Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale: The Lost Seduction 9780567673121, 9780567673145, 9780567673138

Citation preview

i

REIMAGINING DELILAH’S AFTERLIVES AS FEMME FATALE

ii

LIBRARY OF HEBREW BIBLE/ OLD TESTAMENT STUDIES

652 Formerly Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Supplement Series

Editors Claudia V. Camp, Texas Christian University Andrew Mein, Westcott House, Cambridge

Founding Editors David J. A. Clines, Philip R. Davies and David M. Gunn

Editorial Board Alan Cooper, John Goldingay, Norman K. Gottwald, James E. Harding, John Jarick, Carol Meyers, Francesca Stavrakopoulou, Daniel L. Smith-Christopher, Carolyn J. Sharp, James W. Watts

iii

REIMAGINING DELILAH’S AFTERLIVES AS FEMME FATALE

The Lost Seduction

Caroline Blyth

T&T CLARK Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA BLOOMSBURY, T&T CLARK and the T&T Clark logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published 2017 Paperback edition first published in 2019 Copyright © Caroline Blyth, 2017 Caroline Blyth has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. For legal purposes the Acknowledgements on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-7312-1 PB: 978-0-5676-8802-6 ePDF: 978-0-5676-7313-8 ePub: 978-0-5676-8001-3 Series: Library of Hebrew Bible/ Old Testament Studies, volume 652 Typeset by Newgen Knowledge Works Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

v

To Nia, my favourite femme fatale

vi

vii

CONTENTS List of Figures Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations

viii ix x

INTRODUCTION

1

Chapter 1 THE FEMME FATALE: CULTURAL ICON

9

Chapter 2 MIND THE GAP PART 1: DELILAH’S INTERPRETIVE AFTERLIVES

51

Chapter 3 MIND THE GAP PART 2: DELILAH’S CULTURAL AFTERLIVES

85

Chapter 4 DELILAH REDUX

149

CONCLUSION

179

Bibliography Index of Authors Index of Biblical Texts

181 193 197

viii

FIGURES 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8 3.9 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 4.1

Gustave Moreau, Salome Dancing before Herod, 1876 Gustave Moreau, L’Apparition, 1876 Giovanni Segantini, The Evil Mothers, 1894 Fernand Khnopff, Caresses, 1896 Edvard Munch, Vampire, 1895 Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as Phyllis Dietrichson and Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, 1944 Peter Paul Rubens, Samson and Delilah, c. 1609–10 Gustave Moreau, Samson and Dalila, 1882 Gustave Moreau, Dalila, c. 1896 Gustave Moreau, Dalila, c. 1890 Alexandre Cabanel, Samson and Delilah, 1878. Solomon Joseph Solomon, Samson and Delilah, 1887 Solomon Joseph Solomon, Samson and Delilah, 1887 José Echenagusía Errazquin, Samson and Delilah, 1887 Max Liebermann, Samson and Delilah, 1902 Samson and Delilah original movie poster, Paramount, 1949 Hedy Lamarr as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, Paramount, 1949 Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah, Paramount, 1949 Delilah cuts Samson’s hair, Samson and Delilah, Paramount, 1949 Elizabeth Hurley and Eric Thal, Samson and Delilah, TNT, 1996 Lara Pulver and Benedict Cumberbatch as Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes in ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, BBC, 2012

12 13 17 19 20 34 93 97 100 101 103 106 107 109 112 122 123 132 136 140 153

ix

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Writing a book is hard. What makes it less hard for me, though, are the family, friends and colleagues who – all in their own way – sustain my soul and help me believe in myself. A heartfelt thank you, then, to the following people: David, Katie, Robert, Nick, Kath, Tom and Ben, Deirdre, Em, Robin, Jo, Lucy, Blaženka, Lara, Chip, Zöe, Ciara, Johanna, Harriet, Elaine, Jennifer and (especially) Saunnie. I’m not sure this book would have been finished (or even started) without you. A special thank you to Prior, who gave feedback on the first draft of this book with such insight and care, and whose friendship I value beyond rubies. Ngā mihi aroha.

x

ABBREVIATIONS BDB

BibInt CBQ EncJud FemTh HALOT

JBL JPSV JSOT JSOTSup KJV LXXA LXXB MT NASB NIV NRSV Num. R. Ps.-Philo Sot. VT ZAW

Brown, Francis, S. R. Driver and Charles A. Briggs. The Brown–Driver– Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon, with an Appendix Containing the Biblical Aramaic. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2003. Biblical Interpretation: A Journal of Contemporary Approaches Catholic Biblical Quarterly Skolnik, Fred, and Michael Berenbaum, eds. Encyclopaedia Judaica. 2nd edn. 16 vols. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007. Feminist Theology Koehler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner and Johann Jakob Stamm, eds. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. 5 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1994–2000. Journal of Biblical Literature Jewish Publication Society Version Journal for the Study of the Old Testament Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series King James Version Septuagint, Codex Alexandrinas Septuagint, Codex Vaticanus Masoretic Text New American Standard Bible New International Version New Revised Standard Version Numbers Rabbah Pseudo-Philo Tractate Sotah Vetus Testamentum Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft

1

I NTRODUCTION

Close your eyes and think of Delilah. Whom do you see? What does she look like? For many contemporary readers, the name Delilah evokes a jewel-toned tapestry, whose multihued threads stitch together a woman’s presence – dark smoky eyes, delicious lips, whispered secrets, intimate smiles, the sparkle of a razor not quite concealed.1 We will not, however, find these images presented explicitly in Judges 16; instead, we lap them up from the many cultural retellings of this biblical narrative performed in literature, music and the visual arts. Within these retellings, Delilah shines as leading lady; shamelessly seductive, she is the quintessential femme fatale, whose intoxicating sexuality compels and repels our gaze. As J. Cheryl Exum notes, Delilah’s cultural afterlives have become emblematic of the dangerous allure of the untamed female body.2 What is more, images of Delilah as the archetypal fatal woman also make a ubiquitous appearance in the interpretive traditions surrounding Judges 16. Biblical scholars frequently identify her as a sexually treacherous character, whose erotic allure proves too powerful for even the mighty Samson. Filling in the gaps that pervade this biblical text with their own imaginative readings, they sculpt various interpretive afterlives for this elusive character,3 which, more often than not,

1. Some sections of this introduction were developed from an earlier article I  wrote:  Caroline Blyth, ‘When Raymond Met Delilah’, Relegere:  Studies in Religion and Reception 4, no. 1 (2014): 41−63. It is used here with the blessing of the journal editor. 2. J. Cheryl Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted:  Cultural Representations of Biblical Women, 2nd edn (Sheffield:  Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012), 210. Exum’s term ‘cultural afterlives’ refers to those retellings and representations of biblical characters in cultural texts, including literature, music and the visual arts (ibid., 14). 3. I use the term ‘interpretive afterlife’ as I believe that exegetical portrayals of biblical characters can take on a ‘life’ of their own, carrying these characters beyond the pages of the biblical text, into the cultural spaces of the biblical studies academy and onto wider audiences. In other words, just as biblical characters are brought to life in cultural texts, so too are they reincarnated in literary form within biblical interpretation. Both interpretive and cultural afterlives therefore have a tremendous power to shape the way we, as readers, approach biblical characters and texts. This is made exquisitely apparent when we explore Delilah’s own multiple afterlives.

2

2

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

follow the lines and contours of the classic femme fatale.4 From the early Christian writings of Augustine and Ambrose to more contemporary interpretations of this biblical story, Delilah is relentlessly portrayed as a treacherous and licentious destroyer of godly men, whose uncanny narrative presence both electrifies and horrifies her audience.5 Why does Delilah attract such imaginative responses from both biblical scholars and the creators of her cultural afterlives in music, literature and the visual arts? The inspiration for these interpretive choices lies, perhaps, in Judges 16 itself, in that this narrative offers the creative reader a temptingly blank canvas with which to work. Exuding clouds of ambiguity and scattered with tantalizing narrative gaps, this biblical tale provides only the vaguest pencil sketch of Delilah’s character. It is a text ‘fraught with background’,6 which fails to reveal anything definitive about her circumstances, her personality, her motivations or her emotional world – all the things that could disclose her literary persona. It therefore provides readers with a ‘multi-layered system of realized and unrealized potentialities’ that they can engage with imaginatively to construct their own afterlives for this inscrutable figure.7 And, more often than not, they choose to fashion these afterlives in the form of a dangerously seductive femme fatale – a woman whose erotic (and often exotic) allure can knock even the strongest man to his knees.8 Yet why should this be? What is it about Delilah’s narrative presence that inspires readers to ‘see’ her as a fatal woman? In the following chapters, I suggest that creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives are guided as much by the socially constructed discourses of gender and sexuality prevalent within their own cultural milieus as they are by the biblical text of Judges 16. These discourses draw together various ideologies, attitudes and practices pertaining to masculinity, femininity, sex and sexuality, knitting them into a fabric upon which people can trace familiar patterns and decipher their own experiences, thoughts and beliefs.9 Consequently, discourses not only direct readers’ responses 4. Dana Nolan Fewell, ‘Judges’, in Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, expanded edn (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 79. 5. For an excellent overview of Delilah’s (and Samson’s) interpretive and cultural afterlives throughout history, see David M. Gunn, Judges (Oxford:  Blackwell Publishing, 2005), 170−230. 6. Erich Auerbach, Mimesis:  The Representation of Reality in Western Literature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 12. 7. David Fishelov, ‘Roads Not Taken, Taken by the Adapter:  The Case of Biblical Samson’, Connotations 18, nos 1–3 (2008−9): 28. See also Josey Bridges Snyder, ‘Delilah and Her Interpreters’, in Women’s Bible Commentary, 3rd edn, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 141. 8. Dan Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout: Interpreting the Bible’s Women in the Arts and Music (New York: T&T Clark International, 2009), 65. 9. This understanding of social discourse was developed by Michel Foucault in his work, The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972).

3

Introduction

3

to a text, but also construct their wider understandings of and relationships with the world. Within the whorls and patterns of these gendered discourses, we often catch a glimpse of the femme fatale’s distinctive form. This iconic figure is a recurring sociocultural invention, whose body is encoded with multiple truth claims about women’s social and sexual presence.10 As such, she is a potent emblem of the ways sex, gender and power are inextricably interwoven in many cultures across space and time.11 As I establish in subsequent chapters, she is conjured up as a symbol of the conflicts and insecurities arising during periods of social crisis, when dominant discourses of gendered power and identification are perceived to be under threat.12 In particular, the femme fatale serves as a societal scapegoat, a convenient and easy-to-spot target onto which her audiences can shoot their poisoned arrows of social discontent, anger and despair. For her attributes are identified as all that is considered unsafe and undesirable about women: their social and sexual autonomy, their negotiations of power and their encroachment upon traditionally masculine territories of authority, violence and sex.13 Moreover, although the femme fatale is always a product of sociocultural discourses – fashioned, curated and displayed by the dominant fears and fantasies of the age – she is often regarded as the embodiment of a social reality or truth, a ‘clear and present danger’ to the cultures and contexts within which she is located. Instilling in her audience a nagging sense of chaos and unease, she serves as a

10. Foucault speaks about social discourses being part of a wider ‘régime of truth’, which every society uses to sanction its claims as to what is ‘true’: ‘Each society has its régime of truth, its “general politics” of truth: that is, the types of discourse which it accepts and makes function as true; the mechanisms and instances which enable one to distinguish true and false statements, the means by which each is sanctioned; the techniques and procedures accorded value in the acquisition of truth; the status of those who are charged with saying what counts as true.’ See Michel Foucault, ‘Truth and Power’, in Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972−1977, ed. Colin Gordon, trans. Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham and Kate Soper (New  York:  Pantheon Books, 1980), 131.The femme fatale as a signifier of women’s dangerousness has been a persistent element within social régimes of truth throughout history. 11. Kate Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice:  Constructing the Femme Fatale in 90s Cinema’, in Women in Film Noir, 2nd edn, ed. Ann E. Kaplan (London:  BFI Publishers, 1998), 165. See also Silke Binias, Symbol and Symptom: The Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century and Feminist Criticism (Heidelberg:  Universitätsverlag Winter, 2007), 39. For a discussion about the ubiquity of the femme fatale phenomenon across different cultures, see William Jankowiak and Angela Ramsey, ‘Femme Fatale and Status Fatale: A Cross-Cultural Perspective’, Cross-Cultural Research 34 (2000): 57–69. 12. Hilary Neroni, The Violent Woman:  Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema (Albany, NY:  State University of New York Press, 2005), 18; see also Janey Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, in Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 47–8. 13. Neroni, Violent Woman, 18–19.

4

4

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

‘cautionary tale’ about the elision of gender difference, manifesting a not-to-betolerated otherness.14 Thus, as an (oft-unwitting) ‘carrier’ of discourses pertaining to female sexual treachery, her pervasive cultural presence impacts popular expectations and presumptions about real women’s social and sexual significance within a gendered world. These socially constructed discourses about the femme fatale sit at the heart of Delilah’s cultural and interpretive afterlives. They shape readers’ responses to her character, often far more than her textual, on-page presence within Judges 16, offering a template that readers inevitably exploit to decode her literary characterization. For, as has become apparent within today’s postmodern milieu, all readers of texts rely on more than the words on the page, or the sociohistorical context of these words, in order to negotiate the interpretive process. The traditional claim that we can approach a text with objectivity and ‘studied neutrality’15 is increasingly recognized as little more than an illusion. Rather, the meanings we extract from a text are not only dependent on the linguistic features or historical provenance of that text, but are likewise bound up in and shaped by the dominant discourses at play within our own cultural milieu. As David Rutledge argues, ‘Meaning becomes situated in the contentious realm of conflicting discourses of reading communities, and the authority of any reading of any text becomes no more than a function of the persuasive ideological force with which it is held in place by the readers who produce it.’16 In other words, interpreters of a text are unavoidably and always positioned in the world in front of this text, peering at it through the messy tangle of discourses that grow within their own historical and cultural locations. And, while they may attempt to limit their interpretive vision to the world in the text (studying its

14. Ibid. Similar remarks are also made by Jennifer Hedgecock, The Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature: The Danger and the Sexual Threat (Amherst, NY:  Cambria Press, 2008), 4; Małgorzata Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Soft-Shed Kisses:  Re-visioning the Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century (Newcastle:  Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013), 10−11; Virginia M. Allen, The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon (New York:  Whitston, 1983), x; Jack Boozer, ‘The Lethal Femme Fatale in the Noir Tradition’, Journal of Film and Video 51, nos 3−4 (1999−2000), 20; Julie Grossman, ‘Film Noir’s “Femme Fatales” HardBoiled Women:  Moving beyond Gender Fantasies’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24 (2007):  19; idem, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir:  Ready for Her Close-up (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), 3; Kathrin Hoffmann-Curtius, ‘Constructing the Femme Fatale: A Dialogue between Sexology and the Visual Arts in Germany around 1900’, in Women and Death: Representations of Female Victims and Perpetrators in German Culture 1500–2000, ed. Helen Fronius and Anna Linton (Rochester, NY:  Camden House, 2008), 170. 15. Eryl W. Davies, The Dissenting Reader:  Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 101. 16. David Rutledge, Reading Marginally:  Feminism, Deconstruction and the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 93.

5

Introduction

5

literary and linguistic features), or the world behind the text (honing in on its textual provenance and historical setting), their positioning in front of this text will always (wittingly or unwittingly) inveigle its way into the reading process. Like a special effects filter we fit to a camera lens, or an app on our iPhone that adjusts the images we create, our own positioning in space and time inevitably orchestrates the way we see a text and discern meanings within it. As Mieke Bal insists, ‘Interpretation is never objective, never reliable, never free of biases and subjectivity.’17 In the following chapters, then, I  consider Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives, exploring the various filters and lenses that their creators have used to fashion her ambiguity-laden character into the sensuous form of a femme fatale. By highlighting the role of the reader in this interpretive process, I make no claims that their interpretations are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in relation to the ‘original’ meaning of the text; after all, Delilah’s literary character, as envisioned by the author(s) of this narrative, has been irrevocably lost to us with the passage of time. Instead, I want to demonstrate that, regardless of their ubiquity, the afterlives created for Delilah which mould her into a femme fatale are only one possible way of perceiving her persona. As Josey Bridges Snyder insists, ‘The voices of Delilah are many, and they all deserve a chance to speak.’18 Given the text’s opacity, and the many questions left unanswered about Delilah’s character, I believe that multiple alternative afterlives are viable, each of which invites us to reinterpret and revisualize her ubiquitous identification as a fatal woman. By identifying some of those worlds in front of the text that guide readers to envision her thus, I hope to generate a space in which alternative lenses and filters can be used to view her narrative persona in new and sometimes surprising lights. To begin creating this space, Chapter 1 traces the history of the femme fatale, focusing especially on those time periods, places and genres where she emerges with particular vibrancy:  the literature and arts of the nineteenth-century European fin de siècle; the American hard-boiled literature and film noir of the mid-twentieth century; and the neo-noir Hollywood cinema of the late twentieth century. For each of these periods, I  outline some of the defining tropes of the femme fatale, considering the ways that these remain constant over space and time yet  also change in rhythm with the cultural contexts in which they are created. I also consider the possible reasons underpinning the femme fatale’s omnipresence at these specific times in history, evaluating her function and significance as a cultural icon (her sociocultural economy, as it were) within the different contexts in which she is assembled. Specifically, I trace her potential function as a symbol or expression of deeply rooted and at times intensely misogynistic sociocultural discourses surrounding female sexuality and gender. Theories pertaining to the social function of the femme fatale are therefore my main concern, as these allow

17. Mieke Bal, Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 238. 18. Snyder, ‘Delilah and Her Interpreters’, 141.

6

6

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

me to consider the impact that this figure has had (and continues to have) on the cultures and contexts in which her presence has been felt.19 In Chapters  2 and 3, I  revisit these definitional tropes of the femme fatale outlined in Chapter 1, noting the ways that they have been drawn upon, modified or subverted by creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives. Chapter 2 focuses on Delilah’s afterlives in biblical interpretation; here, I search through the gaps in the biblical text, discovering that this narrative presents Delilah’s character in a glorious fug of uncertainty. Along the way, I consider how biblical interpreters have crammed these textual gaps with femme fatale–flavoured fillings, thereby creating images of Delilah as an archetypal fatal woman. I  also offer a number of alternative fillings for these gaps, which open up possibilities for creating new interpretive afterlives for this biblical character. Chapter 3 advances this discussion by looking at Delilah’s cultural afterlives in literature, art, music and film. Once again, I inquire how creators of these afterlives have responded to the ambiguities in the biblical texts by drawing on the familiar imagery of the femme fatale discussed in Chapter 1. Through a close analysis of these cultural texts, I survey the various discourses around female sexuality and gender that have been woven into their particular visions of Delilah. Following my exploration of Delilah’s existing afterlives in Chapters 2 and 3, I  turn in Chapter  4 to compose some of my own interpretive afterlives for this enigmatic biblical character. Drawing on two contemporary cultural texts that depict – in very different ways – some of the familiar tropes of the femme fatale, I revisualize Delilah through alternative viewing lenses. By shifting my position within the world in front of the text, I  want to show that Delilah’s presence in Judges 16 is multifaceted, and that the ambiguities surrounding her narrative presence can be explored from myriad perspectives. Before I begin, however, a word about my intentions for writing this book. By interrogating Delilah’s afterlives as a femme fatale, I  am not seeking to ‘rescue’ her from this designation or deny that she is a fatal woman. To do so would be to acquiesce to those same discourses that identify this female figure as an insalubrious presence deserving our critique. Rather, I  argue that the construct of the femme fatale itself needs to be reappraised and destabilized to uncover its misogynistic roots. As I show in the following chapters, the fatal woman is a source of fascination and fear, but more than this, she is the product of innumerable beliefs and ideologies that distort and denigrate women’s sociocultural economy. As such, her presence has served to justify objective and subjective violence against real

19. I acknowledge from the outset that I am dealing with sociocultural theories about the femme fatale, rather than prima facie truths, and that there are many more theories from a range of critical and disciplinary perspectives which I do not have the space to address. The cultural presence of the femme fatale has been explored using various theoretical lenses from psychoanalysis, psychology, psychiatry and evolutionary biology, to name but a few. For a summary of these different approaches and examples of research in each, see Jankowiak and Ramsey, ‘Femme Fatale and Status Fatale’, 57–69.

7

Introduction

7

women, particularly those who subvert patriarchal assumptions of power and who claim, instead, an agency of their own. As a ubiquitous representative of the femme fatale in biblical interpretation and popular culture, Delilah’s literary character participates in this process in significant ways. For, while she may be a sketchy figure in an ancient biblical story, her location in ‘one of the most influential mythical and literary documents of our culture’20 grants her significant influence in shaping the discourses of gender and sexuality embraced by many reading communities. Similarly, whenever she appears as a character in a poem, or the subject of a song, or a jewel-toned figure in a painting or movie, her embodiment of lethal feminine allure within these cultural texts reinforces widespread attitudes and beliefs pertaining to women’s place in the world. Biblical and cultural texts are formidable sites in which social discourses are articulated, authenticated and disseminated.21 The books we read (sacred and otherwise), the movies we watch, the music we listen to and the paintings we gaze upon all offer us a way of looking at the world from a particular perspective. Rarely non-partisan, they present us with their creators’ ideologies (about gender, sexuality, race, politics, class, economy and so much more), and summon us, either implicitly or explicitly, to accept these ideologies. As such, they are locations where their creators have the capacity to construct and shape our cultural realities and everyday lives. And, when the ‘realities’ offered to us in Delilah’s cultural and interpretive afterlives present us with pervasive images of women’s dangerousness and duplicity, they have the potential to sustain and nourish the already prevalent patriarchal discourses that undermine women’s social legitimacy and agency. As Julie Grossman explains, every cultural and scholarly depiction of the femme fatale as an embodiment of dangerous femininity ‘mutually reinforces powerful stereotypes and reveals a systemic failure to deal with cultural ambivalence about female agency and empowerment’.22 For this reason alone, Delilah’s ubiquitous presence as a femme fatale in both biblical scholarship and popular culture deserves to be taken seriously.

20. Mieke Bal, Lethal Love:  Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987), 1. 21. Stuart Hall, ‘Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies’, Rethinking Marxism 5 (1992):  10. Hall is speaking here about cultural texts, rather than biblical, but his claims about the influence of cultural texts are also applicable to sacred scriptures, including the Bible. 22. Julie Grossman, ‘“Well, Aren’t We Ambitious,” or “You’ve Made up Your Mind I’m Guilty”: Reading Women as Wicked in American Film Noir’, in The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts, ed. Helen Hanson and Catherine O’Rawe (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 201.

8

9

Chapter 1 T HE F EMME F ATALE:  C ULTURAL  I CON

The fatal woman is a timeless figure, portrayed in collective cultural memories, texts and traditions stretching back millennia.1 She embodies that age-old myth of the terrifying woman whose malignant eroticism has the power to intoxicate her victims and drag them mercilessly towards destruction or even death. As Kate Stables notes, ‘Woman  =  sex  =  death is an equation inscribed into mass consciousness around the world.’2 During her ubiquitous appearances in cultural history, the femme fatale has been found draped upon canvas, sashaying through the pages of novels and comic books, slinking around theatres, serenading us within operatic libretti and staring provocatively from our movie screens. She has disguised herself in the forms of deities and demigods, supernatural demons, blood-sucking vampires, hyperfeminized monsters, patricidal wives and lovers, filicidal mothers and terrifyingly ‘real’ lethal ladies from both history and fiction. From ancient myths and sacred texts to movies, graphic novels and video games, the fatal woman is everywhere and has been for quite some time. As Janey Place notes, in popular culture and the public imagination, ‘She is as old as Eve, and as current as today’s movies, comic books, and dime novels.’3 And yet, despite her ubiquity as a cultural icon, the femme fatale remains elusive, a smoke-and-mirrors figure flitting across history. She embodies a sense of enigma and incoherence, ever swathed in countless complex discourses, and evoking ‘a certain discursive unease’ among those who encounter her.4 In this chapter, I want 1. Although the cultural phenomenon of the fatal woman is millennia old, the term femme fatale only gained popularity in the early twentieth century, its French provenance doubtlessly adding a dash of spurious glamour to this already notorious female form. 2. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 167. 3. Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, 47. The femme fatale has even been medicalized, cropping up in the literature and language of psychiatry to define women who exhibit various traits associated with personality disorder and psychopathy. See for example Elham Forouzan and David J. Cooke, ‘Figuring Out La Femme Fatale: Conceptual and Assessment Issues Concerning Psychopathy in Females’, Behavioral Sciences and the Law 23 (2005): 765–78. 4. Mary Ann Doane, Femmes Fatales:  Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis (New York: Routledge, 1991), 1.

10

10

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

to delve into the enigma of the femme fatale, exploring some of the ways she has been represented and understood within popular culture throughout different periods of history. My aim here is not to provide an exhaustive survey of this iconic figure; her history is long and complex and her iterations so numerous they would fill a book of their own.5 Rather, I  focus on those cultural tropes of the femme fatale that are drawn upon most frequently by creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives to fill in the gaps surrounding her biblical persona. These tropes are given a particularly vibrant and ubiquitous airing in three discrete cultural traditions: nineteenth-century European fin de siècle art, literature and music; the hard-boiled literature and film noir of 1940s and 1950s America; and the neo-noir cinema produced in twentieth-century fin de siècle Hollywood. I  explore these traditions in depth, examining how the central features and characteristics of the femme fatale are configured in each.6 I  also consider why this figure became a popular phenomenon during these particular periods in history – what purposes she served and how she embodied the dominant fears and fantasies of the age. In Chapters 2 and 3, I revisit these defining elements of the femme fatale, revealing their ubiquity in Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives.

The Dusk Hours of the Nineteenth Century: Femmes Fatales in the Fin de Siècle In 1876, French artist Gustave Moreau exhibited two paintings at the Paris Salon Palace, both of which depicted the biblical figure of Salome, famous for her role in John the Baptist’s beheading (Mk 6.17-29; Mt. 14.3-11). Within each work, Moreau plucked Salome from her rather benign gospel portrayals and re-visioned her with all the hues and tones of a distinctly fin de siècle femme fatale (Figures  1.1 and 1.2). This artist’s configuration of the femme fatale is summed up to perfection in Joris Karl Huysmans’s 1884 novel À rebours,7 where the central character, antihero Jean des Esseintes, reflects upon the paintings, describing Salome as ‘a monstrous 5. For a brief overview of the development of the femme fatale in popular culture, see Erin Finley, ‘One of These Days These Boots Are Gonna Walk All Over You: An Examination of the Femme Fatale’s Evolution’, in Beauty and the Abject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Corrado Federici, Leslie Anne Boldt-Irons and Ernesto Virgulti, Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature 88 (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 211–24. 6. I am aware that not all femmes fatales created within these particular time periods share the exact same characteristics; I  focus on some of the most ubiquitous features, whilst acknowledging that these are neither definitive nor exhaustive. For further discussion regarding the complexities of defining the femme fatale, see Jess Sully, ‘Challenging the Stereotype: The Femme Fatale in Fin-de-siècle Art and Early Cinema’, in The Femme Fatale:  Images, Histories, Contexts, ed. Helen Hanson and Catherine O’Rawe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 46–7; Binias, Symbol and Symptom, 33–42. 7. Joris Karl Huysmans, À rebours (France: Charpentier, 1884). Available online: http:// www.eldritchpress.org/jkh/rebours.html (accessed 28 April 2017). The novel was written

11

1. The Femme Fatale

11

Beast of the Apocalypse, indifferent, irresponsible, insensible, poisoning . . . all who come near her, all who see her, all who touch her’.8 She therefore exemplified womanhood in all its savagery and sensuality: In this she was altogether female, obedient to her passionate cruel woman’s temperament; active and alive, the more refined the more savage and the more hateful the more exquisite; she was shown awakening man’s sleeping passions, powerfully bewitching and subjugating his will with the unholy charm of a great venereal flower sprouting in sacrilegious beds and raised in impious fields.9

Why did this grim image of the femme fatale rise to prominence in Europe during the fin de siècle period? This was an era whose cultural zeitgeist was laden with an exhausting mix of anxiety and ennui; there was a feverish anticipation of civilization collapsing under the weight of contemporary society’s decline and decay.10 The literate bourgeoisie of the day voiced their dread that world events were moving inexorably towards the anarchic usurpation of the old order and the end of ‘civilized society’.11 These melancholic dusk hours of the nineteenth century are evoked by German writer Max Nordau, who, in his 1895 work Degeneration, bears witness to a palpable public grief for a dying world: One epoch of history is unmistakeably in its decline, and another is announcing its approach. There is a sound of rending in every tradition, and it is as though the morrow would not link itself with today. Things as they are totter and plunge, and they are suffered to reel and fall, because man is weary and there is no faith that is worth an effort to uphold them.12

This fin de siècle climate of anxiety and world weariness inevitably made its way into the artistic and literary movements of the day, shaping the motifs, tropes and symbols that came to dominate cultural thought.13 The femme fatale was one particular trope that rose to prominence during this period, gathering both ‘momentum and glamor’14 within European artistic and literary in 1884 and developed a reputation as the ‘handbook’ of the Decadence movement, which gained popularity during this period. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid. According to Patrick Bade, Huysmans’s description has become ‘one of the most famous and typical expressions of the late-nineteenth-century idea of the fatal woman’. See Patrick Bade, Femme Fatale: Images of Evil and Fascinating Women (London: Ash and Grant, 1979), 16. 10. Shearer West, Fin de Siècle (London: Bloomsbury, 1993), 1−2. 11. Ibid., 2. 12. Max Nordau, Degeneration (London:  William Heinemann, 1895), 5–6. Available online: https://archive.org/details/degeneration035137mbp (accessed 28 April 2017). 13. West, Fin de Siècle, 1. 14. Allen, Femme Fatale, 185.

12

12

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 1.1 Gustave Moreau, Salome Dancing before Herod, 1876. © Art Collection 2/ Alamy Stock Photo.

movements such as Aestheticism, Decadence, Symbolism, the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and art nouveau.15 By the closing decades of the nineteenth century, this cultural icon was decidedly in vogue – a ubiquitous symbol of the degeneration of the age and thus a figure of fascination, if not obsession, for

15. For further details about these various artistic and cultural movements of the nineteenth century, see Michelle Facos, Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2011).

13

1. The Femme Fatale

13

Figure 1.2 Gustave Moreau, L’Apparition, 1876. © Leemage via Getty Images.

artists, authors, playwrights, poets and composers. Such an obsession with the ‘fatal woman’ was, according to Patrick Bade, one of the most pervasive features of late-nineteenth-century culture, ‘appealing to men of opposing artistic creeds, symbolists and realists, rebels and reactionaries, and penetrating deeply into the popular consciousness’.16 While her antithesis – the Good Woman or 16. Bade, Femme Fatale, 6; see also Franҫoise Gaillard and Colette Windish, ‘Naked but Hairy: Women and Misogyny in Fin de Siècle Representations’, South Central Review 29, no. 3 (2012): 163–76.

14

14

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Angel in the House – also remained a stock character in the art and literature of the day, the femme fatale is remembered as a glittering yet dissolute jewel, whose uncanny manifestations were seasoned with the fin de siècle flavours of dysphoria, malevolence and enigma.17 As Bade notes: No matter where the artists and authors found their subjects, these women all bear the unmistakable stamp of the artist’s own period . . . For many it hardly mattered whether they painted Helen of Troy, Judith or Morgan-Le-Fay. The subject was always perceived in the same terms:  women as malignant, threatening, destructive and fascinating.18

Thus, the iconography of the femme fatale in fin de siècle art, music and literature stressed this figure’s diabolical otherness to a greater extent than previous artistic works.19 While the dangerousness of fatal women had always been recognized, now, in the fading light of the nineteenth century, their threat became all the more terrifying, their sexualized exoticism and malevolence designed to horrify and repel. Let us take a closer look at the dominant features of this fin de siècle femme fatale before considering the particular social forces that rendered her such a pervasive and malignant cultural icon during this period. The (Sexualized) Female of the Species Is More Deadly than the Male Two of the central attributes of the late-nineteenth-century femme fatale are her hypersexuality and her intoxicating allure, which serve as primary sources of her destructive potential. Although previous depictions of fatal women often shared these features, the sexual iconography of this figure during the fin de siècle became particularly explicit, her sexual appetites increasingly insatiable and her propensity to violence all the more shocking.20 Female sexuality was imagined in the art and literature of this period as both perilously enticing and ‘tainted with corruption and perversion’ – a marker of women’s deadliness that encoded both eroticism and death.21 In other words, the femme fatale was conceptualized as a deadly presence

17. Bade, Femme Fatale, 7−9. For an overview of the classical, religious and historical inspirations used by fin de siècle artists and writers to fashion their femmes fatales, see Henk van Os, ‘A Framing for the Femme Fatale’, in Femmes Fatales 1860–1910, ed. Henk van Os ed (Groningen: Groninger Museum, 2002), 11–19. 18. Bade, Femme Fatale, 8. 19. Allen, Femme Fatale, 12–13. 20. Ibid., 10. 21. Ibid., 2; see also Bade, Femme Fatale, 8–9.

15

1. The Femme Fatale

15

because she was just so difficult to resist  – this was her greatest, most powerful weapon.22 And therein lies the rub. Resist we must, for although the femme fatale’s sexuality promised myriad forbidden pleasures, it was also toxic, a sexual poison that she dripped into the eyes and ears of her victims, rendering them blind and deaf to her power. Scorning the traditional Victorian ideal of women’s frailty and weakness, she was perceived as posing a threat to her admirers that was shockingly physical; she stabbed, she beheaded, she bit and gouged, she trampled and stamped, she clawed and chewed and clawed some more, all the while tantalizing her victims with her most succulent smile. Yet the femme fatale’s sexuality was not only physically threatening, it could also be spiritually and morally treacherous too, seeped as it was in depravity, sinfulness and even, at times, hints of the demonic. As Małgorzata ŁuczyńskaHołdys notes, ‘Apart from the authority and control over man’s body, she also rules his soul and his imagination.’23 Moreover, the figure of the femme fatale increasingly became conflated with another iconic female image from the nineteenth century  – the prostitute. Nineteenth-century sex workers were accused of lacking sexual morality and were also identified (erroneously) as the primary carriers of the dreaded, and as yet untreatable, syphilis.24 They were thus viewed by many writers and artists of the day as a physical and spiritual trap into which their victims could all too easily fall. In contrast to this image of female moral and spiritual depravity, the (typically) male ‘victims’ of such women were often portrayed as self-denying and solitary knights, who idealized masculine asceticism over the pleasures of the flesh, and for whom the whorish femme fatale represented terrible temptation and threat.25 Men’s encounters with this ‘type’ of woman thus came to be imagined as a spiritual battle of the soul – a binarized struggle of chaste masculine goodness versus hypersexualized feminine evil.

22. Binias, Symbol and Symptom, 39. 23. Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Soft-Shed Kisses, 6. 24. Bade, Femme Fatale, 9; Elizabeth K. Menon, Evil by Design:  The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale (Urbana and Chicago:  University of Illinois Press, 2006), 94–105. Gaillard and Windish extend this fear of syphilis to include all women as potential carriers of the disease (‘Naked but Hairy’, 169). 25. Hoffmann-Curtius, ‘Constructing the Femme Fatale’, 173–7; Reinhold Heller, The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale:  Fear of Women in Nineteenth Century Art (Chicago:  University of Chicago, 1981), 11–12. Man as heroic knight brought to ruin by a femme fatale was most famously depicted in John Keats’s poem, La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1885). Thanks to Prior McRae for drawing my attention to the ascetic qualities of the heroic knight.

16

16

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Gender bending Femmes As well as enticing and terrifying audiences with her irresistible sexuality, the fin de siècle femme fatale aroused further fascination because she was so enigmatic. In the eyes of her cultural creators, she remained indefinable and elusive, a figure prowling just beyond their view, regardless of their attempts to pin her down.26 As Mary Ann Doane notes, the most striking characteristic of the femme fatale is that ‘she never really is what she seems to be. She harbors a threat which is not entirely legible, predictable, or manageable’.27 Yet, at the same time, this unknowability became another source of the fatal woman’s treacherous allure.28 As an uncanny presence, she came to represent the aberrant, the bizarre, the Other. She simply did not belong, occupying a liminal space that lay outside the cultural and gender normativities of late-nineteenth-century society  – a space considered chaotic, subversive and deadly. As Rebecca Stott explains: [The femme fatale] is always outside, either literally . . . or metaphorically, for as sexually fatal woman she represents chaos, darkness, death, all that lies beyond the safe, the known, and the normal. In effect, the major common feature of the femme fatale is that of positionality: she is a multiple sign singularised by her position of Otherness: outside, invading, abnormal, subnormal and so on (italics in original).29

One major feature of the fin de siècle fatal woman’s otherness was her subversion of dominant gender roles and discourses. Within Europe, the ideal archetype of Victorian womanhood – the Angel in the House – was imagined as virtuous, frail, socially and sexually submissive, and content to embrace her ‘natural’ roles of dutiful wife and mother. The femme fatale was portrayed as the Angel’s antithesis, her voracious sensuality perceived as both thrilling and terrifying. As Virginia Allen notes, the femmes fatales of this period are constantly represented as ‘the diametric opposite of the “good” woman who passively accepted impregnation, motherhood, domesticity, the control and domination of her sexuality by men’.30 Typically eschewing maternity and marriage, they became an archetype of subversive womanhood, immersing themselves unashamedly in those traditionally unfeminine pursuits of liberty, sex and uncontained violence.31 26. Elisabeth Bronfen, ‘Femme Fatale: Negotiations of Tragic Desire’, New Literary History 35, no. 1 (2004):  106; Helen Hanson and Catherine O’Rawe, ‘Introduction: “Cherchez la femme” ’, in Hanson and O’Rawe (eds), Femme Fatale, 1. 27. Doane, Femmes Fatales, 1. 28. Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Soft-Shed Kisses, 6. 29. Rebecca Stott, The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale: The Kiss of Death (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992), 37–8. 30. Allen, Femme Fatale, 3–4. 31. Heather Braun, The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790–1910 (Madison, NJ:  Farleigh Dickinson University Press; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012), 3; West, Fin de Siècle, 70.

17

1. The Femme Fatale

17

Figure 1.3 Giovanni Segantini, The Evil Mothers, 1894. © Belvedere Museum, Vienna.

Such an eschewal was interpreted as an arrow pointed straight at the heart of their own death-bringing potential, their barren wombs a scandalous rejection of the maternal, nurturing role associated with the Angel in the House.32 The femme fatale’s violation of acceptable femininity is powerfully evoked in Giovanni Segantini’s rather terrifying painting The Evil Mothers (1894), where a woman lies tangled in the branches of a leafless, sterile tree, which stands against a backdrop of dry, monochrome sterility (Figure 1.3). Nestled by her right breast lies an infant (seemingly lifeless), whom she turns away from, a look of pain and erotic pleasure slicked across her face. This figure served as a warning to women who eschewed their ‘biological destiny’33 and became instead ‘mere empty shells of what they might have been had they not forsaken the sacred duties of motherhood to pursue their lascivious private pleasures’.34 In this sense, the femme fatale was a gender outlaw, embodying women’s ‘dangerous desire for self-determination’.35 She therefore threatened the highly gendered, androcentric social order that was rooted within late-nineteenth-century European culture, stoking fin de siècle anxieties about social dissolution, chaos and decline. She smashed through gendered ideologies of masculine superiority and feminine submissiveness, exposing their fragility; she emasculated men by challenging their claims to power. Masquerading in hyperfeminine drag, she hid a masculine core of sexual assertiveness, power and 32. Heller, Earthly Chimera, 11. 33. Katie B. Edwards, Admen and Eve: The Bible in Contemporary Advertising, The Bible in the Modern World 48 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Pres, 2012), 56. 34. Bram Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 94. See also Bade, Femme Fatale, 19. 35. Elisabeth Bronfen, Night Passages:  Philosophy, Literature, and Film (New York: Colombia University Press, 2008), 307. Also Allen, Femme Fatale, 3.

18

18

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

violence.36 Little wonder, then, that she became a cultural icon that could inspire anxiety, anger and awe; little wonder too that her creators would often curtail her lethal threat, either by domesticating her (rehabilitating her as an Angel in the House) or, more typically, destroying her. As Heller notes, ‘Despite the powers her sensuality might give her, she retained the fate of all women as the 19th Century interpreted it: failing to fulfil her natural function as mother, she could generate only death, including her own.’37 The Earthly Chimera Another aspect of the fin de siècle femme fatale’s otherness expressed within her visual and literary representations was her animality and her affiliation with nonhuman or even monstrous realms. Particularly within the artistic and literary circles of the Decadent and Symbolist movements, she was often represented as a contemporary, sexualized version of those monsters of ancient myths  – part human, part animal, an ‘earthly chimera’ whose allure rendered her desirable and repulsive, feminine and monstrous, Eros and Thanatos.38 Woman and animal became coextensive to a degree, each sharing the same brutish nature. At times, there were even sexual dimensions to this relationship, as tropes of bestiality arose to remind audiences that women could be riddled with baseness and perversity.39 This, of course, added to her identification as Other, shoving her away from ‘normal’ human experience and those traditionally safe feminine spaces of domesticity and motherhood. Defined thus, the body of the femme fatale became an object to be chopped up and reassembled in whatever ghastly Frankenstein-like form best suited the preoccupations of her creator. Her head and breasts often remained intact, fetishized as sites of her lethal allure; yet these were at times attached to the haunches and torsos of other beasts, thus forming grotesque parodies of mythical

36. The notion of masquerade as a ‘disguise’ was first articulated by Joan Rivière, ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10 (1929): 303–13. Rivière suggested that women adopt a masquerade of hyperfemininity in order to move around and survive in a masculine world and thus to disabuse any suspicions of their desire to seize masculine power. To avoid appearing masculine, they enact overly feminine traits and characteristics in an attempt to deflect suspicion of their ‘real’ intentions. For further discussion of Rivière’s masquerade theory in relation to the femme fatale, see Mary Anne Doane, ‘Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator’, Screen 23 (1982): 74– 87. For further discussion of the gender-disrupting femme-homme in fin de siècle European culture, see Menon, Evil by Design, 203–11. 37. Heller, Earthly Chimera, 13. For example, in Oscar Wilde’s play Salomé (1891), Salomé is crushed under the shields of her stepfather’s soldiers at his behest, after he witnesses her kissing John the Baptist’s severed head. Meanwhile, in Frank Wedekind’s 1904 play, Pandora’s Box, the murderous femme fatale Lulu is eventually killed by Jack the Ripper. 38. Ibid., 12; Binias, Symbol and Symptom, 38–9. 39. Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, 272–332; Bade, Femme Fatale, 8.

19

1. The Femme Fatale

19

Figure 1.4 Fernand Khnopff, Caresses, 1896. © Heritage Images via Getty Images.

creatures, such as the sphinx and chimera, or of predators (red in tooth and claw) including leopards, snakes and blood-sucking bats. Paintings by Symbolist artists such as Franz von Stuck (Kiss of the Sphinx, 1895; Sphinx, 1901), Felicien Rops (Pornokrates, 1896) and Fernand Khnopff (Caresses, 1896)  (Figure  1.4) evoked women’s base, animalistic qualities. These images are menacing, even repulsive, inviting us to see the women depicted therein as predatory and untamed  –  monstrous goddesses of cruelty.40 They also serve to further encode women’s sexuality as both alluring and dangerous, an intoxicating mix that spelled disaster for their innocent prey. Another equally bestial image adopted by fin de siècle artists and literati in their depictions of the femme fatale was that of the vampire. Compared to earlier traditions of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, where this figure was invariably male and his victims female, by the second half of the nineteenth century these sharp-toothed creatures had become predominantly female in popular culture, their diet consisting of the lifeblood of their hapless mates.41 As depicted beautifully in Edvard Munch’s 1895 lithograph (Figure 1.5), the female vampire was renowned for her carnal sensuality, which had a voracious and at times cannibalistic appetite; yet her victims found it near impossible to resist, despite the obvious dangers that she posed. She thus represented to perfection the fatal woman of the fin de siècle – uncanny, deviant, with cruel appetites and a merciless hunger for destruction and death. Erotic Exotics A further defining feature of the fin de siècle femme fatale much loved by artists and writers of the day was her foreignness. Such oriental exoticism was often showcased as another element of her otherness, which represented a marker of her unbelonging within nineteenth-century Europe, where whiteness was a

40. Hoffmann-Curtius, ‘Constructing the Femme Fatale’, 167–70. 41. Bade, Femme Fatale, 12; Finley, ‘One of These Days’, 215–17.

20

20

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 1.5 Edvard Munch, Vampire, 1895. © Artepics/Alamy Stock Photo.

taken-for-granted sign of civilization, colonial domination and power.42 Like the (often feminized) foreign lands invaded and seized by European colonial powers of the day, the foreign femme fatale was a source of both fascination and fear. Objectified and eroticized to excess by the colonial male gaze, she was viewed as a potential threat to the established order that required mastery and conquest.43 This ‘porno-tropics’ tradition (to use Anne McClintock’s evocative phrase) thus conceptualized the foreign (non-European) femme as ‘a fantastic magic lantern of the mind’ onto which her European creators (and audiences) could project their desires for and anxieties about the colonized Other.44

42. Jennifer Yee, ‘Colonial Virility and the Femme Fatale: Scenes from the Battle of the Sexes in French Indochina’, French Studies 54 (2000), 470. For further details on Orientalism within the visual arts during the fin de siècle, see Facos, Nineteenth Century Art, 154–62. 43. Suren Lalvani, ‘Consuming the Exotic Other’, Criticism Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1995): 269. 44. Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather:  Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Context (New York: Routledge, 1995), 22. See also Stott, Fabrication, 34–6.

21

1. The Femme Fatale

21

As a result of this European propensity to embrace the porno-tropics tradition, figures such as Cleopatra, Carmen and Salome thrilled and terrified audiences with their erotically charged ‘foreign’ ways; their heated sensuality, alien beauty and strange sexual peccadilloes represented a hazard to the conventional social and sexual norms of nineteenth-century Europe. These women appeared on stage and canvas draped in outlandish costumes, with jewels dripping from their foreheads and coiled around their arms, ankles and fingers. Dark, kohl-smudged eyes, deep-red lips and an excess of exposed flesh (whatever its hue) likewise confirmed their otherness, marking them out as so utterly antipodal to fin de siècle European audiences that they could not help but enthral.

