by Kim Krizan
The (Un)Common(ly Bad) Era
For quite a long time things sucked for femmes, fatale and non-fatale alike. Of course most everyone during those long centuries was poor and illiterate, spending their short, painful lives rooting in the mud. It seems nearly all woman got burned at the stake, sacrificed in a bog, tortured on a rack, or—worse yet—sent to live in a convent. And the only respite from this routine was a “day of rest” during which one spent long hours cowering on one’s knees and begging forgiveness from an angry god.
To make matters worse, boys got really really mad at girls because the boys blamed the girls for screwing up the world. Not that boys had been nice to girls before, but their anger seemed to reach a fever pitch during these spectacularly bad old days. Males sometimes thought of females as devil’s tools, succubae who sucked the life out of men and drove them crazy. This could have lead to loads of fun had the men not started an organized campaign to get all females in line and under control, and to make them pay. Then things started really sucking, but good. All fronts—political, religious, social—seemed to join in a single effort to take all the pleasure out of life and a Fatale had to be at her wily, cagiest best to get around it.
The following are true All-Stars of Fatalism, for in spite of the vast conspiracy to make their lives a livin’ hell, these brave ladies stayed in the ring and kept swinging.
Morgan le Fay
Morgan was the half-sister of King Arthur back when the isle of England was full of unicorns and dragons. Morgan thought brother Artie was doing a crap job of running the kingdom. For one thing, she questioned his Round Table, full as it was of advisors who had invested in war-profiteering companies of the day. No wonder the Knights of the Round Table were always beating the war drums to go after this dragon and that. No wonder Arthur was always claiming the need to fight here, fight there, and fight everywhere. And no wonder unicorns, fairies, elves, sprites, and dragons can no longer be found on the British Isles. Yes, it was prescient sister Morgan who saw the handwriting on the wall.
Morgan was also not a fan of King Arthur’s girlfriend Guinevere as she was privy to the fact that Guinevere was having an affair with a knight named Lancelot. Morgan didn’t care that they hadn’t “gone all the way” and that it had been a text message flirtation. When Morgan tried to expose Guinevere’s disloyalty, Guinevere had Morgan sent from King Arthur’s court.
So Morgan took an extension course and became a first rate sorceress magician, brewing spells and uttering incantations. (Back in those days the national health care system relied almost wholly on uncertified sorceresses and she did her part.) But Morgan did what many Fatales do and kept her powers on the DL, for it was not glory she sought.
In the end Morgan allowed her brother Arthur to keep his good reputation, but she used her magic powers to direct events so that England became a first rate world power. She saw to it that the English royal line was ruled by badass queens—at least three really good ones, ones that lived a long time and showed the world whom was boss.
Lady Macbeth
Lady Macbeth was originally the very real Gruoch ingen Boite, queen consort of Scotland and granddaughter of Kenneth III. She changed her name to Lady Macbeth when the Shakespearean publicity department needed to spiff up her image. The first thing to go was the name “Gruoch”—that and the blue paint on her face.
Lady Macbeth was the wife of Macbeth, a general in the Scottish King Duncan’s army. One night the Macbeths had Duncan over for dinner. Lady Macbeth wasn’t impressed. For one thing, Duncan monologued in the most boring fashion. For another he had abysmal table manners. For another thing he didn’t even compliment her shortbread. And that was the final straw. Lady Macbeth didn’t see why he should be king and not her hubby.
Lady M. got to thinking. Would it be so hard to seize power by killing Duncan and leaving someone else holding the bag? Would it be so difficult to just slide husband Macbeth into that throne? Then she could order new china and host fancy state dinners and have designer gowns made to her specifications—all the while directing her husband from the sidelines.
And so Lady Macbeth talked her husband into killing King Duncan. (When Macbeth tried to balk she used that tried-and-true method of questioning his masculinity, which worked like a charm.) The ambitious couple left bloody knives in the rooms of Duncan’s sleeping servants and thanked their lucky stars there was no DNA testing in those days. Shortly thereafter, Macbeth was crowned king and Lady Macbeth became queen.
