The femme fatale makes her appearance in Pym’s work, though
far more subtly than in other works of literature. These are the woman to paraphrase Lady Lamb,
who are “mad, bad, and dangerous” for men to know. They are the sirens, lamia, gorgons, home
wreckers, gold diggers, black widows, dominatrixes Amazons, often emasculating,
ball busting women that are the stuff of comics, legend, myth, and
unfortunately, sometimes porn. Well, Lady Heather and others, please step
aside, and don’t trip over your whips, boas, dripping diamonds, or weapons of
choice.
The femme fatales we discuss today are the women in pop
culture who deal in death, yet still are smart, sexy, even fun to be
around. They are detectives, amateur or
otherwise, and include Mrs. Mallory, Hazel Holt’s main PI. Holt, you will remember, was Pym’s best friend,
colleague, and literary executor. Miss
Marple is one, as is coroner Tina Kemp.
Include Patricia Cornwell’s Dr. Kay Scarpetta and her niece Lucy, V.I.
Warshowski, Stephanie Plum, Hannah Swensen, Goldy Bear Schultz, and the cozy
women of Deb Baker, Monica Ferris and others. Sue Grafton
and Edna Buchannan have created them.
Elizabeth George gives us Deborah St. James, Barbara Havers, and Lady
Helen Clyde.
TV is full of them, from Dr. Samantha Waters of Profiler, to
Jessica Fletcher of Murder, she Wrote. Their
sisters come from Crossing Jordan, Cold Case, Police Woman,Hunter, The Snoop
Sisters, Mrs. Columbo, McMillan & Wife, The Closer, and other shows and
sitcoms where women solve crime, and live hand in hand with death.
For that matter, all these women as sisters to Death as Neil
Gaiman creates her in The Sandman, or to the other graphic novel icon, Lady
Death.
It’s a new way of defining what a femme fatale is, and a
woman detective is a more positive cultural icon. Some, like Miss Fisher, can be both traditional
femme fatale, and detective. They
live for themselves, and use their own
sexuality any way that suits them, usually for good, but sometimes . . .
Pym’s Prudence and Barbara Bird would have known the drill. Scarlett O’Hara would have understood.
Mary Richards of MTM, well, she’d at least keep an open
mind.