Origins of the Fin de Siècle Femme Fatale As I  indicated in the introduction, the femme fatale has always been a cultural construct – a creative invention – rather than an actual reality. She is the product of multiple articulations of dominant misogynistic discourses, which, when linked together, create and sustain the myth of her monstrous presence. As Slavoj Žižek suggests, ‘The threat of the femme fatale is thus a false one: it is effectively a fantasmatic support of patriarchal domination, the figure of the enemy engendered by the patriarchal system itself.’45 In particular, the fatal woman often functions as an ‘anxiety pointer’46 – a scapegoat upon which the insecurities and preoccupations currently threatening dominant social discourses are projected. She thus embodies her creators’ fears and fantasies about all that is causing their societies to decay and decline. With this in mind, what fears and fantasies might have contributed to those cultural obsessions about the femme fatale that arose in nineteenth-century fin de siècle Europe? As mentioned earlier, this period was marked by an overwhelming sense of terminal decline; artists and writers expressed their anxieties about living through ‘the death throes of a diseased society and the winding down of an exhausted culture’.47 Social realities such as urban decay, industrialization, war, poverty, sexual anarchy and imperial angst stirred up fears of social change and degeneration, which were almost apocalyptic in their intensity.48 In response, a backlash arose against those held responsible for instigating such change, and ‘strict border controls’ were erected to protect and sustain those areas of social life that were perceived to be under threat.49 45. Slavoj Žižek, The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime:  On David Lynch’s Lost Highway (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000), 14. 46. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 171. 47. Elaine Showalter, Sexual Anarchy:  Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle (London: Virago Press, 1992), 1. 48. Ibid., 2. Also Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), 97. 49. Showalter, Sexual Anarchy, 4.

22

22

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Two such areas that became particular sources of public anxiety during this period were the thorny issues of gender and sexuality. The Industrial Revolution and increased urbanization led to changes in the workforce and domestic realm, with a growing number of women taking up employment in offices and factories. Patriarchal gender codes and ideologies, which had until then governed sexual identity and behaviour with near religious intensity, began to crumble; the meaning of traditional binaries of male/female and masculine/feminine were thus increasingly contested and redefined.50 Terms such as ‘feminism’ and ‘homosexuality’ were used for the first time and the arrival of the New Woman51 – with her demands for increased social, political and sexual emancipation – fuelled further fears of social breakdown within the institutions of family and marriage. Women’s liberation was thus clearly ‘on the menu’ in popular European culture  – an increasing source of discussion and contention in literature, art and theatre, not to mention on the street and in the corridors of power.52 Yet, while women’s social and political presence developed a little during this period, and while there were some small improvements to the rights and liberties of a minority of privileged women,53 these changes were so negligible that they were never going to pose a major challenge to the patriarchal status quo.54 Nevertheless, 50. Ibid., 8. 51. The New Woman was, like the femme fatale, a cultural construct, a discursive response to the women’s movement during the fin de siècle. The term was coined in 1894 by writer Sarah Grand to refer to late-Victorian feminists and social activists. To her detractors, the New Woman was an apocalyptic figure of perversity, chaos and decay; as Showalter notes, she was perceived as ‘an anarchic figure who threatened to turn the world upside down and to be on top in a wild carnival of social and sexual misrule’ (Sexual Anarchy, 38). According to Sally Ledger, the New Woman was thus marked within the popular press of the day as ‘a problem, as a challenge to the apparently homogenous culture of Victorianism . . . She was dangerous, a threat to the status quo’. See Sally Ledger, The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997), 9. Yet, in reality, those female social reformers who were identified as New Women simply sought to embrace and endorse some fairly restricted opportunities for women in education, the workplace and the socio-sexual arena (Showalter, Sexual Anarchy, 39). 52. West, Fin de Siècle, 86. 53. In Great Britain, for example, a number of new laws were introduced, improving women’s marital and property rights and granted (at least some) women better access to social mobility, education and employment. The Matrimonial Causes Act (1857) made divorce accessible to women for the first time; women’s franchisement was initially raised in British Parliament in 1867; John Stuart Mill published his essay, The Subjugation of Women, in 1869, which drew attention to the inequitable social position which most women endured; and, in 1870 and then 1882, the Married Women’s Property Acts were passed, which codified some fairly minor property rights for married women. Other legal reforms followed suit, slowly but surely, over the following decades. See Stott, Fabrication, 12; Bade, Femme Fatale, 23. 54. Bade, Femme Fatale, 23; Showalter, Sexual Anarchy, 7.

23

1. The Femme Fatale

23

such reforms were enough, it seems, to cause deep-seated anxiety, if not hysteria, among some sections of society, including the artists and writers who conjured up the femme fatale during this period. A  feverish backlash arose, aimed against individuals and movements  – including women’s rights movements  – who were considered a threat to Europe’s civilized bourgeois society.55 This backlash took place in the public consciousness of Western imperial powers such as Britain and France, within political realms, in the public press and within the arts. In all these locations, feminists and New Women were represented within ‘a collage of opinion, misunderstanding and fear’ as an anarchic source of social degeneracy.56 These women were accused of compromising the strictly segregated spheres of masculine and feminine, considered essential to maintaining social order and moral purity, and were thus blamed for the ‘mysterious dimness’ that was enveloping the Western fin de siècle world.57 Within this milieu of apocalyptic panic, the femme fatale was given new cultural prominence as a grotesque and excessive reimagining of the New Woman’s destructive power. Immortalized and contained on page, stage and canvas via an endemic ‘iconography of misogyny’,58 this bestial, chaos-creating creature gave voice and shape to a surfeit of anxious discourses concerning the threat that ‘gruesome womanhood’ posed to established gender systems.59 As Erin Finley observes, ‘In men’s wariness about losing social authority to the weaker sex . . . they created the beast-like woman, conclusively equating aggressive feminist women with demonic women’.60 This beast-like woman – the femme fatale – thus became a scapegoat, a pathologized body upon which all the gendered dis-ease and anxiety of this period were heaped. And yet, despite her ‘gruesomeness’, there was also acknowledgement that the fatal woman had a terrifying power to beguile. Yes, she was deadly and in many ways grotesque, but she was also irresistible – a mesmerizing snare whose outlandish sexuality lay at the heart of her lethality. Cultural creators of the femme fatale wrestled with this paradox in their portrayals, sculpting their anxieties into a shapely, sensuous female form, justifying their fears of female licentiousness and

55. Showalter, Sexual Anarchy, 4–8; Stott, Fabrication, 13–15, 40; Hedgecock, Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature, 3. Of course, there were also more supportive responses to these social changes during this period; as West notes, however, whatever glimpses of power women began to see were inevitably opposed by someone (Fin de Siècle, 87). 56. West, Fin de Siècle, 86; see also Doane, Femmes Fatales, 1–2; Stott, Fabrication, 26–30. 57. Nordau, Degeneration, 6. 58. Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, viii. 59. Hoffmann-Curtius, ‘Constructing the Femme Fatale’, 170; see also Sarah Bielski, ‘The Femme Fatale as Seen in the Works of J.  K. Huysmans, Felicien Rops and Aubrey Beardsley’, Art Criticism 17, no. 1 (2001): 46–54. 60. Finley, ‘One of These Days’, 214. Similar remarks are made by Allen, Femme Fatale, 191; Heller, Earthly Chimera, 9.

24

24

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

gendered anarchy by insisting on her dangerousness, rationalizing their desires and vulnerabilities by blaming her perverse, animalistic allure. Moreover, by endowing the femme fatale with the spicy flavours of the exotic, her creators marked out her alienation from European conceptions of ‘acceptable’ womanhood. She therefore tapped into the imperial anxieties of the latter half of the nineteenth century, a time of unprecedented colonial expansion led particularly by Great Britain and France.61 While earlier policies of imperial relations had encouraged a degree of acculturation among European officials and traders operating in the colonies, the fin de siècle witnessed a growth in colonialist intolerance of the foreign Other, fuelled by anxieties about the effects of racial ‘mingling’ and ‘crossbreeding’ on the ‘health’ of the nation.62 Xenophobic sentiments ran high, as anxieties about resistance and retaliation from the ‘barbaric’ colonies further fuelled both a fascination with and a suspicion of the exotic outsider.63 This othering of the non-European colonial subject also melted into those same anxieties concerning the maintenance of traditional gender roles and sexualities within European society. The colonial landscape – the Orient, the Dark Continent – was imagined as a place of limitless sexual license, an ‘imaginary realm of desire’ utterly alien within European sexual landscapes.64 In particular, foreign women, with their wild tropical sensuality, were regarded as dangerously uncharted sources of immorality and libidinal abandon, who embodied ‘the glamour and the horror of Otherness’.65 With her constructed orientalism, the exotic femme fatale therefore symbolized a pernicious threat to colonial order and masculine authority.66 She was an ‘ungovernable body’,67 who was both dangerous and dangerously desirable.

Reflecting Back and Looking Ahead As the nineteenth century slipped away and the new century tiptoed in without its anticipated apocalypse, the fervour surrounding the fatal woman eventually began to wane.68 Yet, she did not disappear altogether; although her fin de siècle heyday was over, she left twentieth-century audiences with a striking legacy, her myriad 61. Reina Lewis, Gendering Orientalism:  Race, Femininity, and Representation (London: Routledge, 1996), 12. 62. Ibid., 13; see also Stott, Fabrication, 4. 63. Stott, Fabrication, 2–11. 64. Ibid., 35. 65. Yee, ‘Colonial Virility’, 476. 66. Ibid., 478; Lalvani, ‘Consuming the Exotic Other’, 269; Diane Negra, Off-White Hollywood (London: Routledge, 2001), 62–3. 67. Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 14. See also Stott, Fabrication, 50. 68. One temporary exception in the belle époque was the Hollywood ‘vamp’ (short for vampire)  – a silver-screen character who invariably tried to seduce her leading man for nefarious purposes. Famous Hollywood vamps of this period included Pola Negri, Sarah Bernhardt, Theda Bara and Alla Nazimova, whose enigmatic personas (both off

25

1. The Femme Fatale

25

afterlives from this period having a profound and lingering influence that still ‘festers among us’.69 We see this clearly in the following section, where we consider the femme fatale’s next appearance as cultural icon  – in the hard-boiled fiction and film noir traditions that arose during the first half of the twentieth century. As we will see, she returns with some style – still lovely, still lethal, but nevertheless bearing the marks of her new cultural location.

A Dame to Die for: The Femme Fatale in Hard-boiled Fiction and Film Noir Although the fatal woman was no stranger to literature written before the twentieth century, she made a memorable reappearance in the American hard-boiled crime fiction70 of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Indeed, she brought a touch of glamour to the ‘gritty realism’ that embodied this literary form, thereby prefacing her equally dazzling advent in 1940s film noir. Penned by authors including Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, James M.  Cain and Dorothy B.  Hughes, hardboiled crime fiction brimmed with a bevy of memorable femmes fatales, including Brigid O’Shaughnessy (Hammett, The Maltese Falcon), Helen Grayle (Chandler, Farewell My Lovely) and Phyllis Nirdlinger71 (Cain, Double Indemnity), to name but a few. Within these novels, stereotypes and assumptions are challenged and disturbed, while justice is obscured behind multilayered shadows, leaving the reader uneasy about the narrative’s lack of remedy or moral closure.72 The fatal woman’s primary antagonist in this literary setting is typically the hard-boiled hero  – the cynical, hard-bitten and ever-suffering private eye, who, like the

and on screen), exotic appearance and typecasting in classic femme fatale roles fascinated audiences during this period. The vamp gradually fell out of favour in the 1920s, with audience preferences switching to the all-American girl, typified by actresses such as Clara Bow and Mary Pickford. See Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 55–83. 69. Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, ix. 70. Although hard-boiled crime literature developed into an international literary form, it started out predominantly in the United States, arising as a successor of both the dime novel and pulp fiction produced for Black Mask magazine during the 1920s. As a genre, it defies easy definition; a common feature, however, is its propensity to mix social realism with a highly stylized form of writing, which includes vibrant and at times surreal verbal imagery and a lean, crisp and suitably wisecracking style. For further discussion of hardboiled crime fiction, see Andrew Pepper, ‘The “Hard-boiled” Genre’, in A Companion to Crime Fiction, ed. Charles J. Rzepka and Lee Horsley (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2010), 140–51. 71. This name was changed to Phyllis Dietrichson in the noir movie version of Double Indemnity (1944). 72. Lee Horsley, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 2005), 69.

26

26

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

hard-boiled ideology itself, is usually white, heterosexual and male.73 He spends his days and nights wandering through labyrinthine alleyways lit by the hum of phosphorescent lights, never afraid to sojourn in the criminal world when the need arises.74 A tough and cynical lone wolf, he is as likely to use his fists as his little grey cells,75 while his masculinity and homosocial moral code are his most potent defence against bullets and bottle blondes. Tracing his disillusionment as he stumbles around a shadow world, this literary tradition gives cynical voice to the malcontent of a country rocked by the Great Depression, organized crime and political corruption.76 Unlike earlier ‘golden age’ detective fiction by English authors such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, the hard-boiled novel drips with a steely realism, reflecting the actuality of early-twentieth-century American life. This is a chronically corrupt ‘world gone wrong’, where justice does not prevail and where the actions of one detective are unlikely to restore any lasting order.77 Within this gloomy hard-boiled world, the femme fatale slinks, pouts and poses in a nightmarish urban nightscape crammed with smoky jazz bars, explosive violence and rain-slicked streets that are ‘dark with something more than night’.78 Her relationship with the detective hero is always tantalizing and drives the narrative action through myriad twists and turns. For the detective, this ‘spider woman’ is his nemesis and, occasionally, his love interest too – another shadowy landscape in which he can lose both his way and his hard-boiled masculinity. While our lonely, tarnished knight can just about tolerate the company of those maternal, sexless women who occasionally pop up to bandage his wounds, his encounters with the femme fatale leave him anxious, sleepless and reaching for the bourbon.79 Just as this hard-boiled fiction created a new stage for the femme fatale, so too did the film tradition of 1940s and 1950s Hollywood that later became

73. Frank Krutnik, In a Lonely Street:  Film Noir, Genre and Masculinity (Florence, KY: Routledge, 1991), 42. 74. Ibid., 39. 75. While the hard-boiled hero is not averse to using violence, he typically does so as a necessary postscript to his more metaphysical pursuits, when his words and deductions force him to confront the brutality of a dark, nihilistic world. His violence reveals he is part of this world, but it is a philosophic violence, borne of his search for meaning and justice. Thanks to Prior McRae, who shared these insights with me in a personal conversation. 76. Lee Horsley, The Noir Thriller, Crime Files Series (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001), 23–44. 77. Horsley, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction, 70. 78. Raymond Chandler, Introduction to Finger Man (London:  Ace, 1960), 5; cited in Horsley, Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction, 70. 79. See James Shokoff, ‘The Feminine Ideal in the Masculine Private Eye’, Clues 14, no. 2 (1993):  51–62; Koichi Suwabe, ‘The Case of the Femme Fatale: A Poetics of Hardboiled Detective Fiction’, Journal of American Literature Society of Japan 2 (2003): 55–72.

27

1. The Femme Fatale

27

known as film noir.80 Represented by actors such as Barbara Stanwyck, Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner, the film noir femme fatale cast an especially glamourous silhouette upon Hollywood’s silver screens, her sexual menace thrilling and terrifying her audiences. Yet this fatal femme was not merely a titillating trinket used to decorate the monochrome noir vista; she was a vibrant catalyst to the harsh drama that lay at the core of this film series. Like the hard-boiled novels on which they were originally based,81 film noir focuses in uncomfortable depth on themes of eroticism, urban bleakness, violence and death, all of which are played out in a nightmarish cityscape of cramped shadows and half-light.82 The films propel their viewers into endless milieus of smoky nightclubs and gambling dens, cocktails and cigarettes, cheap motels, rainy nights and ill-li(ci)t alleys; they assault audiences with scenes that are perpetually ‘dark and cold, moody and mean, [and] existentially void’.83 Stylistically, film noir reflects complex themes through its effective use of chiaroscuro and lowkey lighting techniques; sharp contrasts between deep shadows and dazzling lights imbue the screen with a disorienting sense of narrative ambivalence, while close-up shots and tight framing produce a claustrophobic feeling of entrapment. Nightscapes are used frequently as mise en scène, accentuating ‘the toxic underbelly of the blanc world of classic modernity’, in which the darkness itself reveals the corruption, crime and violence pervasive in these urban

80. Classic film noir is a term that has come to represent a series of diverse Hollywood thrillers and melodramas from the 1940s and 1950s. The term was derived from the book-publishing venture the Série Noire (1945), which produced French translations of contemporary crime fiction, including works by American hard-boiled fiction writers. In their definitive essay on this topic, Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton describe film noir as ‘a group of motion pictures from one country sharing certain traits (style, atmosphere, subject matter . . .) strongly enough to mark them unequivocally and to give them, over time, an unmistakeable character’. See Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton, ‘Towards a Definition of Film Noir’, in Film Noir Reader, ed. Alain Silver and James Ursini (New  York:  Limelight Editions, 1998), 17. This essay originally appeared in Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton, Panorama du Film Noir Américain: 1941−1953 (Paris:  les Éditions de Minuit, 1955). For more detailed discussion of film noir  – its origins, styles and relationship to hard-boiled literature – I highly recommend Andrew Spicer, Film Noir, Inside Film (Harlow : Pearson Education, 2002). 81. Early films noir based on hard-boiled crime novels include Dashiell Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely (1944, under the title Murder, My Sweet) and The Big Sleep (1946), and James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Double Indemnity (1944). 82. Borde and Chaumeton, ‘Towards a Definition of Film Noir’, 19. 83. Jerold J. Abrams, ‘From Sherlock Holmes to the Hard-Boiled Detective in Film Noir’, in The Philosophy of Film Noir, ed. Mark T. Conrad (Lexington:  University Press of Kentucky, 2005), 69.

28

28

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

settings.84 Our (typically male) hero of film noir may try to shine a light on this dark world – uncovering truths, lies, treachery and guilt – and he may succeed, but only in small, temporary ways. The films’ plot lines are therefore soaked with impotent anger and disenchantment, reminding us that nothing anyone does will chase the darkness away. For, like its hard-boiled literary precursors, there is a distancing from any moral clarity in film noir; all we are left with is a gnawing sense that we inhabit a universe where ‘the doomed live out their lives under the averted gaze of an indifferent deity, and that if there is deliverance, it is a fluke’.85 And yet, there are moments in Hollywood films noir when our hero’s disenchantment peels away to reveal a man with complex emotions and an alltoo-human weakness for the enigma of dangerous liaisons. The catalyst for these moments is very often his encounter with the femme fatale.86 As in hard-boiled literature of this era, the noiresque fatal woman tends to be a crucial focal point to the plot, to the extent that she, rather than the actual crime or mystery, becomes the ‘enigma’ that the noir hero must investigate.87 Yet his quest is often hampered by this spider woman; her eroticism bamboozles and bewilders him, drawing him into her sticky and treacherous web. He therefore has to resist her fatal charms and find a way to contain, control or even destroy her. As Abrams notes, ‘Women are trouble in his world, sleek and dangerous, beautiful and deadly. He handles them very carefully’.88 Dare we take a closer look? Exquisite Violence The femme fatale spends a lot of time in the darkness of the hard-boiled or noir narrative, occupying the shadowy confines of her urban milieu, be it a nightclub, a barely lit back street or the claustrophobic confines of an oppressive patriarchal household. Despite the shadows that surround her, she is, nevertheless, a glowing presence in the narrative; her sexuality positively sizzles while she sashays from scene to scene in the high fashions and even higher heels of mid-twentiethcentury Hollywood couture.89 Her provocative appearance is also mirrored by her slick and sometimes shocking speech acts, which she fires from glossy lips, giving her both a visual and oral-aural potency that could unsettle even the most

84. Elisabeth Bronfen, ‘The Female Side of Crime: Film Noir’s Femme Fatale and the Dark Side of Modernity’, in Crime Culture:  Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film, ed. Bran Nicol, Eugene McNulty and Patricia Pulham (London: Continuum, 2011), 73. 85. Bernard F. Dick, ‘Columbia’s Dark Ladies and the Femmes Fatales of Film Noir’, Literature/Film Quarterly 23, no. 3 (1995): 155. 86. Not all films noir include a classic femme fatale character. Examples of fatale-less noir movies include Force of Evil (1948) and The Blue Gardenia (1953). 87. Christine Gledhill, ‘Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism’, in Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 28. 88. Abrams, ‘Hard-Boiled Detective’, 76. 89. Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, 54; Neroni, Violent Woman, 22.

29

1. The Femme Fatale

29

cynical onlooker. Her words are often ripe with multiple meaning and suggestion, at times beguiling, at other times cutting to the quick, but always designed to hook her audience’s attention. She is an erotic fantasy – a ‘glorified body of awesome excitation’ who embodies a mythical and deadly femininity.90 Moreover, like her fin de siècle sisters, this noiresque femme fatale exudes a sexuality that is steeped in violence. With one bat of her heavily mascaraed eyelashes, she can whip her admirers into a frenzy of desire. Yet, once she has them where she wants them, she is less likely to fulfil their fantasies than shoot them with the gun she totes as a symbol of her ‘phallic power’.91 Sometimes, she may not pull the trigger herself, but destroys her victims by luring them towards their own self-destruction. So smitten are they by this spider woman, they would do anything – and risk everything – just to win a wink of approval, a smouldering glance or even one soft kiss from those desirable lips. But these marks of affection come at a heavy price; for the sexuality of the hard-boiled and noir femme fatale is a ‘dark omen’ that heralds only violence, danger and death.92 And yet, this strange conflation of female danger and desire makes the spider woman’s sexuality no less irresistible. Her victims know that she will dance them into a spiral of disaster, but, like a modern-day siren, her fatally honeyed tones seem only to whisper promises of unconstrained ecstasy.93 Film noir titles, such as Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Deadly Is the Female (1950) and Murder, My Sweet (1944), twist together the allure of the femme fatale’s forbidden sexuality and its inherent deadliness, leaving the viewer tingling with the erotic promise of sadomasochistic fantasy. Nevertheless, although the hard-boiled and noir femme fatale uses her sexuality in ways that are undoubtedly self-serving, it is rarely a source of her own sexual pleasure. She may make promises of love to her (typically male) victim, and may appear as smitten as he is by their dangerous liaison, yet, ultimately, this is revealed as a facade – an act she performs to ensnare and pacify her hapless lovers. The femme fatale flaunts, teases, thrills and kills in order to gain something for herself, something that she wants – not sexual satisfaction or desire, but more typically money, social power or an egotistical enjoyment of exerting control over her victims. Driven more by avarice than amour, she will stop at nothing to achieve these goals. As Elizabeth Bronfen suggests, the noir and hard-boiled fatal woman ‘entertains a narcissistic pleasure at the deployment of her own ability to dupe the men who fall for her, even as she is merciless in manipulating them for her own ends’.94

90. Krutnik, In A Lonely Street, 43; also Spicer, Film Noir, 91. 91. Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, 54. 92. Barbara Hales, ‘Projecting Trauma: The Femme Fatale in Weimar and Hollywood Film Noir’, Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture 23 (2007): 232. 93. Bronfen, Night Passages, 296. 94. Bronfen, ‘Femme Fatale’, 106.

30

30

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Queer Noir Femmes While sexualized violence is a central feature of the noir and hard-boiled femme fatale, this figure also shares another characteristic with her fin de siècle forerunners: her subversion, or queering, of traditional gender norms and discourses dominant within her cultural milieu. The fatal woman’s persona during this period contrasts starkly with models of ‘acceptable’ womanhood (homemakers, wives, mothers and sexually coy ‘girls next door’) as defined by early-twentieth-century American social mores. Popular Hollywood novels and films from the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s often showcased women who cohered with these mores – women who knew their place and who would always stand by (or usually a little behind) their man. These women were typically powerless, insecure and dependent on men for their survival; they were, as Jan Wager suggests, femmes attrapées – women trapped within the discursive landscapes of this era.95 In contrast, hard-boiled and noir femmes fatales scorned the constrictive gender regulations that dictated women’s lives, thereby exposing their impermanence and fragility.96 Sure, they donned the drag of femininity in their appearance and sociosexual performances, but it was a perverse and sexually loaded hyperfemininity (or an excess of femininity, to use Mary Anne Doane’s lovely term)97 designed only to intoxicate and entrap their victims. The fetishistic image of Phyllis Dietrichson’s jewelled ankle walking down the stairs to meet Walter Neff (Double Indemnity), Gilda’s erotic nightclub performance (Gilda, 1946), Helen Trent’s flirtation with killer Sam Wild (Born to Kill, 1947) – the fatal woman’s gendered excess marked her as a perversion of how women should behave. She was an unwelcome sexual presence who ‘inserted herself into the male world as a threat to its hegemony’,98 and who revealed the terrifying threat that women, unconstrained by social and sexual mores, could pose. Yet, like her fin de siècle sisters, the noiresque femme fatale’s hyperfemininity hid a rock-hard core of masculinity. Holding a martini in one velvet-gloved hand and a Walther PPK in the other, she eschewed traditional female passivity, gatecrashing the classically masculine territory of social and sexual violence. As Raymond Borde and Étienne Chaumeton state, the femme fatale was a ‘new type of woman, manipulative and evasive, as hard bitten as her environment, ready to shake down or to trade shots with anyone’.99 She therefore discombobulated her audience, refusing to let them locate her within the framework of traditional

95. Jans B. Wager, Dames in the Driver’s Seat: Re-Reading Film Noir (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005), 4, 20. 96. Ronald R. Thomas, ‘The Dream of the Empty Camera:  Image, Evidence, and Authentic American Style in American Photographs and Farewell, My Lovely’, Criticism 36, no. 3 (1994): 437−8. 97. Doane, ‘Film and the Masquerade’, 82. 98. Thomas, ‘Dream of the Empty Camera’, 431−2. 99. Borde and Chaumeton, ‘Towards a Definition of Film Noir’, 22.

31

1. The Femme Fatale

31

gender roles.100 Indeed, her appropriation of masculinity to further her own ends reversed these roles, threatening her male victims with symbolic emasculation.101 The male hero’s ability to contain or avoid this reversal – by remaining immune to the fatal woman’s charms – thereby reiterated his ‘firm, self-contained manhood’ and allowed him to escape her dangerous clutches, masculinity intact.102 Another trope of gender disruption that was prominent among hard-boiled and noir fatal women was their eschewal of the traditionally feminine spaces of family and marriage. As Julie Grossman notes, these women were ‘lawless’ agents of feminine desire, ‘rebelling against the patriarchal relegation of women to the domestic sphere where they are deemed passive and valued only in relation to their maternal and wifely vocation’.103 The spider woman was rarely a mother – and if she was, she was a bad mother. And yes, she might be married, but her husband was usually destined to end up either in jail for some crime she had orchestrated or trussed up in the trunk of her lover’s car. As Chris Straayer observes, ‘the American dream of home, family, and “security” is precisely the feminine fulfilment which the femme fatale intended to elude’.104 And, because of all these things, her gender remained unstable and elusive  – a source of chaos and anxiety for those who confronted her. She did not play by the rules; indeed, she delighted in breaking them, using her excess of femininity to destabilize those gendered expectations held as customary, even sacred, in mid-century American society. A Hard-boiled Otherness Like her earlier sisters from the fin de siècle period, the hard-boiled and noir femme fatale is likewise othered by her association with animality, psychosis and sociocultural difference.105 On page and screen, fatal women ‘shrieked’, ‘clawed’ and ‘snarled’ their way through various hard-boiled and noir narratives, displaying at times a terrifying propensity to hysteria, maladjustment and insanity.106 As Lee 100. See Shokoff, ‘Feminine Ideal’, 51–62. 101. As Spicer notes, such gender role reversal is one of film noir’s most distinguishing features (Film Noir, 84). 102. Megan E. Abbott, ‘“Nothing You Can’t Fix”:  Screening Marlowe’s Masculinity’, Studies in the Novel 35, no. 3 (2003): 307. 103. Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir, 4.  Grossman is referring particularly to the femme fatale in film noir, but her description here is apt for femmes fatales presented in other historical locations and cultural texts. See also Bronfen, ‘Female Side of Crime’, 76; James F. Maxfield, The Fatal Woman: Sources of Male Anxiety in American Film Noir, 1941−1999 (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1996), 168–9. 104. Chris Straayer, ‘Femmes Fatales or Lesbian Femmes: Bound in Sexual Différance’, in Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 153. 105. Horsley, Noir Thriller, 132–3. 106. In Raymond Chandler’s novel The Big Sleep, for example, femme fatale Carmen Sternwood is a sexually rapacious, opium-chomping vamp with ‘sharp predatory teeth’; her homicidal urges are explained as a symptom of some undefined psychopathology. For other

32

32

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Horsley notes, ‘The equation of female aggression and sexuality with perverse moral madness and mental sickness is one of the commonplaces of the time, the strongest implication being that certain kinds of sexual behaviour in women itself undermines “sane” social arrangements.’107 Apparently, a woman could not be violent and claim ownership to a hungry sexuality without being either psychotic, drug addled or, in some sense, less than human. Additionally, while mid-century American depictions of the femme fatale did not share those obsessions with Orientalism so prevalent in nineteenth-century European culture, the otherness of the hard-boiled and noir fatal woman may still be understood – metaphorically at least – in racial terms. Like gender, race becomes another ‘border’ the femme fatale appears to have crossed. As Eric Lott and Manthia Diawara both note, in film noir (literally ‘black film’), the stylistic feature of darkness is soaked in metaphorical significance – the darkness of shadows, ill-lit stairwells, louche nightclubs and the like represents the presence and enactment of danger, evil and immorality.108 Similarly, in hard-boiled literature, the nightscapes and shadowy locations of the narrative are inevitably dangerous spaces, filled with ‘shady characters’ and ‘dark’ deeds that constantly threaten the hard-boiled protagonist. Within these filmic and literary traditions, the ‘dark’ thus signifies a threat – both literally and metaphorically – which all too easily becomes a trope for the literal and moral threat of race – of dark-ness.109 While these texts inevitably focus on the corruption and degradation of white lives and experiences, such corruption and degradation appear to simmer in and erupt from the ‘dark’. The inherent moral sanctity of all that is ‘white’ is thus preserved, its occasional rottenness blamed on an unwelcome seepage of all that is dark. As Lott explains: examples of women in hard-boiled literature likewise described as bloodthirsty, bestial and deadly, see Bethany Ogdon, ‘Hard-Boiled Ideology’, Critical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1992): 77. 107. Horsley, Noir Thriller, 133. Horsley offers examples of the standardization of the noir femme fatale as psychologically unbalanced. For an excellent and in-depth consideration of the femme fatale in hard-boiled crime fiction through the lens of medico-legal discourses, see Maysaa Husam Jaber, Criminal Femmes Fatales in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction, Crime Files (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 108. Eric Lott, ‘The Whiteness of Film Noir’, American Literary History 9 (1997):  542– 66; Manthia Diawara, ‘Noir by Noirs: Toward a New Realism in Black Cinema’, in Shades of Noir, ed. Joan Copjec (London:  Verso, 1993), 261–78. On the complex relationships between race, ethnicity and film noir, see also Dan Flory, ‘Ethnicity and Race in American Film Noir’, in Companion to Film Noir, ed. Andrew Spicer and Helen Hanson (Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013), 387–404; Paula Rabinowitz, Black and White Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism (New  York:  Columbia University Press, 2002); James Naremore, More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2008), 220–53; Megan E. Abbott, The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002). 109. Diawara, ‘Noir by Noirs’, 262.

33

1. The Femme Fatale

33

Noir may have pioneered Hollywood’s unprecedentedly merciless exposure of white pathology, but by relying on race to convey that pathology it in effect erected a cordon sanitaire around the circle of corruption it sought to penetrate. Film noir rescues with racial idioms the whites whose moral and social boundaries seem so much in doubt. ‘Black film’ is the refuge of whiteness.110

Thus, while femmes fatales are typically played by white actors in hard-boiled and noir narratives from this era, their characters are metaphorically associated with the exotic or alien Other. They are ‘dark ladies’, who ‘occupy indeterminate and monstrous spaces such as whiteness traditionally reserves for blackness in our culture’.111 Through their association with the night-time locations of jazz bars, gangster hangouts and ill-lit alleyways, not to mention their ‘shady’ morality, these women are compelled to ‘partake of the attributes of blackness’112 that render them dangerously and doubly other: other-than-male and other-than-white. They become an embodiment of the murky abyss of the hard-boiled and noir traditions, inhabiting and absorbing the unfathomable black spaces of the narratives’ amoral landscapes.113 And through such association with this dark otherness, the femme fatale retains and reshapes that legacy of exoticism that was painted upon her during her sojourn in fin de siècle Europe. This feature of the noir and hard-boiled femme fatale comes out particularly clearly in those traditions where she is associated (through her mobility, her location or her looks) with an alien otherness.114 In the Hollywood film noir version of James M.  Cain’s Double Indemnity (1944), for example, Phyllis Dietrichson’s anklet (or ‘slave bracelet’ as Eric Lott calls it),115 her Mexican perfume, her ‘California Spanish house’ and her placement in shadow within so many scenes throughout the film invite us to regard her as someone distinctly alien to white, middle-class suburban life (Figure 1.6).116 Similarly, in The Lady from Shanghai (1947), femme fatale Elsa Bannister’s border-crossing potential and her association with the Orient are intricately connected with her deviant morality. This association with the foreign – the shady – lends the femme fatale a veneer of disrespectability and dangerousness within the strictures of white American modernity. She thus personifies the chaos, uncertainty and ambiguity that is constantly positioned within this dark world, where moral clarity is forever hidden in a thousand shades of grey.

110. Lott, ‘Whiteness of Film Noir’, 545–6. 111. Diawara, ‘Noir by Noirs’, 262. 112. Ibid.; also Lott, ‘Whiteness of Film Noir’, 544. 113. Bronfen, Night Passages, 294. 114. Yvonne Tasker, ‘Women in Film Noir’, in Spicer and Hanson, Companion to Film Noir, 362–3. 115. Lott, ‘Whiteness of Film Noir’, 546. 116. Ibid., 546–9.

34

34

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 1.6 Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray as Phyllis Dietrichson and Walter Neff in Double Indemnity, 1944. Available online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Double-Indemnity-LIFE-1944-2.jpg (accessed 4 May 2017).

Damsels in Disguise and Duplicitous Dames One particularly intriguing feature of the hard-boiled and noir femmes fatales from this period is their propensity for disguise; as Michèle Montrelay suggests, they use their bodies to produce a veneer of (mis)identity – a masquerade – that conceals who they really are.117 Some are characterized as performers, such as nightclub singers, dancers and models  – roles that project an image whilst simultaneously obscuring the person beneath. Others adopt the performative charade of socially acceptable femininity  – devoted wives (Eileen Wade in Chandler’s The Long Goodbye), helpless ladies in need of male assistance (Brigid O’Shaughnessy in Hammett’s The Maltese Falcon) and spoiled rich girls (Carmen Sternwood in Chandler’s The Big Sleep). Yet these women’s respectable veneer eventually peels off, revealing their ‘true’ identity as genderdisrupting femmes fatales. Thus, Cornell Woolrich’s hard-boiled novel, The Bride Wore Black (1940) depicts fatal woman Julie Killeen donning no fewer than five diverse disguises (including party guest, school teacher and artist’s model) in order to murder her victims. And in Chandler’s 1940 novel Farewell My Lovely, as well as its film noir remake Murder My Sweet (1944), the element

117. Michèle Montrelay, ‘Inquiry into Femininity’, m/f 1 (1978): 93.

35

1. The Femme Fatale

35

of performance is crucial to the plot that revolves around femme fatale Helen Grayle.118 The hard-boiled and noir fatal woman is thus repeatedly exposed as a performance, a masquerade that obscures the dangerous otherness of the woman beneath. This masquerade becomes an intrinsic part of who she is (and, perversely, who she is not) – an embodiment of pretence, subterfuge and slick dishonesty. As Christine Gledhill notes, women in film noir are placed in these ‘image-producing roles’ and their enactment within such roles ‘foregrounds the fact of their image as an artifice’.119 This in turn soaks the figure of the femme fatale with the perfume of duplicity; if her audience cannot tell exactly who she is, how can they trust her? How can they tell where the woman ends and the performance begins? If she falls into the arms of our narrative hero (Carmen Sternwood), or weeps on his shoulder (Brigid O’Shaugnessy), or desperately asks for his help to escape from an unhappy marriage (Phyllis Dietrichson), are these simply performances designed to deceive, or do they actually testify to this woman’s genuine vulnerability? The audience simply does not know, but, given the treachery and moral ambiguity that forever shadow this character, it is likely that they will take everything she says with a liberal pinch of salt. As Elisabeth Bronfen observes, ‘Duplicity thus emerges as [the femme fatale’s] most seminal value, insofar as she is not simply willing to delude anyone in order to get the money and the freedom she is after, but because she will never show her true intentions to anyone, especially not the hero she has inveigled.’120 The Dame’s Demise Regardless of what you think of her, the femme fatale in hard-boiled and noir traditions is a glamourous jewel that mesmerizes her audience throughout their narrative journey. Yet, like some of her nineteenth-century fin de siècle sisters, she is not always allowed to survive this trip. 121 As Jans Wager notes, ‘The femme fatale’s resistance is fatal, sometimes to the men who fall for her, almost always to herself.’122 There is a consistent motif of her demise, enacted either through her death, her imprisonment or, occasionally, her rehabilitation,

118. I discuss this novel further in Chapter 4. 119. Gledhill, ‘Klute 1’, 30–1. See also Melanie Bell, Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema (London:  I. B. Tauris, 2010), 66, who makes a similar point about femmes fatales in British cinema during this period. 120. Bronfen, ‘Femme Fatale’, 106. 121. As I mentioned earlier, the convention of the femme fatale’s demise was present within a number of cultural texts from the nineteenth-century fin de siècle. In the hardboiled and noir traditions, this convention appears to be given additional prominence. 122. Wager, Dames in the Driver’s Seat, 4.  Similar remarks are made by Borde and Chaumeton, ‘Towards a Definition of Film Noir’, 22.

36

36

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

where she is stripped of her fatal masquerade and compelled to adopt a more respectable social role, such as wife or chaste penitent. Such a demise, it appears, is necessary, for the femme fatale poses far too great a risk to social discourses and power structures (not to mention the endangered masculinities of her potential victims) to be allowed to go unchallenged.123 As Žižek notes, the femme fatale ‘is destroyed for being assertive and undermining the male patriarchal dominance, for presenting a threat to it’.124 The audience is therefore offered a cautionary tale about her inevitable demise. She may delight and thrill them temporarily, and she may offer them a fascinating glimpse of women’s disruptive potential,125 but her presence simply cannot be tolerated, for, ultimately, she is just too dangerous. And yet, as Place notes, in film noir (and, I  would argue, in hard-boiled crime fiction too), this ‘lesson’ is sometimes less than effective; the sensual expressiveness of these two narrative styles renders the femme fatale a powerful and lingering figure. She may be punished at the end of the novel or movie for her transgressions, but this fades from our memory, and all we are left with is a ‘remarkably potent image’ of this fatal woman, which glows intensely in our minds.126

123. Maxfield, Fatal Woman, 11. Also, as Wager notes, the ideologically conservative Production Code (also known as the Hays Code after its creator Will H.  Hays) that influenced Hollywood cinema from 1930 until 1967 may have played a role in determining the ‘need’ for film noir femmes fatales to be ‘dealt with’ at the end of the movie (Dames in the Driver’s Seat, 4). This code demanded a sense of moral clarity and the denunciation of crime and wrongdoing. To read this code in full, see ArtsReformation.com, available online: http://www.artsreformation.com/a001/hays-code.html (accessed 28 April 2017). 124. Žižek, Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, 13. 125. Certainly, some scholars have suggested that the dangerousness of the femme fatale in film noir serves to accentuate (or even celebrate) the latent power of women. According to Elizabeth Cowie, film noir ‘afforded women roles which are active, adventurous and driven by sexual desire’ (‘Film Noir and Women’, in Copjec, Shades of Noir, 135; also Richard Dyer, ‘Postscript: Queers and Women in Film Noir’, in Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 123−9). And yet, by locating discourses of female empowerment within this figure, film noir only serves to reinforce the undesirability of such empowerment, identifying it as dangerous and perverse. So, while Place notes that the femme fatale in film noir is always active, intelligent and powerful, she also acknowledges that this figure does nothing to challenge dominant discourses around gendered roles and expectations; rather, this spider woman confirms these roles and expectations, accentuating the potential dangers that women’s subversions can pose to the social order (‘Women in Film Noir’, 47−9). As Gledhill notes, despite her ability to break out from traditional gender roles ascribed to women, the femme fatale in film noir is too often juxtaposed with ‘the voice of male judgment’ (‘Klute 1’, 29). 126. Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, 48. See also Karen Hollinger, ‘Film Noir, Voice-Over, and the Femme Fatale’, in Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader, 246.

37

1. The Femme Fatale

37

Sites of Contention: The Origins of Hard-boiled and Noir Femmes Fatales Like her fin de siècle sisters, the femme fatale in classic American film noir and hard-boiled crime fiction reflects anxieties of the age around gender and social (dis)order.127 On page and screen, she expresses that powerful and timeless myth about the dangers women can pose to even the strongest of men, retelling it in ways that were familiar to mid-twentieth-century audiences. The Jazz Age of the 1920s witnessed the effects of Prohibition (1920−33) and organized crime, followed by the Great Depression of the late1920s and early 1930s. Then, in the 1940s came the traumas of World War II, followed in the 1950s by the threat of a prolonged Cold War, the shadow of the atomic bomb and the coming trauma of the Korean War (1950–54). America’s sense of discontent was, unsurprisingly, running high during these decades, especially as any optimism expressed following the eventual victories of the Allied Forces began to feel misplaced.128 People looked back to the retrospectively idealized golden age of pre-war life, knowing they could never recover it, while, at the same time, peering into the future with an uneasy apprehension that things were going from bad to worse.129 National selfconfidence had taken a serious beating; both men and women felt the anxieties and disillusionment of post-war American life, with its bitter flavours of poverty, unemployment, gangsterism, lawlessness and political corruption. The American Dream was starting to look like a mirage. Adding to this general unease within American life were the concomitant shifts and lurches taking place within its gendered hierarchies. During the Great Depression, many American men struggled in a dire financial and social climate to maintain their patriarchal authority. Some women were taking a more prominent role in the traditionally masculine sphere of the workplace; they were also becoming increasingly vociferous in political and social debates.130 This sense of masculine dis-ease continued throughout World War II, where gender roles were again disrupted as women began, by necessity, to take up what was previously considered men’s work in corporate and industry positions.131 Many women also became the primary breadwinners and supporters of their families. As the war ended, these women faced pressures from the US government to give up their jobs for returnee veterans and go back to their domestic ‘duties’ on the home front. While many complied, other women refused, having grown accustomed to and fond of their new-found economic and social independence. Many people

127. Place, ‘Women in Film Noir’, 49–50; Suwabe, ‘Case of the Femme Fatale’, 55–6. 128. Bronfen, Night Passages, 292. 129. Vivian Sobchack, ‘Lounge Time:  Postwar Crises and the Chronotype of Film Noir’, in Refiguring American Film Genres:  History and Theory, ed. Nick Browne (Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998), 165–6. 130. See Krutnik, In a Lonely Street, 57–65. 131. According to Krutnik, by 1945, almost 20 million women were in the American workforce – an increase of 6.5 million (ibid., 57).

38

38

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

therefore began to realize that gender roles  – once thought to be so deeply entrenched within American culture  – were neither clear nor permanent. This created a ‘new site of contention’ between American men and women, compelling them to explore ‘new modes of co-existence’ in both social and sexual realms.132 As Alistair Rolls and Deborah Walker explain, ‘American men, already emotionally scarred by the direct experience of war, suddenly faced massive competition from those whose role had previously been strictly limited to serving their needs as wives and mothers.’133 This in turn added fuel to the growing suspicion of and opposition to women who insisted on remaining in the paid workforce.134 Within this maelstrom of social upheaval and anxiety, hard-boiled fiction and film noir emerged as a reaction against the cosy, feel-good cultural products of previous decades, which appeared to have lost touch with the realities of midtwentieth-century American life.135 It is as though the hyperbolic darkness of these literary and film series reflected the mood of the viewer, allowing for the expression of integrity and honesty rather than false cheerfulness. As Vivian Sobcheck explains: The noir world of bars, diners, and seedy hotels, of clandestine yet public meetings in which domesticity and kinship relations are subverted, denied, and undone, a world of little labor and less love, of threatened men and sexually and economically predatory women  – this world (concretely part of wartime and postwar American culture) realizes a frightening reversal and perversion of home and the coherent, stable, idealized, and idyllic past of prewar American patriarchy and patriotism . . . [N]oir historicizes in the most concrete manner the moment when the idyllic and ‘timeless’ identity and security of the patriarchal American ‘home’ was held hostage to a domestic future beyond its imagination.136

132. Bronfen, ‘Female Side of Crime’, 74. 133. Alistair Rolls and Deborah Walker, French and American Noir:  Dark Crossings (New York:  Palgrave, 2009), 133; also see Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 20–1. According to Anne Leighton, writing in Harper’s Magazine in 1946, ‘Many American war veterans are silently bearing some unexpected . . . difficulties in returning home to what used to be a pleasantly pliable and even appallingly incompetent little woman and finding a quietly masterful creature recognizing no limitation to her own endurance’; cited in Scott Snyder, ‘Personality Disorder and the Film Noir Femme Fatale’, Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8, no. 3 (2001): 155. 134. Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 21. 135. Suwabe, ‘Case of the Femme Fatale’, 56; Bronfen, ‘Female Side of Crime’, 72; see also Paul Schrader, ‘Notes on Film Noir’, Film Comment 8, no. 1 (1972): 9−10. 136. Sobchack, ‘Lounge Time’, 166–7. See also Gwendolyn Audrey Foster, ‘Queer Aesthetics of Film Noir:  Born to Kill’, Quarterly Review of Film and Video 28 (2010):  80; Sylvia Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’, in Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 35–46.

39

1. The Femme Fatale

39

Within these much rawer cultural texts, femmes fatales thus gave synecdochic shape to prevailing anxieties about women’s social and sexual agency. With her gender disruption and traumatizing otherness, she represented the dangerousness of women who refused to conform to traditional social roles, and who emasculated men by challenging male prerogatives to privilege and power.137 Given her ubiquity in cultural texts during this period, there must have been something immensely cathartic about seeing this ‘blameworthy vehicle of cultural crisis’ punished for her disruption of (already fragile) social structures.138 As Boozer suggests, ‘The frequency and similarity of her incarnations in classic noir films clearly point to a mass market demand to see these demonstratively ambitious and thus dangerous women put back in their domestic “place”.’139

Saying Au Revoir – But Not for Too Long The hard-boiled and noiresque femmes fatales from the first half of the twentieth century were, in many ways, successors of their earlier fin de siècle ancestors. While they may have looked a little different  – reflecting contemporary American ideations of beauty and style  – they carried on the legacy of sexual lethality, gender disruption and exotic otherness so exquisitely portrayed in the Salomes, the sphinxes and the vamps of previous decades. Additionally, however, these new iterations of the femme fatale also displayed certain features that were new, or at least more strongly emphasized than previously. The element of performance  – or masquerade  – came to the fore, emphasizing the untrustworthiness and unknowability of the fatal woman. Moreover, and rightly or wrongly, her maleficent behaviour was often attributed to some form of cupidity  – a reflection, perhaps, of those anxieties arising in the 1940s and 1950s about real women’s claims to social and financial independence. Lastly, the femme fatale’s demise in hard-boiled crime literature and film noir became almost par for the course  – she was rarely if ever allowed to continue uncontested beyond the end of the narrative, but instead was contained, redeemed or eradicated within the text. And yet, long after she disappeared, she managed to keep a tight hold on her audience’s hearts and minds, stirring within them both fear and longing, and reminding them that she had the power to haunt their dreams and desires long after she had gone.

