It’s Tuesday again which means time for another round of Top Ten Tuesday; I like joining in on this meme because I have a set topic to work with. Top Ten Tuesday is a book blogger meme that is hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week the theme is: Great femme fatales. I love a good femme fatale, they are mysterious, seductive and often deadly.
- Brigid O’Shaughnessy – The Maltese Falcon by Dashell Hammett (without spoiling the story, Brigid is the ultimate femme fatale)
- Phyllis Nirdlinger – Double Indemnity by James M. Cain (like Brigid O’Shaughnessy, Phyllis embodies the perfect archetype of a femme fatale)
- Cleopatra – Antony and Cleopatra by William Shakespeare (Cleopatra is possibly one of the original femme fatales)
- Dolores – Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (while we may not want a 12 year old femme fatale. You can’t deny she doesn’t embody the characteristics of a femme fatale)
- Vivian Sternwood – The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler (I can’t over look Chandler and Vivian is his best example of a femme fatale)
- Daisy Buchanan – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (no explanation needed)
- Rebecca – Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (just because she’s dead doesn’t stop Rebecca from being a great femme fatale)
- Joan Medford – The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain (Cain is the king of the femme fatale and I struggled to only name one of his characters in this list)
- Laurel Gray – In a Lonely Place by Dorothy B. Hughes (sassy, strong minded with a little mystery to her)
- Veronica Mars – The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas & Jennifer Graham (if you’ve seen the TV show you’ll know how great Veronica Mars is; part hard-boiled detective part femme fatale)
I will deny that a 12 year old is a femme fatale. She’s a victim of abuse, and to claim she’s a Femme Fatale somehow makes that ok. However the narrator might try to portray her to justify his actions, does not make her a femme fatale.
We know that the narrator is unreliable and that she is a victim of abuse but she still follows the femme fatale archetype. Her actions, through the eyes of Humbert come a cross as seductive and manipulative, we don’t know what she is really like but in Lolita she is a femme fatale.
I completely agree with you about Rebecca. She may be dead, but she’s definitely a femme fatale.
It takes great skill to make a dead woman a femme fatale, she did it well.
Yes, in a way, I’d say that the character who prompted my Top Ten today is a fe
Femme fatale. It is Lily Barth in Edith Wharton’s House of Mirth.
Here’s my list of Miserable, Unhappy Characters.
Great list bringing in some of my favorite characters. Who doesn’t love a femme fatale?
So many great characters