"Flor de la luxúria": la concepció de la femme fatale a l'imaginari del modernisme literari decadent

Abstract

European decadent imagery at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, influenced by the misogynist mentality of the period, established a dichotomy between two types of woman: one self-sacrifying, passive and pure, represented by the symbolic figure of the angel of the house; the other, perverse, sexually active, aspiring to freedom and addicted to a life of pleasure. In modernism, the femme fatale was cultivated above all in literary spheres, and among the associated literary figures are the young virgin consumed by desire, the prostitute or lotus flower, the satanic woman, Salomé and the bacchantes of decadence or even the degenerate necrophile. Authors like Jeroni Zanné or Alfons Maseras, among others, were attracted by this enigmatic, fascinating, emasculating woman. By drawing on some of their works and the literature available in contemporary journals, we will survey a number of the typologies related to this subject.