137. Bronfen, ‘Female Side of Crime’, 74; also Harvey, ‘Woman’s Place’, 38. 138. Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 23–4. 139. Ibid., 22.

40

40

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Sexed Up and Gender Fluid: The Fatal Woman in the Twentieth Century Fin de Siècle and Beyond The hard-boiled fiction and Hollywood film noir heydays of the first half of the twentieth century dwindled a little in the 1960s, during a period of political ‘optimism’, technological advancement and white suburban affluence within the United States.140 Nevertheless, these film and literature series never entirely disappeared.141 By the 1970s, as the shiny veneer of the swinging sixties began to tarnish142 and the twentieth century fin de siècle crept into view, film noir and hard-boiled literature came back into vogue, their styles and themes reworked and reproduced in a variety of cultural texts, including film, literature, television series, comic books and advertising.143 Grouped together under the moniker ‘neo-noir’, these texts attempted to revisit and reappropriate the conventions of classic film noir – the slick, sexy style, visual sophistication and thematic foci of alienation and doomed eroticism. At the same time, they typically expressed in more extreme form those noir themes of violence, sexual ambivalence and moral opacity.144 Authors including James Ellroy, Carl Hiaasen, Walter Mosley, Ian Rankin, Sarah Paretsky and James Lee Burke hearkened back to their hard-boiled predecessors, combining storylines of crime detection with hard-hitting commentaries on social, economic and racial inequalities, which reflected the concerns of their own contemporary zeitgeist. In neo-noir cinema and television (my focus in this section), the chiaroscuro menace of classic noir may have been replaced by the Technicolor warmth of the Californian coast (The Long Goodbye, 1973; LA Confidential, 1997), the bourgeois chic of Paris and Cannes (Femme Fatale, 2002)  or the cool urban lines of downtown New  York (Klute, 1971; The French Connection, 1971), but the shadowy cityscape, where night is never far away, still retained a prevalent screen presence.145 Moral ambiguity and paranoia continued

140. Horsley, Noir Thriller, 184. 141. Spicer, Film Noir, 130–3. 142. This optimism of the 1960s was shaken by the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, not to mention the racial unrest simmering in black ghettoes, growing opposition to the Vietnam War, higher crime and unemployment rates, Watergate, a renewal of Cold War hostilities and an increasingly vocal countercultural movement. This social discontent created a cultural milieu that ‘made the cynicism and satiric edge of noir seem all too appropriate’ (Horsley, Noir Thriller, 185). Noir continued to be ‘appropriate’ as the United States moved into the 1980s, with the social and economic traumas of the Reagan years, which brought with them aggressive individualism, rising unemployment and disparities of wealth. 143. Spicer, Film Noir, 149. See also Naremore, More than Night, 254–77. 144. Spicer, Film Noir, 130–74. See also Todd Erickson, ‘Kill Me Again:  Movement Becomes Genre’, in Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader, 307−30. 145. While these neo-noir thrillers were usually set in the present, they occasionally revisited the previous decades of classic noir, allowing modern and postmodern insights to

41

1. The Femme Fatale

41

unabated, while neo-noir heroes had to take even more drastic steps to cling onto their hard-boiled code of honour. These cultural texts were therefore more than a reproduction of earlier popular noir styles and themes; rather, they retained the socio-critical roots of their classic predecessors, while continuing to address the dark and seamy undersides of contemporary social and political life. These neo-noir traditions likewise revisited the equally dark and seamy undersides of the femme fatale’s character, who, after a brief hiatus in the 1960s and 1970s, returned with a vengeance in the 1980s and 1990s, stunning audiences with her outrageous mix of incendiary sexuality and even more incendiary violence.146 In her new post-feminist form, the neo-noir femme fatale became an erotic staple for films such as Body Heat (1981), Fatal Attraction (1987), Basic Instinct (1992), Body of Evidence (1993), The Last Seduction (1994) and Wild Things (1998), the titles of which alone evoke the scent of deadly eroticism.147 And, into the new millennium, the fatal woman continued to shock and seduce her audiences under a range of guises: glamorous jewel thief (Laure Ash, Femme Fatale, 2002), manipulative serial killer (Nicole Wallace, Law and Order: Criminal Intent, 2002– 2008), dazzling dominatrix (Irene Adler, BBC’s Sherlock, 2012)  and avaricious widow (Ava Green, Sin City: A Dame to Kill for, 2014), to name but a few.

play out within temporal locations from the 1940s and 1950s. See, for example, the movies Devil in a Blue Dress (1995) and LA Confidential (1997), which were adapted from the hardboiled novels of the same names by Walter Mosely and James Ellroy respectively. 146. Although the femme fatale does appear in a number of 1970s movies, she is, as Boozer notes, a far cry from the deadly femmes of 1940s and 1950s cinema (‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 24–6). More victim than victimizer, she tends to be a sympathetic character who illustrates less the dangerousness of women than their vulnerability to social, economic and political forces. This new understanding of the fatal woman was perhaps a response to second-wave feminist concerns about the social structures and discourses that denied women the potential for liberation. Meanwhile, the ‘fatal women’ of early 1970s blaxploitation movies, such as Cleopatra Jones (1973) and Foxy Brown (1974), depict women who, like the classic noir femmes fatales, are unafraid to use both sexual allure and physical violence to achieve their goals; unlike their earlier predecessors, however, blaxploitation film narratives stress that they do so in order to save both themselves and sometimes their friends, families and communities from hostile individuals and social structures. Blaxploitation movies were a product of the political struggles taking shape within 1960s and 1970s American society; the African-American heroines depicted therein reflected the political aims of the Civil Rights and second-wave feminist movements, embodying the potential power and vivifying autonomy of black women. See Neroni, Violent Woman, 29−31; Philippa Gates, Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film, Cultural Studies in Film/Video (Albany : State University of New York Press, 2011), 191–220. 147. For an excellent overview of neo-noir films through the 1980s and 1990s, particularly in light of their treatment of masculinity and the femme fatale, see Philippa Gates, Detecting Men:  Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film, Cultural Studies in Film/Video (Albany : State University of New York Press, 2006), 102–23.

42

42

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Despite this multiplicity of neo-noir femmes fatales during this period, we can still discern some common features. A number of these features are found within her earlier predecessors too, but, as we will see, the neo-noir fatal woman also begins to present several novel characteristics that reflect the postmodern, postfeminist ambiance of her new historical and cultural location. ‘Flesh Seduces. Passion Kills’ While sexuality and sexualized violence were already defining features of femmes fatales within classic hard-boiled literature and film noir, they become even more explicit markers of the neo-noir fatal woman.148 In classic noir, the femme fatale’s sexuality was a heavily coded presence, outplayed through the implicit sensuousness of her sateen-draped curves, her slick sideways glances and her double-edged wordplay; audiences were left to conjure up in their own imagination her dangerous peccadillos. As Straayer observes, ‘The classic femme fatale was known for her trigger-happy killings, not her orgasms. Her sexuality per se was passive, limited to its allure.’149 In contrast, the sexual status of the Hollywood neonoir femme often becomes the focus of the film’s narrative.150 Nothing about her sexuality is left to the imagination; everything is, quite literally, laid bare. Like many of her femme fatale sisters in nineteenth-century fin de siècle art, her body is often undressed and left exposed before the audience’s gaze. More than that, though, she is repeatedly immersed in an imaginative slew of transgressive sexual acts – S/M play with hot wax and handcuffs, exhibitionist sex, rape fantasies – which, with their glossy coating of postmodern neo-noir chic, exemplify the acceptably moderated pornography of mainstream cinema.151 This veritable glut of sexual performances that typifies many neo-noir films thus invites the audience to view the femme fatale primarily as the epitome of sexual extravagance  – an ‘excessive, sexual spectacle’152  – rather than a more complex and multilayered character. She may appear to embody twentieth-century feminist ideals of the strong, sexually autonomous woman – thereby resisting the traditional

148. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 171–2; see also Yvonne Tasker, Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema (London:  Routledge, 1998), 124. The title of this subsection, ‘Flesh Seduces. Passion Kills’, was one of the advertising taglines for the movie Basic Instinct. 149. Straayer, ‘Femme Fatale or Lesbian Femme’, 153. 150. Ibid.; Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 170–8; Žižek, Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, 13. 151. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 172–3. Similarly, Žižek notes that ‘the neo-noir femme fatale is to be located in the context of the dissolution of the . . . Production Code. What was merely hinted at in the late ’40s is now explicitly rendered thematic’ (Art of the Ridiculous Sublime, 16). On the ‘transgressive’ sexual speech of the femme fatale, see Doane, Femmes Fatales, 108–9. 152. Spicer’s description of Madonna’s character in Body of Evidence (Film Noir, 163).

43

1. The Femme Fatale

43

patriarchal norms of female passivity, submissiveness and dependence – yet these potentially liberating features of her character are often occluded by her eyepopping erotic intemperance.153 With Basic Instinct, for example, the audience is less likely to remember Catherine Tramell as a wealthy and successful author than the woman who kept an ice pick under her bed and left everyone in no doubt that she had come out without underwear. Similarly, Bridget Gregory (The Last Seduction) may have been a sharp, quick-thinking businesswoman but the iconic image of this film is the erotic moment she shares with new acquaintance Mike Swayle against that chain-link fence. Some film critics and cultural commentators have hailed these neo-noir femmes as poster girls for the (hetero)sex-positive postfeminism154 or ‘do-me feminism’155 that seeped into popular culture in the 1980s and 1990s. This was a rebranded, (hetero)sexualized feminism, which claimed women’s sexuality as a source of their agency and empowerment. Women’s sexual presence was thus acclaimed as a tool of their own emancipation, offering pleasure to – and retrieving power from – the heterosexual male gaze. Yet it is not always easy to see these overtly sexualized neo-noir femmes as emancipated; rather, they often appear as nothing more than disposable, objectified bodies whose screen presence is reduced to pornographic display and spectator arousal. It is as though post-feminist discourses invited women

153. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 178–9. 154. The word ‘post-feminism’ is often used as an umbrella term for many diverse ideologies and theoretical responses that convey a marked paradigm shift from the secondwave feminism of the 1960s and 1970s. It has come to encode a huge range of meanings, from an incorporation, revision or depoliticization of feminism to a complete reaction against or withdrawal from it. I am using the term here to signify a popular response to feminism which has been ambivalent at best, condemnatory at worst. By this understanding, the ‘post’ prefix conveys the sense that feminism is now a thing of the past, occluded or even terminated from contemporary cultural consciousness as outmoded and redundant, either because it did not work or because it has already achieved its liberating goals. For further discussion about popular understandings of post-feminism, see Sarah Projansky, Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture (New York: New York University Press, 2001), 66– 89; Suzanna Danuta Walters, ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture:  A  Case Study of the Backlash’, in Film and Gender: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies: 4. Revisioning Feminism(s), ed. Sue Thornham and Niall Richardson (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014), 107– 35; Tania Modleski, Feminism without Women:  Culture and Criticism in a ‘Postfeminist’ Age (New York: Routledge, 1991); Angela McRobbie, The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change (London: Sage Publications, 2009). 155. The phrase ‘do-me feminism’ was coined by journalist Tad Friend in an article he penned for Esquire magazine in 1994 titled ‘Feminist Women Who Like Sex’. In the article, Friend berates previous feminists for being anti-sex, championing instead a new breed of (post)feminists who express their own brand of feminism through their enjoyment of heterosexual sex. For further discussion of this phrase and the article, see Andi Zeisler, Feminism and Pop Culture (Berkeley : Seal Press, 2008), 133–5.

44

44

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

to represent themselves in exactly the same ways that patriarchal discourses had previously chosen to represent them:  as sexualized, objectified bodies, whose raison d’être is to attract the heterosexual male gaze. In essence, then, women become complicit in their own sexual exploitation, which is marketed to them as a source of liberation.156 This constant hypersexualization of the neo-noir femme fatale therefore does not so much accentuate her newly acquired social and sexual power as affirm those patriarchal predilections for women’s sexual objectification and depersonalization.157 Moreover, as well as being ubiquitous and graphic, the neo-noir femme fatale’s sexual performances often seem intended to both titillate and terrify; like their nineteenth-century and noir predecessors, these women’s sexuality is steeped with violence, reminding the audience of its deadliness. And at times, this melding together of sexuality and violence is particularly explicit, much more so than in earlier classic noir narratives. In the opening scene of Basic Instinct, for example, the audience watches horrified as a blonde woman swings a shiny ice pick towards her lover’s head at the very moment of their sexual climax. In Body of Evidence, Rebecca Carlson literally uses her S/M sexual performances to murder her weakhearted, wealthy lovers. The sexualized body of the neo-noir femme fatale is thus marked out as a lethal weapon capable of the most terrible violence, ever linked with both desire and death. Additionally, sex for this neo-noir fatal woman is less a source of personal pleasure or a means of satisfying a genuine sexual desire than a lethal performance – an ‘act’ she puts on to deceive her victims and thus achieve her real goals, be they financial gain, psychopathic bloodlust or the acquisition of social power.158 Catherine Tramell and Rebecca Carlson both sleep with men who will help get them off a murder rap; Bridget Gregory fucks her hapless lover into agreeing to murder her even more hapless husband; Suzie Toller (Wild Things) orchestrates a ménage à trois with her school guidance counsellor and best friend, ultimately to gain both revenge and a big financial payout. For the neo-noir femme fatale, sex is a currency – sometimes their only currency – that they can use to control events, exert their agency, and get exactly what they need and want in life.

156. Edwards, Admen and Eve, 10. 157. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 179. Angela McRobbie defines popular post-feminism as ‘faux-feminism’, which is constructed from a set of ideologies and commodities that are identified in the media, popular culture and political rhetoric as essential for (Western) women’s freedom; it claims to be feminism and uses some of the same rhetoric as feminism (freedom, choice, liberation), but it works – in reality – to devalue and disestablish feminism (Aftermath of Feminism, 1–2). According to McRobbie, ‘women constitute half of the world’s population and their subordination and experience of inequality, though changed, remains unequivocal and substantial’ (ibid., 2). 158. Miranda Sherwin, ‘Deconstructing the Male:  Masochism, Female Spectatorship, and the Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence, and Basic Instinct’, Journal of Popular Film and Television 35, no. 4 (2008): 176.

45

1. The Femme Fatale

45

Another transgressive element of the neo-noir femme’s sexual profile is her polysexuality. While earlier hard-boiled and noir narratives did not explicitly deny the suggestion that the femme fatale might fluster more than the male gaze, the possibility that her admirers  – and her victims  – might also be other than male was rarely articulated. With the advent of the neo-noir femme, however, this character’s polysexual (and particularly bisexual) potential becomes positively de rigueur, played out unequivocally on both movie and TV screens.159 Characters such as Catherine Tramell, Violet (Bound, 1996), Suzie Toller and Kelly Van Ryan (Wild Things), Laure Ash and Nicole Wallace, to name but a few, count both men and women among their hopelessly smitten victims. Meanwhile, the client list of professional dominatrix and femme fatale Irene Adler contains high-profile men and women; what is more, although she self-identifies as being ‘gay’, she appears more than a wee bit smitten by Sherlock Holmes.160 Clearly, the neo-noir fatal woman’s sensual appeal can now extend beyond its previous heteronormative boundaries, provoking a response from all members of her audience. And yet, rather like her conflicting engagement with post-feminist notions of power, the femme fatale’s queerness can seem less a liberating renunciation of heteronormativity than another means of dehumanizing and othering her character, reducing her to a mindless purveyor of highly regulated and highly eroticized polysexual display.161 Her eschewal of exclusively heterosexual relationships, along with her typically explicit hyper(poly)sexuality, strikes a blow at traditional family structures and the gendered norms of female heterosexual passivity. Her seeming rejection of the roles of wife and mother is often presented as a symptom of her psychopathology, a marker of her deviance and corrupt amorality. Likewise, her rejection of men as her only source of sexual pleasure may invoke her audience’s immediate suspicion; her polysexuality is marked as a signifier of her degradation and her duplicity because it does not conform to the dominant discourse of heterosexuality. Rather, it is presented as a facade by which she can deceive and dupe her victims.162 And, when ‘read’ alongside her homicidal violence, the polysexual femme fatale begins to function dialectically as a metonymy for the threat that queerness poses to society – she is dangerous because she is polysexual; equally, she is polysexual because she is dangerous.163 As Katherine Farrimond suggests, the depiction of polysexual neo-noir fatal women ‘functions as an effective way of affirming the sense of their treacherous

159. Katherine Farrimond, ‘“Stay Still So We Can See Who You Are”:  Anxiety and Bisexual Activity in the Contemporary Femme Fatale Film’, Journal of Bisexuality 12, no. 1 (2012): 139. 160. The gender inversions that play out in this episode of Sherlock – and the queerness of both Irene and Sherlock – will be explored in Chapter 4. 161. Farrimond, ‘Stay Still’, 139–40. With thanks to Prior McRae, who pointed out the dehumanizing effects of the neo-noir femme’s polysexuality. 162. Ibid., 142–3. 163. Ibid; see also Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 29.

46

46

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

untrustworthiness, menace, excessive sexual appetites and lack of sexual responsibility’.164 Or, according to Miranda Sherwin, ‘The femmes fatales in these films are fatal because they do not really need men’.165 Lost in the Post-feminist: Gender Subversion and the Neo-noir Femmes Fatales Like her nineteenth-century fin de siècle and classic noir sisters, the neo-noir femme fatale regularly confounds her audience through her ability to transgress the patriarchal gender norms that continue to prevail within her socio-cultural locations. For, despite those popular post-feminist claims of women’s social and sexual liberation mentioned in the previous section, the femme fatale remains just as much an anxiety-provoking Other as her earlier sisters. Because of her claims to sexual and social agency, she is still regarded as an aberration of acceptable femininity, whose dangerousness lies in her eschewal of traditional expectations concerning women’s social and sexual subordination.166 As Stables observes, the ‘wholesale sexualization’ of the post-feminist femme fatale serves only to render her even more ambiguous, more Other.167 She embodies myriad ‘contradictory codes and uneven directives’ – a dizzying polysemic mix of images and narratives that have the potential both to celebrate female agency and to condemn it.168 Her hyperfemininity  – played out in her overtly sexualized appearance and behaviour – is linked to her predilection for traditionally masculine pursuits of dominance, power and violence. Just like her fin de siècle and classic noir sisters, then, she performs a masquerade of sorts, flaunting the drag of femininity to cover a persona that appears disturbingly and threateningly masculine. In The Last Seduction, for example, Bridget Gregory’s liberating preferences for a career, casual sex and hard cash in lieu of the domestic stability of marriage and motherhood render her a monstrous affront to those gendered values still held dear

164. Farrimond, ‘Stay Still’, 142. 165. Sherwin, ‘Deconstructing the Male’, 177. According to Lynda Hart, Basic Instinct ‘renders visible the systematic homophobia of masculine heterosexual desire’. See Lynda Hart, Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), 134. 166. Projansky, Watching Rape, 88. See also Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 172–4, 179; Katherine Farrimond, ‘Bad Girls in Crisis:  The New Teenage Femme Fatale’, in Women on Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture, ed. Melanie Waters (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 79. 167. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 179. 168. Linda Mizejewski, ‘Dressed to Kill: Postfeminist Noir’, Cinema Journal 44, no. 2 (2005): 123; see also discussions on gender and violence in Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 166; Julianne Pidduck, ‘The 1990s Hollywood Fatal Femme:  (Dis)Figuring Feminism, Family, Irony, Violence’, Cineaction 38 (1995):  64–72; Judith Halberstam, ‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence: Representation, Rage, and Resistance’, Social Text 37 (Winter 1993): 187–201.

47

1. The Femme Fatale

47

in late-twentieth-century American culture.169 Meanwhile, Alex Forrest’s obsessive pursuit of married lover Dan in Fatal Attraction flags her as a potentially fatal peril to his ideal, yet seemingly fragile, nuclear family. Throughout the film, her near superhuman propensity for violence is traced to her physical beauty, sexual autonomy, and personal choice of career over marriage and family; as Boozer notes, ‘Her competitive will apes phallocentric mastery and creates a new variety of scapegoating, where ambitious, single career women now become potential rogues, and married men become vulnerable to their boundless demands.’170 With their assertive sexuality and greater predilection for violence and power than any of their male costars, these fatal women may appear to tick every box on the postfeminist wish list for women’s liberation, yet they are just as likely to be castigated by audiences for their relentless encroachment upon traditionally masculine territories. Getting Away with Murder As we have just seen, the neo-noir femme fatale can be every bit as dangerous as her nineteenth-century and classic noir forerunners, and yet she does appear to have a textual advantage over them  – her ability, on occasion, to survive to the end of her story and beyond. Unlike the earlier fatal women, whose demise was almost guaranteed, thereby reassuring audiences that their fatal power was no longer a threat, the neo-noir femme appears to stand a sporting chance of evading capture, destruction or rehabilitation, managing instead to ride off into the sunset, unburdened by persistent lovers or a guilty conscience.171 Body Heat ends with femme fatale Matty sitting on a tropical beach sipping cocktails with a gorgeous younger man (her new victim?), while her former lover is locked up in prison for murdering Matty’s wealthy husband at her behest. In Bound, partners in crime Violet and Corky drive off hand in hand after Violet kills her mobster boyfriend before he can kill them. Similarly, at the end of The Last Seduction, Bridget Gregory exits without a care (and a whole lot richer), feeling no remorse for murdering her husband and setting up her lover to take the rap. And the last we see of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct, she is lounging in bed with her recently acquired lover – policeman Nick Curran – who, unlike the audience, has clearly not noticed the ice pick that she keeps under the bed just within reach. These lethal women are allowed to survive, let loose in the world to thrill, titillate and wreak destruction

169. For post-feminist engagements with traditional feminine roles in popular culture, see Bonnie J. Dow, Prime-Time Feminism:  Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement since 1970 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). 170. Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 28. See also Neroni, Violent Woman, 33–4. 171. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 171; Tasker, Working Girls, 124–5. This does not always happen; in some neo-noir movies (including Body of Evidence, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For and Fatal Attraction) the fatal woman is despatched at the end of the movie, often by one of her victims.

48

48

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

all over again. Perhaps, in neo-noir’s postmodern milieu, less emphasis is placed on tidying up ethical loose ends and ensuring that women’s attempts at sexual and social liberty are justly punished.172 On the other hand, these endings accentuate the dangerousness of the femme fatale  – her ability to wreak social havoc with impunity and to survive and thrive despite breaking the gender mould. She thus becomes an unstoppable force who leaves her audience with the uneasy sense that she might turn up again one day, more alluring and more dangerous than ever. They’d better watch out.

Fin de Siècle Anxieties Redux: Origins of the Neo-noir Femme Fatale As with the femmes fatales of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the newly constructed neo-noir fatal woman reflects and embodies contemporary discourses around women, gender and sexuality that make this iconic figure newly relevant within her own contemporary milieu. Mirroring the zeitgeist of the time, she symbolizes a threat to established gender norms and patriarchal hierarchies of power.173 For, during the closing decades of the twentieth century, the growing presence and participation of a number of women in the professional marketplace, as well as some women’s increased access to birth control, granted them greater social and sexual liberties. These changes were understood to arise from (post)feminist idealism, which was considered a threat to the social and economic stability of the traditional heterosexual nuclear family, where men were the breadwinners and women the bread bakers.174 Such fears were further fuelled by a grim economic recession in the 1980s, as well as innumerable social crises, including the new threat of HIV/AIDS, global conflict, terrorism, drug abuse, religious decline, environmental catastrophes and Y2K cyber anxieties  – all of which, in this fin de siècle milieu, stirred up ‘end of days’ obsessions that the world was careering helplessly towards disaster and decay. Within this context of fin de siècle dis-ease, the neo-noir femme fatale once again served as a ‘potent lightning rod’ for audience anxiety, embodying the perilousness of women who defied traditional gender expectations and encroached on traditionally masculine territories.175 Despite the fact that, for the majority of women, feminist ideals of female social and sexual emancipation

172. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 171. 173. Ibid., 166. 174. Amelia Jones, ‘ “She Was Bad News”: Male Paranoia and the Contemporary New Woman’, Camera Obscura 25–6 (1991): 314–15; Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 27; Neroni, Violent Woman, 34–5. 175. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 166. Phillipa Gates describes the neo-noir femme fatale as a metaphor for AIDS – representing the threat of casual sex to heterosexual chastity and marriage (Detecting Women, 234).

49

1. The Femme Fatale

49

remained as unattainable as ever (often due to the intersecting challenges of their race, sexuality and socio-economic status), these ideals were still considered a tangible threat to family values and social structures, even a source of female psychopathy and disaffection. Like the multiple portrayals of femmes fatales in the nineteenth-century fin de siècle, these troubling images and myths of the fatal woman re-emerged at the end of the twentieth century on screen, billboard and canvas, becoming ‘an established presence in the universe of contemporary media’.176 As a site of otherness, this culturally constructed figure exposed the fragility of dominant gender discourses, embodying the chaotic outcomes that ensued when these discourses were disrupted. These neo-noir narratives sought to remind women that their (post)feminist desires for social and sexual freedom were too dangerous to be realized; they gave Technicolor shape to the fears of social dissolution, serving as a ‘powerful backlash’ against feminist and post-feminist claims to women’s liberation.177 As Amelia Jones observes, neo-noir portrayals of the femme fatale ‘represent patriarchy’s last-ditch efforts to rebuild or shore up the tottering ramparts by which the masculine is assured a dominant socio-economic position in social relations’.178 So, while the neo-noir narratives of the twentieth-century fin de siècle might appear at first glance to celebrate post-feminist assertions about women’s sexual agency and empowerment, such a reading is undermined by these films’ patriarchal iconographies, which accentuate the death-bringing potential of women’s ‘liberation’. Moreover, as Farrimond suggests, this patriarchal iconography also objectifies the femme fatale and recuperates her body as a source of audience titillation.179 Indeed, Farrimond argues that these films expose the ‘core myth’ of post-feminist ideology:  that women’s sexuality is a liberating source of female power, which they can control and utilize with impunity.180 Instead, however, the neo-noir femme fatale reminds us that women’s sexuality has by no means shaken off the chains of patriarchal control. Or, as Stables explains: In these broad and illegible texts, the femme fatale has come to stand in for all women – once the figure of the woman is comprehensively sexualized on screen, all females are reduced to form and (fucking) function. This mass objectification doesn’t remove danger from desire – it simply serves to represent all women as dangerous.181

176. Neroni, Violent Woman, 36. 177. Jones, ‘She Was Bad News’, 297–8, 314–15. Although, such gains in women’s power are widely recognized as being more a mirage than a material reality. See Edwards, Admen and Eve, particularly 35−63. 178. Jones, ‘She Was Bad News’, 298; see also Neroni, Violent Woman, 36. 179. Farrimond, ‘Bad Girls in Crisis’, 79–80. 180. Ibid., 79. 181. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 179.

50

50

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Summing Up the Femme Fatale Exotic and erotic, irresistible and immoral, luscious and lethal, desirable and deadly  – these are just some of the features of the femmes fatales we have encountered in this chapter. As we have seen, these iconic cultural personas may look very different, yet they are bound together by a number of shared characteristics that travel with them through space and time. Reaching out from page, stage, canvas and screen, fatal women are always guaranteed to grip their audiences by the throat and demand they submit to their treacherous yet tantalizing charms. What is more, these women’s presentations in various cultural texts have been shaped quite incisively by the historical and socio-cultural milieus within which they were created. Powerful and persistent social discourses – about women, gender, sexuality, social decline and cultural chaos  – have moulded these characters into terrifying female forms who then become powerful cultural markers of who and what a woman is or can become. Created from fears and fantasies about gender disruption, they are then envisioned as a social reality  – an embodied accusation to be hurled at any woman who claims some degree of social and sexual agency. Fantasy and reality thus intertwine, and the fictional femme fatale becomes Everywoman, while every woman is suspected of having the potential to be a femme fatale. But what, then, of Delilah? How might she fit into this rogues’ gallery of fatal women? Are we able to glimpse similarities between her biblical persona and the Salomes, the Phyllis Dietrichsons and the Catherine Tramells we have just encountered? In Chapter 2, I focus on the biblical narrative of Judges 16, looking more closely at Delilah’s characterization in order to contemplate how she came to earn her moniker of quintessential femme fatale within the interpretive traditions surrounding this text. I  also consider how her interpretive afterlives within biblical scholarship have so often identified her as carrying some of those same fatal-woman traits that I  have discussed in this chapter. Do any of these traits have their roots in the Judges 16 text? Or have biblical interpreters perhaps created afterlives for Delilah that reflect the gendered discourses dominant in their own cultural milieus and the anxieties that fatal women can evoke therein?

51

Chapter 2 M IND THE G AP P ART 1: D ELILAH’S I NTERPRETIVE A FTERLIVES

Introduction Like those femmes fatales we have just encountered in Chapter 1, the character of Delilah in Judges 16 is a woman of infinite mystery. Shrouded in textual gaps and ambiguities, many facets of her persona remain unspoken in this story.1 The narrator reveals nothing about her social identity, her race or her sexuality  – identity markers typically employed in biblical characterization  – thereby coating her with a veneer of ambivalence that renders her disquietingly unknowable. Nevertheless, rather than deterring readers from exploring her characterization, such ambivalence has inspired myriad interpretive and cultural afterlives for Delilah which often rely less on what is included in the text than what is absent from it. For readers often feel impelled to fill the silences that surround Delilah’s persona – they need to make this seemingly dangerous and powerful woman less enigmatic and thus less threatening in her otherness.2 They crave a more knowable Delilah, a Delilah who does not unnerve them with her troubling opacity, a Delilah whom they can recognize, categorize and make sense of, thereby rendering her safer and more controllable.3 These afterlives, however, do not offer us the ‘real’ Delilah – the character initially envisioned by the author of this narrative. That Delilah is forever lost to us by the passage of time. The text of Judges 16 offers us only a gap-ridden story; even if we stare endlessly into these gaps, we will never see the ‘truth’, only an emptiness – an absence, not a presence. And, as I discuss in the rest of this chapter and the next, creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives fill this absence by drawing

1. It is not clear whether Delilah’s ambiguity is a narrative strategy to maximize her mystique or a sign of authorial disinterest. See Carol Smith, ‘Samson and Delilah: A Parable of Power’, JSOT 76 (1997): 48–9. 2. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 258. 3. Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 65–6.

52

52

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

on an array of resources, including intertextual clues, pop-culture references and their own sociocultural discourses – in other words, their world in front of the text. This process inevitably lends the textual Delilah a complex, ‘prismatic’4 quality; like an object viewed through cut crystal, she shifts and transforms depending on the interpretive and discursive vantage points from which she is beheld by the reader. And, most frequently, the Delilahs that readers create through this process (be they in popular culture or biblical exegesis) appear in the shapely form of the femme fatale – the sensuous siren of Sorek, whose dangerous sexuality proves all too irresistible for Samson. The mystery woman of Judges 16 thus becomes the fatal woman, a villainous foil to the heroic Samson and a grim warning to her audience about the dangers of feminine allure. In the rest of this chapter, I  take a closer look at some of these prismatic visions of Delilah, considering the ways that they have emerged from the gaps surrounding her character in Judges 16. More particularly, I focus on those gaps that have inspired biblical interpreters to fashion her in the hues and tones of a femme fatale: namely, the significance of her name, her social identity, her race, her sexuality, her gender performances and her ‘fate’. In the following chapter, I examine how these gaps have been filled and interpreted in cultural retellings of Judges 16  – in literature, art, music and film  – looking at how Delilah’s cultural afterlives likewise imbue her character with the heady scent of the fatal woman, which we breathed in so deeply in Chapter  1. What assumptions are made about her sexuality? Does she comply with social gender norms or bend them to meet her own dangerous tastes? Is she identified as an exotic Other and how does such otherness intersect with perceptions of her sexuality? Are her actions construed as disrupting the patriarchal structures of social and sexual power, thereby necessitating her rehabilitation or destruction? I  am intrigued to discover how these locations of ambiguity in the biblical narrative have been ‘demystified’ by creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives, allowing them to construct their own portrayals of Delilah as a femme fatale. Studying these afterlives in depth, I consider the ways they are shaped by both the Judges 16 narrative and the contemporary cultural texts, discourses and concerns of their creators. As I journey through these two chapters, I also demonstrate that the ambiguities surrounding Delilah’s narrative persona in Judges 16 invite the possibility of new afterlives, many of which subvert or reconceptualize her reputation as a fatal woman. These alternative afterlives are rarely contemplated by biblical interpreters and, as we see in Chapter 3, they are seldom explored within cultural retellings of the biblical story. Instead, we are far more likely to encounter an endless pageant of glamour-drenched fantasies of Sorek’s infamous femme fatale which often bear little resemblance to the enigmatic figure we encounter in Judges 16. Let us

4. I have borrowed this term from Helen Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power in the Stories of Delilah and Bathsheba: Seduction in Song’, in Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible, ed. George Aichele, JSOTSup 309 (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000), 154.

53

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

53

begin, then, by turning to the pages of biblical scholarship so we can witness this exegetical transformation of Delilah from mystery woman to fatal woman.

What’s in a Name? Delilah is the only woman in Samson’s life identified by name; even his own mother (the recipient of a divine annunciation no less) and his first Timnite wife lack the prestige of nomenclature. This grants Delilah a particular significance in the narrative; naming a biblical character transforms them from a shadowy background figure to an active, ‘speakable’ subject, whose textual presence demands our attention.5 Moreover, Delilah’s lilting appellation (transliterated delîlâ from Hebrew) may also betray something to the audience about her otherwise ambiguous character. For, in the Hebrew Bible, personal names of people and places often offer insights into their attributes, personal history or fate. As Karla Bohmbach explains: In ancient Near Eastern literature generally, names often carry enormous significance, being inextricably connected to the very nature of that which is named . . . To know the name is to know something of the fundamental traits, nature, or destiny of the name’s bearer. Names can provide insights into a person’s character, social location, or future, or the way in which others perceive the person. In the Bible, the name often represents the very essence of a person.6

This significance of naming can be especially important when we consider women’s names, given the Bible’s typically androcentric focus. As Bohmbach argues, women’s names can grant precious insights into their personalities, ethnicities, histories, qualities and, often, their social locations and kinship ties.7 Given the narrator’s silence about these aspects of Delilah’s persona, her name at least grants her a certain narrative distinctiveness and independence rather than simply being identified ‘in relation to’ a male character (either as their kin or an object of their

5. Mieke Bal, ‘Dealing/with/Women: Daughters in the Book of Judges’, in Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, ed. Alice Bach (New York:  Routledge, 1999), 319. See also Greg Mobley, The Empty Men:  The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel, Anchor Bible Reference Library (New York: Doubleday, 2005), 191. 6. Karla G. Bohmbach, ‘Names and Naming in the Biblical World’, in Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, The Apocryphal/ Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament, ed. Carol L. Meyers, Toni Craven and Ross Shepard Kraemer (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 33. 7. Ibid. See also Wil Gafney, ‘A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game’, in Womanist Interpretations of the Bible:  Expanding the Discourse, ed. Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace, Semeia Series (Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016), 55–6.

54

54

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

desire). As Susan Ackerman notes, ‘Through this language of identification versus anonymity, the tradition signals its sense of Delilah’s autonomous status. The text thereby recognizes her ability to function outside the structures of male authority.’8 Nevertheless, Delilah’s name ultimately proves to be little help in unpacking her textual characterization. For, as many scholars have pointed out, no one is quite sure just what the name delîlâ actually means – what Hebrew root it derives from, what semantic allusions it is intended to convey or even from which ancient Near Eastern language it may have been derived. Despite their best efforts to unpick it, delîlâ – like its owner – remains inscrutable and intriguing. To give you a taste of the unknowability of this name, let me highlight some of the suggested meanings and origins that biblical scholars have previously proffered, while adding one or two thoughts of my own. First, some scholars note that delîlâ may be a Hebrew name, derived from one of the two roots dll and dlh.9 These roots have multiple meanings:  both can convey the verbal sense ‘to hang down’ or ‘dangle’, while the noun form, dallâ, can mean ‘hair’ or ‘thrum’ (the warp threads that hang from a loom).10 Carrying this same semantic nuance, the Ethiopic cognate form delūl refers to ‘dangling curls’;11 thus, delîlâ may allude to Delilah’s personal coiffure or foreshadow her disastrous manipulation of Samson’s own dangling curls.12 The root dll, however, can also mean ‘to be low, weak, brought low, languish’,13 definitions considered apropos by Jewish sages who relate delîlâ to a causative (hiphil) form of this verb, thus conveying the sense ‘to enfeeble’:  ‘Even if her name had not been Delilah, she deserved to be called by such a name, dildelāh, “to weaken.” She “weakened” [Samson’s] strength, she “weakened” his actions, she “weakened” his determination.’14 In contrast, the qal stem of dll carries a nuance of powerlessness; the adjective dal means ‘poor, helpless, small, insignificant’, while the noun dallâ denotes ‘[the] poor’.15 Consequently, Stanislav Segert suggests that the name delîlâ acts as a narrative device, which encourages the audience to view this character initially as a ‘submissive woman’; her eventual defeat of strongman Samson at the denouement of the story is therefore rendered all the

8. Susan Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel (New York: Doubleday, 1998), 52. 9. HALOT, 222; BDB, 196; David J. Clines, ed., Dictionary of Classical Hebrew (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1995), 2:440. 10. HALOT, 222; BDB, 195; Clines, Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 2:440. 11. HALOT, 222. 12. Pnina Galpaz-Feller, Samson: The Hero and the Man. The Story of Samson (Judges 13–16), Bible in History (Bern: Peter Lang, 2006), 167. 13. BDB, 195; John Gray, Joshua, Judges and Ruth (London: Nelson, 1967), 356. 14. Sot. 9b and Num. R. 9.24, cited in Leila Leah Bronner, ‘Valorized or Vilified? The Women of Judges in Midrashic Sources’, in A Feminist Companion to Judges, ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), 92. 15. BDB, 195; HALOT, 221.

55

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

55

more shocking.16 This translation of delîlâ thus imbues Delilah’s character with the bitter taste of falsehood and deceit; she wears her name as a disguise to hide from Samson (and the audience) her power to dominate and destroy. And yet, if delîlâ does convey a sense of ‘submissive’, ‘small’ or ‘powerless’, perhaps rather than being a deliberate misnomer – a literary device employed to hoodwink the audience – it is a genuine attempt by the Judges 16 narrator to relate something about her character. As a ‘powerless’ or ‘submissive’ woman, might not her complicity with the Philistine plot to capture Samson have been borne, less from a disingenuous desire to enfeeble and entrap than from a genuine inability to act in any other way? Did her ‘smallness’  – either her physical frailty or her diminished social status – prevent her from refusing the Philistine elders’ request for her assistance? Or, did it impel her to take extreme measures to rid herself of Samson, before he turned his volatile temper and propensity for violence upon her own much smaller, weaker body? It is possible that the name delîlâ is a sign or marker that invites the audience to look upon her character sympathetically, as a woman trapped and helpless within an intolerably precarious situation. Yet, this possibility is rarely if ever raised, perhaps because Delilah’s established reputation as a powerful and duplicitous femme fatale in her interpretive and cultural afterlives goes against the grain of such a reading, rendering it too incongruous to take seriously. Another common proposal for the origins of delîlâ is that it is a deliberate word play on the Hebrew term laylâ (‘night’).17 This conjures up disquieting images of Delilah shrouded in dark and furtive mystery – a ‘shady lady’ of the night, akin, perhaps, to the Gaza prostitute to whom Samson paid a nocturnal visit (Judg. 16.13) or even a Lilith-like night demon who sucked the life from her prey.18 In the Hebrew traditions, night is associated with suffering and grief (Pss 6.6; 91.5; Job 7.3; 30.17; Lam. 1.2), sudden assault (Jer. 6.5; 2 Kgs 6.4), disturbing visions (Job 33.15), and disaster and death (Exod. 12.29; Job 34.20). It is also a time when female licentiousness (Prov. 7.1-27) and sexualized shenanigans (Ruth 3.8; Song 3.1-4) blossom under cover of darkness. Pnina Galpaz-Feller therefore suggests that the assonance between laylâ and delîlâ conjures up ideations of eroticism and violence, and is a suitable name for a woman cast in the role of a deadly femme

16. Stanislav Segert, ‘Paranomasia in the Samson Narrative in Judges XII–XIV’, VT 34, no. 4 (1984): 460; see also Susan Niditch, Judges: A Commentary (Louisville, KY: Presbyterian Publishing, 2008), 164. 17. According to Lilian Klein, the words delîlâ and laylâ may ‘create an association of sound and meaning’, based on the Midrashic traditions that treat words with shared sound patterns as having shared semantic nuances. See Lilian R. Klein, The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges, JSOTSup 68; Bible and Literature 14 (Sheffield:  Almond Press, 1988), 226, n. 14. Klein cites Ithamar Gruenwald, ‘A Technique of the Midrash: Linkage by Sound Patterns’, Hasifrut 1 (1968–1969): 763. 18. Galpaz-Feller, Samson, 167; Ulrich Simon, ‘Samson and the Heroic’, in Ways of Reading the Bible, ed. Michael Wadsworth (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981), 157.

56

56

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

fatale.19 This understanding of delîlâ is expressed with beautiful simplicity in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1949 movie Samson and Delilah (more of which in Chapter 3), when Samson, captured by the Philistines, coldly asserts that ‘the name Delilah will be an everlasting curse on the lips of men’. This association between delîlâ and laylâ also forms a chiaroscuro contrast with Samson (šimšōn), whose name in turn resonates vocally with šemeš (‘sun’) and could carry the meaning ‘sunny’ or ‘little sun’.20 This noiresque juxtaposition  – between sun and night – may serve as a signal to the audience that this relationship is destined for disaster, the ‘shady’ lady ultimately extinguishing the light (and sight) of the ‘sunny’ hero.21 As Exum suggests, ‘For as the night overcomes the mighty sun . . . so Delilah overcomes the apparently invincible strong man’.22 These shady allusions surrounding delîlâ may likewise be glimpsed in scholarly interpretations that propose non-Israelite origins for this name, linking it to the worship of foreign deities and immoral sexuality.23 For example, delîlâ has been associated with the Akkadian dalālum (‘to praise, glorify’), which is used as an element in personal theophoric names. If it were a truncated form of Dalîl Ishtar (‘praises of Ishtar’ or ‘devotee of Ishtar’), the appellation delîlâ could thus draw associations between Samson’s love interest and the Mesopotamian goddess of fertility, love, war and sex.24 This name could even allude to Delilah being a hierodule or sacred prostitute to the cult of Ishtar  – a ‘devotee’ of the goddess. Alternatively, delîlâ has been linked to the Arabic root dll, the verbal form of which means ‘to flirt’ (dalla), thereby suggesting semantic nuances that range from the innocuous ‘beloved’25 to the more pejorative ‘temptress’,26 ‘amorous’, ‘coquettish’27

19. Galpaz-Feller, Samson, 167. 20. Carolyn Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), 221; Royce M. Victor, ‘Delilah – A Forgotten Hero (Judges 16:4-21): A CrossCultural Narrative Reading’, in Joshua and Judges, ed. Athalya Brenner and Gale A. Yee, Texts @ Contexts (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 240. 21. Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 142; also Simon, ‘Samson and the Heroic’, 157. 22. J. Cheryl Exum, ‘Delilah’, in Meyers, Craven and Kraemer, Women in Scripture, 68. A similar interpretation is offered by Barry G. Webb, The Book of Judges, New International Commentary on the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 398. 23. See, for example, Lilian Klein, ‘The Book of Judges:  Paradigm and Deviation in Images of Women,’ in Brenner, Feminist Companion to Judges, 63, 66. 24. K. Lawson Younger Jr, Judges and Ruth: The NIV Application Commentary (Grand Rapids:  Zondervan, 2002), 315, n.  70; also Clines, Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, 2:440; HALOT, 223; J. Alberto Soggin, Judges: A Commentary, 2nd edn, trans. John Bowden, Old Testament Library (London: SCM Press, 1987), 253; Nahum Sarna, ‘Delilah’, EncJud 5:539; Gray, Joshua, Judges and Ruth, 235, 357. 25. Soggin, Judges, 253. 26. Sarna, ‘Delilah’, 539. 27. Gray, Joshua, Judges and Ruth, 357.

57

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

57

or ‘flirtatious’.28 According to John McKenzie, these monikers forewarn the audience of the ‘disaster’ that Delilah will bring down upon Samson’s head.29 It seems that an amorous or flirtatious woman will cause nothing but trouble. My brief foray into onomastics clearly shows that Delilah’s name has been bestowed with multiple meanings, many of which carry derogatory connotations, whether racial, religious or gender related. Ultimately, however, despite our best efforts to pin down a meaning for delîlâ, uncertainty will always prevail; Delilah may play a central role in the Judges 16 story, she may be the only woman in Samson’s saga to be granted a moniker, but this moniker remains unfathomable. And perhaps this in itself is noteworthy; perhaps her inscrutable name is a literary ploy, accentuating her disquieting mystique. For, like so many femmes fatales, Delilah is a woman steeped in intrigues and ambiguities. Her name may therefore serve as a mask, hiding its wearer’s identity. This may not reflect negatively on her character, though; as I  discuss in Chapter  4, the femme fatale may disguise herself for a number of reasons, including self-protection and survival. Delilah’s name, which obscures her social and racial identity, may have been chosen to reflect this, particularly if we consider the volatile narrative environment of racial hostilities and dangerous subterfuge within which she was located. I return to this in Chapter 4, but for the moment, let me leave you with the thought that, rather than being ‘an everlasting curse on the lips of men’, the name Delilah may instead by an everlasting enigma that captures the multifaceted complexity of this biblical persona.