Soon, dead people were turning up around the castle and Lady Macbeth perfected the faux faint. All could have been rosy, but Lady M. made the mistake of letting her guard slip by “feeling bad” and being overcome with guilt and finally committing suicide. Let this be a lesson to us all. We must be forever on guard against that most unholy and unnecessary of enemies: remorse for killing one’s husband’s boss.
Appropriate Ensembles for Every Occasion
Scheming to Have Her Husband’s Boss Killed
Long pale blue gown with indescribably dramatic sleeves.
Celtic trim along sleeve edges and neckline.
Tight underblouse of white with laced wrists. Gold wedding band.
Extra points: Long red hair.
(As worn by Lady Macbeth, played by Francesca Annis in “Macbeth.”)
Lucrezia Borgia
Lucrezia was a true moll, a real mafiosa girl, but in her case crime was a family affair the likes of which the Corleones or the Sopranos would never see.
Lucrezia began as the pretty daughter of man who became pope (which would be weird, to say the least). Her father and brothers realized they had a goldmine in “Lucky,” as they called her, and arranged her numerous marriages to powerful men—all so the family could advance their position in the great Italian Monopoly game for power. Lucrezia had gigantic, ostentatious weddings rife with scandal (to dwarf anything a Trump might have had with any Slavic model). And somehow, because of her secured legal position as the one to inherit her husband’s vast holdings, Lucrezia’s husbands were always conveniently executed for this and that, which opened the way for new husbands. (Note to Melania: Hint hint.)
Lucrezia was forever having to stay in convents while she had babies between marriages. And somehow her marriages always seemed to be annulled and her engagements always seemed to be canceled, making the way for other lovers who would spawn new pregnancies—and then she’d be sent off to the convent once again. In short, Lucrezia had her naughty fun without any of the repercussions that would’ve befallen a girl whose dad wasn’t pope.
Finally Lucrezia retired from the game, content in knowing that she and her family had cut a wide swath through the heart of the Renaissance. Her family had risen about as far as a clan could and had dominated the scene as much as could be hoped. And in her retirement “Lucky” enjoyed the fruits of her labors, living in an ostentatious McMansion, getting Botoxed regularly, and forever meddling in the lives of her many illegitimate children.
Elizabeth Bathory
The truth about Elizabeth Bathory is that she was a late 16th and early 17th century Hungarian countess who was educated, cultured, and spoke four languages. At age fifteen she married into a powerful family and her husband Ferenc gave her a rad castle that was surrounded by picaresque landscaping and villages. When Ferenc went off to lead the Hungarian army in a war against the Turks, Elizabeth was left to take care of the castle and the surrounding estates, as well as the peasants who lived in them.
Elizabeth is believed to have helped the peasant women of her area by employing them, teaching them etiquette, and taking them in when their husbands were killed in the war or they were impolitely raped by Turks. But when Elizabeth’s own husband was killed and other powerful Hungarian families wanted her cool castle, the horseshit hit the proverbial fan.
What better way to take over a lady’s castle than to spread a few vicious rumors about her? And who else should spread those rumors but a religious leader in cahoots with the rising powers? B
efore she knew it, Elizabeth was labeled not only a lesbian murderess who tortured hundreds of young girls, supposedly bathing in their blood and being brought to orgasm by their slaughter, but the most notorious serial killer ever and the originator of the vampire myth. Elizabeth so terrified people that she wasn’t given a trial, nor was she executed. Instead, the powers that were merely bricked her into her own home and waited for her to die.
