Fatal Women of Romanticism

Abstract

Incarnations of fatal women, or femmes fatales, recur throughout the works of women writers in the Romantic period. Adriana Craciun demonstrates how portrayals of femmes fatales or fatal women played an important role in the development of Romantic women's poetic identities and informed their exploration of issues surrounding the body, sexuality and politics. Craciun covers a wide range of writers and genres from the 1790s through the 1830s. She discusses the work of well-known figures including Mary Wollstonecraft, as well as lesser-known writers like Anne Bannerman. By examining women writers' fatal women in historical, political and medical contexts, Craciun uncovers a far-ranging debate on sexual difference. She also engages with current research on the history of the body and sexuality, providing an important historical precedent for modern feminist theory's ongoing dilemma regarding the status of 'woman' as a sex.

Stoichiometry, phase, and texture evolution in PLD-Grown hexagonal barium ferrite films as a function of laser process parameters

“…While the influence of the process gas (i.e., oxygen) pressure, substrate surface properties, and substrate temperature have been investigated previously [7,8,9,10], the role of laser beam parameters has not been explored in sufficient detail for ferrite materials. Several studies on the influence of laser parameters on the structure and composition of alloy films and simple metallic oxides have been published previously [11,12,13]. Presented here is a comprehensive study of the impact of such laser parameters on the epitaxial growth of hexaferrite films.…”

‘My mite for its protection’: The Conservative Woman as Action Hero in the Writings of Charlotte West

“…As Adriana Craciun has shown, images of Marie Antoinette as persecuted mother and, indeed, emblem of persecuted femininity abounded in British writing about the queen after her execution. 29 West's portrait of Marie Antoinette as a largely passive and suffering mother therefore does not deviate from existing models for representing Marie Antoinette by either radical or counter-revolutionary writers. Where West's work does differ, of course, is in its insistence on the role she had to play in supporting the queen physically and emotionally.…”

Snaking into the Gothic: Serpentine Sensuousness in Lewis and Coleridge

“…These topsy-turvy inversions embellish the femme fatale trope that echoes so widely throughout the poem's two parts. "Femme fatales", Adriana Craciun (2002) writes, "in particular, with their inherent "doubleness" as both feminine and fatal, offer us an especially productive perspective on the development of sexual difference in the Romantic period" (p. 7). Craciun recalibrates understandings of femme fatales, not singularly as a pathology of male fears regarding female empowerment, but as an opportunity to visualise the modes of female sexuality, and female same-sex sexuality in particular, that "account for the complexity of women's uses of seduction and violence in the Romantic period" (p. 16).…”