Gendering Sex If Delilah’s name often leaves biblical interpreters shilly-shallying over its significance, the same cannot be said for their response to another ambiguity that surrounds her character in Judges 16: her sexuality. The majority assumption within Delilah’s interpretive afterlives is that she and Samson were involved in some form of (hetero)sexual relationship. Yet, when we scrutinize the narrative nuts and bolts of Delilah’s sexual portfolio, we discover that the text remains frustratingly coy; her sexual status, along with the nature of her relationship with Samson, are never explicitly spelled out. Instead, the narrator whispers to us a number of loaded terms and obscure clues, teasing us with the promise of sexual intrigue but never offering quite enough detail to quench our curiosity. Interpreters are therefore left to fill the textual gaps themselves, using an imaginative range of sexual storylines that are not voiced explicitly in the text. Within these storylines, Delilah’s character is regularly moulded into the shapely form of a quintessential femme fatale, whose 28. BDB, 195; Robert G. Boling, Judges:  A  New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (New York: Doubleday, 1975), 248. 29. John L. McKenzie, The World of Judges (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice Hall, 1966), 155.

58

58

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

eroticism renders her a lethal presence for Samson. Her deadliness is thus located in her sex, embodied in her gender – she is envisaged as a sexualized woman and, consequently, as a dangerous woman. In the rest of this section, I take a closer look at the biblical text’s portrayal of Delilah as a sexual and gendered subject, considering the ways that this influences her interpretive afterlives. As well as exploring the nature of her relationship with Samson, I also evaluate the ways that her gendered performances throughout this narrative have shaped readers’ appraisals of her sexuality, particularly in relation to her characterization as a hypersexualized femme fatale. I  am keen to learn whether such appraisals are rooted in the text itself or whether they may stem more from readers’ own tacit assumptions about female sexuality and gender, and the complex ways these two phenomena are often conflated. Did They or Didn’t They? Within the interpretive traditions of Judges 16, there is a commonly voiced assumption that Samson’s relationship with Delilah was both heterosexual and consummated; Delilah has therefore variously been described as ‘Samson’s mistress’,30 his ‘wife’31 and his ‘lover’.32 Indeed, James Crenshaw suggests that the very mention of Delilah’s name in this narrative ‘is suggestive of amorous conduct’.33 In order to pinpoint the precise nature of their relationship, some readers jostle to catch the pair in flagrante, combing the text for any hint of erotic potential or innuendo. And to be sure, the narrator does tell us that Samson ‘loved’ (‘hb) Delilah (Judg. 16.4); on the rare occasion when this verb is used to denote a man’s feelings towards a woman who is not his kin,34 the relationship envisaged is typically sexual. It is likely, then, that Samson’s love for Delilah can be understood in a similar light.35 30. Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, 231; Victor, ‘Delilah’, 237. 31. Matthew B. Schwartz and Kalman J. Kaplan, The Fruit of Her Hands: A Psychology of Biblical Women (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007), 53. 32. James L. Crenshaw, ‘The Samson Saga: Filial Devotion or Erotic Attachment?’ ZAW 84 (1974): 498. 33. Ibid. 34. E.g. Gen. 34.2; 24.67; 29.18, 30, 32; 1 Sam. 1.5; 2 Sam. 13.1; 1 Kgs 11.1; Est. 2.17; 2 Chron. 11.21. 35. Delilah is the only woman Samson is said to love; his Timnite wife ‘pleases’ him (Judg. 14.1-3), but it is unclear whether his emotional attachment runs to love. As for the prostitute at Gaza, we are simply told that Samson ‘saw’ her and ‘went into her’ (16.1); there is little in the way of emotional attachment apparent within their brief encounter. According to Webb, Delilah is thus set apart from these other women as the sole recipient of Samson’s love (Judges, 399). Similarly, Exum suggests that the narrator’s disclosure of Samson’s love for Delilah signals that ‘this time is going to be especially important – a fatal attraction’. In J. Cheryl Exum, Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives, 2nd edn (Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015), 59.

59

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

59

Nevertheless, there is still a reticence surrounding this duo’s relationship, making it hard to discern its contours and nuances. The narrator tells us Samson loved Delilah, but remains silent about whether she loved him in return.36 We simply do not know whether they shared a heterosexual attraction to or relationship with each other (however such a relationship may have been configured in Hebrew biblical conceptions of sexuality), although traditional heteronormative interpretations typically suppose that they did. And, while the usual Hebrew euphemisms for sexual intercourse are absent from the text,37 biblical interpreters often identify other clues in this narrative that may insinuate the couple’s sexual intimacy. Yet these clues are decidedly ambivalent; the nearest we get to witnessing any sexual familiarity between the duo is in v. 19, when the narrator tells us that Delilah ‘lulled’ or ‘brought’ Samson to sleep ‘upon her knees (or lap)’,38 shortly before his hair was cut. While this may have been intended as an innocuous statement about Samson’s favourite place to take a nap, it has also been interpreted as a delicate declaration of coital trysting, the Hebrew dual word form birkayim (‘knees, lap’) being read as a euphemism for female genitals39 or an allusion to Samson’s preference for ‘kneeto-knee’ (or missionary position) sex.40 Moreover, the narrator uses the piel form of the verb yšn (‘to sleep’) in v. 19 to indicate that Delilah ‘brought’ Samson to sleep;41 that is, she actively did something in order to tire him out. Taken together, these factors are evidence enough for some interpreters to conclude that the strongman’s snooze was likely post-coital.42 And yet, we are left with a sense that all this sex talk seems rather vague. To be sure, Samson and Delilah appear to spend a lot of time together, yet their shared

36. The verb ‘hb only occurs in two biblical texts with a female subject and male object: in 1 Sam. 18.20, we are told that Michal loves David; in the Song of Songs, the female speaker speaks of her love (and the love felt by other local women) for her ‘beloved’ (1.3-4, 7; 3.14). The fact that this verb is not used in Judges 16 with Delilah as the subject is therefore unlikely to be significant (Victor, ‘Delilah’, 238). 37. For example, ‘to know’ (yd‘), ‘to go into’ (bw’) and ‘to lie with’ (škb). 38. This phrase in the Masoretic Text (MT) is ‘al birkeyha – the Hebrew word birkayim is usually translated as either ‘lap’ (NIV, NRSV) or ‘knees’ (KJV, NASB). LXXA renders the phrase ana meson (between her knees) but LXXB uses epi (on), akin to the MT. 39. There are a number of Hebrew biblical passages (e.g. Gen. 30.3; Job 3.12) where ‘knees’ (birkayim) may be used euphemistically to denote female genitals. See Susan Ackerman, ‘What if Judges Had Been Written by a Philistine?’ BibInt 8 (2000): 39. 40. Anton Karl Kozlovic, ‘The Construction of Samson’s Three Lovers in Cecil B.  DeMille’s Technicolor Testament, Samson and Delilah (1949)’, Women in Judaism 7 (2010): 5–6. Other scholars who suggest Samson’s sleeping position bears sexual innuendo include Exum, Fragmented Women, 57; Niditch, Judges, 166. 41. Jack M. Sasson, ‘Who Cut Samson’s Hair? (And Other Trifling Issues Raised by Judges 16)’, Prooftexts 8 (1988): 334. 42. For example, see Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 145. This may also be what LXXA is suggesting with its placement of Samson ‘between’ Delilah’s knees.

60

60

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

activities do little to infuse their relationship with the scent of sexual promise. They both play various ‘games’ where Delilah ineffectually ties Samson up and Samson ‘escapes’ (vv. 6-9, 10-12, 13-14). And, when Samson is not enjoying a snooze in her company (vv. 16, 19), they talk – or rather, Delilah talks a lot while Samson makes the occasional response (vv. 6, 10, 13, 15-16). This is hardly the stuff of erotic fantasy. Even the allusion to Samson sleeping on (or between) Delilah’s knees (v. 19)  need not carry sexual overtones. Rather, it may invite us to view Delilah’s behaviour in a maternal rather than a sexualized light, given that knees (birkayim) are mentioned within biblical contexts of birthing and parenthood. A woman gives birth ‘on her knees’; children are born ‘upon’ a parent’s knees; an infant is dandled on a mother’s knees (e.g. Gen. 30.3; 50.23; 2 Kgs 4.20; Isa. 66.12; Job 3.12).43 Delilah may thus present a horrifying maternal parody here – rather than a lover  – as she cradles the bald-headed Samson while he lies in her lap, weak as a baby.44 Although this conjures up some interesting thoughts about her gendered characterization within the narrative (more of which later), the lack of explicit reference to her sexual history with Samson allows us at least the possibility that his sexual love for her was both unconsummated and unrequited. Of course, this literary couple may instead have embarked upon a sexual relationship in which traditional (hetero)sexual contours were subverted. As Lori Rowlett suggests, given their predilection for playing games with reeds, ropes and fibres (vv. 6-9, 10-12, 13-14), it may be that they shared a passion for S/M encounters, with Delilah playing the role of ‘femme dominatrix’, tantalizing and tying up Samson, the ‘butch bottom’ in their sexualized games of dominance and submission.45 Textual hints at the S/M nature of Samson and Delilah’s relationship are also noted by Lopate, who comments that Delilah is very dominatrix-like, with her functional and forthright speech and her no-nonsense approach to binding Samson.46 And, while Galpaz-Feller does not explore this theme of S/M explicitly, she does observe a ‘sensuality and violent eroticism’ that seems to seethe within Samson as he and Delilah play their ‘games of deception’, both figures enjoying the thrill of treachery, teasing and counter-teasing.47

43. See, for example, Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 39–40; Phillip Lopate, ‘Judges:  Tests of Weakness. Samson and Delilah’, in Congregation:  Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible, ed. D. Rosenberg (San Diego:  Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987), 88; Sasson, ‘Who Cut Samson’s Hair’, 334; Bal, Lethal Love, 59; Greg Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East (New York: T&T Clark International, 2006), 91–2. 44. Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 39. 45. Lori Rowlett, ‘Violent Femmes and S/M: Queering Samson and Delilah’, in Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, ed. Ken Stone, JSOTSup 334 (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001), 106. 46. Lopate, ‘Judges’, 84. 47. Galpaz-Feller, Samson, 173. See also Webb, who notes that the couple’s relationship was marked by game playing (Judges, 401), and Alter, who suggests that Delilah’s request to Samson about how she can bind and subdue him (v. 6) ‘makes this sound like a perverse sex

61

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

61

Furthermore, within this S/M scenario, the characters of both Samson and Delilah are not confined to a strictly heteronormative sexual script; neither of them is explicitly characterized as engaging in sexual intercourse of any form, nor as being heterosexual or cisgendered.48 Of course, the sociocultural meanings, significances and discourses of sexual desires (be they same sex, opposite sex, somewhere in-between or something different altogether) have changed significantly since the biblical texts were written;49 we therefore have to be cautious about pinpointing and categorizing Delilah’s and Samson’s sexuality, gender and relationship using contemporary terms and definitions. Yet we also need to remember that heterosexuality is one of these contemporary definitions too,50 although it is usually mapped unproblematically by biblical scholars onto opposite-sex relationships within the ancient biblical traditions. So, while we might be tempted to dismiss Rowlett’s S/M scenario as an anachronistic interpretation of the text, in reality, normative readings that assume the duo’s heterosexuality are equally anachronistic. We should acknowledge at least that the ambiguity of Judges 16 leaves open multiple potentials for the nature of Samson and Delilah’s relationship, not all of which are explicitly or implicitly hetero or sexual, as we define these terms today. Readers and interpreters of the text who fill this enigmatic gap with assumptions about the duo’s sexual dalliance are perhaps relying less on the textual evidence in Judges 16 than on those heteronormative sexual discourses dominant within their own sociocultural milieus. A final word or two about Samson and Delilah’s sexual involvement. Most interpreters of Judges 16 who assume the pair were engaged in a sexual relationship also suppose that it was consensual for both parties. Yet, given Samson’s reputation

game they are playing’. See Robert Alter, Ancient Israel. The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2013), 189. 48. For some fascinating discussions about the fluidity of gender and sexuality within S/ M encounters, see Teresa J. Hornsby, ‘Gender Role Reversal and the Violated Lesbian Body’, Journal of Lesbian Studies 3, no. 3 (1999):  61–72; Nikki Sullivan, A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory (Edinburgh:  Edinburgh University Press, 2003), 151–67; Robin Bauer, Queer BDSM Intimacies: Critical Consent and Pushing Boundaries (Basingstoke:  Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 49. Contemporary understandings of sexual terms such as ‘homosexuality’, ‘bisexuality’ and ‘sadomasochism’ only began to develop in the nineteenth century within professional discourses (medical, legal, psychoanalytic). See Gerard Loughlin, ‘Biblical Bodies’, TheolSex 12 (2005): 9–27; Sullivan, Queer Theory, 119–35. For more detailed discussion of changing historical discourses around sexuality, see David M. Halperin, One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990); Jeffrey Weeks, Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985) and, of course, Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality. Volume 1: An Introduction, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 50. Loughlin, ‘Biblical Bodies’, 11.

62

62

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

for impetuous and deadly violence (Judg. 14.19; 15.15), not to mention the grim fate of his Timnite wife thanks to his boastful riddle game (Judg. 15.6), we should consider the possibility that Delilah simply did not wish to have any involvement (sexual or otherwise) with this man. To be sure, the narrator assures us in v. 4 that Samson ‘loved’ (‘hb) her, but love is no guarantee against violence, as narrative rape victims Tamar (2 Samuel 13) and Dinah (Genesis 34) can all too painfully attest. Their rapists claimed to ‘love’ them too (using the same verb ‘hb), yet this did not prevent these men from violating the objects of their ‘love’.51 Rather than being Samson’s willing but duplicitous lover, perhaps Delilah was too afraid of his potential violence to share a bed with him. Or perhaps she did have sex with him, only because she was too afraid to refuse his erotic advances. Perhaps, like Shechem (Genesis 34) and Amnon (2 Samuel 13), Samson raped the object of his desire. At the end of the day, just how free was Delilah to shape her sexual destiny with Samson? As Kathy Rudy reminds us, concepts such as consent and coercion are not necessarily ‘mutually exclusive absolutes’,52 but are much murkier than that, leaking into each other so that it is hard to see where one begins and one ends. The sexual choices we make always occur in a ‘context of constraint’, the result of processes that limit our abilities to exercise absolute sexual and bodily autonomy.53 Delilah’s character likewise faced constraints, including Samson’s volatile strength and his reputation for violence, not to mention her own vulnerability as a woman in this patriarchal and war-torn literary landscape. Although such a reading of her relationship with Samson is rarely entertained, it is no less plausible than those which insist on Delilah’s credentials as Samson’s amorous ‘lover’. Gender Trouble? As we have just seen, Delilah’s interpretive afterlives often assume she was in a (hetero)sexual relationship with Samson, despite a lack of textual evidence to support this reading. More than that, though, she is typically identified as the treacherous protagonist of this relationship – the hypersexed partner who whipped up Samson’s desires and then manipulated them to bring about his ruin. Following their own contemporary constructions of gender and sexuality, readers may reason that Delilah is female, therefore she is the sexualized seductress; Samson, by contrast, is the innocent male victim, powerless to resist her treacherous allure. Indeed, the popular supposition made by biblical scholars constructing Delilah’s interpretive afterlives is that she took the active lead in initiating their liaison. Thus,

51. For a discussion of the complexities of the Hebrew verb ‘hb, see Sasson, ‘Who Cut Samson’s Hair’, 334–5; Caroline Blyth, The Narrative of Rape in Genesis 34:  Interpreting Dinah’s Silence (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 209–12. 52. Kathy Rudy, ‘Sex Radical Communities and the Future of Sexual Ethics’, Journal of Lesbian Studies 3 (1999): 140. 53. Ibid.

63

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

63

she has variously been described as a ‘temptress’,54 a ‘seductress’55 and ‘Samson’s lover-betrayer’,56 while also being accused of ‘overtly using sexual attraction to entice Samson’.57 According to Nancy Tischler, Delilah is a ‘cynical manipulator of sensuality’ who poses a ‘real threat to [Samson’s] masculinity and his mission’.58 For Roger Ryan, she is portrayed as ‘a temptress who uses her feminine allure as power’ to betray ‘poor’ Samson.59 Meanwhile, Royce Victor suggests that Delilah employed her ‘sexual charm’ to deceive Samson, thereby infusing her character with the aroma of bewitchment.60 Kozlovic likewise echoes this in his reference to Delilah as the ‘seductive sorceress of Sorek’ who employs ‘enticement strategies’ to wrest from Samson the secret of his strength.61 Whether or not her reputation extends to occultism, there is at least widespread agreement among many biblical interpreters that her charm must have been staggering, given Samson’s astonishing naïveté and the apparent ease with which he fell for her none-too-subtle tactics.62 As well as conjuring an air of bewitchment about Delilah, Victor also suggests that the narrator’s mention of Samson’s ‘love’ for Delilah in v.  4 only serves to accentuate ‘the intensity of her treachery’; she not only betrayed a Hebrew man, she betrayed the Hebrew man who loved her.63 This evaluation of her character is likewise echoed by Elizabeth Cady Stanton, nineteenth-century author of The Women’s Bible, who describes Delilah as the embodiment of ‘the treacherous, the sinister, the sensuous side of woman’, who uses her sexuality ‘as a snare to beguile the man whose lust she has aroused’.64 Similarly, author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe appeals to nineteenth-century gender mores when she writes about

54. Crenshaw, ‘Samson Saga’, 487; Roger Ryan, Judges, Readings:  A  New Biblical Commentary (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007), 121. 55. Alter, Ancient Israel, 191; also Gail Corrington Streete, The Strange Woman: Power and Sex in the Bible (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), 55. 56. Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, 222. 57. Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 141. See also Lillian R. Klein, ‘A Spectrum of Female Characters in the Book of Judges’, in Brenner (ed.), Feminist Companion to Judges, 28–9; Smith, ‘Samson and Delilah’, 52; Schwartz and Kaplan, Fruit of Her Hands, 37. 58. Nancy Tischler, Legacy of Eve:  Women of the Bible (Atlanta:  John Knox Press, 1977), 75, 77. Cited in Carol A. Smith, ‘Delilah: A Suitable Case for (Feminist) Treatment?’ in Judges:  A  Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series), ed. Athalya Brenner (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), 112. 59. Ryan, Judges, 121. 60. Victor, ‘Delilah’, 249. 61. Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 4, 6. 62. J. Clinton McCann, Judges (Louisville, KY:  John Knox Press, 1989), 107–8; see also D. Luciani, ‘Samson: l’amour rend aveugle’, VT 59 (2009): 325. 63. Victor, ‘Delilah’, 238. 64. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, The Woman’s Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective (Mineola, NY:  Dover Publications:  2002), 2:34. Stanton’s Woman’s Bible was originally published in two volumes in 1895 and 1898.

64

64

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

‘Delilah the destroyer’ – an ‘evil woman’ and ‘terrible creature, artful and powerful, who triumphs over man, and uses man’s passions for her own ends without an answering throb of passion’.65 Thus, in the eyes of many biblical interpreters, Delilah is the ‘quintessential deceptive seductress’66 and ‘femme fatale par excellence’67 who drains Samson of his warrior’s strength by intoxicating him with the enticements of her sex. With her particular brand of destructive and dishonest sexuality, she is portrayed in her interpretive afterlives as akin to those fin de siècle fatal females, such as the sphinx and the vamp, whose sexual allure tears into their (typically male) victims, consuming their masculine potency. These afterlives also bear a certain resemblance to some noir and neo-noir femmes  – such as Cora Smith (The Postman Always Rings Twice), Matty Walker (Body Heat) and Rebecca Carlston (Body of Evidence) – whose potent sexuality is both irresistible and deadly, and the source of their disruptive power. Nevertheless, these condemnatory evaluations of Delilah’s sexuality are not given explicit shape or voice within her textual characterization. The Judges 16 narrator does not tell us that Delilah is a sexual predator, nor are we shown, through her words or actions, that she relies on her sexual allure to wring from Samson the secret of his strength. In v. 5, the Philistine elders do instruct her to ‘entice’ (pattî) Samson to reveal this secret. Yet, while this verb (pth) is used three times in the Hebrew Bible to denote one person’s seductive actions towards another,68 it more frequently conveys a sense of persuasive speech, or ‘verbal convincing’, either honest or underhand, which is not inherently seductive in form or content.69 65. Harriet Beecher Stowe, Women in Sacred History: A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical and Legendary Sources (New  York:  JB Ford, 1873), 108–13. A  little earlier, writer and education reformer Sarah Trimmer (1741–1810) echoed Stowe and Stanton in her description of Delilah as a ‘mercenary wretch’ – the type of woman who takes pleasure in orchestrating the downfall of any man unfortunate enough to cross her path: ‘The unhappy consequences of [Samson’s] attachment to Delilah should lead men to be on their guard against the artifices which are usually practiced by wantons; these unprincipled females, having no affection for those who are weak enough to waste their tenderness upon them, are ready to betray or ruin them whenever it will answer any mercenary views of their own.’ In Sarah Trimmer, Sacred History, Selected from the Scriptures, with Annotations and Reflections, 2nd edn (London: R&R Gilbert, 1817), 2:267, 269. 66. Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, 222. 67. Fewell, ‘Judges’, 79. 68. Exod. 22.16 uses the verb pth to denote the ‘seduction’ of an unmarried woman. In Job 31.9, the seducer’s gender is reversed, when Job mentions the hypothetical situation of being ‘enticed’ (pth) by a woman into committing some form of sexual indiscretion. In Hos. 2.14, God plans to ‘allure’ his wife Israel into the wilderness to renew their covenant relationship, after she has been punished for her infidelities. 69. Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses:  Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth (New York: Free Press, 1992), 135, 260, n. 3. See, for example, 2 Sam. 3.25; Ps. 78.36; Prov. 1.10; 25.15; Jer. 20.7; Ezek. 14.9.

65

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

65

Furthermore, nothing about Delilah’s subsequent behaviour suggests her ‘enticement’ took a particularly sexualized form. To be sure, she appeals to Samson’s emotional attachment towards her when trying to persuade him to reveal his secret (v. 15), but again, nothing in this verse suggests her complaint was erotically charged. ‘How can you say “I love you” when your heart is not with me?’ she pleads, the words ‘love’ and ‘heart’ softening her accusation that his game playing belies his claims of love.70 And, while she eventually drives him to submission with her verbal harrying (vv. 16-17), the Hebrew verb used here to denote this harrying (ṣûq) carries no intrinsically sexualized or gendered inferences.71 The verb takes a female subject only here and in Judg. 14.17, when Samson’s Timnite wife likewise ‘pressed’ him to reveal the answer to his riddle.72 In other words, while Delilah’s persistent and persuasive speech causes Samson great distress, her actions bear no explicit overtones of eroticism or sexualized manipulation. Moreover, we need only cast our eye over this narrative to see that it is Samson, not Delilah, who has a textual history of sexualized behaviour (Judg. 15.1; 16.1, 4). The narrator remains tight lipped about Delilah’s sexual provenance, and yet she is the one whom readers visualize as foisting her sex onto this naïve man of God. Perhaps audiences feel a little flustered about attributing to Israel’s holy Nazirite any sense of sexual appetite, and yet, throughout the Samson traditions, he exudes a stronger scent of sex than Delilah. Overall, then, the narrative does not disclose Delilah’s feelings for Samson, nor does it hint that her behaviour towards him was explicitly sexualized. Nevertheless, creators of her interpretive afterlives continue to portray her as a treacherous temptress. This, I suggest, is because she threatens to destabilize their own contemporary discourses regarding female sexuality and gender norms. Delilah does not behave in ways that women (both biblical and contemporary) are ‘expected’ to behave  – she bends and breaks gender norms throughout the Judges 16 narrative. Consequently, interpreters appear to link her unorthodox gender performance here to notions of her sexual treachery, which are actually absent from her literary characterization. In other words, Delilah’s reputation as

70. Webb, Judges, 404. 71. Koslovic refers to Delilah as ‘Queen of the Naggers’ (‘Construction’, 6), while Ryan describes her as a ‘pest’, whose importunate nagging ‘drains the life from a man who loves her’ (Judges, 123–4). Delilah’s verbal harassment and the effect it had on Samson is ‘revealed’ from Samson’s perspective in Philip R. Davies, Yours Faithfully:  Virtual Letters from the Bible (London: Acumen, 2004), 45–9. I return to the significance of Delilah’s verbal powers in Chapter 4. 72. The verb ṣûq literally means ‘to narrow’; in its causative form, as here, it takes on the sense ‘to press upon’ or ‘to constrain’ (BDB, 847). Elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (e.g. Deut. 28.53, 55; Isa. 29.2, 7; 51.13; Jer. 19.19), the verb is used in the context of warfare, to denote a sense of ‘besieging’ or oppression caused by the enemies of Israel. It also appears in Job 32.18, during Elihu’s speech, when he complains that the spirit within him ‘compels’ him to speak.

66

66

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

hypersexualized femme fatale may be constructed more from assumptions about her gender than from anything explicitly disclosed about her sexuality within the biblical narrative itself. Consider, for example, the silence surrounding Delilah’s sexual and social status. The reader is given no details about Delilah’s role or roots within either the family structure or her wider community. To which tribal and kinship network did she belong? Was she single, married, widowed, divorced? The narrator simply does not say, and Delilah’s position in the patriarchal household remains a mystery. There is no indication that she was living under the authority of a man – either a father, husband or other male kin. This is unusual for a named female character in the Hebrew Bible traditions, where genealogy is a vital indicator of social identity. Instead, Delilah is ‘virtually rootless’ in time and space, devoid of both genealogical and geographical origins.73 Unlike Samson’s mother (Judges 13) and his Timnite bride (Judges 14–15), whose social identities are clearly marked by their relationships to male kin, she defies social categorization.74 With no male authority figure to whom she must accede, Delilah is thus granted a certain agency in this narrative to conduct both her relationship with Samson and her negotiations with the Philistine elders. While such agency is not unheard of among female characters in the Hebrew Bible,75 it is more often presented as a masculine prerogative within these ancient traditions. Delilah’s own agency therefore highlights the strangeness, or nonconformity, of her literary persona.76 And, although some readers evaluate this nonconformity as a marker of her social and economic empowerment,77 for others, it arouses suspicions and anxieties about her character, nudging them to identify her as a femme fatale. Klein, for example, reminds us that Delilah is ‘an unattached woman, and such women are often depicted as seductively leading good men astray’.78 She thus concludes that the socially independent Delilah ‘uses her sexuality to tangible advantage’.79 73. Lilian R. Klein, From Deborah to Esther:  Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003), 24. 74. Even the woman Samson visits at Gaza is given a social category – that of professional prostitute  – despite her kinship status being unstated. Prostitutes were women who did not live under the authority of male kin, and were ‘exempt’ from the usual control under which women within patriarchal households were held. See Phyllis A. Bird, ‘“To Play the Harlot”: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor’, in Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, ed. Peggy L. Day (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989), 77. 75. For example, Rahab (Joshua 2), the medium of Endor (1 Samuel 28), Ruth and Naomi (Ruth 1–4), and the daughters of Zelophehad (Num. 27.1-11). 76. See Victor H. Matthews, Judges and Ruth (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 159–60. 77. For example, ibid., 159; Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, 231–3; Bal, Lethal Love, 51. 78. Klein, ‘Book of Judges’, 62. 79. Ibid.; also Ryan, Judges, 121. Interestingly, although Samson’s Timnite wife uses very similar tactics as Delilah (persistent nagging, emotional blackmail, appeals to Samson’s love

67

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

67

Similarly, Roger Ryan describes Delilah as a ‘savvy lady who is able to look after herself, an opportunist, who takes initiatives’.80 This is a double-edged compliment, acknowledging Delilah’s social autonomy but likewise casting a suspicious eye over it, the word ‘opportunist’ seldom conveying entirely wholesome implications. Exum, meanwhile, suggests that the narrator intended for Delilah’s agency to be taken as a critique of her character and a warning to readers of the perils that such independent women may pose to patriarchal stability.81 The message of this narrative, she suggests, is that ‘women’s sexuality must be controlled. In order to reduce its threat, women’s behaviour must be regulated.’82 As well as her unusual social agency, Delilah’s character appears to subvert traditional gender roles even further by her seeming refusal to conform to any of the social functions typically prescribed for biblical women. This renders her a ‘borderline figure’ within the patriarchal setting of her literary milieu;83 bearing a name, but not a familial pedigree, she cannot be slotted neatly into one of the gendered categories constructed by patrilineal and patriarchal norms, such as wife, mother, concubine or sister. Like her femme fatale allies from the nineteenthand twentieth-century fins de siècle, she also stands accused of subverting some of these traditionally feminine categories, twisting them to meet her own perverse desires. She is apparently unmarried, living autonomously and preferring to betray the man in her life rather than serve his every need; she is thus deciphered as the ‘complete antithesis of the perfect Israelite wife’.84 Most significantly, however, is the fact that Delilah appears to abstain from the revered feminine role of motherhood, a fact that may render her immediately suspect within a biblical setting, where women were expected to embrace this position. As Exum observes, ‘Motherhood and nurturing characterize the good woman; sexuality and sensuality, the evil one.’85 Indeed, according to some biblical interpreters, Delilah does not simply eschew motherhood, she perverts it too.

and loyalty) in order to wheedle from him the answer to his riddle, she is far less likely to be characterized by readers of Judges 14–15 in a sexualized light. Perhaps this is because, as a ‘wife’, she has a respectable role within the narrative and is therefore less likely to be considered a femme fatale. 80. Ryan, Judges, 121. 81. Exum, Fragmented Women, 64–7. 82. Ibid., 65. 83. Ibid., 54. 84. Smith, ‘Samson and Delilah’, 52. Schwartz and Kaplan describe Delilah as Samson’s wife, but berate her for failing to ‘support her husband in his special abilities or in his divinely appointed mission’ (Fruit of Her Hands, 53). Such critiques of Delilah’s spousal credentials cast her in a comparable light to those film noir femmes fatales, such as Phyllis Dietrichson (Double Indemnity), Cora Smith (The Postman Always Rings Twice) and Bridget Gregory (The Last Seduction), who go against the grain of the ‘perfect’ doting wife and instead betray their husbands – even as far as plotting to kill them – for their own personal gain. 85. Exum, Fragmented Women, 54.

68

68

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

In Judg. 16.19, Samson lies bald and helpless on Delilah’s knees, just before his capture, imprisonment and torture by the Philistines. As I mentioned earlier, lying on a woman’s knees is a motif associated in the biblical traditions with birthing. This image is enough for Koslovic, among others, to view Delilah’s character as scorning traditional maternal responsibilities of selfless care and protection of her ‘child’.86 As monstrous filicidal mother, Delilah is thus construed as a grim warning about those women who reject traditional gender roles to pursue their own paths of sexual and social autonomy. For, by surrendering to this woman’s ‘maternallylinked eroticism’,87 Samson becomes fatally vulnerable.88 Thus, according to Robert Alter, Judg. 16.19 offers the reader a ‘powerful image of the seductive woman lulling the mighty hero and reducing him to a baby in her lap’.89 Or, as Koslovic posits, ‘It is the mother-like actions of Delilah-the-sexy-non-mother that facilitated Samson’s ultimate demise.’90 As well as distorting the revered role of mother, Delilah’s participation in Samson’s downfall is another element to her persona that subverts traditional expectations prescribed for biblical women. She singlehandedly ensures the capture of Samson – a feat that even whole armies of Philistine warriors had been unable to achieve. In order to do so, she manoeuvres her way competently through the typically masculine territories of political negotiations and covert military operations, liaising with political leaders (vv. 5, 8, 18)  before independently strategizing and executing her plan. Taking the lead in this operation, she shows herself to be in control, barely having to rely on the Philistines at all for support. While initially the Philistine elders appear to cooperate with her as she sets out to discover Samson’s secret (vv. 8-9, 12), she ends up working increasingly on her own.91 And, by the time Samson gets round to telling her the real source of his 86. Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 6. 87. Ibid. 88. Webb makes no reference to Delilah as a mother in this scene but does suggest the shaved and sleeping Samson is ‘like a new-born baby’ (Judges, 406). 89. Alter, Ancient Israel, 191. 90. Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 6. Also Leneman notes that ‘Delilah . . . is not destined to become a mother because that is not her purpose. Therefore she remains a threat to the very end and must disappear from the story’ (‘Portrayals of Power’, 147). 91. When Samson first tells Delilah that he can be restrained by seven fresh bowstrings, the Philistine elders bring these to her (v. 8); there are also Philistine troops hiding in an inner chamber of her house (v. 9), no doubt to capture Samson once he is incapacitated. On the second attempt, these troops remain in their hiding place, but Delilah has to get the new ropes to bind him herself (v. 12). The third time the duo enact their ‘game’, Delilah again provides the restraining material (a loom) and the Philistine troops are no longer mentioned, having seemingly abandoned her (v. 14). This growing distance between Delilah and the Philistines is noted by a number of scholars, including Webb, Judges, 406; Sasson, ‘Who Cut Samson’s Hair’, 337; Hope Parisi, ‘Discourse and Danger: Women’s Heroism in the Bible and Dalila’s Self-Defence’, in Spokesperson Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, ed. Charles W. Durham and Kristin Pruitt McColgan (Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press,

69

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

69

strength, Delilah has to ‘send for’ the elders in order to tell them the news (v. 18). Clearly, she is a woman who has no qualms about completing a dangerous task without male assistance. Through her successful solo mission to capture Samson, Delilah therefore undermines traditional gender boundaries that claim politics and warfare as singularly masculine pursuits. While playing no active part in Samson’s blinding or subsequent imprisonment, she is portrayed as adorning the masculine facade of a successful political strategist and military tactician. Moreover, just as she lays claim to her own core of masculinity, she simultaneously deprives Samson of his. As Niditch notes, cutting Samson’s hair may represent his symbolic ‘castration’ or ‘womanization’, hair being traditionally associated with male genitals and sexual potency.92 Delilah’s role in Samson’s hair loss (regardless of whether she herself cut it93) thus symbolizes her ‘stripping and subjugation’ of the Hebrew warrior, emasculating him and depriving him of his manly credentials:  ‘The cutting of Samson’s hair, ironically accomplished by a woman’s treachery, makes him into a woman, the subdued one, the defeated warrior.’94

1994), 269; Betsy Meredith, ‘Desire and Danger:  The Drama of Betrayal in Judges and Judith’, in Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible, ed. Mieke Bal (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989), 71–2; Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 216. 92. Susan Niditch, ‘Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit: The Empowerment of the Weak’, CBQ 52, no. 4 (1990). 93. There is some debate around whether Delilah or a third party wielded the blade that cut Samson’s hair. The text of Judg. 16.19 is a little obtuse, stating that Delilah ‘called to the man’ and then cut off the seven locks of Samson’s hair. It is not clear who this man is, and why Delilah calls to him. Some interpreters suggest he is a barber, or Philistine soldier, who brings Delilah a razor, or even does the hair cutting himself (e.g. Boling, Judges, 250; Soggin, Judges, 254; Webb, Judges, 406). A number of translations (e.g. NRSV, KJV, JPSV) echo this by indicating that it is this man, not Delilah, who wields the blade. Yet the verb watigallaḥ is a feminine form, suggesting that she herself did the deed. I find Sasson’s explanation quite convincing, that ‘the man’ she calls to is Samson himself, and she is checking to make sure he is asleep before she takes her first snip (‘Who Cut Samson’s Hair’, 333–46). Regardless of who cut Samson’s hair, the fact remains that Delilah was the catalyst that allowed it to happen. So in a sense, it makes little difference whether or not she did the cutting – her role in these events remains central and she is inextricably connected to this deed and Samson’s subsequent loss of masculinity and strength. For more detailed discussion of this topic, see Clanton, Daring, Disreputable, and Devout, 68; Ela Lazarewicz-Wyrzkowska, ‘Samson: Masculinity Lost (and Regained?)’, in Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, ed. Ovidiu Creangǎ, Bible in the Modern World 33 (Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010), 177–8. 94. Niditch, ‘Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit’. Niditch also notes that, in his shorn state, Samson is put to grind at the mill, a euphemism for sexual intercourse used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible (Job 31.2; Isa. 37.10). He is thus the heroic warrior who is ultimately raped, humiliated and subdued ‘like a woman’.

70

70

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

What is more, Delilah’s actions in the immediate wake of Samson’s arrest may further accentuate both her own masculinization and Samson’s emasculation. In v. 19, after Samson’s hair has been cut, the narrator states that she began to ‘annōtō.95 This Hebrew word is usually translated as ‘subdue him’ or ‘weaken him’, the piel form of the verb ‘nh carrying a sense of ‘to weaken, afflict, humiliate’. This verb, however, is also used in the Hebrew Bible to denote a physical rather than emotional or social form of affliction, conveying acts of physical and sexual assault.96 Did Delilah physically or sexually violate Samson while he lay powerless on her lap? As Susanne Scholz observes, this interpretation of the word ‘annōtō is seldom considered within biblical scholarship, perhaps because of the common cultural misconception that a woman cannot perpetrate rape against a man. Yet, as Susanne Scholz insists, the possibility that Delilah sexually assaulted Samson is exegetically feasible.97 Interpreters may baulk at the idea of a heroic Hebrew warrior being so thoroughly ‘unmanned’ by the act of rape; traditionally, men are the violators not the violated, the penetrators not the penetrated.98 They are in control, having the sexual agency and autonomy to decide when and with whom they have sex. As a recipient of Delilah’s sexual or physical violence, Samson is thus emasculated and feminized according to dominant gendered discourses, taking the feminine position of abused body, while she dons the masculine role of abuser. Time and again, then, Delilah traverses normative gender boundaries within this narrative, slicing through them like a hot knife through butter, as she enacts both masculine and feminine roles  – political conspirator, violent warrior, querulous love interest, sexual abuser – with apparent ease. And, by so doing, she strips apart the fragile inerrancy of male power and authority in social, political and sexual spheres, exposing them as a sham. Such gender fluidity and the threat

95. The same verb is used in v. 5 by the Philistine elders, as they reveal to Delilah their plans for Samson. She then repeats it in v.  6 when, with breathtaking honesty, she asks Samson how he might be restrained. 96. The verb is used in its piel form to denote Sarai’s mistreatment of Hagar in Gen. 16.6, 31, and refers to acts of sexual violence in Gen. 34.2; Deut. 22.29; Judg. 19.24; 20.5; 2 Sam. 13.12, 14, 22, 32; Lam. 5.11. Alter notes the verb ‘nh in Judg. 16.19 could convey the sense of ‘tortured’, which, while not explicitly referencing sexual violence, certainly captures a sense of Samson’s physical or emotional abuse, rather than a simple ‘subduing’ or ‘weakening’ of his strength (‘Samson without Folklore’, 53). And, in his commentary on Judges, Alter describes Delilah’s torture of Samson here as ‘sadistic’ (Ancient Israel, 191). Exum suggests ‘nh could mean ‘to bully’, although admits that it could imply physical violence, or even ‘something more harsh or heartless’ (Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 217). 97. Susanne Scholz, ‘Judges’, in Women’s Bible Commentary Revised and Updated, ed. Carol A. Newsom, Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, 3rd edn (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012), 122. 98. Ibid. See also Ken Stone, Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996), 80−1.

71

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

71

she poses to patriarchal prerogatives of power can dizzy her audience, instilling in them a sense of anxiety and uncertainty concerning her social and sexual placement within this narrative. To make sense of these gendered idiosyncrasies, they choose to typecast her as a femme fatale, a figure who, as we saw in Chapter 1, regularly eschews traditional gender roles. By classifying her thus, the audience can at least pin down and ‘explain away’ her dangerous body, labelling her as an uncanny aberration and the exception that proves the necessary rule of patriarchal pre-eminence. As Exum notes, ‘Samson’s yielding to a woman’s lure exposes the fissures in the edifice of masculinity. By surrendering, he reveals his superiority over the woman as an illusion, for women are supposed to surrender to men, and not the other way round.’99 Thus, throughout the Judges 16 narrative, Delilah’s gender subversion is evoked by her words and actions, as well as the gaps and silences that surround her social and sexual status. And it is this subversion, so intrinsic to Delilah’s narrative portrayal, that likewise evokes fears about her perilous and anxiety-provoking sexual nonconformity, which so many creators of her interpretive afterlives identify as an intrinsic feature of her persona. As we saw in Chapter 1, the femme fatale’s ‘gender trouble’ is often assumed to be contiguous with an equally dangerous ‘sexual trouble’  – an irresistible erotic allure which seeps, like a toxic perfume, into her victims’ every pore, rendering them helpless to resist her charms. We can see this process at work in Delilah’s interpretive afterlives too; despite the gaps surrounding her sexuality within the narrative, many interpreters nevertheless correlate her gender disruption with a sexual disruption that is simply not voiced in the biblical narrative. Accordingly, her character is imbued with a multiplicity of (hyper)sexual overtones and allusions, which are based less on textual evidence than on these discourses around women’s gender performances and sexualities as internalized by the interpreter. Viewed thus, Delilah invariably becomes Samson’s lethal lover  – a femme fatale whose sexual allure is so enticing that even this super-strong, God-chosen warrior is powerless to resist. Whether such an afterlife coheres with the original intentions of the text’s author, we will never know. But what we do know is that this type of afterlife has become a common means of bringing shape and substance to Delilah’s biblical character, turning the narrative into a cautionary tale about women’s dangerous sexuality. As Exum notes, ‘Samson yielded, and look what happened to him, says our story. If even an apparently invincible man like Samson can be undone by a woman, how much more so should the ordinary man be on his guard.’100 Or, to quote Melissa Jackson, Judges 16 thus

99. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 255. 100. Ibid., 252. Is Delilah dangerous only to men, as Exum’s quote suggests? That is certainly not the case with more contemporary femmes fatales, whose victims include people of all genders (Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct and Nicole Wallace from Law and Order:  Criminal Intent are two excellent examples). Alas, the biblical text does not invite us to test this, given that we only ever see Delilah negotiating or interacting with male characters.

72

72

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

becomes a didactic lesson for the audience that ‘sexuality overcomes strength, female overcomes male’.101 Whoring Around Another facet of Delilah’s sexual provenance that is often added to her interpretive afterlives is her identification as a prostitute. This claim has been made by biblical interpreters dating back to the first few centuries of the Common Era; Josephus refers to her as a Philistine harlot (Ant. 5.8.11-12), while Pseudo-Philo conflates her character with that of the Gaza prostitute whom Samson visited in Judg. 16.1 (Ps.-Philo, 43.5-7). This ubiquitous reading of Delilah’s character may again be related, in part at least, to her unconventional gender performances rather than any explicit evidence within the narrative. The fact that she has no identified male kin and yet  – like the prostitute Rahab in Josh. 2.1  – dwells in her own house (Judg. 16.9, 12) is often taken as a textual ‘clue’ that she is ‘on the game’ in some sense.102 Furthermore, Samson’s seeming ‘predilection’ for prostitutes (v. 1) also serves to endorse this hypothesis; being the first woman Samson meets after his visit to the prostitute at Gaza, Delilah is thus similarly identified as a whore, albeit a whore Samson falls in love with.103 Her behaviour has also been described as ‘promiscuous’104 and ‘very prostitute-like’,105 in that she is deemed to have ‘bartered’ her sexuality for financial gain in a cool-headed and businesslike manner. According to Webb, Delilah is ‘every bit as mercenary as the prostitute of Gaza, but far more upmarket – and lethal’.106 And, in John B. Vickery’s eyes, she is simply a ‘whore at heart’.107 Such interpretive readings of Delilah’s character appear to follow the same ‘logic’ as those late nineteenth-century discourses (mentioned in Chapter 1), which associated the femme fatale with the dangerous figure of the prostitute. Both of these feminine icons were accused of wrecking men’s spiritual and moral superiority through their debauched sensuality. So, with Delilah playing this role, Samson thus becomes the heroic embodiment of spiritual and sexual purity, the tragic knight and man of God trapped within the harlot’s snare.

101. Melissa A. Jackson, Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible: A Subversive Collaboration (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 128. 102. Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 38. 103. Ibid.; Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 9. 104. Charles Halton, ‘Samson’s Last Laugh: The Ś/ŠHQ Pun in Judges 16:25-27’, JBL 128 (2009): 61. 105. Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, 231. 106. Webb, Judges, 400. Quite why Webb would envisage Delilah as an ‘upmarket’ prostitute is not clear. 107. John B. Vickery, ‘In Strange Ways:  The Story of Samson’, in Images of God and Man: Old Testament Short Stories in Literary Focus, ed. B. O. Long (Sheffield: Almond Press, 1981), 69; cited in Ackerman, Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen, 231.

73

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

73

Yet, despite the ubiquity of Delilah’s whorish interpretive afterlives, nothing in the text of Judges 16 confirms that her character was engaged in prostitution; as Bal insists, any resemblance is, at best, ‘superficial’.108 To be sure, Samson has sex with a professional prostitute directly before meeting Delilah, but that does not prove he was attracted only to prostitutes; one swallow, after all, does not make a summer. And, while it is true that Delilah appears to have access to her own house, nothing suggests that it doubled as her brothel workplace. Perhaps, like the apocryphal Judith, she was a woman of means (Jdt. 8.1-8)  – a wealthy widow or businesswoman whose hard work and political acumen allowed her to live autonomously and liaise profitably with local leaders, thereby preserving her financial independence.109 As Bal suggests, Delilah can easily be considered in this biblical text as ‘a prototype of the socially successful, independent woman’.110 On the other hand, perhaps Delilah’s character was a prostitute. Given her seeming lack of kinship support, we can imagine that she would have had to find some means of sustaining herself within her narrative location, where biblical women’s survival was so often dependent on their male kin. Prostitution may have been a matter of exigency and survival, whether she wanted to follow this lifestyle or not. So perhaps she did have sex with people for money; perhaps it was the only means she had of scraping together a living within the battle-weary valley of Sorek. As Avaren Ipsen notes, history betrays a timeless proximity between militarism and prostitution, war being an occasion when sexual exploitation (including rape, slavery and coerced sex work) becomes ubiquitous.111 Filling the textual gaps around Delilah’s character, we might imagine her being forced into this occupation by the military groups in the region, held captive and abused for the sexual ‘pleasure’ of local troops. Again, the Judges 16 text does not explicitly evoke any of these afterlives, yet neither does it reveal, as some biblical scholars aver, that she was a perfidious and self-centred whore. Taking the moral high ground around the topic of prostitution is easy – if you have a roof over your head, a safe place to sleep and food in your belly. Without these things, the moral hues of sex work are far from black and white. For some reason though, styling Delilah in the garb of a treacherous whore seems to make sense to readers of this narrative. As a woman who breaks gender rules, who cannot be safely slotted into a predefined category of womanhood (wife, mother, widow, sister), she unsettles her audience. Moreover, the fact that she coolly manipulates a man’s sexual emotions in return for financial reward makes her audience peer at her with deep suspicion. Women are supposed to be passive, needy and dependent in their (hetero)sexual relationships; the fact that Delilah appears more Machiavellian than mawkish impels readers to rationalize her ‘abnormal’ behaviour in a way that makes sense according to their own sociocultural

108. 109. 110. 111.

