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Michele Foucault explains that sexuality is an “object of great suspicion” (69), a belief demonstrated by conservative reformers like William Acton and W. R. Greg, who produce a proliferation of debates leading to a plethora of feminine representations that attempted to categorize and to reinforce control over different types of women.6 Sexuality inevitably becomes a very public issue in the nineteenth century. To thwart these categorizations, novelists in the 1860s obscure gender differences by characterizing women as ambitious, adventurous, and aggressive—traits usually attributed to men. Victorian perceptions of women shift from the passive and meek domestic woman to a more assertive and demanding dominant role. As a new representation of mid-Victorian women, the femme fatale shows literal signs of self-empowerment and a willful energy, by resorting to desperate measures that include adultery, bigamy, or murder. Since her sexual past involving these crimes is really the central mystery in the novel, the femme fatale is figuratively meant to embody hidden secrets of feminine sexuality, while the male detective battles for control over this knowledge. In the opinion of nineteenth-century conservative reformers, feminine sexuality, particularly characterized in sensation fiction, destabilizes the hegemonic power structure. By punishing dangerous women, and by subordinating domineering, assertive bourgeois women into their proper domestic roles, the detective in sensation fiction and the popular penny dreadfuls of the 1860s figuratively reestablishes order.
Similar to the male protagonist who obsessively investigates the femme fatale’s sexual history and defines her as a dangerous woman, nineteenth-century medical scientists explain that a woman’s biological reproduction system can categorize her as decent or immoral. Male detectives look for clues that enable them to arrive at such conclusions about a woman’s character, regardless of whether she is pure. For example, a gold lock of hair and a baby’s shoe allude to Lady Audley’s sexual experience and eventually link her to the disappearance of George Talboys, her first husband.