The Femme Fatale in American Literature By Ghada Sasa

The contrasts outlined by Pizer are essentially the contrasts that I address. The femme fatale in American naturalism is an emotional, sensitive character who begins as an innocent victim in the naturalistic world. Once heredity and environment seek to control this innocent victim, she becomes the victimizer who strives to overcome. One of her methods of fighting back is by victimizing men. She is eventually defeated by stronger forces; yet, at the same time, the fact that she has attempted to fight back may be seen as a victory in itself. All of these processes occur within a tangled web of “moral ambiguities.”

In The Light of Common Day: Realism in American Fiction, Edwin H. Cady argues that man in realistic writings eventually reaches a moral vision, and thus, the literature of realism becomes “a literature of moral illumination” (36). On the other hand, Cady believes that man in naturalistic writings is a brute, exposed to socioeconomic factors that are more powerful and destructive than he is: “Man was reduced to the merest organism fighting meaninglessly, at the mercy of chance and force, to foredoomed loss” (47). I argue that socioeconomic factors surrounding these women are essential in creating the femme fatale.