The feminine figure in the french imaginary of the 19th century

Abstract

The femme fatale plays a very important role in the French ideology of the 19th century. In this troubled century, she emerges as an ambiguous being, an inaccessible sphinx that artists, writers, philosophers and scientists sought to decipher. Over the centuries, we see the construction of an image of the woman associated with the senses, the body, sin, evil, and death – an image that will be recovered and rethought in the nineteenth century. This cruel woman attracts and seduces men with their devices, proving fatal to them.