Femme Fatale as a Cultural Construct: The Fatal as a Cultural Construct: The Fatal Womanhood Phenomenon in a Historical and Transcultural Perspective

The main topic of Femme Fatale as a Cultural Construct: The Fatal Womanhood Phenomenon in a Historical and Transcultural Perspective is to describe, compare and interpret "femme fatale" in the context of the belly dancer, geisha and salonnière phenomena. The thesis objective, and subsequently its main research question, is to perform a comparative analysis of femme fatale as a unique cultural construct that is projected into various roles of a woman in an original manner. Special attention is paid to make note of concrete cultural and historical attributes related to the profession, knowledge, skills and social roles of belly dancers, geishas and salonnières. Among secondary objectives, the thesis intends to take an interdisciplinary stance in order to elaborate the problems of emancipation and sexuality in historical attitudes toward women, and to identify fatal womanhood motives in fine arts. Last, but not least, the plan is to study cultural and aesthetic contribution of women regarded as femmes fatales. The thesis consists of four relatively standalone chapters, each of which take different interdisciplinary angles to analyze the fatal womanhood phenomenon. The first chapter, a historical exposé of the thesis, investigates the femme fatale through the eyes of mythology and religion. The second chapter,..