Hester Prynne
Puritan New England was an absolute bummer of a place filled with the usual sanctimonious religious hypocrites, much like some of our modern towns today. Hester Prynne was the prettiest and nicest woman in the area, but her husband was away on business in another city and she hadn’t seen him for some time. Is it any wonder that with her husband absent the town’s beloved and handsome minister Dimmesdale found space in his busy schedule to visit Hester? Is it a surprise that he took the time to come to her home to offer male guidance, support, and spiritual solace as well? And is it any wonder, since God had created in Hester such loveliness and in Dimmesdale such an appreciation for her loveliness, that they would find themselves doing the old hokey-pokey and the rumpy-pumpy, taking pony rides and making whoopee?
Some months later Hester developed an obvious baby bump, yet townspeople knew that her husband hadn’t been for a visit in a long long while. The cognitive wheels turned and the whispering began. The whole town was enflamed with indignation. Had someone had fun when they had not? A few months later Hester gave birth to a baby and the outrage reached a fever pitch. Everyone knew yummy mummy Hester Prynne had committed adultery, and yet she belligerently refused to name the father, even when the church elders threatened to have her hung. Instead, Hester took the public shaming alone, even wearing the red letter “A” (for adultery) attached to her dress.
Hester took pity on the poor townspeople. They were a sorry lot, for she knew that those who don’t have much pleasure in their lives tend to obsess about other people’s imagined pleasures. She thought it amusing that women who have sex are whores while men who have sex are victims of those whores. She sighed and didn’t let a little red letter affect how she felt about herself. In fact, she came to see that letter as a badge of strength against the forces of idiocy.
Appropriate Ensembles for Every Occasion
Luring a Man of God Into Sin
Gray small-waisted frock with laced, flattening, corset-type bodice,
stripes at hem, pale gray apron, and white underblouse.
Hair must be skimmed into tight bun on crown of head
with long tendrils hanging beside the ears.
(As worn by Hester Prynne, played by Demi Moore
in “The Scarlet Letter.”)
The Nineteenth Century to the Rescue
Thankfully, like a tulip bulb awakened from a long sleep in the frozen ground, the femme fatale blossomed again in all her vivid glory, dominating 19th century literature and art in spite of—or perhaps because of—the repressive Victorian era. When people put cloth pantaloons on table legs so they won’t feel lustful toward their furniture, the femme fatale knows she’s in heaven. And though all those dreadful centuries she had gone a bit underground while the world had burned her and cut off her head and drowned her and shamed her and made her wear red letters proclaiming her sin … well, she was merely biding her time.
Of course 19th century society still tried to keep the femme fatale down, what with constricting corsets in the West and foot-binding in the East, the dogged insistence she not get an education or seek a job or enjoy political rights or own property. And the continual drone that it was her sex that had snubbed God and brought about mankind’s fundamental problems never ceased. But what seems an insurmountable obstacle to the average person is nothing more than a delightful challenge for the Fatale.
Male artists of this era did their level best to portray her as powerfully evil and tricky, perhaps in an effort to halt the spread of the concept of women’s rights, but in the end they only made her that much more appealing. Painters Edvard Munch, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Gustave Klimt, and the writer Oscar Wilde did her bidding, portraying her as an extremely attractive and terribly powerful—albeit bad—woman, whether entrancing nymph, otherworldly spirit, spooky she-devil, or even seductive bellydancer.
And then the painter John Singer Sargent scandalized all of polite society in 1884 with a portrait he entitled “Madame X.” Sargent’s muse and model for this work was a lady named Madame Gautreau who enjoyed being the first to wear the latest fashions. What earth-shattering, sky-splitting design did Ms. Gautreau see fit to wear for her portrait sitting with Sargent? A pearl necklace and a smile? A new hair-do and a splash of cologne? No, the lady in question wore a (wait for it) strapless gown. Salacious, suggestive, scandalous … This portrait, which exposed Ms. Gautreau’s milky-white shoulders, completely destroyed her reputation. (A few decades later “Madame X” was considered a sensation. And less than sixty years later schoolgirls everywhere would be wearing strapless dresses to any old prom to which they could finagle invitations.)