Bal, Lethal Love, 51. Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 38–9. Bal, Lethal Love, 51. See also Kozlovic, ‘Constructions’, 7. Avaren Ipsen, Sex Working and the Bible (London: Equinox, 2009), 61–2.

74

74

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

world in front of the text. Moreover, the fact that they often do so by identifying Delilah as a prostitute betrays more about their own preconceived notions of gender and prostitution than it does about Delilah’s persona in Judges 16. Dressing her up in this manner helps readers ‘explain’ why she defies traditional gender categorization: it offers an explanation as to why she is not dependent on male kin, why she seems incapable of returning Samson’s love and why she is apparently willing to sell him out for hard cash.112 It also alleviates readers’ deep-seated anxieties about women’s potential dangerousness; for it is far more reassuring to believe that only ‘certain’ women (that is, prostitutes) will behave like Delilah than to imagine a social world where all women may potentially share her manipulative powers. Regarding her as a prostitute may also make it easier for readers to blame her for Samson’s downfall and to elevate him to the status of innocent victim. Labelled as the stigmatized whore, she instantly becomes a tainted presence in the narrative – less valuable, less worthy of empathy or concern, and much easier to marginalize and revile.113

‘I Am Philistine, and Beautiful’: Race, Hybridity and Otherness As well as offering a complexity of innuendo regarding her sexuality and gender, the Judges 16 narrator wraps Delilah’s character in even more mystery by prevaricating about her racial and ethnic identity. This is another tantalizing gap in her characterization, which readers then fill with their own preconceptions about gender, femininity and race.114 Right from the outset, there is a certain slipperiness surrounding her racial provenance. When introduced in v. 4, she is not identified as coming from a particular town or settlement; instead, the narrator tells us only that Samson met her in the wadi of Soreq (literally, the wadi of vines), a vast geographical region on the border of Israelite and Philistine territory. During this particular narrative episode in Judges, it is unclear whether the area was under Philistine or Israelite control.115 As Delilah’s locale, it therefore reveals nothing

112. J. Cheryl Exum, ‘Lethal Woman 2:  Reflections on Delilah and Her Incarnation as Liz Hurley’, in Borders, Boundaries and the Bible, ed. Martin O’Kane, JSOTSup 313 (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 257. 113. On the contemporary social stigmatization of prostitutes, see Myuki Tomura, ‘A Prostitute’s Lived Experiences of Stigma’, Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 40 (2009): 51–84. 114. Exum, ‘Lethal Woman 2’, 257. 115. The wadi of Soreq has been identified as a large region, now known as Wadi es-Surar, located around thirteen miles west-southwest of Jerusalem and running from the highlands of Judah towards the coastal plain. To the north lay the Israelite Zor’ah, Samson’s birthplace, and to the south and west, Timnah and Ekron, respectively – both Philistine territories. During the period of biblical history in which the Judges 16 narrative is set, it is unclear whether the area was under Philistine or Israelite control. For further details, see Klein, ‘Book of Judges’, 61; Tammi J. Schneider, Judges (Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 2000), 220.

75

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

75

about her race. She could have been an Israelite or a Philistine, or something different altogether. This was former Canaanite territory, after all, so she may have belonged to a people who were among the former inhabitants of this land.116 Or perhaps she was a sojourner who had moved to the area from another nearby territory – Edom, perhaps, or Moab. Stationed here in the liminal space of Sorek, the narrator simply refuses to confirm her racial origins, positioning her quite literally on the border of two nations, while tying her specifically to neither.117 As well as prevaricating about Delilah’s precise geographical locality, the Judges 16 narrator does not disclose her racial origins, implicitly or explicitly, by any other means either. As I noted above, the name delîlâ offers few clues, being variously identified as deriving from Hebrew, Akkadian, Ethiopic or Arabic. Moreover, Delilah’s actions do not mark her as belonging indisputably to one particular people, be they Israelite, Philistine or otherwise. True, she conspired with Philistine elders against a Hebrew man who was not averse to Philistine women; these factors offer enough evidence for some interpreters to affirm her Philistine loyalties and racial affiliations.118 Yet Delilah’s actions also make sense if we identify her as other-than-Philistine; after all, the Philistines were not the only community that wanted Samson contained. Some of his fellow Israelites were also tired of his troublemaking in the region and were keen to get him out of their hair before he stirred up even more strife with their Philistine overlords (Judg. 15.9-13). Perhaps Delilah was a member of this group (whether an Israelite herself or not) that sought to rid their battle-scarred neighbourhood of this unruly pest.119 As Ackerman suggests, 116. Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, 222. 117. Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses, 260, n. 105. See also Mobley, Samson and the Liminal Hero, 90. Gafney suggests that Delilah may have had an Israelite father and a Philistine, or Canaanite, mother (‘Womanist Midrash’, 63). 118. The tradition of Delilah’s foreign origins can be traced back to early Jewish and Christian biblical interpretations of Judges 16, including those by Josephus (Antiquities of the Jews 5.310), Pseudo-Philo (Ps.-Philo 43.6) and Ambrose (Letter to Virgilius 35.29). Other more recent scholars who suggest that the text could hint at Delilah’s foreignness (be it Philistine or otherwise) include Younger, Judges and Ruth, 316; Soggin, Judges, 253; Klein, ‘Book of Judges’, 62, n.  1; A. Graeme Auld, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, Daily Study Bible (Louisville, KY:  Westminster John Knox Press, 1984), 219; Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, 222; Victor, ‘Delilah’, 240; Gregory T.  K. Wong, Compositional Strategy of the Book of Judges: An Inductive, Rhetorical Study (Boston:  E. J. Brill, 2006), 231, n. 11; Webb, Judges, 399; Joseph Blenkinsopp, ‘Structure and Style in Judges 13–16’, JBL 82 (1963):  73; Jackson, Comedy and Feminist Interpretation, 120, n. 25; Bradley L. Crowell, ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl:  Foreign Women of the Deuteronomistic History in Postcolonial Perspective’, BibInt 21 (2013): 8–9. 119. In her first-person retelling of the Judges 16 narrative, Yairah Amit proffers the possibility that Delilah is an Israelite from the tribe of Judah who was impelled to betray Samson on behalf of her people in the hope that the Philistines would subsequently leave them in peace. See Yairah Amit, ‘I Delilah: A Victim of Interpretation’, in First Person: Essays

76

76

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Delilah may be likened to the character of Jael (Judges 4–5) in this respect, with both women participating in an ethnic conflict that was ‘not necessarily their own’ and both playing a significant role in the conquest of a man who was perceived by others as a threat to Israel’s welfare.120 Alternatively, we might compare Delilah to Rahab (Joshua 2), a Canaanite woman who chose to aid the Hebrew troops in their conquest of her own people because she believed that, in religious terms, it was the right thing to do. Thus, while some readers may not expect a woman to conspire with ‘the enemy’ against one of her own people,121 there are precedents in other biblical traditions that render this a plausible interpretation. Moreover, Samson’s supposed predilection for non-Israelite women is similarly of little use in determining Delilah’s racial identity. Just because he found one Philistine woman so attractive that he sought to marry her (Judg. 14.1-3) does not mean that he found only Philistine women worthy of his sexual energies. Who knows whether Samson even cared about the racial identity of the women whose sexual and social company he sought? Additionally, the prostitute (zōnâ) he visits in Gaza (Judg. 16.1-3) may have been living in Philistine territory, but, as Exum notes, her character may have been conceptualized as an Israelite living and working in foreign territory.122 While some sensitive readers may baulk at the thought of Israelite women working as prostitutes (even within literary contexts such as this), the Judges 16 narrator does not disclose the implied racial background of this character or whether Samson’s visit was prompted primarily by a penchant for foreign women. Such narrative evasiveness about Delilah’s racial identity leaves some biblical interpreters feeling uneasy – without this powerful social-identity marker, she is rendered less familiar and thus harder to classify and comprehend. It is as though her race becomes an essential locus of meaning for her character, signifying who she is and why she behaves the way she does. As a result, readers of Judges 16 often thrust upon Delilah’s character a specific racial identity, most typically either Israelite or Philistine, depending on how they understand her character’s function within the narrative. And, as she is usually identified as the duplicitous and dangerous ‘villain’ of the story, they often assume she is a ‘foreign’ – that is, non-Israelite – woman, or, more specifically, the interpretive afterlife they create for her is that of a sexualized foreign woman. Because, for some readers of this text, Israelite women in the Bible are ‘respectable’ and trustworthy; foreign women, on the other hand (both biblical and otherwise), spell treachery and danger for even the godliest of men.123 Their racial otherness slips into a sexual otherness that is both alien and alluring; they therefore personify a warning – voiced in the

in Biblical Autobiography, ed. Philip R. Davies, Biblical Seminar 81 (London:  Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), 74–6. 120. Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 37. 121. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 218. 122. Ibid. 123. Exum, Fragmented Women, 48.

77

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

77

biblical traditions124 – about the power of foreign females to wreak havoc within the hallowed boundaries of Israel’s patriarchal community. Using their guile to penetrate these boundaries from the ‘outside’, these exotic femmes fatales entice men away from their racial and religious identity, subverting their authority and draining them of their masculine strength.125 Thus, biblical characters such as Cozbi and her Midianite sisters (Num. 25.1-18; cf. Numbers 31), Potiphar’s wife (Genesis 39), and the ‘strange’ or ‘foreign’ woman in Proverbs 1–9126 are painted within both the biblical texts and their interpretive afterlives with the vibrant hues of alien eroticism, which, as we saw in Chapter  1, remains a powerful identity marker of the fatal woman. Given this dominant discourse regarding foreign women in the biblical traditions, Delilah’s ambivalent racial provenance takes on similar shades of disreputability within her interpretive afterlives. As Exum notes, Delilah is often doubly ‘othered’ by readers of this text – other-than-male and other-thanIsraelite  – and thus marked as a twofold danger to the much-idealized Hebrew masculinity.127 As a result, the textual reticence about her race is often broken with interpretive whispers of exoticism and eroticism, forcing her to assume the facade of the ‘evil foreign temptress’128 whom Samson simply could not resist. Webb, for example, identifies Delilah as a Philistine, suggesting that her fascinatingly foreign allure rendered Samson far too ‘reckless of danger and sober responsibility’, and ultimately led him to abandon his duties to God and country.129 Crenshaw likewise 124. For further discussion of the reputation of foreign women in the biblical traditions, see, for example, Crowell, ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl’, 1–18; Galpaz-Feller, Samson, 176–80. Foreign women, such as Rahab (Joshua 2), Jael (Judges 4–5), Tamar (Genesis 38) and Ruth (Ruth 1–4), are portrayed more positively, despite their sexually loaded characterizations, perhaps because they display loyalty towards Israel, placing its (androcentric) needs before their own or those of their ethnic community. By so doing, they pose no threat to the patriarchal power structures of biblical Israel. They are therefore distinguished from the ‘bad’ foreign women in the Bible whose exotic sexuality was considered a threat. See Athalya Brenner, The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative (Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985), 115−21. 125. See Streete, Strange Woman, 43–75; Crowell, ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl’, 5–6, 14. 126. See for example Prov. 2.16; 6.24, 26; 7.1-27; 9.13. Interestingly, Niditch also notes that Prov. 23.27 reveals ‘a fascinating wavering’ between the zārȃ (‘foreign woman’) and the zōnȃ (‘harlot’), suggesting a conflation of the two in the minds of the editors and translators of this text (cf. Prov. 2.16; 5.3, 20; 7.5, 10; 22.14) (‘Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit’, n. 25). 127. Exum (Fragmented Women, 50–5) discusses the ‘othering’ that occurs throughout Judges 13–16. 128. Rowlett, ‘Violent Femmes and S/M’, 106. 129. Webb, Judges, 396. Webb’s reading takes a similar approach to that articulated in Ps.-Philo 43.5-7, which suggests that Samson’s ‘mingling’ with Philistines (of which Delilah is one) is his downfall, thus highlighting the dangers of foreign women to intoxicate (literally and metaphorically) men with their strong wines and even stronger sexual allure.

78

78

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

argues in favour of Delilah’s Philistine provenance, suggesting that Samson’s perilous and seemingly unbreakable enthralment with Philistine women can be read as a polemic against the ‘grave danger inherent within such a union’.130 According to Crenshaw, such danger may have arisen from the ‘natural beauty’ and superior expertise in ‘cosmetics, clothing and the like’ of Philistine women (including Delilah), which rendered them particularly irresistible to Hebrew men.131 Interpretive traditions such as these therefore invite readers of Judges 16 to view Delilah as a dusky, dangerous body – a foreign body – within which is located a terrible moral ‘darkness’. Yet, given the uncertainty over Delilah’s race, readings such as Webb’s and Crenshaw’s may have been guided by other factors, including wider biblical attitudes towards foreign females and interpreters’ own contemporary assumptions about the (biblical and non-biblical) feminine exotic. In turn, these interpretive assumptions take on a life of their own, as Delilah’s entire persona is scrutinized through the lens of her prescribed foreignness. Her sexuality (which likewise remains a gap in this narrative) becomes seeped with exotic potential. Akin to those nineteenth-century fin de siècle femmes fatales crafted in the Orientalist imaginings of their European creators, she is gazed upon through the magic lantern lens of McClintock’s ‘porno-tropics’ tradition132 and fashioned into the fatal foreign seductress whose body is inscribed with colonial myths about the erotic and exotic feminine Other.133 And, like those ‘shady’ fatal ladies of film noir, her moral darkness whispers to readers toxic connotations of ethnic darkness and the ever-present threat of racial otherness. Nevertheless, these interpretive afterlives that identify Delilah as a foreign femme fatale ignore her position as a border dweller in this narrative; by locating her in the region of the Sorek valley (an area bordering both Philistine and Israelite territory), the text itself invites us to consider her as neither Israelite nor Philistine, neither insider nor outsider. In this border dwelling, she therefore refuses to fit into one racial category or the other, but rather adopts a certain ‘hybridity’ that defies categorization.134 Yet such hybridity can cause discomfort and confusion among biblical interpreters, betraying, perhaps, a tendency to ascribe a moral value to the biblical (and, at times, non-biblical) Other that is largely determined by where they are from. This discomfort often compels creators of Delilah’s interpretive (and 130. Crenshaw, ‘Samson Saga’, 480. See also Crowell, ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl’, 8−9. 131. Crenshaw, ‘Samson Saga’, 480−1. 132. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 22. 133. For example, Lilian Klein suggests that, because prostitution was a cultural institution and ‘modus vivendi’ among Philistines, the Philistine Delilah therefore ‘cannot be judged by Israelite standards’ (‘Book of Judges’, 66). Moreover, she suggests, ‘Prostitute or not, the [sexual] methods Delilah uses are acceptable, perhaps traditional, in her [Philistine] society’ (ibid., 63). 134. On racial hybridity, see Sullivan, Queer Theory, 73.

79

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

79

cultural) afterlives to transport her from this border location and reposition her somewhere – anywhere – so they can ‘see’ her more clearly. Frequently, they move her to a space (their world in front of the text) that is preoccupied by their own beliefs and ideologies about race and gender, using these to illuminate and classify her narrative persona. Within this space, Delilah will always be the sojourning Other, the diaspora dweller, dislocated from her textual borderland and relocated within a new interpretive and cultural locale, dressed up according to the local contexts and customs so that she makes ‘sense’ to her audience.135 And, more often than not, she is adorned with the costume of a treacherous and hypersexualized Philistine femme fatale, thus betraying the discourses and expectations about biblical foreign women (and sometimes, about all foreign women) held by her hosts. Her interpretive afterlives thus become reflections of their creators, mirroring the contours and landscapes of their own cultural worldviews that continually shape and are shaped by their perceptions of the racial Other.

Show Me the Money: Unravelling Delilah’s Motivations Another point of ambiguity in the Judges 16 narrative concerns Delilah’s motivations for helping the Philistines capture Samson. What persuaded her character to take on, single-handedly, this hugely dangerous mission, in which armies of Philistines (as well as a gang of Hebrews) had previously failed? Why did she appear to accede, immediately, to the Philistine elders’ request? Did she have any reservations, second thoughts or regrets about her role in this mission? The Judges 16 narrator gives no definitive answers to these questions; Delilah’s inner world – her emotions and motivations – remains a mystery, as do so many other facets of her character. Readers must fill in this narrative gap themselves, using both the textual evidence and (very often) their own presumptions about Delilah’s persona. For some interpreters, her motivations are rooted in her sexuality – she betrays Samson because she is ‘that sort of woman’, a femme fatale who revels in seducing, manipulating and ensnaring her victims because this is an intrinsic part of who she is.136 Any other explanation as to why she cooperated with the Philistines is therefore moot. For other readers, however, Delilah’s persona is soaked with the acid hues of avarice, which, as I mentioned in Chapter 1, is a familiar feature of the hard-boiled and Hollywood noir femme fatale. Within these twentieth-century cultural texts, the fatal woman often appears as a grasping and amoral vamp who destroys her victims because she gains something from doing so – be it social power, egotistical pleasure or material wealth. Some interpreters of Judges 16 appear to view Delilah 135. Clanton, Daring, Disreputable, and Devout, 65–6. 136. See, for example, the evaluations of Delilah’s character by Tischler, Stanton, Kozlovic, Trimmer and Beecher Stowe mentioned earlier in this chapter.

80

80

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

in this light too, claiming that she was motivated to betray Samson by greed alone. The five Philistine elders each offer her 1,100 pieces of silver (so 5,500 pieces in all) if she helps them capture Samson (Judg. 16.5). This is a huge sum of money,137 perhaps reflecting the difficulty of the mission or the urgency with which the Philistines wanted to complete it. Whatever the reason, Delilah appears to accept these terms, starting work on the elders’ request immediately (v. 6) and carrying on, despite a number of obstacles, until the Philistines’ money is in her hand (vv. 18-20). These details of Delilah’s financial reward from the Philistines are the only explicit indicator in the text of a possible motive for her betrayal of Samson. Indeed, according to Exum, the Judges 16 narrator deliberately suppresses any other possible motivations that could explain Delilah’s behaviour, thereby nudging readers towards the conclusion that the Philistines ‘bought’ her complicity with their generous monetary remuneration.138 As a result, some interpreters identify her character as a heartless gold-digger, whose desire for wealth resulted in a man’s death. Betraying the man who loved her was bad enough, they contend, but betraying him for money  – a huge sum of money to boot – was even worse, signalling her amoral and selfish cupidity. In Alter’s eyes, she is thus a ‘mercenary’ figure,139 while Galpaz-Feller accuses her of being ‘enslaved to money’.140 Crenshaw likewise identifies her ‘deviousness’ as being ‘rooted in greed rather than the coquetry of love’.141 Ryan, meanwhile, clearly has money on his mind when he envisions Delilah at the moment of Samson’s capture, ignoring the Hebrew strongman’s agonized screams ‘as she carefully counts her 5,500 pieces of silver’.142 Ryan’s creative production of this scene (which is completely absent from Judges 16) portrays Delilah as a horribly heartless betrayer; his reference to her counting out 5,500 ‘pieces of silver’ also equates her with that most despised exemplar of biblical betrayal, Judas (Mt. 26.15). This in turn transforms her into a force of evil, whose rapacity heaped 137. To get a sense of the enormity of this sum, Boling points out that, in Judg. 17.10, Micah offers a Levite priest ten shekels as an annual stipend, which he appears happy to accept (Judges, 249). Thus, the 5,500 pieces of silver offered to Delilah would appear outrageously high, giving her a very strong motivation to accept the Philistine offer. As a point of comparison, given that the average annual salary for a parish priest working in Britain is around £24,000, Delilah would be paid today somewhere in the region of £13 million for her services. See also Younger, Judges and Ruth, 316; Webb, Judges, 400. 138. Exum, Fragmented Women, 64. 139. Alter, Ancient Israel, 189. 140. Galpaz-Feller, Samson, 176. 141. Crenshaw, ‘Samson Saga’, 472, 500. Both Klein (From Deborah to Esther, 13) and Myra J.  Siff (‘Samson’, EncJud, 17:749) suggest that Delilah betrays Samson ‘for a price’, hinting that financial reward was the motivating factor behind her actions. 142. Ryan, Judges, 124.

81

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

81

chaos and death upon a Christ-like Samson. Like those hard-boiled and noir femmes, such as Brigid O’Shaughnessy (The Maltese Falcon), Bridget Gregory (The Last Seduction) and Kathie Moffat (Out of the Past), who appear to value wealth over human life, Delilah is thus captured in these interpretive afterlives as a dangerous feminine presence whose predatory hunger for wealth impelled her complicity in a heinous act of violence. Of course, not all biblical scholars view Delilah’s character through the razoredged lens of avarice; a number of alternative motivations have been proffered, which present her in a more complex or sympathetic light. Ackerman, for example, suggests a fascinating afterlife for Delilah, which casts her in the role of a heroic Philistine military agent, patriotically striding out to cut down the Hebrew menace who is such a threat to her people.143 Ackerman likens Delilah to those other biblical heroes – Jael (Judges 4–5), Rahab (Joshua 2) and the apocryphal Judith – who bravely take enormous risks to deliver a community from military threat. Unlike Jael and Judith, though, Delilah is more typically castigated as the avaricious whore rather than the military saviour of a people. And yet, as Ackerman insists, ‘the heroic status of Delilah, who sold herself to capture a Philistine enemy, should likewise stand undiminished’.144 Perhaps, then, we should envisage her as an expert in espionage, whose superb undercover skills come with an eye-wateringly large price tag, reflecting the high esteem in which the Philistines hold her. In a similar vein to Ackerman, Klein notes that, while Delilah betrayed Samson for ‘the lowest of purposes:  a price’, this Philistine siren may have been motivated to do so in order to ‘save her people’ from Samson’s seemingly unbeatable military might.145 In other words, we might raise a judgmental eyebrow at Delilah’s methods, but her motivations may at least have been grounded in something more than selfish gain. In these interpretive afterlives, Delilah the femme fatale meets Delilah the femme forte; while she is willing to accept cash to betray the man who loves her, her heroic endeavours (to some extent at least) surely let her off the moral ‘hook’ upon which she is so often hung. To summarize, then, while it is true that the narrator of Judges 16 reveals no explicit reasons for Delilah’s complicity in Samson’s betrayal other than the Philistines’ cash offer, her motivations do remain open to interpretation and cannot be used to ascribe to her explicitly mercenary or avaricious qualities. Like those other gaps that surround her character in the text – her gender, ethnicity and social status – this particular ambiguity offers readers multiple possibilities, not all of which invite such a negative evaluation of her actions. The fact is, we simply do not know why Delilah handed Samson over to the Philistines in exchange for 5,500 shekels. We therefore cannot assume that she did so because she was an avaricious femme fatale, driven by a grasping desire for wealth, pleasure or power. 143. Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 35–41. See also Victor, ‘Delilah’, 235–55; Bal, Lethal Love, 51. 144. Ackerman, ‘What if ’, 41. 145. Klein, ‘Book of Judges’, 63–4.

82

82

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

(Un)happy Endings: Delilah’s Fate Thus far, we have considered the ambiguities surrounding Delilah’s character in Judges 16, which have inspired her innumerable interpretive afterlives as a femme fatale. There is one final gap that I wish to consider, which again readers may fill in ways that echo these afterlives: Delilah’s fate. The narrator does not articulate what happened to her after Samson’s capture. Did she leave the valley of Sorek, 5,500 shekels tucked into her bag, and settle down somewhere to enjoy a long and luxurious life? Or was she in the temple of Dagon on that fateful day (Judg. 16.23-30), numbered among the Philistines Samson killed when he pushed down the temple pillars?146 Even more intriguingly, how did Delilah feel about Samson’s imprisonment and torture at the hands of the Philistines? Did she ever regret playing such a decisive role in his capture? Did she suffer sleepless nights, agonizing over her betrayal of the man who loved her? Or was she simply relieved to have ‘escaped biblical patriarchy, with her body weight in bling, silver, to boot’?147 These questions remain unanswered, and we are left once again to fill in this gap using a mix of textual clues and our own evaluations of what would be a ‘fitting end’ for this biblical betrayer. For, even though she suffers a ‘textual death’,148 disappearing from the narrative as soon as her task is done, Delilah’s shadow may continue to haunt the corners of our consciousness, leaving us dissatisfied with the moral resolution to this story. Did she really ‘get away’ with her act of betrayal? Why was she not punished for her role in destroying a divinely elected judge of Israel? And how could the narrator leave her unfettered, free to wander through the biblical landscape where she could continue to threaten the hallowed edifices of biblical patriarchy? As I  mentioned in Chapter  1, the femmes fatales of the late nineteenth-century imagination were at times ‘killed off ’ by their creators, thereby reassuring audiences that the threat they posed to masculine power structures had been destroyed or contained. So too were those lethal ladies of classic film noir and hard-boiled literature from the mid-twentieth century, who were considered by their creators and audiences as a ‘source of rebellion that must be quashed’.149 Yet, while Delilah’s interpretive afterlives do not often address the issue of her fate, it is nonetheless taken up in a number of her cultural afterlives, which we look at in the following chapter. There we see that, in film, literature and music, Delilah the femme fatale must bear the consequences of her own treachery,

146. This is the fate for Delilah suggested by H. Lockyer, The Women of the Bible (London:  Pickering & Inglis, 1967), 44; I. Guthridge, Great Women in History and Art (Middle Park:  Medici School Publications, 1995), 23; G. Karssen, Book 2:  Her Name Is Woman (Colorado Springs, CO:  Navpress, 1991), 104. These are cited by Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 12. 147. Gafney, ‘Womanist Midrash’, 70. 148. Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 14. 149. Maxfield, Fatal Woman, 169.

83

2. Mind the Gap Part 1

83

either through redemption, death or sometimes both. Unlike the biblical narrator of Judges 16, her cultural creators refuse to let her escape scot-free; for, as Exum notes, ‘The desire to know what happened to Delilah is often a desire to see her punished.’150

Lingering Impressions Delilah exits the Judges 16 narrative in v.  20, trailing behind her a lingering scent of betrayal and death. Right to the end, the narrator maintains her enigma and leaves readers with more questions than answers about her sexuality, her social status, her race, her motivations and her fate. More than this though, the narrator also offers readers few if any clues about how they are meant to evaluate Delilah’s character within this story. Should they shower her with admiration or disapproval? Should they condemn her actions outright, or consider them in a more sympathetic light? The narrator does not say, and so Delilah remains both unpunished and unacclaimed for her decisive role in Samson’s demise. Biblical interpreters have engaged with this ambiguity in different ways, offering their own evaluations of the narrator’s intentions regarding Delilah’s characterization in Judges 16. According to Exum, the ‘patriarchal agenda’ of this text promotes the belief that women are ‘powerful and dangerous’.151 The narrator guides readers to approach the story ‘according to convention’, filling in the textual voids with gendered stereotypes about women, which are prominent within both the wider biblical traditions and their own cultural milieus.152 This in turn encourages them to craft a vibrant and unforgettable image of Delilah as femme fatale  – an archetype of women’s treachery and thus an endorsement of their subjugation and control.153 Offering an alternative view to Exum, Carol Smith suggests that the narrative does not nudge readers towards a specific moral position vis-à-vis Delilah’s character; rather, it presents her story in all its glorious ambiguity and invites readers to form their own conclusions as to its moral significance. As she suggests, ‘While the narrative certainly does reflect the values and preoccupations of the patriarchal society from which it arose, it does not so much reinforce them as leave open the possibility that they may be questioned.’154 Smith also argues that, although the narrator portrays Delilah as a manipulative and deceitful woman, we are able to regard her more positively by adopting alternative viewpoints. Her character is located in a web of patriarchal power structures, which, at times, limits her responses and behaviours. As a ‘victim of her time’, her actions may therefore 150. 151. 152. 153. 154.

Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 243–4. Exum, Fragmented Women, 63. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 42; and Exum, Plotted, Shot and Painted, 210. Smith, ‘Samson and Delilah’, 48.

84

84

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

not be entirely excusable, but at least they are understandable.155 The narrative thus invites readers to consider her character in a more sympathetic light, taking into account the hugely challenging context in which she was operating. In the following chapters, I take up this narrative invitation identified by Smith, while, at the same time, never losing sight of Exum’s concerns about the patriarchal agenda of Judges 16. As I have shown throughout this chapter, Delilah is habitually presented in her interpretive afterlives as the formidable femme fatale, who delights in transgressing traditional expectations. As a character who smashes her way through patriarchal discourses surrounding female sexuality and gender, she is thus envisioned by biblical scholars and readers of Judges 16 as a dangerous figure, who wields her sexuality like a rapier to destroy the hopelessly smitten Samson. And, as I show in the next chapter, this predominantly negative portrayal of Delilah within biblical interpretation remains dominant within her cultural afterlives too, on stage and screen, in literature, music and art. Yet, I also intend to demonstrate in Chapter 4 that these features of her character which remain unarticulated by the narrator may be viewed from multiple perspectives through our prismatic interpretive lens, allowing us to imagine a number of different afterlives for Delilah that challenge, complicate or reconstruct those dominant visions of her as a fatal woman.

155. Smith, ‘Delilah’, 111. Similarly, Gafney notes that Delilah’s ‘ethical standards are at some variance from contemporary readers but are perfectly appropriate in the world of the text’ (‘Womanist Midrash’, 71).

85

Chapter 3 M IND THE G AP P ART 2: D ELILAH’S C ULTURAL A FTERLIVES

In the previous chapter, I considered the ways that biblical interpreters have filled the gaps surrounding Delilah’s character in Judges 16. Particularly, I noted that the interpretive afterlives they create for Delilah are often sculpted in similar forms to those deadly femmes fatales we encountered in Chapter 1. In this chapter, I turn my attention to Delilah’s cultural afterlives, exploring how her representations in art, film, music and literature are likewise imbued with the sights, sounds and scents of the fatal woman. Given the ubiquity of these cultural afterlives across the centuries, my discussion is by no means exhaustive.1 Rather, I focus on a number of portrayals that, to my mind, perpetuate most vibrantly her reputation as a femme fatale. Many of these portrayals emerge during historical periods when the femme fatale was at the height of her cultural notoriety (the nineteenth-century fin de siècle and the mid-to-late twentieth century), thereby reflecting wider cultural obsessions about the fatal woman so prevalent at the time. But I also study some of Delilah’s cultural afterlives from earlier periods too, noting the way that these foreshadow subsequent depictions of this biblical character as a fatal woman. In particular, I consider how creators of these afterlives have drawn upon their own sociocultural discourses of gender and sexuality to transform Delilah’s opaque biblical characterization into the sparkling and sensuous form of Soreq’s infamous femme fatale.

Fatal Words: Delilah as Femme Fatale in Literature The story of Samson and Delilah has been retold and re-visioned by a number of poets and novelists over the centuries. For example, Eric Linklater’s novel, Husband of Delilah (1962), portrays Delilah as a Philistine courtesan who becomes Samson’s wife, and whose betrayal is an act of retaliation against his

1. Gunn, Judges, 170−230 offers a marvellous overview of the Samson and Delilah tradition as it has been interpreted and portrayed in literature, music and visual culture across the centuries.

86

86

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

destructive presence in her life. More recently, in The Book of Samson (2006), American author David Maine presents Samson as a figure whose morally inscrutable zeal compels him to commit mass murder against the Philistines. Delilah, meanwhile, is transformed into a Philistine nymphomaniac, whose primary talents are ‘carried in her cunt’2 and who is motivated by the twin desires of quenching her voracious sexual appetite and serving her people. According to New  York Times reviewer Janet Maslin, The Book of Samson attempts to ‘reinterpret the Bible’s humanity in ways that make sense in the modern world’.3 Clearly, what ‘makes sense’ in the modern world are images of men as misguided extremists and women whose capacity for treachery lies in their insatiable sexuality. The most well-known literary afterlife for Delilah, however, is found in John Milton’s dramatic poem Samson Agonistes. Published in 1671, this work depicts Samson as a godly warrior whose blindness and suffering serve as conduits through which Milton contemplates thorny theological issues. Milton begins Samson’s story at Judg. 16.23, with the Hebrew warrior blinded and imprisoned in a Philistine gaol. Here, he laments his fate, identifying his marriage to Delilah (an event absent from the biblical text) as the source of his current predicament. Milton thus fills in the biblical gap about Delilah’s sexuality in a similar fashion to many other interpreters of this tale, by assuming her relationship with Samson was (hetero)sexual. Moreover, he identifies her as a Philistine, her foreignness serving to accentuate her unsuitability as a spouse for this heroic Hebrew warrior (722; 980−7).4 Nevertheless, as Samson’s wife, Delilah has a slight veneer of respectability in Milton’s poem, although this is insufficient to negate her reputation as a dangerously sexualized woman. When she visits Samson in gaol, the Chorus provide a commentary on her appearance that connects her physical allure to her duplicity. She is ‘bedekt, ornate, and gay’, like a ‘stately Ship’ whose ‘Amber scent of odorous perfume’ serves as harbinger of her appearance at Samson’s gaol cell (712–21). Her voice is ‘inchanting’ (1065) and she has used her ‘over potent charms’ (427) and ‘fair fallacious looks, venereal trains, softn’d with pleasure and voluptuous life’ (533–4) to beguile and betray her husband. While beauty itself was not considered a sign of feminine duplicity during the Renaissance period, a woman who exploited her attractiveness and adornments in order to arouse men (including her husband) was regarded as a source of immorality and danger. As Mary Weinkauf notes, ‘In an age which believed that it was wrong for a wife

2. David Maine, The Book of Samson (Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007), 128. 3. Janet Maslin, ‘The Book of Samson’, New  York Times, 5 November 2006, available online:  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/arts/05iht-bookmon.3401187.html?_r=0 (accessed 28 April 2017). 4. All quotations from Samson Agonistes (and line numbers) are taken from the online version of the text from Project Gutenberg, available online:  http://www.gutenberg.org/ files/1745/1745-h/1745-h.htm#link2H_4_0075 (accessed 28 April 2017).

87

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

87

to incite lust in her husband, Dalila would be considered contemptible.’5 Indeed, such is the Chorus’s antagonism towards Delilah, they describe her throughout this poem as almost bestial in nature – she is a serpent (997–8), a viper (1001) and a hyena, whose smooth words are her ‘wonted arts’ (748). Samson too identifies something brutish in his wife’s persona, likening her to a ‘specious Monster’ (230) who ensnared him with her treachery. Like those femmes fatales of the nineteenthcentury fin de siècle, Milton’s Delilah has an air of animalistic cruelty – she is not quite human, but dangerously Other. When Delilah visits Samson in his gaol cell, she attempts to explain to him the reason for her betrayal. Yet her husband is unwilling to listen, calling her out as ‘My Wife, my Traytress’ (725). The antithesis to the silent, obedient and sexually chaste Good Wife, revered during the Renaissance period, she is, in our hero’s opinion, a ‘deceitful Concubine’ with a ‘lascivious lap’ (536–7) upon which he fell prey. Moreover, the fact that Milton grants Delilah a voice throughout this poem, which she uses to defend herself against Samson’s accusations, would have been enough for seventeenth-century audiences to look at her askance; respectable wives, after all, were not supposed to argue with, interrupt or oppose their husbands. As Weinkauf observes, ‘Dalila is hardly a model of proper wifely silence’.6 Rather, like a typical fatal woman, she breaches traditional male territory, daring to adopt the ‘masculine assumption’ of gravity and authority, while using reason and legalistic argument to convince her husband that she, not he, is in the right.7 Delilah’s insistent audience with Samson is not the only occasion on which she ventures out of feminine space to challenge traditional gender norms. Given her active collusion with the Philistines to ensnare Samson, she also stands accused of invading masculine spaces of politics and religion – both foreign territories to the Good Wife – thereby betraying a gender-subverting arrogance and lust for power.8 Samson likewise associates her with the typically manly pursuits of violence and control; he calls her an ‘accomplisht snare’ (230), whose attempts to betray him were tantamount to ‘assaults’ on his freedom, rendering him her ‘Bond-Slave’ (402–13). All in all, there’s a whiff of the masculine about Milton’s Delilah, which would undoubtedly have evoked anxieties among her Renaissance audience. As well as sharing the same gender-bending proclivities as some of her later afterlives, Milton’s Delilah also shows her femme fatale credentials by virtue of her motives for betraying Samson. While the Chorus accuse her of being inherently evil, Samson initially identifies avarice as the reason behind her treachery, condemning her ‘Spousal embraces, vitiated with Gold’ (389). Yet Milton’s Delilah is driven by a complex mix of motives, including nationalism, religious zeal, a

5. Mary S. Weinkauf, ‘Dalila:  The Worst of All Possible Wives’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 13, no. 1 (1973): 142. 6. Ibid., 143. 7. Thomas Kranidas, ‘Dalila’s Role in Samson Agonistes’, Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 6, no. 1 (Winter 1966): 128. 8. Weinkauf, ‘Dalila’, 144.

88

88

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

thirst for fame, and a selfish desire to control and contain her husband.9 It is this last objective that I  find the most intriguing (and emphatic) within the poem. Delilah wants Samson in her power, too weak to leave her for another woman, as he had left his first Timnite wife: And what if Love, which thou interpret’st hate, The jealousie of Love, powerful of sway In human hearts, nor less in mine towards thee, Caus’d what I did? I saw thee mutable Of fancy, feard lest one day thou wouldst leave me As her at Timna, sought by all means therefore How to endear, and hold thee to me firmest: No better way I saw then by importuning To learn thy secrets, get into my power Thy key of strength and safety. (790–9) In order to stop Samson from leaving her, Delilah has to drain him of his masculine authority and power which, according to Renaissance thought, were his prerogatives as a husband. She had anticipated that, once his strength was gone, the Philistines would allow her to ‘keep’ him. As she tells Samson: I was assur’d by those Who tempted me, that nothing was design’d Against thee but safe custody, and hold: That made for me, I knew that liberty Would draw thee forth to perilous enterprises, While I at home sate full of cares and fears Wailing thy absence in my widow’d bed; Here I should still enjoy thee day and night Mine and Loves prisoner, not the Philistines, Whole to myself, unhazarded abroad, Fearless at home of partners in my love. (800–10) Speaking to Samson in his prison cell, Delilah offers to take him home and nurse him in his now wretched state: I to the Lords will intercede, not doubting Their favourable ear, that I may fetch thee 9. On the one hand, Delilah insists that she was pressured into betraying Samson by the Philistine elders (850–70). Yet this is complicated by her admission that she loved Samson and was afraid he would leave her. In addition, she also hints that she was driven by a desire to earn the same fame afforded to another biblical betrayer, Jael (981–7). This inconsistency in Delilah’s reasoning may be a deliberate attempt by Milton to evoke the reader’s suspicions about the trustworthiness of Delilah’s words (Kranidas, ‘Dalila’s Role’, 125–37).

89

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

89

From forth this loathsom prison-house, to abide With me, where my redoubl’d love and care With nursing diligence, to me glad office, May ever tend about thee to old age With all things grateful chear’d, and so suppli’d, That what by me thou hast lost thou least shalt miss. (920–7) While this desire to care for her husband may appear admirable  – the start of Delilah’s ‘redemption’ even – it is unlikely that her newly awakened vocation as nursemaid would have commended her to Milton’s seventeenth-century audience. Certainly she displays a certain tearful naïveté (trusting the Philistines and assuming Samson’s eventual acquiescence); nevertheless, her motives still betray her as a fatal woman who elbowed aside Renaissance ideals of wifely passivity and reverence. In an act tantamount to ‘marital treason’, Milton’s Delilah used her dangerously potent allure to emasculate her husband and pin him down, forever under her control.10 As Samson himself declares, Delilah’s betrayal went ‘Against the law of nature, law of nations’ (890). Blind and impotent, all he can now look ahead to is a ‘ghastly picture of the vegetative life, with Dalila as all-powerful nurse’.11 Little wonder, then, that he tells his wife he would feel freer in his prison cell than in the confines of her care: If in my flower of youth and strength, when all men Lov’d, honour’d, fear’d me, thou alone could hate me Thy Husband, slight me, sell me, and forgo me; How wouldst thou use me now, blind, and thereby Deceiveable, in most things as a child Helpless, thence easily contemn’d, and scorn’d, And last neglected? How wouldst thou insult When I must live uxorious to thy will In perfet thraldom, how again betray me, Bearing my words and doings to the Lords To gloss upon, and censuring, frown or smile? This Gaol I count the house of Liberty To thine whose doors my feet shall never enter. (938–50) Milton’s Delilah thus embodies the dangers of the fatal woman to those who become mesmerized by her charms; yet Samson, chained and blinded, at least offers the audience reassurance that, no matter how bloodied and bowed he becomes at the hands of this femme fatale, he still retains enough of his masculine strength to resist her.12

10. Weinkauf, ‘Dalila’, 138 (see also 137–40). 11. Kranidas, ‘Dalila’s Role’, 133. 12. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 231.

90

90

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Samson Agonistes ends with the Chorus delivering a lengthy sermon on the potential treachery and selfishness of all women, particularly beautiful women, who use their physical allure to lead men (including their husbands) down paths of unrighteousness: Whate’er it be, to wisest men and best Seeming at first all heavenly under virgin veil, Soft, modest, meek, demure, Once joined, the contrary she proves, a thorn Intestine, far within defensive arms A cleaving mischief, in his way to virtue Adverse and turbulent, or by her charms Draws him awry enslaved With dotage, and his sense depraved To folly and shameful deeds which ruin ends. (1034–43) With this fearful warning ringing in their ears, readers of Samson Agonistes are reminded of the dangerousness of women who seize those masculine prerogatives of social, political and marital power. For this goes against the very order of creation, subverting man’s God-given ‘despotic power/over his female in due awe’ (1054−5). As Exum notes, Milton stresses to his audience that ‘women are seductive and dangerous, and it is therefore in the interest of society that women be subordinate to men and their behaviour controlled’.13 A later and lesser-known literary afterlife for Delilah, which, like Milton, imbues her character with the piquant trappings of the femme fatale, is the rather alarming work by French poet Alfred de Vigny, La Colère de Samson (‘the wrath of Samson’). Written in 1839, Vigny envisioned Delilah as a potent source of male ruin  – a ‘terrifying symbol of woman, the treacherous mistress who turns over to his enemies the one who loved her’.14 The poet’s deeply misogynistic view of womanhood is given full vent in La Colère de Samson, where he endows Delilah with an earthy exoticism that is simultaneously desirable and horrifying.15 Her brown limbs are encased in jewels, her body wrapped in Oriental fabrics; her warm, moist skin and pleasure-seeking eyes demand our sensory attention, conjuring memories of sweaty sex and inviting our touch. Meanwhile, the ‘ancient amulets’ that weigh down her breasts evoke a heady mix of sexuality and the occult,16 13. Ibid., 247. 14. Vigny’s diary entry dated 27 November 1835. Cited in Denise Bonhomme, The Poetic Enigma of Alfred de Vigny: The Rosetta Stone of Esoteric Literature (Victoria, BC:  Trafford Publishing, 2003), 192. 15. An English translation of the full poem is included in Bonhomme, Poetic Enigma, 186–8. The original French version can be found on the Poésie Française website, available online: http://poesie.webnet.fr/lesgrandsclassiques/poemes/alfred_de_vigny/la_colere_ de_samson.html (accessed 28 April 2017). All translations here are my own. 16. Bonhomme, Poetic Enigma, 194–9.

91

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

91

while her animality is likewise hinted at by her gazelle-like buttocks. Later in the poem, Vigny continues this theme of Delilah’s bestial otherness as he compares her to a tame yet lethal leopard lounging at Samson’s feet. Even more terrifying, she is further imagined ‘crawling in her filth’ on the floor around Samson like a ‘golden viper’. In nearly every line, the poet betrays his enchantment with Delilah’s eroticism, whilst simultaneously expressing horror at the impurity of her ‘body and soul’ and her power over men. He thus projects his own anxieties about the fragility of masculinity onto this female body, blaming her for man’s weakness and loss of gendered power. In the throes of misogyny and self-loathing, Vigny agonizes over Delilah’s night songs, her warm breasts, her dawn kisses and fiery lips, all of which excite and repel him. He accuses her of ‘artificial love’ and a willingness to disclose ‘the secret of our hearts’, which she wrestles from him with ‘deceitful kisses’. Vigny’s Delilah is thus a toxic presence – a classic femme fatale – whose treachery lies at the heart of her eroticism. Although Vigny clearly grants an amatory power to Delilah, he also complicates this portrayal by characterizing her (repeatedly) as Samson’s prostitute-slave. As we have seen, Judges 16 makes no mention of Delilah’s sexual or social status; the poet is filling in this gap with deeply misogynistic understandings of women that were prevalent within his nineteenth-century milieu. His portrayal betrays a strange juxtaposition of women’s powerlessness and power; Delilah is a ‘pale prostitute’ but also ‘Crowned, adored and queen of the banquet’. She is a slave who lies at Samson’s feet, but who rules him with a terrifying authority from this position of subservience. Under her burning gaze, Samson is compelled to use his God-given might to satisfy her seemingly insatiable sexual urges – he is the ‘master, whose divine strength obeys the slave’.17 In his depiction of Delilah as sexual spectacle, Vigny pins her to the page, inviting readers to gaze upon her as a powerless playmate for their sexual desires. At the same time, however, he insinuates her potency over those who drink in her embellished body. She craves authority, looking forward to the glorious status she will attain by conquering this heroic strongman.18 She is thus both mistress and master, shaking and stirring her hyperfemininity into an unholy cocktail laced with masculine penchants for sex, violence and power. Indeed, Vigny hints at Delilah’s gender-disrupting capacities by occasionally using French masculine noun and adjective forms to describe her; by so doing, he ‘de-feminizes’ her, all the while lavishly belabouring her feminized sensuality and form.19 Through this potent frisson of gender subversion, Vigny affirms Delilah’s anxiety-provoking eschewal of feminine subordination and her encroachment into masculine spheres of dominance and control.

17. Valerie Minogue, ‘The Tableau in “La Colère de Samson”’, The Modern Language Review 60, no. 3 (1965): 376. 18. Bonhomme, Poetic Enigma, 187, 201. 19. Ibid., 193–4.

