struggle to apprehend the dangerous woman persists throughout the novel after Midwinter suspects her duplicity. The role of the detective, his pending investigation of the dangerous woman, and his obsession with decoding dreams and symbols reflect the control over women that Victorian gender ideology gives to men in courtship and marriage. The male protagonist wants to master or be master over the femme fatale—or more generally, women altogether. So long as her schemes go undetected, Lydia demasculinizes her lover, making Midwinter the hysteric, reversing stereotypical male and female roles, and undermining the ideological apparatuses of courtship and marriage.
The final chapter discusses Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles and addresses a central debate taken up by literary critic, Rebecca Stott, who maintains that Tess is a femme fatale. While Tess is a late nineteenth-century heroine, she is autonomous and carries similar qualities that we recognize in this discussion of the midcentury femme fatale.