Detecting Femme Fatales

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.

Public Domain

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.

Public Domain

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.