92

92

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Captured on Canvas: Delilah in Art Delilah’s portrayals in art have been abundant over the centuries, the Judges 16 narrative proving a popular subject for artists from the Middle Ages up to the present day. Many of these artworks capture her alongside Samson, just before, during or after the fateful hair-cutting scene. Other artists, however, portray her alone, either before or after Samson’s arrest, thus constructing an afterlife for her that lies outside the immediate framework of the biblical narrative. Very often, artists dress Delilah in the styles and fashions of their own historical period, reminding (or warning) their audiences that this biblical character is a ‘type’ of woman who is still present and active in their own contemporary milieu. And, if we trace her portrayals over the centuries, we notice subtle changes to her appearance. Initially presented as rather modestly dressed in earlier paintings from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, she then begins to emerge as a more sexualized figure, whose increasingly risqué costumes offer audiences anything from a glimpse of bosom to a full-frontal exposure of her naked form. In the discussion below, I look at a number of these artworks in detail, considering how artists have coloured in that vague pencil sketch of Delilah in Judges 16 in order to present us with a vibrant figure who embodies the credentials of an archetypal femme fatale. Peter Paul Rubens, Samson and Delilah (c. 1609–10) One of the most well-known images of Samson and Delilah, the seventeenthcentury masterpiece by Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640) (Figure  3.1), depicts the hair-cutting scene in Judg. 16.19, where a snoozing Samson loses his locks and his strength.20 Looking closely, we can trace the ways that Rubens has filled in some of the gaps surrounding Delilah’s biblical character. The couple occupy the forefront of the painting, Delilah sitting on a divan while Samson sprawls asleep on her lap. His head rests on his right hand, which lies atop Delilah’s skirts in the region of her crotch, while his other arm is flung across her thighs. His upper torso and limbs are naked, showing off his impressive musculature, while his buttocks remain hidden by shadows and the folds of a fur throw (the pelt of the ill-fated lion in Judg. 14.56, perhaps). Delilah, meanwhile, looks down at him with hooded eyes, her facial expression a mix of tenderness and sleepy curiosity. The bodice of her dress has been pulled down, drawing the viewer’s gaze towards the milky luminescence of her torch-lit skin.21 Her left hand rests gently on Samson’s back, suggesting a certain

20. For further details of the history of this artwork, and its symbolism, see Aneta Georgievska-Shine, ‘Rubens and the Tropes of Deceit in Samson and Delilah’, Word & Image 23, no. 4 (2007): 460–73. 21. Erika Langmuir describes Delilah’s décolletage in this painting as ‘some of the fleshiest [flesh] ever painted’. In The National Gallery Companion Guide (London: National Gallery Publications, 1994), 240; cited in Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 226.

93

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

93

Figure 3.1 Peter Paul Rubens, Samson and Delilah, c. 1609–10. © Fine Art via Getty Images.

fondness.22 Looking closer, we notice that her cheeks are flushed, due perhaps to the sexual exertions insinuated by the riot of luxurious bedsheets, dishevelled clothes and bare flesh that dominate the canvas. As Aneta Georgievska-Shine observes, Rubens’s Delilah is ‘a woman whose surrender to the senses is as palpably conveyed in her reclining pose as it is in the virile body of her victim’.23 With her bare breasts and sex-blushed skin, she embodies a dangerous sensuality that compels Samson’s desire and, ultimately, his death. As such, she serves as a visual warning of women’s sexual power to drain a man of his energy, his vocation, even his life force. Clearly, for Rubens, the relationship between Samson and Delilah – so ambiguous in the biblical text – is explicitly sexual and lethal. Rubens makes a number of other interpretive decisions about Judges 16 that likewise embellish this portrayal of Delilah as fatal woman. The scene is set at 22. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 226. 23. Georgievska-Shine, ‘Rubens and the Tropes of Deceit’, 461.

94

94

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

night  – a detail not noted in the biblical text  – and the chiaroscuro contrast of deep shadows and warm candle glow conjure up a noiresque mise en scène of danger and sensuality.24 While Samson lies covered by murky shade, the flames from a torch positioned behind Delilah and the candle to her left bathe her in a warm light, which picks out the rich jewel tones and textures of her clothes. Through her sensuous touch, it is as though Delilah is draining the ‘light’ and life out of Samson, leaving him a shadow of his former self. Additionally, the lush gold satin cover accentuates her crimson dress – a colour often associated with women’s sexual immorality. This is affirmed by other details in the painting, including the elderly woman who stands behind Delilah holding the candle. In seventeenthcentury Dutch paintings, this figure commonly represented a brothel keeper;25 her presence invites us to draw certain conclusions about Delilah’s sexual provenance and the nature of her relationship with Samson. And, if we look at the faces of Delilah and the older woman, we cannot help but notice a startling resemblance between them, ‘as close as those of a mother and daughter’.26 Rubens is hinting at these women’s inner equivalence here – Delilah may be an irresistible beauty now, but such beauty is both artificial and fleeting, hiding an inner ‘ugliness’ that treats sex as a commodity for material gain. Rubens also alludes to the brothel location of this scene through his inclusion of other well-known motifs, including the glass jars and folded towel placed on the shelves to the left of the door; moreover, a statue of Venus and Cupid occupies a niche on the wall, suggesting that this is a place where sexual desires are indulged without restraint.27 The Philistine soldiers standing hesitantly at the door remind us too that Delilah is being paid for a sexual performance steeped in deception and betrayal. The man who sleeps on her lap, oblivious to the activities humming quietly around him, will soon be captured, tortured and imprisoned because of this woman. While she does not do the actual hair-cutting herself in this painting, she nevertheless sits placidly, letting a young man perform the task on her behalf. Perhaps the hand she rests on Samson’s back is less a gesture of tenderness than a restraining touch, holding him still, in case he should move around and disrupt the barber’s task. Thus, in every shadowy corner and candlelit detail of this painting, Rubens calls our attention to the deception that envelops this fatal woman.28 Yet, of course, there is more than one way to interpret a painting (or indeed any cultural text); as Exum notes, we can perform our own reader (or rather, viewer) response to this image, capturing its potential to portray Delilah from different perspectives.29 For example, Rubens may be hinting at a shared passion between 24. Madlyn Kahr, ‘Delilah’, The Art Bulletin 54 (1972): 294. 25. Ibid., 296; Georgievska-Shine, ‘Rubens and the Tropes of Deceit’, 461. 26. Georgievska-Shine, ‘Rubens and the Tropes of Deceit’, 469. 27. Beginning in the seventeenth century, the haircutting scene of Judg. 16.19 was often depicted in a brothel, thereby allowing this biblical text to serve as a warning of the dangers of ‘venality and lasciviousness’ (Kahr, ‘Delilah’, 292). 28. Ibid. 29. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 226.

95

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

95

Samson and Delilah in this painting, as well as a certain fondness on Delilah’s part for the man lying asleep across her lap.30 Her benign facial expression and the gentleness of her touch may insinuate her regret for the role she took in this betrayal. Moreover, her depiction as a woman who has, moments earlier, been having sex with this muscular giant, as well as her location in a brothel, accentuate issues of sexual self-determination and consent. Did Delilah want to sleep with Samson, or did she feel compelled to do so as part of her arrangement with the Philistines? Did the brothel keeper orchestrate this event, whether Delilah wished to be involved or not?31 Delilah is trapped and immobilized within this canvas, a sexualized female body left exposed to the spectator’s objectifying gaze.32 She is in a state of what feminist film critic Laura Mulvey describes as to-be-looked-at-ness33 – a female form styled and fetishized to be a source of pleasure for the heterosexual male gaze.34 Her breasts are bared, not for her own pleasure (or Samson’s, who is asleep), but for the gratification of those who look at her and own her through this act of looking.35 Surrounded by others, she cannot escape this look: Samson’s powerful frame fastens her to the bed, his outstretched arm blocking her escape toward the viewer; the brothel keeper stands like an oppressive presence behind her, and to her left, the barber likewise hems her in, as he snips his sharp shears dangerously close to her bare flesh. Moreover, the Philistine troops blocking the door remind us that, willingly or not, she is embroiled in a treacherous political game from which there is no easy escape. Interpreted thus, Rubens’s painting conjures up an afterlife for Delilah that may accentuate her powerlessness, not

30. Ibid. 31. Ibid., 232. 32. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London:  Penguin, 1990), 45–7. Berger is speaking generally about the tradition of women being portrayed in art as an object to be ‘owned’ by the (archetypically male) spectator. 33. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Screen 16, no. 3 (1975):  6– 18. Mulvey’s understanding of female to-be-looked-at-ness in cinema is akin to Berger’s discussion of women’s status as acted-upon object in art (Ways of Looking, 45–64), although Berger does not use an explicitly psychoanalytic lens to articulate this, as Mulvey does. Mulvey’s work is focused on women’s representation in cinema, but her theory of the male gaze has been applied to other forms of visual culture, including art. 34. Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure’, 11. In this and subsequent works, Mulvey argues that the controlling gaze in cinema is always heterosexual and male. While both men and women are ‘looked at’ on screen, this experience carries a profoundly different meaning for female objects of the look. Moreover, while women spectators are invited (or even compelled) to participate in the act of gazing at female images, they lack the agency of action and possession over these images that is inherent to the male gaze. As Kaplan stresses, ‘The gaze is not necessarily male (literally), but to own and activate the gaze . . . is to be in the “masculine” position . . . Women receive and return a gaze, but cannot act upon it.’ See E. Ann Kaplan, Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera (New York: Methuen, 1983), 30–1. 35. See Berger’s discussion of the nude in art (Ways of Seeing, 54).

96

96

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

to mention the sacrifices to her sexual autonomy that she may have had to make. Rather than judging her as a dangerous femme fatale, perhaps we can recognize her here as a victim trapped by circumstance, who had no option but to use her only source of power – her sexuality – in order to complete her mission for the Philistines and escape the various forces that imprisoned her. A Coterie of Delilahs from Gustave Moreau Delilah remained a popular subject for artists throughout the Baroque and Romantic periods, when she was portrayed (to various degrees) as a sexualized figure of feminine treachery. And, as the nineteenth century progressed, her appearances on canvas grew more frequent, particularly during the decades of the fin de siècle, when the femme fatale reached her zenith in European art and literature. As I  discussed in Chapter  1, this was an era imbued with ennui and apocalyptic anxiety over the perceived decline of European society. And within this fraught context, the femme fatale was typically presented by artists, musicians and literati as a malignant and irresistible coup de grâce, who drained men of their noble masculinity and left them floundering in a puddle of bitter yearning. She thus exemplified the degeneration of the age – a figure of fascination and fear upon whom were projected social anxieties about moral decline, women’s emancipation and the infectious depravity of the exotic Other. During this period, the biblical story of Judges 16 thus functioned as an ‘excellent exemplum’ for artists seeking to expose women’s perfidy.36 Time and again, they filled the textual gaps of this narrative with their contemporary ideologies and images of the fin de siècle femme fatale, bringing Delilah to life as a quintessential seductress who, like Rubens’s Delilah, warned against the dangers of women’s allure. As we will see, she is portrayed as outlandish, animalistic and perverse – a figure whose monstrous power over men is located in her violent, yet scarily irresistible, hypersexuality. One such fin de siècle artist who immortalized Delilah on a number of canvases was French Symbolist Gustave Moreau (1826–98), renowned for his paintings of (predominantly female) figures from both classical mythology and the biblical traditions. With his exquisite use of colour and tone, he brought to life infamous fatal women such as Salome, the Sphinx, Cleopatra and the sirens, drawing viewers’ attention to both their beauty and their uncanny allure. In his paintings of Delilah, he reinvents the shadowy biblical character of Judges 16 as a languid and luxurious femme, whose erotic depravity is writ large. One of Moreau’s earlier paintings of Delilah, Samson and Dalila (1882), presents her sitting in a luxurious boudoir, while a sleepy Samson reclines across her lap (Figure 3.2). She looks towards the viewer, her face bearing an expression of languid curiosity tinged with boredom and contempt. Bracelets of precious metals and jewels weigh down her wrists and upper arms, while gold chains decorate her elaborately coiffed hair. Her breasts are barely covered by a creamy 36. Dijkstra, Idols of Perversity, 375.

97

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

97

Figure 3.2 Gustave Moreau, Samson and Dalila, 1882. Musée du Louvre, Paris. © Heritage Images via Getty Images.

gauze scarf, while the tunic of her dress clings tightly to her ribcage before fanning out into a brightly embroidered skirt of peacock blue. Compared to Rubens’s Delilah, Moreau’s afterlife is far more ornate, embodying a cool dispassion that betrays no hint of emotion or warmth. She is a fin de siècle Delilah, whose exotic costume and adornments mark her as dangerously and sexually Other. Her foreignness is likewise accentuated by the explosion of Oriental detail cramming the room in which she sits – the Greco-Roman pillars, the cabinet lacquered in jewel tones, the Grecian urn, the rich drapes, the golden throne, even the servant in the background who cools the duo with a plumed fan. In such a setting, Delilah’s ethnic distinctiveness – her non-Western-ness – is brought into sharp relief. And yet, such ethnic distinctiveness is complicated by Moreau, in a way that accentuates her status as Other. Delilah’s milky white skin is juxtaposed against the external signs of her foreignness – her dress, her surroundings – so that she is rendered neither entirely white nor entirely not white. Rather, she is an anxietyprovoking hybrid, whose presence threatens to ‘erase the comfortable distance between whiteness and colour’.37 With her elaborate costume, she becomes an excessively produced body, painted and primped with the exotic trappings of the

37. Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 5.

98

98

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

foreign femme fatale.38 Contrasted with the unambiguous ‘whiteness’ of acceptable Western femininity, the ‘threat’ of colour39 that she poses, despite her white skin, is another reason for the fin de siècle viewer to regard her with anxiety and distrust. Moreover, by adorning her in Oriental clothes and jewels, and locating her in this sumptuous boudoir, Moreau appears to be crafting an afterlife for Delilah that wraps her in the facade of an exotic prostitute or courtesan, a feature of her character that, as I  discussed in the previous chapter, is unstated in the biblical text. Fin de siècle iconography often conflated the femme fatale (particularly the foreign femme fatale) with the figure of the prostitute – that nineteenth-century embodiment of female sexual depravity, disease and moral decline. This conflation arose from Western fears and fantasies of foreign women’s ‘suspect’ sexuality, where gender and race intersected to create ‘magic lantern’ images of the exotic whore.40 Following this trend, Moreau paints Delilah with the hues and tones of the Oriental harlot – a woman whose expensive adornments and lush surrounds are funded by her debauched lifestyle. Moreau also confirms Delilah’s lethal potential through a number of other details in this painting. In her left hand, she holds a pair of shears, presumably to cut Samson’s still-luxurious locks. Her right arm droops possessively over Samson’s shoulder, her hand resting lightly upon his limp wrist. As in Rubens’s painting, he appears to be sleeping, his face turned heavenward, exposing his delicate silhouette. And, like Rubens’s Samson, he is half dressed, wearing only cream shorts and an ornate belt. Yet the difference between Samson’s portrayals in these two paintings is stark. While Rubens offered us a Herculean warrior whose muscles bulged even as he slept, Moreau’s Hebrew strongman looks positively waif-like. His arms and legs are soft and slender, his smooth, unmuscled chest sinks into Delilah’s skirts. Rubies circle his throat like drops of blood, repeated in a matching bracelet that adorns his wrist. With his long hair and willowy form, Samson looks distinctly androgynous here, if not feminine, even before Delilah has wielded her shears. We might imagine the fur rug that is draped around his body as his own pelt of masculinity, which Delilah has skinned from this former wild man, leaving him fatally bereft of his predatory male power. Before meeting her, Samson killed a lion with his bare hands; now, he is the prey and she the hunter, having wrestled from him his strength and potency. Thus, within this image, Delilah twists around the iconography of gender representation traditionally seen in visual culture. Rather than being a conventional female spectacle – an object whose appearance defines ‘what can and cannot be done to her’ – she adopts the masculine position of active subject, communicating what she is ‘capable of doing to or for you’.41 In other words, she embodies both an erotic to-be-looked-at femininity and a masculine subjectivity. She is the actor

38. 39. 40. 41.

Ibid., 76. Ibid., 5. McClintock, Imperial Leather, 22. Berger, Ways of Seeing, 46.

99

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

99

in this scenario, the one who holds sexual and physical control, while Samson is relegated to the traditional feminine role of acted-upon object. Positioned higher than Samson in the frame, she acknowledges the viewer’s gaze and dares to return it, wearing those masculine traits of domination and sexual authority like a second skin. Samson, meanwhile, embodies an uneasy femininity – the delicate features, the powerlessness and the passive surrender to another’s sexual presence. His heroic body has become a flaccid body, emasculated by the cruel yet irresistible eroticism of this fatal woman. As a fin de siècle femme fatale, Moreau’s Delilah thus highlights woman’s dangerous potential to wreak havoc on the patriarchal gender binaries entrenched in nineteenth-century European culture. Staring at us from her golden throne, she draws us into her Oriental paradise with languorous eyes. And, while she undoubtedly remains crystallized on canvas as the sexualized object of our gaze, we cannot shake off the suspicion that we, likewise, have become the object of hers. Moreau also created other afterlives for Delilah, in which he similarly evokes her disruptive credentials as a fin de siècle femme fatale. In his 1896 painting, Dalila, he presents her as a decadent pearl glowing eerily in the dimness (Figure  3.3). Fine jewels hang from every part of her body, even her toes. Her elaborate dress encases her torso in thick drapes, leaving her décolletage, breasts and most of her legs exposed. The satin fabric gleams, white and gold embroidered folds revealing a shock of scarlet lining  – the colour of the harlot  – that betrays her sexual depravity.42 Moreau’s Delilah is once again a courtesan, a woman who barters her sexuality for financial gain.43 Perched on Delilah’s head is an ornate turban studded with jewels – another marker of her exoticism. Beneath this turban, her dark hair frames a heart-shaped face, upon which Moreau has painted almond eyes and pouting lips. Reclining on an ornamental seat, she glances to her left, looking at something or someone lying just beyond the frame. Her expression denotes curiosity, uncertainty and perhaps a little impatience – is she waiting for someone? Arranged thus, she embodies exotic allure, performing for and controlling our viewing pleasure. An object conjured up by the porno-tropical imagination, she is once again a projection of fin de siècle colonial fantasies and anxieties, reminding us of the foreign femme’s potential for manipulating Western desires. Moreau further confirms Delilah’s credentials as an exotic femme fatale by situating her in a shadowy space of faded luxury, which captures the decadence and decay so central to the fin de siècle zeitgeist. There is, again, an excess of Oriental opulence here, but it is an outlandish opulence, which accentuates Delilah’s strangeness and makes us shiver with unease. Flowers are scattered on the cool marble floors, while luxurious object d’art lie neglected around the room. Peering into the shadows, we can see Greco-Roman columns embellished with baroque carvings, which evoke

42. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 222. 43. Indeed, when Moreau first exhibited this painting, his original title for it was Biblical Courtesan (ibid.).

100

100

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.3 Gustave Moreau, Dalila, c. 1896. Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris. © Art Collection 2/Alamy Stock Photo.

ancient idolatrous temples in faraway lands. Delilah sits in the foreground like a temple idol – a death-bringing fetish in the cult of the femme fatale. Flitting between the pillars are two vermillion birds, accentuating again the exoticism of this location. Their presence reflects back on Delilah, who perches like a decorative but dangerous bird of paradise waiting to swoop upon her prey. Flamingo pink feathers spray out behind her left shoulder  – it is hard to tell whether a bird has alighted beside her or whether these feathers are part of her own ‘plumage’. This hint of animality is a further marker of Delilah’s otherness and a motif fin de siècle artists used to portray the alien nature of the femme fatale. Indeed, in another of Moreau’s paintings of Delilah created around the same time (Figure  3.4), her animality seems even more striking. Here, she sits in a room that is awash with verdant greens and earth tones. Illuminated by natural light streaming in from a window behind her, the room feels like a leafy extension of the

101

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

101

outside world – a tropical forest, where a near-naked Delilah lounges like an exotic animal amidst luxuriant foliage. A brilliant red bird sits preening to her left; like her, it displays its beauty for our viewing pleasure. Moreau’s Delilah is once again the quintessence of alien otherness, a reminder of women’s strangeness and their capacity to evoke our desires and fears. In these latter two paintings by Moreau, Samson is absent from the scene. Is this a portrait of Delilah waiting impatiently for his arrival? Or has Moreau captured the aftermath of Samson’s haircutting from Delilah’s perspective, filling in the Judges 16 gap about her ‘fate’? If this latter scenario is the case, then her extravagant costume, her excess of jewellery and the lush setting of her repose may have been paid for by the 5,500 pieces of silver she received from the Philistine elders. Avarice, then, may be the motive our artist has chosen for Delilah within these two afterlives. Alternatively, if Moreau anticipated this scene as the precursor to Samson’s capture, it would appear that Delilah already enjoyed an ostentatious lifestyle; there really was no pressing financial need for her to accept the Philistines’

Figure 3.4 Gustave Moreau, Dalila, c. 1890. Musée Gustave Moreau, Paris. © Photo RMN-Grand Palais. Photographer Gérard Blot.

102

102

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

lavish offer. Perhaps she simply took up their challenge because she was a femme fatale who got perverse pleasures from destroying any man who fell for her amatory charms. Whichever of these scenarios we prefer, Moreau’s Delilah clearly evokes the anxieties about women’s deadly cupidity that were prominent within this artist’s fin de siècle milieu. Alexandre Cabanel, Samson and Delilah (1878) Alexandre Cabanel (1823–89) was a French artist who shared Moreau’s predilection for painting subjects from history, classics and religion. His portrait of Samson and Delilah depicts that nerve-wracking moment in Judges 16 just prior to Samson’s haircut. Samson slumbers on Delilah’s lap, his dark hair falling over her skirt in thick plaits (Figure 3.5).44 The top of his head nestles against her partially covered breasts; her gauzy white blouse slips off one shoulder, exposing most of her back and décolletage. Given the intimacy of their pose, and Delilah’s state of partial undress, Cabanel appears to be suggesting, like Rubens and Moreau, that this biblical couple shared a sexual relationship, which has lulled Samson into a deep, post-coital slumber. Once again, fin de siècle anxieties about women’s potent and dangerous sexuality are given vivid expression. Cabanel focuses more on Delilah in this painting than he does Samson  – dominating the canvas, she arrests our gaze. Her beauty shines against a background of dark reds and browns; a light source to our right casts a glow across her translucent skin, highlighting the sensuous curve of her bare shoulder and back. Although her eyes remain in shadow  – a symbol of her ‘shady’ duplicity perhaps – her face nevertheless conveys a breathtaking androgynous beauty. Her dark hair, smoky eyes and ruby lips (again, the colour of female licentiousness) become classic hallmarks of the femme fatale ‘look’ during this period (and also later, in classic Hollywood film noir of the 1940s and 1950s). Compared to Moreau’s Delilahs, her costume is relatively plain, titivated only by an elaborate headdress of green chiffon studded with red jewels; this headdress lends her an air of exoticism, Cabanel reminding his European audience of her dangerous and alien otherness. Cabanel has captured Delilah as she stretches out her left hand to grasp something just beyond the frame – we presume it is the shears to cut Samson’s hair. Her movements appear slow and careful, as though not to rouse Samson from his slumber. She looks across to her left, perhaps to reassure herself that the Philistine troops are nearby, ready to accost the sleeping warrior should he awaken. Cabanel may have intended these gestures to accentuate her duplicity and her willingness to deceive the man who lies so trustingly in her lap. Moreover, her right hand, which she holds up towards her face, appears abnormally wide in proportion to her face and neck.45 Combined with her 44. This is presumably Cabanel’s interpretation of Judg. 16.19, which mentions Samson’s ‘seven locks’ of hair. 45. Thanks to friends and colleagues who commented on this feature of the painting via social media (after I asked whether I was imagining the largeness of the right hand): Deidre

103

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

103

Figure 3.5 Alexandre Cabanel, Samson and Delilah, 1878. Private collection. © Print Collector via Getty Images.

androgynous facial features, this paw-like hand may evoke fin de siècle anxieties about women’s encroachment into male territories of power, violence and strength. Cabanel’s Delilah may be beautiful, she may be exotic and enticing, but she is powerful too, a potent blend of masculinity and femininity that can disarm even the toughest of Hebrew warriors. Cabanel’s afterlife for Delilah reminds me of another painting which likewise catches this biblical figure as she waits to wield the scissors against Samson’s hair. A portrait of Delilah by Australian artist Henry Clive (1882–1960), Enchantresses of the Ages, originally graced the cover of American Weekly magazine in 1948.46 Parr, Nick Thompson, Erin Runions, Mark Hangartner, Sylvie Rabinovitch Bolstad, Deb Anstis, Robert Myles, Emily Colgan, Yael Klangwisan and Philip Culbertson. 46. Copyright restrictions prevent me from reproducing the painting here, but its full lushness can be viewed at the Grapefruit Moon Gallery website (where the original painting was sold), available online: http://grapefruitmoongallery.com/9478 (accessed 28 April 2017).

104

104

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Here, Delilah stands in a curtained doorway looking over her shoulder, anxiety etched upon her exquisite face. Although created in a different era, Clive’s Delilah shares the same smoky eyes, delicately arched brows and glistening ruby lips that adorn Cabanel’s afterlife. Her face is both delicious and calculating, youthful and yet slicked with an age-old mask of feminine duplicity. She is wearing a white dress, draped in a harem style that reveals her smooth shoulders and back. Accessorized by heavy gold and silver jewellery, the entire costume carries an air of Oriental glamour and reiterates her exotic otherness. A pair of viciously sharp shears (we presume as yet unused) lie on a shelf immediately to her right, their cold blades mirroring the metallic sheen of Delilah’s jewellery, thus connecting them with her in our mind’s eye. The red curtain she stands beside is reflected in the polished blades like smears of blood, queasily reminding us that Samson’s blood will spill once Delilah enacts her duplicitous plan. Clive’s juxtaposition of these sharp blades with Delilah’s sensuous form highlights that this woman’s exotic beauty is both desirable and deadly. Yet, when I look again at these two portrayals of Delilah by Clive and Cabanel, I  notice the way that both images complicate her unfavourable reputation as a treacherous fatal woman. In each painting, Delilah waits for the moment when Samson’s hair will be cut and his strength depleted. Until then, she is surely in terrible danger, alone with a man who can kill scores of Philistine warriors with his bare hands. What if he wakes up and discovers what she is about to do? How will he react if he sees these scissors in her hand and realizes her intentions? Strength for strength, Delilah is no match for Samson, and there is no guarantee, given his flammable temper, that he will not hurt her if he discovers her duplicity. While the narrator of Judges 16 offers no insights into Delilah’s thoughts or emotions as Samson lies sleeping on her lap (v. 19), she would surely have been concerned about her own safety at this moment. Perhaps she was thinking about Samson’s Timnite bride who, after revealing another of Samson’s secrets, ended up dead (Judg. 15.6). While Samson did not kill her himself, his aggressive response to her betrayal ultimately resulted in her being burned to death. Was Delilah wondering whether she would share this woman’s fate, killed either by Samson or by the Philistine elders, should her plan fail? How much heart-thumping anxiety would she have experienced here? At this crucial juncture in the biblical story, Samson is both literally and metaphorically pinning her down with the weight of his divine strength; the Philistines, meanwhile, are lurking somewhere in the neighbourhood, waiting to hear whether she has succeeded (or failed) in her mission. Her life literally hangs in the balance here – a detail we rarely contemplate when reading this narrative. Nevertheless, Delilah’s portraits by Cabanel and Clive allow us to bring this detail into sharper focus, as both artists capture the anxiety of the moment from Delilah’s point of view. In each painting, her face is etched with trepidation and uncertainty, her body a taut coil waiting to spring. Both figures are glancing towards something out of the frame, desperately searching for reassurance, perhaps, that Philistine backup is close at hand. In Cabanel’s painting, Samson’s head lies like a huge dead weight on Delilah’s lap, while his thick, muscular arm is flung across her

105

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

105

thighs, preventing her escape. His heavily shadowed face conveys an ill-tempered and slightly sinister expression, and I fear for Delilah’s safety should he wake up and see her reaching for the shears.47 Clive’s Delilah, meanwhile, stands uncertainly at a curtained door, working up the courage, perhaps, to enter the room where Samson waits for her. The shears lie on the shelf, and she knows that they must soon be used, for otherwise she is in serious trouble. As I look at both of these paintings, and soak up the stomach-churning tension in Delilah’s face and body, I no longer view these shears as the weapon used by a heartless femme fatale against a helpless Samson. Rather, they become the only means Delilah has to defend herself against Samson’s fickle and violent temper. For Clive’s Delilah, they are reassuringly close by; in Cabanel’s painting, however, they are just out of reach. Delilah has to stretch across to grasp them  – frantic, perhaps, to feel their comforting weight in her hand. I wish I could pick them up and hand them to her, reassuring myself that she has some means of self-protection. Looking at these two paintings, I therefore do not see a fatal woman’s dispassionate treachery, but rather a desperate woman scrabbling for her own survival. Whom do you see? Solomon Joseph Solomon, Samson and Delilah, 1887 A particularly dramatic image of Delilah from the fin de siècle period is by British artist Solomon Joseph Solomon (1860–1927), whose painting, Samson and Delilah, is one of his most acclaimed works (Figure  3.6). Compared to the stillness of the images by Moreau, Cabanel and Clive, Solomon’s painting displays a pandemonium of activity, emotion and noise. It captures the events of Judg. 16.20, when Samson awakens and discovers that both his hair and his superhuman strength are gone. Solomon, however, has filled in several gaps in this narrative moment, drawing on fin de siècle iconography of the femme fatale. In the process, he conjures up one of the most vibrant and virulent afterlives created for Delilah during this period. Samson’s capture takes place in a bedroom, insinuating a sexualized basis to his relationship with Delilah. The Hebrew warrior kneels on the bed, still tangled in the bedclothes, straining against his captors. Despite his shorn head, he appears to have preserved a remarkable level of strength  – no fewer than six men are struggling to restrain him. Some of these men, like Samson, are partially naked – it is a very fleshy painting, brimming with taut muscles and contorted bodies.48 47. Interestingly, beneath Delilah’s right eye, there is a patch of deep shadow that looks like a bruise. Whether or not Cabanel intended this, it is a reminder of the point I raised in Chapter 2 about the potentially abusive nature of Samson’s relationship with Delilah. And, in my own viewer response to the image, this bruise heightens Delilah’s sense of desperation as she reaches for those shears and her urgent need to escape an intolerably violent situation. 48. We assume these men are the troops sent by the Philistine elders to detain Samson, although their state of undress seems an unlikely uniform for soldiers to wear on ‘official business’. Perhaps, as Exum suggests, they are bona fide brothel clients, caught up in the moment quite by chance, or Philistine troops disguised as brothel clients so that they can

106

106

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.6 Solomon Joseph Solomon, Samson and Delilah, 1887. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool. © Beryl Peters Collection/Alamy Stock Photo.

Pinned to the bed by these struggling figures, Samson is forced into the emasculated and feminized position of a (physically and sexually) subjugated body.49 He turns his head to look at the one whose actions have brought about his subjugation – Delilah, who stands at the right-hand edge of the frame. Samson’s face betrays a mix of disbelief and fear, as though he has just realized the woman he loves is a vicious betrayer. Like the men who surround him, Delilah too is naked from the waist up, wearing only an elaborately draped skirt of thick gold and cream satin. Jewellery adorns her neck and arms and a silver tiara nestles in her tousled black mane. Leaning forward, as though she were performing some exotic dance, she turns towards Samson, eyes shining with malice and red lips curved in a feverish grin (Figure 3.7). In her right hand, she holds a tuft of Samson’s freshly cut hair, waving it aloft to exacerbate his wretchedness.50 A horizontal line draws our eyes from her hand across the canvas until we reach Samson’s desperate gaze.

remain out of sight until the moment to arrest Samson arrives (Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 228–9). 49. Aysha Musa, ‘Reading Solomon J.  Solomon’s Samson against the Book of Judges’, FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts 23 (Winter 2016): 2–3. 50. Exum notes a lovely artistic touch in this painting, where Solomon’s use of delicate brush strokes to paint the bunch of hair in Delilah’s hand has produced a blurring that gives the effect of movement, as though we can see Delilah shaking it in the air (ibid., 229).

107

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

107

Figure 3.7 Solomon Joseph Solomon, Samson and Delilah, 1887, detail.

There is still a powerful connection between this couple and the canvas crackles with their emotive confrontation. Like the images created by Moreau, Solomon’s afterlife is a vision of Oriental eroticism, with Delilah portrayed as the epitome of feminine malevolence.51 As a foreign, sexualized body, she is a dangerous body, within which sensuality and malice are melded in a toxic brew. The room in which Solomon has set this scene also adds to Delilah’s exoticism. As Exum notes, the presence of the bed and the faded glamour of the wall hangings suggest this is a brothel in which, we are to presume, Delilah works. This is also affirmed by her revealing costume and showy jewels, not to mention her shameless posturing, bare breasted, before this crowd of men. As Exum observes, ‘Just by looking at her we know she is a prostitute and a femme fatale’.52 As I  noted in

51. Solomon based his Delilah on two models. Her face and head were modelled by a young Indian woman, Therese Abdullah, while for her body, Solomon used Italian model Madeline Fionda. For further background on the artist and this painting, see National Museums Liverpool, ‘About the Artwork’, available online:  http://www.liverpoolmuseums. org.uk/picture-of-month/displaypicture.aspx?id=1 (accessed 28 April 2017). 52. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 229.

108

108

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Chapter 1, the prostitute was a dangerous creature in the fin de siècle imagination, whose erotic hold over men would bring them disease, ruin and death. This is also evoked by the tiger-skin rug upon which Delilah stands; as well as adding a note of Oriental overindulgence to the scene, it equates her with the visual iconography of a wild and ferocious predator. Despite all the straining muscles in this image, Solomon locates the real strength within Delilah – in her sexuality, her outlandish exoticism and the predatory potency that oozes from the artist’s every brushstroke. Like Moreau, Solomon therefore subverts traditional artistic conventions by granting authority and agency to the female figure rather than her male companions. Although she remains the sexualized object of our gaze, she controls the action in this drama, orchestrating Samson’s downfall gleefully from the canvas’s sidelines. José Echenagusía Errazquin, Samson and Delilah, 1887 After Solomon’s visual maelstrom, Samson and Delilah by Spanish artist José Echenagusía Errazquin (1844–1912) appears at first like a visual oasis of calm. Yet this painting again draws upon fin de siècle iconography of the femme fatale, presenting Delilah as the epitome of Oriental glamour and deceitful allure (Figure 3.8). Dressed in a beautifully draped, embroidered ensemble and adorned with a frenzy of luscious jewellery, Echenagusía’s Delilah exudes an exotic otherness from head to toe. This is accentuated by her sharp, kohl-lined eyes, which drink Samson up with the intensity of their gaze, and her bird-shaped headdress, whose pearls and gold feathers fan across her ebony hair. Her lips are glossy and slightly parted, hinting at sexual promise. Like Moreau, Echenagusía has imbued Delilah with the flavours of erotic animality that render the fin de siècle femme fatale so enthralling and perilous. The room in which Samson and Delilah are sitting further lends the image an aura of decadent Orientalism, confirming Delilah’s credentials as some porno-tropical creature of dark and dangerous sensuality. The Persian rugs, the hieroglyphs decorating the wall, the feathery plumes and bejewelled couch with its golden bird motif all give the scene a hedonistic flavour of overindulgence and excess. As in Solomon’s painting, even the rug under Delilah’s feet may serve as a marker of her animal allure. Crafted (we presume) from the lion slaughtered by Samson, the fact that Delilah’s feet rest upon it may remind us that she poses a far greater threat to Samson than any wild beast. Echenagusía captures the moment when Samson eventually reveals to Delilah the secret of his strength (Judg. 16.17). Leaning towards her, he touches his luxuriant locks, while she sits perfectly still, rapt by his revelation. Her eyes are locked with his, as though urging him to trust her. The way he lounges on the couch gives his muscular body a soft, curvaceous shape and positions him lower in the frame than Delilah, who is left literally ‘looking down’ at him from a (typically masculine) position of authority and control. With his slouched posture, Samson looks less like a valiant warrior than a lotus eater; moreover, his rather flamboyant embroidered shorts and the decorative (shackle-like) silver cuff around his left calf

109

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

109

Figure 3.8 José Echenagusía Errazquin, Samson and Delilah, 1887. Bilbao Fine Arts Museum. © Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao.

endow him with glimmers of femininity and hint at a lack (or loss) of masculinity and power, even before he loses his hair. Thus, while Echenagusía’s Delilah is exquisite to look at and exudes a heady scent of Eastern promise, the artist’s portrayal of Samson hints that this femme fatale poses a deadly threat to her prey. And yet, like the paintings by Rubens, Cabanel and Clive, we can re-view Echenagusía’s portrayal of Delilah, deconstructing its fatal-woman iconography. While Delilah is positioned higher than the slouching Samson, her body is nevertheless awfully slim and small compared to his muscular form. Moreover, when we look closely at her face, she appears to be very young – a teenager at most; suddenly, her exotic costume and excess of jewellery look distinctly perturbing, like a child who has been dressed up in grown-up clothes to satisfy the peccadillos of an adult audience. Who is Delilah, and what is she doing in this outrageously ornate room? Is this another brothel, where young girls like Delilah are compelled to sell their sex in order to survive? Have the Philistine elders ‘bought’ her services and dressed her up in a manner they suspect will appeal to their Hebrew nemesis? Samson certainly seems

110

110

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

smitten; he presses against her, his hand circling her frail wrist, his eyes fixated on her face. And she, in turn, leans back ever so slightly, as though to keep some distance between them. Her kohl-rimmed eyes look at him beseechingly  – perhaps she is willing him to tell her what she needs to know. Perhaps this elaborate act is the only way she can rid herself of this unwelcome suitor, earning enough money to escape a life of prostitution. There is something sinister about this image, something that, again, makes me more afraid for Delilah than for Samson. I see this young woman as less a lethally alluring femme fatale than a victim of political power struggles within which she has (willingly or unwillingly) been enlisted. Even the lion rug takes on more disturbing nuances when viewed in this light; lying on the floor, under Delilah’s feet, it reminds us all too clearly of Samson’s violent strength, thus serving as a grim warning of what he will do to any creature whom he suspects can do him harm. De-glamorizing Delilah The final paintings I discuss in this section were also created during and in the immediate aftermath of the nineteenth-century fin de siècle; like the others, they draw heavily upon the iconography of the femme fatale. And yet, these paintings cast a pall over this iconic figure, stripping away her glamour and exposing her exotic allure as smoke and mirrors  – a veneer that hides something far more insidious about her character. The first of these works is by Brazilian artist Oscar Pereira da Silva (c. 1865–1939), whose painting, Samson and Delilah (1893), captures Delilah at the moment immediately after she has cut Samson’s hair.53 As in the works by Rubens and Solomon, the scene is set in a bedroom, suggesting the couple had been having sex prior to Samson’s slumber. It is a tawdry-looking room, with creased, grubby drapes and a dusty, litter-strewn floor, alerting us perhaps to the tawdriness of the woman who lives there. Even the Philistines creeping into the room look more like salacious voyeurs than military personnel, evoking in the viewer a further moue of distaste. Unlike the afterlives created by Moreau, Cabanel and Clive, Silva’s Delilah is more louche than luxurious. Her deep red sash hints at her dissolute sexuality, suggesting she may be a prostitute plying her trade in this shoddy brothel. And, while her gauzy transparent skirts, ornate headdress and near-luminous breasts draw our attention to her exotic sexual presence, any erotic charge we might feel is dampened, both by the deadly sharp scissors she holds in her hand and by the presence of Samson, lying helpless beside her on grubby, sweat-dampened sheets. This former warrior looks positively withered, his face deeply marked by shadows of violence and his left arm curled over his chest in the contracted posture of an atrophied limb. His other hand grabs feebly at the air, searching for the woman who, moments earlier, had lain beside him. Perhaps the sheets still exude the heat of her body, but she is no longer there. Perched on the side of the bed, Delilah has 53. Permission to reproduce a high-resolution image of this painting was unavailable. Nevertheless, it can be viewed online here:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/ File:Oscar_Pereira_da_Silva_-_Sansão_e_Dalila,_1893.jpg (accessed 7 May 2017).

111

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

111

moved out of Samson’s reach and sits, looking at her lover with scant emotion – although is there a slight, satisfied smile playing around her lips? Like other fin de siècle artists, Silva has created an afterlife for Delilah that affirms those patriarchal ideologies about the potency of a woman’s sex. She is sexualized, foreign and thus a locus of desirability; but because of this, she is also conceptualized as a ruinous presence, whose sordid allure can drag a man from the victory of battle to a dingy room, where he must lie, slowly dying, in a sweat-stained bed. Silva’s de-glamorizing of Delilah is re-enacted to an even greater extent in two paintings by German artist Max Liebermann (1847–1935), both of which are titled Samson and Delilah. Like many artists, Liebermann stresses the sexualized nature of Samson and Delilah’s relationship by locating the naked couple in a bedroom during the hair-cutting scene. Yet gone are Delilah’s exotic outfits, fine jewels and carefully painted face. Gone too is the Oriental splendour of her surroundings; with its smeary, dark-grey walls, the room takes on a cavernous quality  – like a feral lair  – and is utterly bereft of embellishment, save for the plain white bed upon which she sits. Lying beside her in both paintings, Samson is rendered limp and emasculated by her bedroom performance, his muscular form seemingly drained of all capacity for movement or response. Delilah’s bed thus becomes a sacrificial altar upon which his masculinity has been forfeited.54 In Liebermann’s 1902 painting (Figures 3.9), the Hebrew warrior’s head is bowed, pushed down towards the bed by Delilah’s claw-like hand. His left arm lies lifeless on the bed and he makes no effort to fight back against his captor. Delilah, meanwhile, turns away from him, triumphantly holding up a clump of his shorn hair as though it were the scalp of her enemy.55 We get the sense that Samson has not just lost his superhuman strength, he has lost all his strength, all sense of his masculinity. We are thus invited to gaze upon a fatal woman stripped of her glamorous trappings, whose pasty-skinned, naked body and unlovely face are less symbols of her sexual allure than of the raw ‘ugliness’ that lies beneath her feminine masquerade.56 In Liebermann’s 1909 work,57 Delilah’s face becomes almost bestial, with small, coal-black eyes and lips drawn back in a grimace or snarl. It is as though, after trapping Samson in her bed, she has peeled off her exotic layers of sensuality, exposing the grotesquery that lies beneath. In these two paintings, the femme fatale is, quite literally, laid bare; no longer a rare, exotic creature, she is, far more worryingly, simply a woman – Everywoman – whose dangerousness is engrained 54. Credit to Dijkstra, who uses the evocative imagery of sacrifice in his discussion of the fatal woman (Idols of Perversity, 376). 55. Ibid. 56. Liebermann was known as the ‘disciple of the Ugly’; his realistic and raw style contrasted with the more romantic paintings of his colleagues, who preferred prettiness or glamour for their female depictions (van Os, Femmes Fatales, 108). 57. Permission to reproduce a high-resolution image of this painting was unavailable. Nevertheless, it can be viewed online here:  http://www.the-athenaeum.org/art/detail. php?ID=47077 (accessed 7 May 2017).

112

112

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.9 Max Liebermann, Samson and Delilah, 1902. Städel Museum, Frankfurt. © Heritage Images via Getty Images.

like dirt in her sexuality and whose bed becomes a graveyard for masculine potency and control.

Delilah in Music As well as being a popular source of inspiration for writers and artists over the centuries, the story of Judges 16 has also inspired numerous musical retellings. Both classical and popular music have reimagined and reinvented the figures of Samson and Delilah, offering audiences a creative range of fillings for the gaps that pepper this biblical tradition. In this section, I dedicate most of my time to one musical retelling  – French composer Camille Saint-Saëns’s opera, Samson et Dalila  – which appears to have exerted a powerful influence on Delilah’s subsequent afterlives.58 Specifically, I trace the ways in which Saint-Saëns appears to have interpreted the textual ambiguities of Judges 16 in order to sculpt Delilah into a treacherous fin de siècle fatal woman. I then review more briefly a number of contemporary songs that reference Delilah, looking to see whether their various afterlives for this biblical character draw on similar tropes of duplicity, sensuality and exoticism that mark Saint-Saëns’s iconic portrayal.

58. Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 153.

113

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

113

Camille Saint-Saëns, Samson et Dalila In 1867, Saint-Saëns (1835–1921) began working on a musical piece based on Judges 16; the project would take him nine years to complete, owing to a number of contributing factors, not least of all the suspicion with which biblically inspired music was treated in nineteenth-century France.59 After premiering at Weimar in 1877, Samson et Dalila eventually received its first French airing in 1890, where it was met with critical acclaim. The opera remained popular during the next decade, being staged regularly by opera companies within Europe, England and the United States. Throughout the three acts of this opera, Saint-Saëns and his librettist Ferdinand Lemaire use a swelling score and passion-filled lyrics60 to transform Delilah’s sketchy biblical characterization into a vibrant archetype of the fin de siècle fatal woman: foreign, treacherous, amoral, irresistible – and therefore utterly deadly. The work evokes a common theme in French opera from this period – a spiritual man of God is lured to danger and destruction by the enchantments of a hypersexualized vamp.61 Omitting Samson’s daring deeds recounted in Judges 13–15, Saint-Saëns focuses on the Hebrew leader’s disastrous relationship with Delilah, his former Philistine love interest, who has been nursing vengeance in her bosom since Samson spurned her in favour of his divine calling. Samson, in turn, becomes a virtuous yet flawed hero  – a soul-searching figure who speaks ‘with the voice of God’62 but whose vulnerability to the charms of a treacherous woman proves to be his Achilles’ heel. According to Burton D. Fisher, ‘The entire story is a tense conflict between the spirit and the flesh, the sacred and the profane, and love and duty.’63 Or, as Ralph Locke observes, ‘The opera is, in many ways, about a man’s “undoing”, la défaite d’un homme.’64 The entire opera crackles with the passion and pain of this undoing – both Samson and Delilah ache from loving too much, but while Samson succumbs to this love (with tragic results), Delilah strikes back at the object of her erstwhile affections, unleashing her vengeance in a maelstrom of feminine fury.

59. Ralph P. Locke, ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”: Saint-Saëns’s Samson et Dalila’, Cambridge Opera Journal 3 (1991): 298; also Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 69. 60. The full lyrics of the opera can be found on Internet Archive, available online: https:// archive.org/ stream/ samsondalilahope00sainuoft/ samsondalilahope00sainuoft_ djvu.txt (accessed 28 April 2017). A full English translation of the libretto can be found in Burton D. Fisher, ed., Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah, Opera Journeys Libretto Series (Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2007). 61. Steven Blier, ‘The Secret of Samson’s Strength’, Opera News (28 February 1998): 10. 62. Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 69. 63. Burton D. Fisher, ed., Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah, Opera Classics Library Series (Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2005), 20. 64. Locke, ‘Constructing’, 277.