Adding a good dousing of gasoline to the fire that was Fatalism, Philip Burne-Jones’ 1897 painting “The Vampire” showcased a beautiful woman in a filmy nightdress hovering gleefully over a man who, for all intents and purposes, appears to be dead. Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula came out the same year, solidifying the public’s fear that there exist beings who suck the life force out of the hapless. Both works created a fashion for the female vampire and shortly thereafter the word “vamp,” a shortened form of “vampire,” entered the lexicon.
It was nothing less than a fabulous century for Fatales, one populated by both real and fictional characters who brought new meaning to the ancient archetype. Here are some of the best and brightest:
Scarlett O’Hara
The protagonist of Martha Mitchell’s famed novel Gone with the Wind was the femme fatale extraordinaire of the United States Civil War era, a Georgian belle who single-mindedly sought to save her plantation home while flying in the face of Atlanta’s social conventions. She wasn’t above stealing her sister’s fiancé, dancing at grand balls when she should’ve been in mourning for her dead husband, and refusing sex to Clark Gable.
In short, Katie Scarlett didn’t sit in the glow of a bay window crocheting doilies while the Union stole her way of life. Being cinched into her corset by a slave was her God-given right. And though she may have looked like a China doll, she wasn’t too delicate to pick through the dead bodies of her Southern countrymen, dig in the dirt for food, or yank down a whole window treatment so as to turn it into a regal frock. But when Clark Gable dumped her at the end of the movie saying he didn’t give a damn what she did, Scarlett O’Hara was secretly thrilled. In truth she had her eye on another guy, one even more handsome and suave and sexy than Clark, and her sly plan to get him out of the way had worked beautifully.
Appropriate Ensembles for Every Occasion
Whooping it Up While in Mourning for Her Husband
Long black dress with humongous hoop skirt, minuscule waist, long,
tight sleeves, and tight bodice. Black veil.
Extra points: Dance wildly before stunned on-lookers.
(As worn by Scarlett O’Hara, played by Vivien Leigh in “Gone with the Wind.”)
Sarah Bernhardt
The illegitimate French girl who worked as a high-class prostitute until she could become the most successful dramatic performer of her day took acting so seriously that she slept in a coffin for the purpose of more fully understanding the tragic characters she played. And in response, what did society dub her? As “divine”—which shows that as long as one didn’t wear a strapless dress in late 19th century Paris, one could get up to all manner of extreme behavior.
Sarah Bernhardt was a veritable queen of creativity. She painted, sculpted, modeled, wrote books and plays, and married the requisite morphine addict. It seems that nothing could stop her, not even having her leg amputated. She is still known as
the most famous actress of all time, but when they gave her the big, glittering “Most Famous Actress of All Time” award, did she get touchingly tearful, thank everyone for liking her, and thank God for his divine assistance in seeing to it that—in lieu of attending to starving masses in third world countries—her career went well and an award was sent her way? Hell no. Here are Bernhardt’s exact words: “Me pray? Never! I’m an atheist.”
Lillie Langtry
Pretty, blue-eyed Miss Lillie was the daughter of a church rector on the Isle of Jersey, an isolated little place just off the coast of England. Her prospects were few, but she married one Mr. Langtry and used him as a springboard to cast herself into the lavish world of London society. Because Lillie did not have the funds for the extravagant wardrobe normally required of high society ladies, she repeatedly wore a simple black dress (really, one of the first LBDs). The look was so new, so not done, that she began to attract attention. Soon she was invited to act on the stage and was dubbed “The Jersey Lily,” a position she didn’t fail to exploit.
Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s son and the first in line for the throne, noticed sweet, simple, demure Mrs. Langtry and soon they were having a roaring affair. This brought Lillie the adulation of being known as the Prince’s semi-official mistress. Lillie made fast work of the situation, getting ahold of Bertie’s credit card and snapping up a load of bitchin’ clothes. Soon the prince set her up in a killer crib, spent loads of time with her (while leaving his wife and children to languish in their castle), and showed Lillie as good a time as a girl could have. (Who the hell knows where Mr. Langtry was?)