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However, that gap in scholarship has now been filled by Ghada Suleiman Sasa’s insightful The Femme Fatale in American Literature, an exploration of the subtle and complex role of the femme fatale in writers like Frank Norris, Kate Chopin, Theodore Dreiser, and Nella Larsen. Sasa positions these naturalistic femmes fatales between the more powerful femmes fatales of both the romantic period and the modern period. Sasa points out that most critics of naturalistic fiction portray women characters as little more than weak and passive pawns, stereotyped victims of either men or forces of fate, heredity, and environment. However, Sasa argues that, despite the deterministic mood and the social and economic limitations imposed upon heroines of naturalistic fiction, numerous women manage, at least temporarily, to resist and rise above these limitations and, by their powers of enchantment, to defeat heredity and environment.
Sasa, thus, discovers a duality in the femme fatale of much naturalistic fiction. On one hand, Sasa’s femme fatale is “strong, daring, and determined.” She exploits her sexuality in order to escape the forces of heredity and environment that constrain her. In the process she becomes a victimizer who possesses the power to bend men to her will and accomplish her own selfish goals. On the other hand, the femme fatale of American naturalism is fated for failure, disillusionment, even death. Despite her initial successes, she ultimately falls victim to forces of society and fate over which she has little control.
The complex view of the femme fatale in The Femme Fatale in American Literature is compelling because it reinforces one of the most consistent theories of critics who have written extensively about essential characteristics of naturalistic authors and their texts.