114

114

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

We first meet Delilah near the end of act 1, when she appears before Samson with a troupe of Philistine priestesses, who dance sinuously in the background as she tries to rekindle her former lover’s desires. Her first aria, ‘Printemps qui commence’, leaves little to the imagination, confirming for the audience that she and Samson share a sexual history. Moreover, she seems to crave for him to return her still-burning affections. Using some seriously seductive speech to stroke Samson’s ego, she tells him that he is the man who ‘reigns’ over her heart; she pleads with him to come with her to Soreq, ‘where Delilah will open her arms to you!’65 She reminds him of the softness and sweetness of her kisses, of the intoxicating perfume of her heart; echoing the sensuous Shulammite in the biblical Song of Songs, she tells Samson that she has woven ‘roses of Sharon’ into her ebony hair,66 crowning her brow with ‘clusters of black grapes’. These fruity and floral allusions leave Samson hopelessly smitten. He begs God to ‘close my eyes, and close my heart to the soft voice that presses me! . . . Veil her features, her beauty disturbs my senses, troubles my soul! And her eyes extinguish the flame that loves liberty!’ One look at Delilah and Samson is smoking with rekindled desire; gone is the spiritual hero, the saintly Hebrew leader, and in his place, the Philistine siren leaves us with a jelly-kneed, feverish wreck no longer in control of his senses or will. In the background, an elderly Hebrew man watches this scene disapprovingly; he warns Samson to resist this ‘strange woman’ with her ‘lying voice’, which he likens to the ‘serpent’s deadly venom’ – an allusion, perhaps, to the snake in the garden of Eden (Genesis 3), whose powers of temptation are traditionally blamed for the downfall of humankind. What lethal potency this fatal woman has, warns Saint-Saëns  – Samson’s divinely gifted strength is no match for her diabolical enchantment. The full extent of Delilah’s poisonous allure becomes apparent in act 2, where she reveals that her avowals of sweet fruitful love are as hollow as her heart. In the opening scene, during her second aria (‘Amour, viens aider ma faiblesse’), she appears alone, uttering a prayer to the Philistine deity of love for the strength to ‘poison’ her way into Samson’s heart. ‘Oh love!’ she cries, ‘Come help my weakness!’ Is she referring to her physical weakness in comparison to Samson’s superior physical strength? Or is this a hint that she, like Samson, suffers from a weakness of love, wrought by the emotional attachment she still feels towards him? While her fellow Philistines fear him, she boasts of her intrepid yearning to ‘keep him at my knees!’ This may sound like a cold-hearted need to see Samson brought low, but the swelling music in this aria, with its evocation of sweet evening breezes, betrays what is left implicit in the libretto: Delilah’s unquenched desires for the Hebrew warrior.67 Insisting that he is her ‘slave’, who will ‘surrender’ to her, she discloses an unspoken desire to possess him as her lover, forever enchained to her heart.68

65. All translations of the opera lyrics are my own. 66. Cf. Song 2.1. 67. Locke, ‘Constructing’, 291. 68. Ibid. Delilah’s potential love for Samson is also voiced in Voltaire’s libretto, which inspired Saint-Saëns (ibid., 292). See also Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 211–12.

115

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

115

Delilah’s soliloquy is interrupted, however, by the arrival of the Philistine high priest, and in their duet we discover they are plotting together to capture Samson. Here, Delilah gives full vent to her thirst for vengeance, and we discover she is driven not by avarice but by a mixture of Philistine patriotism and a desire to punish Samson for his rejection of her love. When the high priest offers to pay her any amount of riches to betray Samson, she retorts, ‘What does your gold matter to Delilah? And what good is a whole treasure, when I dream of vengeance!’ Her motivations are reiterated in the final act of the opera, where, standing before a blind and chained Samson in the temple of Dagon, she lashes him with her words of bitter betrayal: ‘Love served my purpose! To satisfy my vengeance, I tore your secret from you . . . You believed in this love and it became your chains! On this day, Delilah avenged her god, her people and her hatred!’ Thus, in his desire to fill the gap in Judges 16 about Delilah’s motivations, SaintSaëns draws upon the characteristics of the fin de siècle femme fatale – a creature whose poisonous appetites and perverse desires drive her to destroy her victims. And, near the end of her duet with the high priest, Delilah reminds the audience of the strength of her treacherous allure: ‘He is strong in battle, but in my arms he is my trembling slave . . . I have prepared my weapons for this final fight: Samson will not be able to resist my tears!’ Saint-Saëns’s afterlife for Delilah is a searing furnace of rage and brutal passion.69 She thus embodies those fin de siècle anxieties about the femme fatale’s capacity for gender subversion; eschewing feminine passivity and weakness, she instead wields her sexuality like a weapon to exert a traditionally masculine power over her love-stricken prey.70 In the second scene of act 2, Delilah and Samson meet again, and she continues to torment him with whispers of erotic love. Her aria, ‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’, throbs with feverish desire, the musical intervals, chromatic melodies and accompanying instruments all providing a sensuous backdrop to this scene.71 Through her vocal caresses, she mouths more fruity promises of love, all the while chastising Samson for not loving her in return. Unlike the biblical text, where Delilah wears Samson down with her ‘nagging’, Saint-Saëns’s Delilah seduces him to destruction, affirming for the audience her unshakeable credentials as a classic femme fatale.72 Samson, once again, is in an agony of desire. Torn between his love for Delilah and his loyalty to God, we witness a ‘love triangle’ emerge,73 which

69. Locke, ‘Constructing’, 297. See also Peter McGrail, ‘Eroticism, Death and Redemption: The Operatic Construction of the Biblical Femme Fatale’, BibInt 15 (2007): 411. 70. Elaine Hoffman Baruch, ‘Forbidden Words – Enchanting Song: The Treatment of Delilah in Literature and Music’, in To Speak or Be Silent: The Paradox of Disobedience in the Lives of Women, ed. Lena B. Ross (Wilmette: Chiron Publications, 1993), 245–6; cited in Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 71. 71. Barrymore Laurence Scherer, ‘Song of the Orient’, Opera News 62, no. 12 (28 February 1998): 23. 72. Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 153. 73. Clanton, Dangerous, Disreputable and Devout, 70.

116

116

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

ultimately breaks down as Samson succumbs to Delilah’s relentless entreaties: ‘My love for you is so great that I dare to love in spite of God himself! Yes! Even if it were to make me die one day, Delilah! Delilah, I love you!’ Delilah, meanwhile, does not remain unmoved by this impassioned exchange with Samson. Despite her earlier words of vengeance, we get a sense that she too is stirred by the mutual desire that fizzes between them. Moreover, the return of the breeze motif (from her first aria) in the orchestral accompaniment reminds us of her ‘unconfessed sexual longings’ for this Hebrew leader.74 While she ultimately betrays Samson with breathtaking cruelty, this aria whispers the possibility that her feelings for him remain complex. As Locke notes, it ‘reinforces Saint-Saëns’s daring portrayal of Delilah as a woman who is sexually demanding, physically expressive, emotionally unrepressed’75 – in other words, everything a nineteenthcentury woman was expected to abjure. As Samson’s loyalty to God begins to waver and Delilah’s hold over him strengthens, her dangerous passion is signalled by a flute motif in the orchestral music, which evokes an approaching storm.76 Finally, as divine thunder rattles the heavens, Samson joins Delilah in her tent, only to be disturbed, moments later, by the arrival of Philistine troops. In the throes of desire, Samson has clearly told Delilah the secret to his strength, for when we next see him, he is in a Philistine prison – shorn, blinded and chained to the grinding mill. The final scene shifts to the temple of Dagon, where Delilah’s diabolical nature is given full vent. Standing before Samson, she mocks him, the music of her song parodying her seduction aria from the previous act (‘Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix’). Through her sweet words, she eventually lured Samson into a trap, hammering a wedge between the man and his God. In the end, neither Samson’s physical nor spiritual strength could withstand the sensual enticement of this femme fatale. Thus, throughout Saint-Saëns’s opera, Delilah is granted an afterlife that is dripping with eroticism, enchantment and danger. What is more, she is the epitome of anxiety-provoking exoticism. For, as Locke notes, Samson et Dalila is saturated in the Orientalist paradigm fashionable in colonial Europe during this period.77 Yet Saint-Saëns adds a significant twist to this paradigm, picking apart the traditional discourses that portrayed the West as the all-powerful colonizer and the Orient as the subjugated and territorialized Other.78 Throughout the opera, a proto-Western, Christ-like Samson is the dramatic subject with whom we are invited to identify,79 yet he becomes subjugated at the hands of the Philistine

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

Locke, ‘Constructing’, 297. Ibid. Scherer, ‘Song of the Orient’, 23. Locke, ‘Constructing’, 261−302; also Scherer, ‘Song of the Orient’, 18−23. Locke, ‘Constructing’, 271. Ibid.

117

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

117

Other, who, with Delilah’s help, emerges as the (albeit temporary) oppressor of God’s chosen people. This paradigm shift would have terrified Saint-Saëns’s contemporary audiences, confirming their ever-present fears about the threat of chaos, contagion and rebellion from the ‘barbaric’ colonies ruled over by the ‘civilized’ West. Delilah’s role as the deadly femme étrangère is emphasized by Saint-Saëns throughout this opera. The melodies and lyrics of her arias evoke the Oriental delights of fruits and flowers; her tent in the valley of Soreq is exotically landscaped with ‘Asiatic plants and luxurious creepers’;80 she conspires with a Philistine high priest and sings to Samson accompanied by a bevy of dancing Philistine priestesses; she holds court in a pagan temple with its associated myths of heathen sexual excess. Even her presence around Samson is a catalyst for a fearful storm – she is a force of nature, a cyclone of emotional upheaval, who threatens to topple the civilized order of Western colonial patriarchy. Her love is ‘hotter and scarier’81 than fin de siècle audiences would have wished to encounter in any woman; hers is a love inspired by lust and desire, but also by hatred and a terrifying will to conquer. She is the stereotypical Western construction of the Oriental femme fatale  – a porno-tropical vision that evokes both desire and dread. And Samson, in turn, is the embodiment of colonial manhood from the ‘God-chosen West’ – spiritual, innocent and powerful, but also horribly vulnerable to the emasculating control of the exotic feminine Other.82 At the end of the opera, Samson, enabled by the power of his God, brings down the pillars in the temple of Dagon, thus following the events recorded in Judg. 16.28-30. Yet, unlike the biblical text, where Delilah’s fate remains unarticulated, Saint-Saëns quenches our curiosity about this narrative gap by situating her in the temple, where she perishes under the rubble alongside her fellow Philistines. Just prior to Samson’s act of destruction, Delilah stands before the altar of Dagon, praising her Philistine god while questioning the ability of Samson’s deity to rescue him. Her subsequent demise refutes her Oriental feminine powers and affirms for Saint-Saëns’s fin de siècle audiences all that Samson represents  – the supremacy of masculinity over dangerous womanhood, the superiority of the Hebrew (and more specifically, Christian) God and a reaffirmation of the ‘God-chosen West’ as the rightful holders of colonial authority. Like many fatal women of this period, la femme fatale Delilah of Saint-Saëns’s imagination is considered too dangerous to leave unchallenged lest she run amok within the patriarchal landscape, toppling fragile edifices of white male privilege. Rather, her threat must be extinguished, her wickedness punished and her power destroyed.83

80. 81. 82. 83.

According to the notes in the vocal score (cited in ibid., 294). Ibid., 292. Ibid., 271; also Clanton, Dangerous, Disreputable and Devout, 72. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 243–4.

118

118

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Fatal Femme, Floozie and Feckless Lover: Delilah in Contemporary Song Following Saint-Saëns’s iconic afterlife for Delilah at the end of the nineteenth century, this biblical character remained a popular subject of song lyrics throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. In this section, I briefly review some of these songs to see how they fill in the gaps surrounding Delilah’s biblical character with those familiar tropes of the femme fatale.84 I also reflect on a number of songs that speak of other women called Delilah, which use these same tropes. Focusing on this shared nomenclature, I consider the cultural significance that the name Delilah continues to convey beyond the biblical tradition and within popular culture.85 Turning first to these songs that ‘retell’ the events of Judges 16, one of the more well known is a folk song titled ‘Samson and Delilah’, initially performed by Blind Willie Johnson in 1927. It was popularized later in the century by gospel and blues singer Reverend Gary Davis, and subsequently recorded by a number of artists, including Peter, Paul and Mary (1962), the Grateful Dead (1977) and Shirley Manson (2008).86 In the lyrics to this song, Delilah is described as bedazzling Samson with her beauty. Moreover, her behaviour towards Samson is described as both duplicitous and erotically charged – she sits on his knee (reversing roles in Judg. 16.19, where Samson sleeps on Delilah’s lap) and speaks to him seductively. When he eventually reveals the secret of his strength, she then betrays him. Samson and Delilah’s relationship is flavoured throughout this song with sexual treachery, thereby confirming Delilah’s reputation as an archetypal femme fatale.

84. Of course, not all songs about Delilah treat her as a treacherous femme fatale. In the 2015 song ‘Delilah’ by British band Florence and the Machine, the biblical figure is imagined more as a source of inspiration and self-healing, as she encourages lead singer Florence Welch to ‘cut away’ the negative influences in her life and dance her way to freedom. The music video accompanying this song accentuates the biblical allusions to Judges 16, showing Welch cutting a man’s hair before undergoing some intense religious experiences (including a baptism) that seem to allow her to escape the claustrophobic confines of her surroundings. For further discussion of this song, see Anne T.  Donahue, ‘Florence and the Machine:  Delilah’, Rookie, 21 October 2015, available online:  http://www.rookiemag. com/2015/10/florence-and-the-machine-delilah (accessed 28 April 2017). Special thanks to Harriet Winn for alerting me to ‘Delilah’, and for sharing her expertise on the music of Florence and the Machine. 85. Further discussion of Delilah in contemporary music can be found in Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 72–7. 86. Manson’s rendition was the opening music of an episode of the sci-fi TV series The Sarah Connor Chronicles (created by Josh Friedman) called ‘Samson and Delilah’ (season 2, 2008). For a discussion of the relationship between this episode and the Judges 16 narrative, see Robert J. Myles, ‘Terminating Samson:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the Rise of New Biblical Meaning’, Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 1 (2011): 329–50.

119

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

119

Delilah’s potent allure is accentuated even more in the song ‘Sam and Delilah’, written by Ira Gershwin for the musical Girl Crazy (1930). Gershwin describes Delilah as a ‘floozy’, who enchants Samson by doing her ‘kootch’ – a reference to the salacious hootchie-kootchie dance that became famous in the United States during the late nineteenth century. The hootchie-kootchie adapted the Oriental belly dance tradition into a sinuous performance guaranteed to titillate Western audiences. Serving up a heady brew of exotic allure and ‘hootch’ (alcohol), Delilah thus bewitches the hapless Samson until he is completely under her spell. Again, this song sexualizes the couple’s relationship and sets Delilah up as the foreign femme fatale. Moreover, her sexuality is also steeped in a propensity for violence – after suspecting that her lover had been unfaithful, she tracks him down and kills him in a fit of jealousy. Like Saint-Saëns, Ira Gershwin fills the biblical gap about Delilah’s motivations by suggesting that she was avenging an unrequited love. A fatal woman indeed. One of the fascinating things about this song is its more general warning about women’s dangerousness.87 For Gershwin, Delilah is not simply a oneoff character in an ancient tale, but rather the archetype of a particular type of woman – a fatal woman – who continues to exist within his own contemporary milieu. This type of woman will, like Delilah, entice unsuspecting men with their erotic dancing and strong liquor; they may even murder their lover should he inflame their jealous desires. This grim warning is repeated in Neil Sedaka’s hit song ‘Run, Samson, Run’ (written by Howard Greenfield, 1960), which similarly cautions its listeners that every woman has the capacity to behave like Delilah. The song also stresses Delilah’s moral failings (and thus every woman’s), calling attention to her cheating heart, likening her to a ‘demon’ and a ‘devil’, and suggesting that men would be safer in the company of a ‘hungry lion’. As Clanton notes, the song takes the biblical Delilah out of her (decidedly ambiguous) textual setting and twists her characterization into ‘an androcentric cautionary tale’, which highlights the perfidy of all women and their innate propensity to be femmes fatales.88 This notion of Delilah as an archetype of feminine duplicity reaches its natural conclusion in a number of songs that recount tales of other Delilahs, who are likewise embellished by their creator with the characteristics of the fatal woman. In ‘Beautiful Delilah’, singer Chuck Berry praises the physical allure of a woman called Delilah. At the same time, this praise is soured by allusions to her promiscuity (whenever the singer sees her, she’s with a ‘different guy’) and the callous way that she treats her innumerable lovers, breaking their hearts just for her own entertainment. This theme of sexuality cloaked in cruelty is also expressed in the lyrics of ‘Modern Day Delilah’, a song released in 2009 by US rock band Kiss. This modern Delilah is a liar, who enjoys treating her lovers like a hunter treats their quarry. Another song by the same name, recorded by American singer

87. Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 74–5. 88. Ibid., 74.

120

120

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Van Stephenson in 1981, similarly associates notions of menacing violence with a hairdresser aptly named Delilah, who owns a pair of wickedly sharp scissors, with which she stabs her victims in the heart. There is something about the name Delilah that evokes the powerful motif of dangerous sexuality, and yet, as we noted in the previous chapter, this motif is never raised explicitly in Judges 16 as part of Delilah’s characterization; rather, it is added later by creators of her afterlives, who conjure her up as a deadly femme fatale. The most famous of these modern-day Delilah songs is, of course, Tom Jones’s 1967 hit ‘Delilah’ (written by Les Reed and Barry Mason), where the Welsh singer croons emotively about a cheating girlfriend called Delilah, whose unfaithful ways eventually impel him to kill her. Again, tropes of duplicity and sexual immorality come to the fore, as Jones relates the tragic tale of Delilah’s infidelity. From the outset, he bemoans that she is trouble – a woman who made him feel like a ‘slave’ to her love (echoing the chains and enslavement motifs that are woven into Delilah’s afterlives by both Saint-Saëns and Milton). Like many of her afterlives, the song adds a sexualized flavour to Delilah’s treachery, despite the fact that her act of betrayal in Judges 16 revolved around a secret rather than her sexuality.89 Jones’s Delilah is an unfaithful lover, but when he confronts her, she simply laughs at him. This challenge to his masculine authority compels him to murder her; in a reversal of the biblical story, Delilah, not Samson, suffers violence at the hand of her lover – the betrayer, not the betrayed, dies as the result of her actions.90 Like Saint-Saëns’s retelling of Judges 16, Delilah is not allowed to escape unpunished from this story; as a duplicitous femme fatale, she must suffer the consequences of deceiving the man who loved her. Violence, however brutal, seems a perfectly acceptable way to rid the world of duplicitous women, and while Jones voices regret over his actions, we are left with the feeling that these events have been a tragedy for him, rather than for the woman he killed.

Delilah Projected Moving now from music to the movies, I consider Delilah’s afterlives created for the silver screen during the mid-to-late twentieth century. I focus particularly on two filmic retellings of the Judges 16 story from this period (both titled Samson and Delilah), each of which casts Delilah in the role of the fatal woman:  Cecil B. DeMille’s classic biblical epic was released in 1949, during the heyday of film noir, while Nic Roeg’s offering coincided with the emergence of neo-noir film traditions during the twentieth-century fin de siècle. Tracing the ways that the writers and directors of these films resolve the ambiguities surrounding Delilah’s biblical characterization, we discover each film presents her a little differently,

89. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 248. 90. Ibid.; Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 77.

121

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

121

echoing their particular historical and sociocultural milieus. Yet, each one nevertheless offers us a vision of Delilah that captures various tropes of noir and neo-noir femmes fatales, which we considered at length in Chapter 1. Samson and Delilah (1949): ‘Bring in a Woman and You Bring in Trouble’ During the early decades of the twentieth century, Cecil B.  DeMille (1881– 1959) gained a reputation as the undisputed master of Hollywood biblical epics, producing classics such as The Ten Commandments (1923 and 1956) and The King of Kings (1927).91 His movie retelling of Judges 16 – Samson and Delilah – was one of the first biblical films made after World War II and was DeMille’s first Technicolor endeavour (Figure 3.10).92 Yet colour is not the only thing that glows on-screen; like some of the other biblical movies made during this post-war period, Samson and Delilah is awash with throbbing desire and tumultuous sensuality. As Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones observes, DeMille’s original vision for the Judges 16 narrative was ‘a Bible story with sex appeal; a big, brassy, gaudy, titillating extravaganza’.93 The movie is a fabulously camp retelling of this biblical tradition, shot through with the jewel tones of hot desire and even hotter revenge. Indeed, the text of Judges 16 appears positively pallid in comparison; for, while DeMille may claim to have retold this saga ‘without contradicting a single fact related in the Bible’,94 both he and the screenwriters indulged in more than a little gap filling to breathe some 1940s Hollywood glamour into this ancient tale. As Robert Birchard notes, ‘The basic Bible story wasn’t altered, but it was slicked up a bit.’95 To play the part of Samson, DeMille cast American actor Victor Mature, who had previously starred in a number of Hollywood Westerns and films noir. Mature’s

91. For further details about DeMille’s life and movie career, see Cecil B. DeMille, The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, ed. Donald Hayne (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1959); Robert S. Birchard, Cecil B.  DeMille’s Hollywood (Lexington:  University Press of Kentucky, 2004). 92. Written by Jesse L. Lasky Jr and Fredric M. Frank, the movie plot also used original treatments by American writer Harold Lamb and Russian novelist Vladimir Jabotinsky (whose novel Judge and Fool, also known as Samson the Nazirite, was published in 1927). For more details on the use of Jabotinsky’s novel in DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, see David Fishelov, Dialogues with/and Great Books:  The Dynamics of Canon Formation (Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), 90−103. 93. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, ‘The Fashioning of Delilah:  Costume Design, Historicism and Fantasy in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949)’, in The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, ed. Liza Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005), 14. 94. Paramount movie gift book, Cecil B.  DeMille’s Masterpiece Samson and Delilah (Hollywood: Paramount, 1949); cited in Gunn, Judges, 188–90. 95. Birchard, Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood, 335.

122

122

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.10 Samson and Delilah original movie poster, Paramount, 1949. Available online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samson_and_Delilah_original_1949_ poster.JPG (accessed 28 April 2017).

Samson is tanned, clean-shaven and muscle-bound  – a ‘big brawny athlete’,96 complying nicely with mid-twentieth-century mores of masculine grooming and athleticism. Even his strength-giving hair is usually tucked out of sight in a tidy man bun, preventing his long locks from giving him an unmanly mien. Like his 96. DeMille’s description of Samson, which he used to sell the movie idea to Paramount executives. See DeMille, Autobiography, 398−9; cited in Stephen C. Meyer, Epic Sound: Music in Postwar Hollywood Biblical Films (Bloomington and Indianapolis:  Indiana University Press, 2015), 19.

123

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

123

Figure 3.11 Hedy Lamarr as Delilah in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah, Paramount, 1949. Image courtesy of Photofest.

biblical counterpart, Mature’s Samson is a brave but impetuous Danite warrior, whose temper is quick to flare when the Philistines rile him. He also shares the biblical Samson’s weakness for women  – Philistine women in particular  – and his love for Delilah, though much slower to develop, ultimately becomes an overwhelming passion that seals his fate. The real star of this movie, however, is Delilah, played to perfection by Hollywood leading lady Hedy Lamarr (Figure 3.11). From the outset, DeMille fills the gaps surrounding Delilah’s character by envisioning her as both the embodiment of ‘biblical glamour’97 and ‘a scheming little dame’98 – the classic fatal woman of film noir, who ensnares her prey with her sexual allure. His choice of Lamarr for this role was therefore apt. As a ‘late ’40s vision of perfect womanhood’,99 the AustroHungarian actor fit flawlessly with DeMille’s reading of Judges 16 as a story about a man swept away by a tidal wave of passion for ‘a slim and ravishingly attractive 97. Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 20. 98. P. A. Koury, Yes, Mr. De Mille (New York:  Putnam, 1959), 214; cited in Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 8. 99. Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 20. For further details of Lamarr’s acting career, see Dominique Mainon and James Ursini, Femme Fatale:  Cinema’s Unforgettable Lethal Ladies (New York: Limelight Editions, 2009), 148–56.

124

124

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

young girl’.100 By portraying Delilah as the ideal representation of 1940s American beauty standards, the director was helping the audience understand why Samson, a heroic man of God, could lose his head so disastrously over a woman. With her iridescent grey-green eyes, glossy lips, chocolate spit curls and sinuous curves, Lamarr’s Delilah is simply too luscious not to stare at; indeed, she is the epitome of Mulvey’s to-be-looked-at-ness – a cinematic female form fashioned as a source of pleasure for the heterosexual male gaze.101 Throughout the film, Delilah’s physical beauty remains centre stage, demanding the attention of her (predominantly male) costars and audience, and affirming their mid-twentieth century suspicions about the dangerous power of women’s allure.102 This to-be-looked-at-ness is also accentuated and even encouraged by the fact that Lamarr brought to the role of Delilah a certain nuance of sexual scandal. Her infamy arose, in part at least, from her appearance in the 1933 Austrian-Czech film, Ecstasy (directed by Gustav Machatý), in which, at the age of nineteen, she played the first completely nude part in movie history, not to mention enacting one of the first simulated orgasms in mainstream cinema. Additionally, her multiple marriages and divorces raised a few eyebrows among 1940s audiences.103 With her exquisite looks and sexually scandalous past, Lamarr thus presents a thoroughly re-vamped, mid-twentiethcentury Delilah  – a noiresque femme fatale whose sizzling sensuality heats up nearly every scene in the film. Of course, it is not only Lamarr’s physical beauty or her sexual repute that renders her such an irresistible object of the spectators’ gaze; the costumes she wears throughout Samson and Delilah (created by Hollywood designer Edith Head) are also coded to affirm her status as amatory spectacle. Following DeMille’s careful instructions, Head’s creations meld historical elements of Late Bronze Age Minoan costume with the ‘New Look’ couture that was in vogue in 1940s Hollywood, reminding the audience, perhaps, that the femme fatale Delilah remained every inch the modern woman.104 The result is a wardrobe for Lamarr that epitomizes Hollywood fashion trends with a twist of Oriental chic; draped in Head’s glorious designs, she is transformed into a tantalizing vision of bare flesh caressed by silky drapes, jewels, feathers and fur. Every outfit accentuates her sensuality, inciting the viewer’s desire to touch both it and its

100. DeMille, Autobiography, 398−9; cited in Meyer, Epic Sound, 19. When researching this movie, I came across more than one scholar who commented that, at the age of thirtyfive, Lamarr was a little long in the tooth to play Delilah convincingly. She was actually a year younger than Victor Mature, who is seldom if ever accused of being too old to play Samson. 101. Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, 11. 102. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 260. 103. Lamarr had been married and divorced three times when she appeared in Samson and Delilah. She went on to have three further marriages, all of which likewise ended in divorce. 104. Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 19–24.

125

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

125

wearer. This was quite an achievement for Head, given that she was working under the stringent Hollywood Production Code governing actors’ on-screen appearance.105 In scene after scene, Delilah sashays around wearing tightly draped ‘harem’ (halter bikini) tops that show off as much of her décolletage as the code would allow. These tops are matched with long, gauzy skirts in jewel tones, cinched at the waist to leave her midriff daringly bare and with slits that afford the audience a glimpse of leg. Gold and precious jewels adorn her arms, throat and head, and in later scenes, she carries a feather-plume fan, which colour coordinates with her outfit and accentuates the Oriental glamour of her overall ‘look’ (see Figure 3.11). These luxuriant costumes thus affirm Lamarr’s (and Delilah’s) status as a screen presence exuding to-be-looked-at-ness  – they draw our desiring gaze towards her and urge us to linger, drinking her in as we leisurely trace the contours of her breasts, midriff, hips and legs. And, by holding our gaze, Lamarr’s colourful attire invites us to observe her body as a signifier of dangerous desirability. Particularly in Samson’s presence, Lamarr uses her body to dramatic effect, lounging, leaning and draping herself around him, compelling his attention. As Lopate notes, ‘At times she seems to act mainly with her midriff . . . or with her eloquent shoulder blades, as she leans against the wall, thrusting her breasts forward.’106 DeMille invites us to appraise Lamarr’s Delilah, not just as an object of the male gaze, but also its director, its instigator. Acutely aware of being gazed upon, she draws her victims under her spell with amorous glances and a hint of ‘midriff eroticism’.107 DeMille thus creates an afterlife for Delilah that locates her along with those spider women from classic film noir, whose glamourous allure traps their prey in a web of deadly desire. As Head herself observed, both her costumes and DeMille’s direction shaped Lamarr into a Delilah who was an ‘all-time femme fatale’.108 While Lamarr’s on-screen appearance evokes Delilah’s dangerous sensuality, it also adds another element to her character that, again, remains unarticulated in the Judges 16 narrative: her ethnicity. The exotic opulence of Head’s designs affirms Delilah’s identity as a Philistine woman in DeMille’s movie; her costumes are, as Llewellyn-Jones suggests, ‘pure Arabian Nights’.109 Indeed, the entire film is a riot of Hollywood-style exotic glamour, awash with oiled muscles and lion wrestling,

105. The Motion Picture Production Code (1930) prohibited complete nudity, in fact or in silhouette, and ‘indecent or undue exposure’, which included excessive cleavage, navels and explicit focus on the pelvic area. 106. Lopate, ‘Judges’, 73. 107. Ibid. 108. Edith Head and J. K. Ardmore, The Dress Doctor (Kingswood: Little Brown., 1960), 9; cited in Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 24. The pre-release poster artwork is a vision of danger and desire, showing a lush and barely clad Delilah, breasts thrusting towards Samson, while a blade gleams behind her back (see Figure 3.10). 109. Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 24.

126

126

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

leather whips and pagan temples, Oriental attire, golden wine goblets, lush oases and even lusher boudoirs bedecked with sumptuous fur throws and silken tassels. Situated against these Oriental trappings, Delilah shines like an exotic jewel. With her ‘Philistine’ costumes and exquisitely painted face, this biblical character is once again transformed into an excessively produced body that is alien, alluring and anxiety provoking. To accentuate this, the music composed by Victor Young to accompany Delilah throughout the film weaves together the tones and rhythms commonly used in opera and post-war film scores (including biblical epics and film noir) to depict the morally louche and fatally foreign temptress.110 As Stephen Meyer explains, ‘Like the bodies of the women with which they are associated – and in contrast to the masculine angularity of the hero motives – these melodies curve and flow . . . [T]he sinuous lyricism of these cinematic themes is bound up with sexual seduction and moral turpitude.’111 With the assistance of Young and Head, DeMille thus corroborates Delilah’s all-too-common identification as the classically exotic femme fatale, whose on-screen presence evokes the intoxicating scents of Oriental mystique. DeMille further emphasized Delilah’s foreign allure by casting Lamarr in this leading role. Once she had moved to Hollywood, the Austro-Hungarian actor came to epitomize the (hyper)sexualized foreign female who stimulated audiences’ curiosity and desire.112 With her European roots and hint of a Viennese accent, she was, as Diane Negra notes, the embodiment of ‘Continental exotic’.113 And, by the time she played Delilah, she was an actor already ‘notorious for being notorious’,114 embodying the common cultural trope of the predatory foreign vamp.115 In the immediate aftermath of World War II, her feminine European otherness intersected inextricably with her ‘hyperbolic exoticism and transgressive sexuality’, becoming a marker and magnifier of her treacherous erotic power.116 DeMille’s choice of Lamarr to play Delilah profited from these intersections, affirming his post-war audiences’ anxieties about foreign women and the threat they posed to ‘homegrown’ (American) heroes such as Mature’s Samson. Importing the classic film noir figure of the exotic femme fatale into his biblical epic, the Hollywood director thus creates an afterlife for Delilah that captures the dark and deadly power of the female sex.

110. Meyer, Epic Sound, 25. 111. Ibid. 112. See for example, Algiers (1938), Lady of the Tropics (1939) and White Cargo (1942). In 1946, she starred as the manipulative femme fatale Jenny Hager in The Strange Woman. 113. Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 103. 114. Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 24. 115. Negra, Off-White Hollywood, 103. Negra notes that this element of Lamarr’s screen presence became particularly prominent within the movies she made during the late 1940s and 1950s. 116. Ibid., 16.

127

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

127

As well as filling in the biblical gaps about Delilah’s sexuality and ethnicity, DeMille and his screenwriters also made a number of other interpretive decisions that both accentuate and complicate her credentials as femme fatale. Her relationship with Samson, for example – so frustratingly obscure within the Judges 16 narrative  – is fleshed out throughout the movie, as DeMille weaves around the couple a complex web of emotions. While Judg. 16.4 attests that Samson ‘loved’ Delilah (staying silent about her feelings for him), Mature’s Danite hero is initially impervious to Delilah’s charms, despite her obvious attraction to him. In the opening scenes of the movie, she vies outrageously for his attention. Yet, much to her chagrin, Samson only has eyes for her older sister Semadar (played by British-American actor Angela Lansbury).117 Indeed, Samson makes no secret of his disinterest in Delilah, despite her explicit declarations of love. In an early scene, she persuades him to purloin one of her father’s chariots so that they can ride to a lion hunt. As they race through the desert, she stands behind him on the chariot, arms wrapped around him in a passionate clinch. ‘Faster, Samson, faster!’ she cries. ‘Semadar doesn’t love your strength like I do. I’d love to feel the power of your arms!’ Samson, however, is slow to thaw: ‘I’d rather feel a wildcat on my back’, he responds, reassuring the audience that he is alert to the dangers of this temptress. With her brazen declarations of heterosexual desire, Lamarr’s Delilah breaks from the feminine mores of sexual and social passivity that dominated 1940s American life. This is similarly accentuated during the scene where Samson wrestles with the lion they encounter on their hunting trip. As Delilah stands watching on a nearby rock, her face glows with sexual arousal, as though violence and eroticism were intricately intertwined within her world view.118 She thus embodies the gender-disrupting potential of the femme fatale, displaying a disquieting blend of masculine and feminine proclivities. For, while her ultimate goal is marriage to Samson (thereby conforming to more traditional feminine expectations), her pursuit of this goal takes on the traditionally masculine flavours of assertive sexuality and an erotic attraction to violence and power.119

117. This familial association between Delilah and Samson’s ill-fated Philistine wife is not featured in the biblical narrative, but is a detail that the screenwriters borrowed from Jabotinsky’s novel, Judges and Fool (Fishelov, Dialogues with/and Great Books, 94–5). 118. Samson too looks sweaty and jubilant in this scene, as though he had just completed a sexual marathon. Reinhold Zwick notes that Delilah is also aroused earlier in the film, as she watches Samson bend in half the spear of Ahtur, Philistine governor of Dan and Semadar’s suitor – a none-too-subtle enactment of Samson’s unmanning of this Philistine love rival. See Reinhold Zwick, ‘Obsessive Love:  Samson and Delilah Go to the Movies’, in Samson, Hero or Fool? The Many Faces of Samson, ed. Erik Eynikel and Tobias Niklas (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 225. 119. As Kozlovic notes, Semadar, like her screen sister, subverts biblical ideals of submissive maternal womanhood (‘Constructing’, 13). She too rides in a chariot, spear in hand, enjoying the thrill of big-game hunting. Yet unlike Delilah, she does embrace certain

128

128

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

DeMille continues to portray Delilah as subverting traditional gender norms throughout the movie, blending her obvious feminine allure with the flavours of masculine agency and aggression. By exploiting the ambiguities that exist around her gendered status in Judges 16 (vis-à-vis her maternal and marital status, her social and sexual autonomy, and her potential for violence), the director accentuates her ability to disrupt the fragile gender binaries that were struggling to survive in post-war American society. Lamarr thus plays Delilah with a mix of ‘muscles, tits and sadism’;120 while her exotic costumes maximize her (hyper) femininity, they also stress her incompatibility with traditional feminine roles of motherhood and domesticity (the closest she comes to being a domestic goddess is when she pours Samson a goblet of drugged wine).121 Instead, she appears comfortable and influential in the social and sexual company of powerful men, including the Philistine ruler (the Saran of Gaza) and his council, negotiating with them confidently as their equal (or even their superior) vis-à-vis her leading role in Samson’s capture.122 Earlier in the movie, she even refuses her father’s request to serve as hostess to Samson and Semadar’s wedding guests, preferring to lounge among them, sensuously licking honey off a spoon while she stirs up trouble for the newly-weds. Indeed, it is during this wedding scene that DeMille brings into sharp relief the dangerous power of Delilah’s gender-bending allure. Samson rebuffed Delilah in favour of Semadar and now she is intent on making him change his mind. As Exum reminds us, DeMille’s Delilah ‘does not accept rejection. Ever.’123 In the biblical text, Samson’s disastrous wedding and the death of his Philistine wife were the result of his hot-headed response to his wife’s betrayal and the loss of a wager to his Philistine guests (Judges 14–15). DeMille, however, casts Delilah as the sole catalyst of the violence that unravels here. She manipulates the wedding guests, her sister and her father, all in an attempt to win Samson’s hand in marriage. The result is an eventual explosion of violence that leaves both Semadar and her father dead and their luxurious family homestead in flames. Yet Delilah entertains no self-blame; instead, she holds Samson responsible for reducing her life to ‘ashes social and gender mores, chastising Delilah for speaking boldly to the Philistine ruler, the Saran, and (unlike Delilah) eventually embracing domesticity and social acceptance through marriage. 120. According to Lamarr, this was the advice given by her agent when she took the role. In Hedy Lamarr, Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman (New York:  Penguin, 1966), 168–9; cited in Llewellyn-Jones, ‘Fashioning of Delilah’, 24. 121. Koslovic, ‘Constructing’, 8. Indeed, during a scene with Samson, she proudly admits to him that she has no ‘husband’ or ‘master’, confirming her rejection of these traditional feminine roles. 122. The title Saran is related to the Hebrew noun used in Judges 16 to refer to the five Philistine elders (sing. seren). 123. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 237.

129

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

129

and death’.124 It is at this point in the film that her feelings for Samson change, from a powerful unrequited love to something far more complex. In a previous scene, she confesses to Samson that he is ‘the only thing in the world’ she desires. Samson retorts that she is a ‘fork-tongued adder’ whom he could crush under his heel. ‘If you crushed the life out of me, I’d kiss you with my dying breath’, she replies, clinging to Samson until he pushes her aside. Like Saint-Saëns’s operatic afterlife, DeMille’s Delilah has an emotional bond with the Hebrew warrior that is passionate and terrifying in its intensity. Yet, standing with her servant Hisham near her family’s burning fields, smoke stained and white-hot with anger, she swears her revenge on the Danite who has captured her heart and ruined her life. ‘He called you a fork-tongued adder’, Haisham reminds her. ‘He’s going to feel its sting’, replies Delilah. ‘I’ll find strength, Haisham, strength to destroy him.’ The next time we meet Delilah, she has transformed herself into a courtesan in the Philistine court of the Saran of Gaza. It seems that, after Samson rejects her as a wife, she rejects any aspirations to conform to this traditional feminine role. DeMille thus embraces the popular reading of Judges 16 that identifies Delilah as a fatal woman who plies her sex for material or social gain. And, within her role as courtesan, DeMille’s Delilah enjoys considerable power. The source of this power is her beauty, which is now foregrounded as the weapon that she uses to wreak vengeance on Samson. Even the Philistine ruler, the Saran, recognizes the dangerous strength of her allure; while he compares her lips and eyes to precious jewels, he also describes her as a ‘dimpled dragon, flashing fire and smoke’. Again, the enthralling beauty of the femme fatale is intricately entwined with her treachery, as though one could not exist without the other. The Saran’s description of Delilah as a ‘dimpled dragon’ also taps into another common trope of the fatal woman so beloved of her creators in the nineteenthcentury fin de siècle and Hollywood noir periods  – her animalistic qualities. Samson likewise evokes these when he compares Delilah to a wildcat, an adder and even a gutter rat. These descriptions serve to accentuate her otherness – she is dangerous, unpredictable and carnal. Yet DeMille acknowledges that such otherness is a source of her power; while Ahtur, the Philistine governor of Dan, insists that ‘no man’ can stand against Samson’s superhuman strength, Delilah remains unfazed, coolly suggesting, ‘Perhaps he’ll fall before a woman.’ Another member of the Saran’s council affirms her claims, noting, ‘Bring in a woman and you bring in trouble.’ Masculine muscle, it seems, is no match for women like Delilah. As Delilah approaches the Philistine elders with her plan to capture the Danite menace, we can trace the way DeMille has filled another gap in the Judges 16 narrative – Delilah’s motives for betraying Samson. Initially, she turns down the

124. The words of Delilah’s servant, Hisham, as the two women watch the fires burning around Delilah’s home.

130

130

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

‘bauble’ offered as a reward and instead, negotiates a phenomenally high payment – ‘a pharaoh’s ransom’ – of 1,100 pieces of silver from each of the council elders. Does this hint that she is driven by cupidity? Is DeMille drawing on the familiar motif of the avaricious fatal woman of film noir? Yet when the Saran appears reluctant to let her carry out her plan, she draws on the same desire for vengeance she had voiced earlier to Haisham: ‘When my father and sister lay dead in the ashes of our home because of Samson, he laughed at my tears.’ Delilah’s actions, it seems, are fuelled primarily by a need to punish Samson for the personal losses she has incurred at his hand. There is also the possibility, however, that she is still nursing a desire for retribution after Samson rejected her love. This is hinted at by Delilah’s insistence to the Saran that, in the event of Samson’s capture, ‘No drop of his blood shall be shed, no blade shall touch his skin.’ She may seek vengeance against Samson, but not his destruction. Rather, she wants to see him imprisoned and humiliated: ‘Chain him to the grist mill, let him grind our grain like a beast!’ DeMille’s Delilah bears echoes of Saint-Saens’s and Milton’s afterlives for this biblical character, where past passions still burn frighteningly strong but have been distorted into a desire to enslave and possess. Here, the violent undercurrents of the femme fatale’s sexuality are brought to the fore, and we are reminded of this figure’s potential to captivate (quite literally) the object of her desire. After sealing her deal with the Saran and his council of elders, Delilah travels to Sorek as part of her strategy to ensnare Samson. The strongman is currently on a looting spree in the surrounding territory to bolster the coffers of his Danite rebellion; she therefore hopes that her opulent oasis boudoir (an extension of her own opulent body, perhaps) will serve as a trap that lures him to her.125 The plan works, and Samson turns up to plunder her treasures. As he wanders around, filling a sack with ornaments and jewellery, she poses sinuously before him, titillating and provoking him in equal measure. Delilah is the quintessence of glamorous mystique throughout this scene; her gunmetal off-the-shoulder harem top and shimmering silver skirt reveal the creaminess of her skin and accentuate the curves of her breasts and hips. Like the Delilahs created on canvas by Moreau, Lamarr’s Delilah is embellished with a surfeit of precious jewels, while her glistening red lips and smoky eyes are redolent of the classic noir femme fatale ‘look’, captured by Clive in his painting Enchantresses of the Ages. Thrusting herself into Samson’s line of vision, she forces him to drink in her excessively feminized body. Although Samson is pillaging her riches here, she is the one in control, directing his gaze, drawing him gradually under her power. A surfeit of smouldering looks, hesitant touches and barely concealed lust gradually envelop the couple, while double entendres fire back and forth like bullets until the audience is left blushing with the heat of unfulfilled desire.

125. Lopate likens Delilah’s boudoir to her body  – its elaborate ornamentation and sumptuous comfort ultimately ensnare Samson (‘Judges’, 86). Samson begins by seeking to plunder its riches, but ultimately ends up trapped inside it, an emasculated victim of Delilah’s enchantment.

131

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

131

Somewhat akin to the biblical text (Judg. 16.6), Delilah makes clear to Samson during this scene that she is here to betray him. Yet notes of duplicity ring out during her performance. At times, she hides the lower half of her face with a gauzy scarf when she speaks to Samson, hinting at the treacherous undertones of her words. And at one point, Samson pushes her onto an animal-skin rug, reminding the audience of this woman’s predatory potential. To give Samson credit, he does initially appear wise to her intentions, noting that she is performing ‘the oldest trick in the world. A  silk trap, baited with a woman.’ ‘You know a better bait, Samson?’ Delilah asks, ‘Men always respond.’ While Samson recognizes her threat, he nevertheless seems unable to resist. She thus articulates that central trope of the femme fatale – the dangerous power of a woman’s sexuality to ensnare her prey. Samson even acknowledges this, telling her ‘You could bind a man tighter than the Saran’s chains.’ The couple’s sexually charged dialogue contains an unsettling mix of desire and the underlying promise of sadomasochistic violence. Finally, Delilah reminds him of her previous love and her willingness to kiss him with her ‘dying breath’. Samson retorts that her kiss would be the ‘sting of death’, yet moments later, after calling her a ‘daughter of Hell’, he scoops her into a passionate clinch, unable, it seems, to resist those ruby lips. And, while the Hollywood Production Code may have prohibited DeMille from showing the audience anything more explicit than the locking of lips, we are left with the unmistakeable sense that the couple’s relationship will now be far from chaste. The scene fades at that moment, and when we next see Samson, he is comfortably ensconced in Delilah’s opulent oasis, clearly a permanent fixture within this exotic love nest. The couple frolic in an Edenic garden and it is here that Delilah first tries to discover the secret to Samson’s strength. When he asks her why she wants to know, she replies, ‘So you could never leave me’, hinting again that her obsessive love may indeed be motivating her betrayal. As in the biblical text, Samson initially misinforms her, treating her requests as a game. Delilah too plays along at first, weaving an exotic bloom into the green reeds that she uses to bind Samson’s wrists, and laughing with him when he breaks out of his bondage with ease. Yet later, back in her tent, Delilah’s playfulness turns to impatience and, akin to the biblical tradition, she accuses Samson of not trusting or loving her enough (Judg. 16.10, 13, 15). ‘You still fear me more than you love me’, she complains, to which Samson replies, ‘I don’t fear you enough.’ Clearly, the Danite carries lingering suspicions about Delilah’s motives, or is at least conscious of her intoxicating power. This power is already manifest in Samson’s appearance, whether he realizes it or not. Gone is the heroic warrior with superhuman strength who wrestles lions with his bare hands and slays an army of Philistines. In his place, we see a man unmanned – a man who frolics by shady pools, letting his lover weave flowers around his wrists, a man who lounges in luxuriant boudoirs wearing a toga of shimmering lamé that resembles the fabric in some of Delilah’s own costumes (Figure 3.12).126

126. We saw a similar ‘unmanning’ of Samson in Moreau’s painting, Samson and Delilah, discussed earlier in this chapter.

132

132

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.12 Victor Mature and Hedy Lamarr in Samson and Delilah, Paramount, 1949. Image courtesy of Photofest.

Surrendering to Delilah’s sensuous influence and her honeyed promises of love, Samson abandons his battle against the Philistines and is transformed into a domesticated lounge lizard, enjoying the decadent luxuries of soft lips and warm arms, as well as the promise of sexual excess. DeMille thus warns his 1940s audience of women’s capacity to emasculate the objects of their desire, confirming in the process the potential vulnerability of male power. In a society still coming to grips with women’s post-war challenges to traditional gender roles (which I discussed in Chapter 1), Samson’s fate would have been a sobering reminder of the dangers that sexually and socially liberated women like Delilah could pose. Delilah thus serves a similar function as those femmes fatales of 1940s hard-boiled literature and film noir, whose treacherous sensuality could drain a man of his masculinity, leaving him soft and vulnerable to their lethal charms. As Delilah argues with the newly feminized Samson about his refusal to trust her, we witness a moment where she seems to waver (albeit temporarily) in her intent to betray him. Anxious not to lose Delilah’s affections, Samson offers to marry her; at this, her face lights up, but she holds firm, asking him again to reveal the source of his strength. Tentatively, he begins to tell her, but before he can, she

133

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

133

reaches up and places both hands across his mouth. ‘No Samson, no!’ she insists, ‘I don’t want to be armed with a weapon to destroy you.’ Has Delilah changed her mind about betraying him? Is this a sign that her love for him is genuine? DeMille leaves us guessing, adding to that air of mystery that so frequently surrounds the noiresque femme fatale.127 At this point in the film, we may experience a little pang of sympathy for Delilah, but this evaporates minutes later when the character of Miriam appears on the scene. Samson has just told Delilah that his strength lies in his hair, but rather than Delilah acting on this revelation to incapacitate her lover, the couple share dreamy thoughts of running away to Egypt. As Bruce Hertzberg notes, it is as though Delilah treats Samson’s revelation as ‘an act of love’ that lies between them, rather than as the conclusion of her duplicitous plan.128 ‘For all eternity’, she promises him, ‘nothing can ever take you out of my arms.’ But with the appearance of Miriam everything changes, and Delilah’s promises of eternal love evaporate so quickly we are left wondering whether we imagined them. The character of Miriam is not in the original text of Judges 16, but was added by DeMille as a foil to Delilah’s flamboyant persona. If Delilah is the hypersexualized emasculating femme fatale of this movie, then Miriam is the binary opposite – the spiritual, wholesome and virginal Angel in the House, who seeks only to support and sustain Samson’s authority and strength. She is everything Delilah is not  – a Danite, like Samson, and an icon of domesticity, who appears throughout the movie in a variety of domestic scenes (e.g. a well, a kitchen). Despite not being married, she is a maternal figure, who shows kindness to children and the elderly, even taking a young boy called Saul under her wing. Her adoration of Samson is unwavering, not treacherous or fickle. Moreover, unlike Delilah, the ‘great courtesan of Gaza’,129 she is chaste, rebuffing the crude advances of an amorous Philistine soldier in an early scene of the film. Although beautiful, she always appears unadorned by make-up, fine jewellery or ornate costumes. Indeed, her outfit of choice may remind us of the iconography typically associated with the Virgin Mary, with its pale-blue head covering and (rather dowdy) dress that shows nary an inch of flesh.130 Even Samson’s mother, Hazelponit, approves of her, pointing out to Samson her countless virtues: ‘From morning to night Miriam’s hands are never idle’, she tells Samson, ‘No cross words ever pass her lips.’ What Hazelponit would think of Delilah, we can only guess. For Delilah is the foreign, ‘sexy-non-mother’, the femme fatale who is less interested in household chores

127. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 240. 128. Bruce Herzberg, ‘Samson’s Moment of Truth’, BibInt 18 (2010): 245. 129. This is how Samson refers to her when looting her tent. 130. DeMille’s vision for Miriam was that she would be an archetypical ‘sweet little girl’ and Virgin Mary archetype (Koury, Yes, Mr. De Mille, 231; cited in Kozlovic, ‘Construction’, 15). Mary is an English form of the Hebrew name Miriam, and, in one scene, Miriam is seen riding a donkey, evoking strong associations with traditional nativity scenes.

134

134

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

than admiring her reflection in a mirror or adorning her body with jewels.131 Yet it is she, not Miriam, who ultimately captures Samson’s heart. When Miriam turns up at the oasis love nest, however, she shatters the happy couple’s romantic daydreams, bringing news to Samson of the violence perpetrated by the Philistines against the Danites, including Samson’s family. While Samson has been out of action, lounging and loving in Delilah’s boudoir and getting ‘drunk’ on her kisses,132 his people have suffered. Miriam urges Samson to remember his divine calling as their saviour and return home with her immediately. Perhaps out of guilt, he prepares to leave with her, stripping off his lamé toga and replacing it with his warrior’s garb. Just as Delilah has unmanned him, so Miriam, with her traditional femininity, grants him the opportunity to re-gird his loins and take up his masculine role as heroic soldier. Delilah, however, has other ideas. With her vivid maquillage, mauve bikini top and long, split skirt, her contrast to Miriam could not be starker. She warns Samson that ‘this milk-faced girl with her cow’s eyes will lead you to your death!’ When he refuses to listen, Delilah accuses Miriam of wanting Samson for herself; Miriam does not deny this, telling Delilah, ‘Yes, I love him. In his face I see all that is strong and good. His name is like a cry of hope for us.’ Miriam’s spiritual love ‘re-masculates’ Samson, feeding his manly qualities of strength and leadership. She tells Delilah that she is not her biggest rival for Samson’s loyalty:  ‘There is a higher voice that speaks through him and he will always answer its call. Even your treacherous beauty cannot turn him from it.’ Looking heavenward, Delilah responds to Miriam almost in a whisper: ‘I cannot fight against his god . . . but no woman will take him from me.’ As Meyer has observed, the plot of this film revolves around female desire – a desire that is eventually Samson’s undoing.133 Throughout the scene between Delilah and Miriam, both women’s love for Samson burns bright, but their loves could not be more different. While Miriam’s love supports and encourages Samson’s God-given ability to deliver the Danite people from Philistine subjugation, Delilah’s is a love so possessive and obsessive that it can only lead to destruction and despair, both for Samson and his people.134 DeMille’s deliberate juxtaposition of these two female characters may again reflect the director’s post-war American context, where there was growing disquiet about women’s demands for social and sexual emancipation. Women have power over men, DeMille seems to warn us – power that can bring catastrophe to the political history of entire nations.135

131. Kozlovic, ‘Constructing’, 6; also Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 261–2. 132. As Miriam cries to Samson, ‘While this woman of Sorek gets you drunk with her kisses, the Philistines murder your people!’ 133. Meyer, Epic Sound, 31–3. 134. As Exum notes, such is the strength of her love, Delilah is prepared to die for it – twice she tells Samson she would kiss him with her ‘dying breath’ were he to kill her (Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 242). 135. Meyer, Epic Sound, 20, 32–3.

135

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

135

Despite her biblical location, Delilah nevertheless exemplifies the modern woman in this movie  – laying claim to sexual and social agency, eschewing traditional stereotypes of femininity, and driven by seemingly irrational passions and desires that spell disaster for even the most heroic of men. In contrast, Miriam personifies traditional ideals of womanhood, selflessly putting her man first, encouraging his (God-given) greatness, while devoting herself to the domestic roles of homemaking and motherhood. In a society still reeling from the economic, military and political traumas of the first half of the twentieth century, the fear that women’s emancipation could reignite further societal chaos was very real. Delilah embodied such fear, and DeMille confirms the terrible power of this ‘type’ of woman – the femme fatale – to wreak havoc on all that was held dear.136 Rather than let Samson leave with Miriam, Delilah decides to enact her original plan to betray him to the Philistines. In a perverse parody of feminine hospitality, she drugs his wine with a potion stored in her feather fan (a reminder, perhaps, of the dangers hidden within her exotic plumage).137 Embracing her lover for a final time, Delilah articulates the dichotomy that exists between herself and Miriam: ‘She’s the good in you. I’m the weakness, the love that will enslave you.’ Delilah the femme fatale may evoke the strongest of passions, but she will only drain the strength and freedom of those who succumb to her charms. After Samson has fallen into a drugged slumber, she completes her act of unmanning him by cutting off his hair, decisively excising his masculine potency (Figure 3.13). As I mentioned in Chapter 2, the biblical hair-cutting scene is a symbolic ‘stripping and subjugation’ of Samson, a ‘castration’ or ‘womanization’ that attests to Delilah’s fatal power to emasculate and subdue her victim.138 When Samson awakens, he finds himself surrounded by Philistine soldiers, while Delilah sits nearby, tormenting him. ‘I’ve taken away your strength, Samson’, she gloats, showing him a handful of his shorn hair, ‘Your little Danite sparrow will nest alone!’ Reminding him of her love (‘I could have loved you with a fire to make all other loves seem like ice’), Delilah’s motives for betraying Samson remain clear – she is a woman scorned, a woman burning with a hot, lethal jealousy over a man she thinks has betrayed her (‘No man leaves Delilah!’). She is a woman who would rather see her man emasculated and in chains than in another woman’s arms. Samson responds contemptuously to her claims of love, reminding the audience that the source of her deadly power lay in her sensual allure: ‘Your arms were quicksand; your kiss was death. The name Delilah will be an everlasting curse on the lips of men.’ His words are echoed by Ahtur, who tells Samson to take a final look at Delilah as she sashays out of her tent: ‘Remember the perfume of her hair,

136. Ibid., 32–3. 137. Interestingly, Samson still does not trust Delilah fully, swapping their wine goblets before he drinks. And she must realize that this distrust still exists, for she has pre-empted him by initially picking up the goblet of drugged wine herself. 138. Niditch, ‘Samson as Culture Hero’; see also Lopate, ‘Judges’, 86–7.

136

136

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.13 Delilah cuts Samson’s hair, Samson and Delilah, Paramount, 1949. Available online: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Samson_and_Delilah_film_still.JPG (accessed 28 April 2017).

the softness of her lips, the fire of her embrace. Satan himself taught her all the arts of deception. It’s easier to catch the moonlight than to hold such a woman.’139 So, Delilah achieves her goal, and receives her ‘Pharaoh’s ransom’ from the Philistine elders. Yet, unlike the narrative of Judges 16, where Delilah disappears from view, DeMille fills this textual gap by imbuing her afterlife with tones of repentance and redemption. On seeing Samson blinded and grinding at the mill, she is aghast. Tormented by nightmares and visual hallucinations of her former lover’s pitiful state, she prays to Samson’s God for guidance, offering her sight as a ransom for the return of Samson’s. In this moment of repentance, she becomes a ‘born-again monotheist’ with a seemingly genuine remorse for what she has done.140 Wearing a long, white gown and dark, hooded cloak, she visits Samson at the mill. The exotically attired and adorned Delilah has been replaced by a much

139. Near the end of the film, the Saran makes a similar comment about the dangerous potential of Delilah’s sexual allure, when he notes that Samson was not captured ‘by force of arms, but by their softness’. 140. See Fishelov, Dialogues with/and Great Books, 99; also Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 249. We almost get the sense here that DeMille is suggesting Delilah’s actions

137

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

137

chaster figure (she looks almost nun-like), as though, in her penitence, she has stripped off her femme fatale facade, abandoning this masquerade that has, up to now, been an intrinsic part of her persona. Delilah’s encounter with Samson at the mill is fraught with anger, regret and reconciliation, betraying the ‘intensity of feeling’ that remains between these erstwhile lovers.141 Samson’s murderous anger towards her quickly melts into passion, but not before he threatens to kill her. Delilah is at first willing to let him do it, such is her remorse. But on realizing that his strength has returned (his hair has grown whilst in captivity), Samson decides on another course of action. With Delilah’s help, he chooses to exact his revenge on his Philistine tormentors during the festival at the temple of Dagon, where Samson is taken to be humiliated before the crowd. In this final scene of the movie, Delilah reapplies her femme fatale disguise, strutting around the temple, resplendent in a costume of gem-studded peacock feathers and glittering silver headdress. After coldly rejecting Miriam’s final appeal to have Samson released into her care (‘I’d rather see him dead than in your arms!’), she walks away from the Saran, abandoning her previous masquerade as a royal courtesan, to join Samson, who is being whipped and tormented before the crowd. At first, she pretends to participate in his humiliation, all the while leading him to the pillars that support the temple. Although Samson presses her to leave, she (unbeknownst to him) chooses to stay, thus dying alongside him when he pushes down the pillars. With DeMille’s help, Delilah finds redemption in death, laying down her life in capitulation to the ‘rightful’ power of her re-masculinized lover. She thereby adopts a more respectable social role – a chaste and penitent martyr to the cause of patriarchal privilege. For, as often happens to femmes fatales appearing in hard-boiled literature and film noir, Delilah is not allowed to escape unpunished; like so many other fatal women, she is held up as a cautionary tale of the havoc women can wreak when they transgress traditional gender norms. Her attempted subversion of these norms results in her rehabilitation and destruction, for she is too dangerous a presence to remain at large in her audience’s patriarchal landscape.142 And therein lies the story of Samson and Delilah, 1940s Hollywood style. With the help of a racy script, Head’s glorious costumes and Lamarr’s glittering

throughout this film are less the result of wilful intent than an inherent propensity within her (and perhaps all women?) to act treacherously. It is as though she never fully understands the implications of her behaviour until it is too late. Consequently, the only way for a woman to redeem herself is to ‘become’ like Miriam – chaste, penitent and wholly subservient to patriarchal expectations. Thanks to Prior McRae for pointing this out in a personal conversation. 141. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 212. 142. As I mentioned in Chapter 1 (n. 123), the Hollywood Production Code may have encouraged the tradition of femmes fatales either being destroyed or redeemed at the end of a movie, given its principle that the audience should never be encouraged to sympathize with morally dubious characters or events.

138

138

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

performance, DeMille fills in the gap-riddled text of Judges 16 to create an afterlife for Delilah that is an extravaganza of sensual opulence. A  deliciously noiresque femme fatale, she struts through the movie, dazzling her audience with an irrepressible blend of eroticism, perfidy and violence, all the while crushing mid-twentieth-century gender norms under the heels of her strappy gold sandals. She seems a far cry from the biblical Delilah, whose sketchy textual presence is more monotone than Technicolor. Nevertheless, we might recognize in DeMille’s Delilah some of the same features identified by biblical scholars in her interpretive afterlives, such as her hypersexuality, her cupidity, her foreignness and her identity as a courtesan. DeMille appears to have crafted this biblical afterlife to embody contemporary anxieties regarding the ‘threat’ posed by women’s social and sexual emancipation. In the years immediately following World War II, America was still reeling from the traumas of war, poverty and social discord that had plagued them throughout the first half of the century. The disruption threatened by women’s growing desires for a gender revolution only fuelled that discord. As a classic femme fatale, DeMille’s Delilah therefore stood as an exemplar of emancipated womanhood in all her chaotic glory  – a woman who was socially and sexually independent, who was comfortable in the traditionally masculine localities of work, war and politics, and who had abandoned the traditional feminine roles of chaste homemaker, wife and mother. As this emancipated figure, she served as a warning to her audience about women’s lethal power to ensnare and emasculate their prey through their dangerously irresistible charm. Look at the destructive power of the fatal woman, DeMille urges. She will bewitch you, unman you and bring the whole country to its knees. Post-feminist and Patriarchal: Nic Roeg’s Samson and Delilah (1996) After the soaring exuberance of DeMille’s Hollywood extravaganza, the 1996 TV movie, Samson and Delilah, brings us crashing back to earth with a painful thud. Nearly three hours long, it retells the Samson narrative of Judges 13–16, from his miraculous birth to his death in the temple of Dagon. The movie was part of the Bible Collection miniseries aired by US cable network TNT, and was written by screenwriter Allan Scott and directed by Nicolas Roeg. Known for his disjunctive editing, mosaic-like plot structures and memorable cinematography, Roeg’s previous works include the movies Walkabout (1971), Don’t Look Now (1973) and The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). These earlier films have been described as ‘haunting, imaginary, and visionary’;143 while Samson and Delilah affords the occasional glimpse of this impressive style, it offers the audience a retelling of the Judges 16 story that has neither sparkle nor substance. The screenplay plods along at a tedious pace, while the characters are rarely given the chance to develop beyond the superficial – held back, in part, by dialogue that ranges from humdrum to nonsensical. If this were not bad enough, we also have to endure (for the whole

143. Nick James, ‘Nicolas Roeg: The Last British Romantic’, Sight and Sound 21, no. 3 (2011): 29.

139

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

139

three hours) a ponderous narratorial voice-over provided by actor Max Von Sydow, who insists on preaching the story to us, rather than letting the actors and screen action guide us through the narrative.144 To play the part of Samson, Roeg cast American actor Eric Thal. Compared to Mature’s freedom-fighter Samson, Thal portrays the Hebrew judge as less local hero than aimless young man, uncertain about the nature of his life’s calling. He is, as reviewer William Grimes suggests, a bit of a Hamlet – an eternal procrastinator who lacks the initiative or will to do what needs to be done.145 Or, as the narrator (who puts a more positive spin on things) insists, he is ‘gentle, good, thoughtful and unsure, as all men are, of the purpose of his life’. Handsome and dreamy, Thal embodies Hipster Samson, with his tawny eyes, designer stubble and luxuriant, caramel-coloured hair, which is often styled fetchingly into seven plaits (cf. Judg. 16.13). Reluctant to join his friend Naomi’s gang of rebels (who are planning an insurrection against their Philistine oppressors), he prefers to spend his time playing with the village children and flirting with local girls. Even when Naomi insists that he could lead the rebellion against the Philistines, Samson voices doubts that he would be capable of such a role. ‘A man is what he chooses to be’, Naomi tells him. ‘And I choose nothing’, he replies. Indeed, it is only when Naomi deliberately puts herself in danger that we first see Samson use his strength against the Philistines; after shouting abuse at a passing group of Philistine soldiers, they attack her, spurring Samson to come to her aid. He dispatches them easily, causing the villagers to hail him as a hero. ‘You have been chosen’, cries Naomi. ‘How can you doubt it?’ Yet Samson does doubt it, preferring to turn to God in the hope that the deity will tell him what to do. While Naomi’s intervention may at least have started Samson thinking about his future, it also brings him to the attention of the Philistine leaders, and sparks a chain of events that ultimately ends in his death. In the following scene, we are transported to the Philistine royal courts, where King Hanun of Gaza (played by Michael Gambon) and his hot-headed son Prince Sidqa (Ben Becker) argue about how to deal with Samson. Delilah (the king’s niece in this retelling) lounges nearby on a divan, entertaining fantasies of the Hebrew strongman whom she is yet to meet. This royal connection is, of course, absent from the biblical text, but, once again, it fills in the gap about Delilah’s ethnicity, identifying her unequivocally as a Philistine.146

144. For a delightfully scathing and insightful review of this movie (particularly Delilah’s afterlife therein), see Exum, ‘Lethal Woman 2’, 254–73. I  shall refer to Exum’s article throughout this section. 145. William Grimes, ‘She Who Wields the Scissors, Wields Power’, New York Times, 8 December 1996. 146. Nevertheless, Hurley’s Delilah lacks the exotic glamour of some of Delilah’s other cultural afterlives (particularly the one offered to us by Lamarr); with her alabaster skin and clipped English accent, it is really only her ‘Philistine’ costumes and the film’s MiddleEastern-themed props and backdrops that mark her out as in any way ‘foreign’.

140

140

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Figure 3.14 Elizabeth Hurley and Eric Thal, Samson and Delilah, TNT, 1996. Image courtesy of Photofest.

The role of Delilah is played by English actor Elizabeth Hurley, whose afterlife for this biblical character is a vision of 1990s post-feminist glamour  – a neonoiresque femme fatale for the twentieth-century fin de siècle.147 Like those other neo-noir fatal women from this period (such as Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction, Katherine Trammell in Basic Instinct and Bridget Gregory in The Last Seduction), Hurley’s Delilah is self-centred, sexually experienced and deadly – a cool-headed mercenary figure with a no-nonsense briskness when it comes to selling sex. She 147. Hurley came to popular attention in 1994 after appearing with her then-partner Hugh Grant at the LA premiere of his movie, Four Weddings and a Funeral, wearing the famously revealing ‘safety-pin dress’ designed by Versace.

141

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

141

is also beautiful, styled according to late-twentieth-century supermodel trends,148 with thinly plucked brows, dark, smoky eyes and full, glossy lips. Her fashionably willowy figure is attired in sleeveless, wrap-around halter dresses, accessorized with elaborate gold headdresses, hair ornaments and chunky costume jewellery. Compared to Lamarr’s elaborate wardrobe, Hurley’s Delilah is a vision of 1990s minimalist chic, exemplifying the decade’s fashion trends that eschewed the excesses of 1980s styling for a more practical and relaxed look (Figure 3.14).149 While Delilah lounges decoratively in the royal court, she is joined by her friend and confidante, General Tariq (played by Dennis Hopper). Tariq is the king’s right-hand man and, of all the characters in this film, is probably the most sympathetic and well developed. Although the duo have never been lovers, Tariq enjoys a certain intimacy with Delilah, teasing her with titbits of court gossip and playfully calling her a ‘loose woman’. Compared to Tariq, Delilah appears vacuous; she laughs at his suggestion about her ‘looseness’, retorting, ‘And if I weren’t, I’d find that remark offensive, general.’ The duo continue to parry around this theme in an excruciating dialogue that is made all the worse by Hurley’s attempts to appear seductive (and thus live up to her ‘loose’ reputation), twirling her hair and sucking her fingers as she snuggles against Tariq.150 Unlike Lamarr, who offered us a masterclass in noiresque seduction, Hurley simply lacks the subtlety and mystique to be credible in this role. During this toe-curling conversation, Tariq suggests to Delilah that no man could meet her high ‘sexpectations’ (my word, not his). ‘Except, perhaps, this Israelite hero’, she replies. Before even meeting Samson, Delilah has him firmly on her sexual radar; his reputation for superhuman strength and violence seems to excite her. Whereas the biblical text leaves Delilah’s sexuality and sexual provenance unstated, Roeg’s characterization emphasizes her (hetero)sexual experience and sophistication, all the while insisting on her morally ambiguous reputation as a ‘loose woman’. In a later scene, this facet of Delilah’s character is again confirmed, when she admits to Tariq that she is ‘excited . . . as a woman’ about the prospect of seducing Samson and hopes he provides an adequate ‘service’ to meet her sexual needs. Having witnessed him killing a lion with his bare hands, she appears both impressed and aroused by his strength. This conflation of eroticism and violence (which is also present in Lamarr’s depiction of Delilah) is rendered even more explicit during the scene where Delilah and Samson first have sex (shortly after she

148. Despite the rise of grunge and casual fashion styles, supermodel glamour was popular throughout the 1990s, exemplified by figures such as Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell and Claudia Schiffer. 149. For an excellent overview of 1990s fashion trends, see ‘The Decades’, WWD, 28 September 1998. Available online:  http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA21181 062&v=2.1&u=learn&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=6c3f14eec27061be157e9414dcd57f24 (accessed 28 April 2017). 150. Exum describes their conversation in this scene as ‘soap-opera dialogue’ (‘Lethal Woman 2’, 258).

142

142

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

has agreed to betray him). Through the use of flashback, Roeg offers us a glimpse into Delilah’s inner world; writhing in pleasure, she conjures up a memory of Samson wrestling the lion, as though both events were tied together by shared themes of aggression and desire.151 Later, as the couple lie in bed, she licks the scars left by the lion on Samson’s chest, as though relishing the memory of this ferocious encounter. Like so many other Hollywood femmes fatales (especially the neo-noir femmes of the 1980s and 1990s), Delilah’s eroticism is indelibly marked by a penchant for cruelty and pain. Given her obvious attraction to the Hebrew strongman from the outset of the movie, it comes as no surprise when Delilah accepts King Hanun’s request that she use her powers of seduction to betray Samson. Compared to DeMille’s retelling of this biblical scene (Judg. 16.5), where Delilah singlehandedly initiates and orchestrates the plot to capture Samson, Scott’s screenplay has Delilah sitting passively, like a pretty ornament, while Tariq, Hanun and Sidqa duke it out about the practicalities of their plan. Throughout this discussion, the three men evoke that age-old myth of the dangerous power of women to bring a man to ruin; as Tariq observes, ‘There is no general on this earth could devise a better plan to lay his enemy low than to capture him by that part of his body in which he is the weakest.’ Delilah smugly agrees to participate in the plan, excited by the prospect of sleeping with Samson. She then goes on, however, to name a hefty price for her services  – 1,100 pieces of silver from everyone present in the chamber. ‘I’ll be proud to serve my people’, she tells King Hanun, ‘in return for a financial consideration.’ ‘Your loyalty to the throne is measured in silver’, replies the King. ‘I’m offended, but not surprised.’ In contrast to DeMille’s retelling, where Delilah’s motivations for betraying Samson are deliciously complex, Scott and Roeg leave us in no doubt as to what drives this Philistine royal, utilizing that well-worn trope of the avaricious and hypersexual femme fatale to explain her actions. Once the deal has been struck, she attempts to justify her high price tag to Tariq, telling him, ‘A girl must look to her future.’ Yet this obtuse statement is never explained in any depth; while she expresses a desire to ‘escape’ the court when Prince Sidqa becomes king, the audience is left with little or no reason to sympathize with or even understand her apparent cupidity. As a calculating, sexually adventurous and avaricious seductress, Roeg’s afterlife for Delilah thus complies with a number of characteristics commonly found in the neo-noir femmes fatales so popular in 1990s cinema. Like Katherine Trammell, Suzie Toller and Bridget Gregory, Hurley’s Delilah embraces the ethos of (hetero)sex-positive post-feminism, unashamedly utilizing her sexual allure as a commodity by which she can acquire social and economic power. In this post– Production Code era, the sexualized nature of her relationship with Samson is much more explicit than it was in DeMille’s retelling,152 the narrator even announcing to

151. Zwick, ‘Obsessive Love’, 229. 152. Although, to be honest, the sex scenes are not that explicit, perhaps due to the family audience that TNT anticipated for this Bible series.

143

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

143

us (in slightly disapproving tones) that the couple shared a nine-day love-in, where Samson fell deeper under Delilah’s spell. The precise events of these nine days are (mercifully) left to the audience’s imagination, but the implication is that Delilah is the epitome of the über-sexy and sophisticated post-feminist woman – a poster girl for 1990s ‘do-me feminism’, whose stamina in the bedroom is a marker of her impressive social and sexual currency.153 Yet, while Delilah’s hypersexual sophistication may resist traditional patriarchal expectations about women’s sexual passivity and social dependence, Roeg fails to make a (post)feminist hero out of this character. Despite  – or perhaps because of  – her sex-positive credentials, Hurley’s Delilah is nonetheless tarnished with the reputation of a sexually and morally unscrupulous ‘loose woman’ who betrays her lover for hard cash. Roeg thus reinforces those double standards that continue to prevail within post-feminist milieus, where women’s sexual agency is paradoxically hailed as a source of their power and condemned as a sign of their moral depravity.154 Delilah’s sexual experience and her seeming willingness, for a price, to adopt the role of sexual commodity are the only defining features of her character. Additionally, her function throughout the film is primarily decorative;155 in every scene in which she appears, she is the embodiment of tobe-looked-at-ness, an acquiescent and enthusiastic object of the desirous gaze. Consequently, her ‘value’ as a character is measured only according to her skills at driving Samson into an erotic frenzy, causing him to forget his divine calling and give up the secret of his strength. These features of her characterization are never presented sympathetically; rather, Delilah’s sexual expertise and her to-be-lookedat-ness are treated as both traits of post-feminist womanhood (a source of her power) and aberrations of acceptable femininity (a source of her dangerousness). The audience is thereby urged to look upon her as an anxiety-provoking Other whose sexual allure ultimately destroys an Israelite hero and man of God. Roeg’s neo-noiresque Delilah thus continues to embody the age-old stereotype of the sexualized woman as ‘loose woman’  – morally questionable and a dangerous source of temptation and titillation for those unfortunate enough to fall under her spell.156 Another (and equally negative) feature of Roeg’s afterlife for Delilah is her treachery. As I discussed in Chapter 1, the duplicity of performance is a central trait of classic Hollywood noir and neo-noir femmes fatales, affirming the age-old cultural fears of women’s power to deceive. Like many other on-screen femmes fatales of the twentieth century, Roeg’s Delilah is an expert in role play, adopting the disguise of Samson’s devoted lover. Before long, Samson is hooked, forgetting any notion of the divine ‘call’ that he had heretofore been listening for. As the couple lounge in bed, not long after their initial meeting, Delilah asks Samson why 153. As Exum notes, ‘A self-acknowledged maneater, she has appetites only a he-man like Samson could satisfy’ (‘Lethal Woman 2’, 259). 154. Edwards, Admen and Eve, 45. 155. Exum, ‘Lethal Women 2’, 260. 156. Ibid., 268.

144

144

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

he is not leading his people, given that he is ‘chosen’ of his God. ‘Because I choose you’, he responds, reminding the audience of the power of a woman’s sex to wrest a man from his godly vocation. As the narrator pronounces censoriously, Samson’s love for Delilah blinded him to his mission. And, while Delilah later assures Samson about her own devotion to him (‘I chose you too’), the audience remains unconvinced, knowing that her ‘devoted lover’ routine is nothing but a selfish facade. This makes her character all the more unlikeable, particularly when she uses her duplicity to squeeze from Samson the secret of his strength. As in the biblical story, Samson initially gives her incorrect answers that lead to a number of abortive attempts to bind him. Increasingly frustrated, she then gives her best, most convincing performance yet, revealing to the audience her aptitude for treachery. Eyes wide and lips quivering, she promises unending love and loyalty to Samson (‘I am you. We’re one . . . I love you . . . the man that you are. Why would I want to change you?’). When Samson warns her that, were he to tell her the truth, she cannot test it, she looks him straight in the eye and promises her fidelity to his request: ‘No more tests, just love. The proof of love.’ The camera dwells at this moment in a close-up of Delilah’s face, shot from Samson’s perspective; her unwavering gaze attests to the well-practiced skill of her performance, while lie after lie pour from her glossy lips. Such is the quality of Delilah’s masquerade as devoted lover that we might start to wonder whether her performance of love is slipping into something more real. We are not left to wonder for long, though. Samson spills the beans about his strength-giving hair and, as soon as he is asleep,157 a small, nastily sharp sickle blade appears in Delilah’s hand. Although considerably daintier than Katherine Trammell’s iconic ice pick in Basic Instinct, Delilah’s weapon of choice is every bit as deadly – just like her. Clearly, the ‘proof of love’ she spoke of moments before has been tested and found wanting. Her words of loyalty are revealed to be empty words, used in a performance that will ultimately make her rich. Moreover, although she spends a tearful night fretting about the task that lies ahead, that little sickle blade is still in her hand in the morning, a sign that her resolve remains unbroken. When Samson first awakens, he cannot quite grasp that Delilah’s performance as devoted lover has simply been an act. ‘Why have you been crying, my only love?’, he asks her. ‘When you were sleeping’, answers Delilah, ‘I held the power of life or death in my hands.’ Samson then sees the blade, but still remains under the thrall of her masquerade. ‘The life or death of the man you love’, he insists, ‘but you did not cut.’ Unmoved, Delilah tells Samson that, nevertheless, she ‘must’ now do the deed, for, ‘when power is given, how can it not be used?’ Delilah’s power is sexual power – duplicitous power – which she cannot relinquish. It is a power that she can use, must use, to her financial and social advantage. For is it not, according to her post-feminist ideals, the only power that she has? And, while Samson responds that ‘love is stronger still’, she remains unconvinced. ‘Oh

157. Samson falls asleep in Delilah’s lap, as he does in Judg. 16.19 – Roeg reworks this ambiguous scene to suggest that Samson’s slumber is most definitely post-coital.

145

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

145

yes, love. Love’, she mutters absently, as though she had forgotten what that word actually meant. And then, at last, she cuts. Delilah’s first emasculating slice causes Samson to writhe in agony as his strength drains from him; almost immediately, the Philistines move in, cutting off the rest of his hair before blinding and imprisoning him. Delilah looks on in shock, although before long she is back in the royal palace, being pampered by her coterie of maidservants. For the present, she has slipped out of her ‘devoted lover’ disguise and becomes once more a decorative ornament at King Hanun’s court. Her reputation as ‘loose woman’ has been bolstered by her recent sexual marathons with the Hebrew strongman and she is free to enjoy her monetary reward. And, while she appears a little unsettled after Samson’s arrest, Roeg presents us with no strong evidence that she is experiencing any deep sense of remorse. Although she admits to Tariq that, after Samson’s arrest, she now knows ‘the pain of feeling’, the film fails to make this claim seem terribly plausible. She moons around a little, staring out of windows and snapping at her maidservants, but compared to Lamarr’s tortured nightmares, hallucinations and desperate midnight prayers to Samson’s God, Hurley’s Delilah is a vision of jaded apathy. Nevertheless, another Hebrew figure makes her way into Delilah’s life at this moment  – Samson’s friend Naomi, played by Turkish actor Jale Ankan. Like Miriam in DeMille’s movie retelling, Naomi acts as a visual foil to Delilah; with her unmade-up face, olive skin, cheap shell necklace and shapeless hessian dress, she looks and sounds utterly unlike Hurley’s Delilah, who epitomizes Western beauty ideals with her alabaster complexion and received pronunciation English accent. And yet, Naomi’s femininity is more acceptable than Delilah’s when it comes to late-twentieth-century gender norms; while Delilah sits ornamentally around the royal court, Naomi works tirelessly, inspiring her people towards a better life, free from Philistine oppression. Her power does not come from her sexuality or her decorative appeal  – it comes from her bravery, her kinship allegiances and her resilience to hardship. The fierce loyalty she exhibits towards Samson is genuine, rather than part of a Delilah-like masquerade. Thus, while DeMille’s character, Miriam, represented the ideal woman of the 1940s (a virginal paragon of domesticity), Roeg’s Naomi is a Miriam for the 1990s – a woman who seeks to inspire and champion her man in the political sphere, to support his ‘call’ to leadership and to offer him a selfless love that makes no demands. She is akin to a first lady, perhaps, or even a loyal deputy. Naomi is liberated but not so liberated as to pose a threat to the patriarchal power structures held dear by her late-twentiethcentury audience, who were feeling increasingly anxious about the hazards posed by (typically white Western) women’s post-feminist claims to sexual, social and economic power. When Delilah asks her who she is, she replies that she is ‘just a woman’, her self-deprecatory identification reassuring audiences that she has no aspirations above her gendered station. She therefore stands as a model of acceptable modern womanhood, unlike Delilah, whose post-feminist lifestyle renders her a dangerous threat to the power and authority of the patriarchal status quo.

146

146

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Naomi asks Delilah to help her see the imprisoned Samson. Delilah is initially suspicious of her motives, but later, the two women meet again and it is clear that Delilah has hatched a plan that will benefit them both. While an uneasy truce forms between them, Naomi refuses to accept Delilah’s weak attempts to explain her act of betrayal. Finally, Delilah admits that she loved Samson ‘too well’ (whatever that means). ‘Yet you still brought him down’, Naomi responds. ‘That is not love.’ As Exum notes, this is perhaps the most honest line of dialogue in the film.158 Yet, at the same time, it once again condemns Delilah’s post-feminist credentials as a sexual sophisticate, highlighting the deadly capabilities of liberated female sexuality. As a neo-noiresque femme fatale, Delilah offers neither love nor life, only betrayal and death. The plan that Delilah devised involves bringing Samson to the temple under the pretext of humiliating him before his captors. She then takes Naomi to see him, so that they can share a moment together. Yet, Delilah has other motives for this reunion too – selfish motives that do nothing to redeem her in the audience’s eyes. Prompted by Delilah, Naomi asks Samson for a kiss, and when he agrees, she lets Delilah lean forward (unbeknownst to Samson) and kiss him in her stead. It is not clear whether this scene is designed to make us feel some sympathy for Delilah – suggesting she harbours some genuine emotions for her erstwhile lover – but if so, it fails spectacularly. In her desire to satisfy her own sexual needs, she is prepared to deceive Samson again in the cruellest way, thereby affirming her treachery and selfishness.159 After this perfidious kiss, Samson urges Naomi to leave the temple,160 and, moments later, he knocks over the pillars and brings the whole building tumbling down. Everyone inside is killed, including Delilah, whom we last see disappearing under a heavy chunk of falling masonry. Compared to DeMille’s Delilah, who died heroically by Samson’s side after refusing to leave him, Roeg’s ‘loose woman’ is granted no redemption; as a noiresque femme fatale, her death is almost inevitable, and is not to be mourned. Rather, this Delilah is simply a pawn in a game played between God and man – the unwitting catalyst that drives Samson to embrace his divine call. As the narrator declares at the end of the film, ‘To all things there is a purpose. It was through the Philistine woman Delilah that Samson finally came to the faith which began the liberation that the Lord God of Israel had promised.’ Delilah, then, is little more than a narrative device, an expendable female body who is used in a male conspiracy before being despatched and destroyed. Such is the value Roeg and Scott afford to the sexualized, post-feminist woman in a patriarchal world.

158. Exum, ‘Lethal Woman 2’, 265. 159. Ibid., 266. 160. Samson has no knowledge Delilah is there, and does not inquire about her either. Compared to DeMille’s Samson, who urged a penitent Delilah to flee the temple before he destroys it, Roeg’s heroic Hebrew has his mind set firmly on God, while appearing to have forgotten his treacherous lover.

147

3. Mind the Gap Part 2

147

Roeg’s cinematic adaptation of Judges 16 presents us with a story that aims to retell the biblical story, filling in the narrative gaps and ambiguities in ways that would meet the needs of a late-twentieth-century audience. As such, it constructs an afterlife for Delilah that bears echoes of the neo-noir femme fatale. Like those other cinematic fatal women decorating movie screens during the 1980s and 1990s, Hurley’s Delilah is at first glance a popular post-feminist vision of women’s sexual agency and empowerment. Nevertheless, like many of the neo-noir offerings from this period, Roeg’s Samson and Delilah is replete with patriarchal iconography which exposes the fallacy of this vision. It presents us with a femme fatale who confirms popular anxieties of this pre-millennial, AIDS-aware era about the emasculating threat that sexually liberated women may pose to even the most manly of men. Yet, at the same time, the film’s imagery and plot ultimately deny the femme fatale any lasting or meaningful power by repossessing her body as an object of titillation for the audience’s gaze and, ultimately, by destroying her. Fin de siècle audiences are therefore reassured that women’s potentially dangerous sexuality remains firmly under patriarchal control – reduced to ‘form and (fucking) function’161 as and when the need arises. Hurley’s neo-noiresque fatal woman is danger and desire rolled into one, but once her desirability has fulfilled its (malecontrolled) purpose, all that is left is her dangerousness, which, at the end of the day, has to be destroyed.

The Dialectics of Discourses and Afterlives In the previous chapter, we explored the ways biblical readers create interpretive afterlives for Delilah that sculpt her into the familiar form of the femme fatale. In this chapter, I  have considered Delilah’s cultural afterlives  – in literature, art, music and film – noting that here, too, she regularly appears before her audience donning the attire of the fatal woman. When we look at these interpretive and cultural afterlives side by side, we can see just how similarly they fill the gaps and ambiguities enveloping Delilah’s character in Judges 16. In both biblical scholarship and on screen, stage, canvas and page, this sketchy literary persona is embellished time and again with the dazzling, jewel-toned trappings of amoral sensuality, exotic eroticism, treacherous cupidity and gender-disrupting otherness, all of which render her a deadly yet irresistible presence. And, despite the fact that these characteristics are granted no explicit voice in the biblical text, the creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives insist on their veracity, or at least their plausibility, all the while sidestepping other, equally plausible interpretations of her character. Why might this be? Why is la femme fatale Delilah such a ubiquitous figure in both the interpretive traditions of Judges 16 and its cultural retellings? As I have argued throughout these past two chapters, creators of Delilah’s fatal-woman afterlives have likely been influenced by the patriarchal discourses dominant 161. Stables, ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice’, 179.

148

148

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

within their own sociocultural locations, which issue anxious warnings about women’s disruptive potential. These discourses teach us to expect a woman who betrays and bests a man to be sexually alluring and dangerously exotic; they teach us to expect her to look, act and speak in ways that accentuate her terrifying otherness. Such women are dangerous, these discourses insist  – they threaten patriarchal stability and masculine prerogatives of authority and control; they refuse to be defined by their gender; they have too much power, and, what is more, the source of this power is located in their sex. So, when we look at the biblical Delilah through the lens of these discourses, noting her character’s sexual, social and gendered ambivalences, we likewise see what we expect to see – a sensuous and irresistible femme fatale whose deadly charms prove no match for Samson’s God-given masculine power. These discourses and afterlives are thus locked in a dialectical, mutually dependent relationship. Discourses prompt us to sculpt Delilah’s afterlives in the form of a fatal woman; in turn, these afterlives perpetuate and corroborate the discourses that inspire them. In other words, Delilah the femme fatale is not necessarily present in the world in the Judges 16 text, or in the world behind this text; rather, she is a product of the patriarchal worlds in front of the text, in which creators of her afterlives are located. At the same time, Delilah the femme fatale also sustains these worlds in front of the text, affirming their discursive truth claims about women’s toxic potential. And yet, as I have suggested throughout these past two chapters, other afterlives for Delilah are available; the textual gaps that pepper her characterization in Judges 16 are open to multiple, equally viable interpretations, which invite us to view her in a spectrum of less pejorative, or at least more complex, lights. As Exum maintains, ‘it is not axiomatic that the story [of Judges  16] must be developed in a certain way and not another’.162 The narrative plot of a woman betraying a strong man to his enemies after manipulating him emotionally is timeless and universal, and has been told and retold in manifold ways, not all of which invite us to condemn the female character as a treacherous femme fatale. Some of these retellings even attempt to deconstruct the very notion of the fatal woman, maintaining that this iconic figure demands a more sympathetic audience. In the following chapter, I therefore appraise Delilah’s characterization in Judges 16 from some alternative perspectives, using my own choice of cultural ideologies and texts to guide my reading. Particularly, I focus on two cultural texts that, in their own way, retell this fabula of a strong man betrayed by a ‘fatal woman’, asking how they invite us both to creatively reread Delilah’s character in Judges 16 and to radically reimagine the significance of the femme fatale.

162. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 213; also Snyder, ‘Delilah and Her Interpreters’, 141.

149

Chapter 4 D ELILAH  R EDUX

I first began researching Delilah’s afterlives in 2012. As I delved into the Judges 16 narrative and its various interpretations and cultural retellings, a curious thing happened. I started to ‘see’ the story of Samson and Delilah everywhere – in song lyrics, TV dramas, Hollywood movies, even advertising billboards. More specifically, I began to identify Delilah-like characters in countless texts – characters with impressive expertise in hoodwinking their prey, characters who wanted (or often needed) to obtain something from someone, even if that someone was destroyed in the process. What fascinated me especially about these Delilah-like figures was the way that they often embraced and subverted the familiar tropes of the femme fatale, which, as we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, are reproduced time and again in Delilah’s innumerable afterlives. Some employed finely tuned eroticism to ensnare their victims, while for others sexuality played little or no role in their machinations; some embraced a sphinx-like allure, while a fair few were more establishment than exotic; sometimes, these characters’ motives were rooted in avarice or self-indulgence, while at other times, they were driven by exigency, force or fear. And, for many of the ‘fatal’ women I encountered, there was no simple equation between their gender and their behaviour; rather, they were caught in an intersecting web of sociocultural, economic and political forces that sculpted their narrative landscapes and the actions they took therein. Carefully picking my way through these narratives, I began to recognize their value for enhancing my own interpretation of Delilah’s character in Judges 16, particularly in light of her reputation as a femme fatale. For these cultural texts offer new ways of understanding and re-conceptualizing the femme fatale, illuminating her significance in radically different lights. Let me explain what I mean. In Chapter 1, I noted that this iconic figure is typically envisioned within sociocultural discourses as the embodiment of a gendered world gone awry, an anxiety-provoking Other who threatens to disrupt established norms surrounding women’s social and sexual presence. Subsequently, audiences turn away from her, reluctant to catch her eye or share her view of the world.1 Instead, they fetishize her as a one-dimensional trope of dangerous womanhood  – an undesirable 1. Bronfen, Night Passages, 297.

150

150

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

presence who must be contained or destroyed.2 By so doing, they imagine that they have ‘explained’ her: she behaves like a fatal woman because, well, she is a fatal woman, and that’s what fatal women do.3 In the meantime, the actual reasons for her behaviour – the sociocultural, economic and political forces that necessitate her actions and relationships – are eclipsed and ignored. Such a refusal to engage effectively with the femme fatale thus serves to reinforce those powerful discourses that underpin her cultural presence in the first place, sustaining her potency as a symbol of deadly feminine otherness.4 What would happen, though, if we stopped turning away from the femme fatale and chose instead to meet her face-to-face? Would such an encounter not enhance our understanding of this enigmatic figure and allow us to grasp the multiple intersecting forces that shape her behaviour and worldview? As Elisabeth Bronfen suggests: What if, rather than treating [the femme fatale] as a fetish, projection, or symptom, one were to treat her instead as the subject of her narrative . . . This would mean ascribing feminine agency to the femme fatale, seeing her as an authentic modern heroine . . . What would it mean for us to put a stop to the series of turnings away which revolve around the femme fatale, to abdicate the gesture of fetishism, which supports the refusal to see her as a separate human being and the refusal to accept her difference?5

In other words, by paying attention to the femme fatale’s sociocultural context and the way this intersects with her narrative characterization (especially her gender and sexuality), we can attempt to revisualize her persona in new and more enlightened ways. This revisioning of the femme fatale allows us to recognise her appearance, her relationships and her behaviours not as markers of her deadly sexuality or perversion but as responses shaped or demanded by her narrative setting. As Grossman suggests, ‘Rather than promoting images of women that rely on their bodies, finally, we need to illustrate the contexts that inform women’s experience’.6 Once we do this, we discover that the femme fatale’s behaviour is often a necessary response to the circumstances in which she finds herself. If we look at the world through her eyes, we might catch a glimpse of the dark and desperate underside of life within which she is so often ensnared. We might recognize that she is a complex figure of ‘cultural disaffection and revolt’,7 whose actions are driven by a desire for social, sexual and economic agency, a desire to escape the patriarchal

2. Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale, 6; Bronfen, ‘Femme Fatale’, 109−14; Exum, ‘Lethal Women 2’, 268. 3. Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale, 8. 4. Grossman, ‘Well, Aren’t We Ambitious’, 201. 5. Bronfen, ‘Femme Fatale’, 114–15. 6. Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale, 5. 7. Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 22.

151

4. Delilah Redux

151

prescriptions and proscriptions that hem her in, and a desire simply to survive in this bleak, androcentric world.8 And we might become aware that she inhabits a ‘place of rage’, to use poet June Jordan’s evocative phrase,9 where her own treachery and violence are less signs of her immorality or disruptive femininity than lifesaving rejoinders to the (typically masculine) violence that threatens her. Unable to find alternative means of escape from her ‘psychotically gendered’10 location, she has to transgress gendered codes of sexual and social conduct, manipulating, deceiving and enacting aggression as a matter of exigency. Her violence thus transforms the way women are signified in gender discourses by her insistence on retaliating against violence, rather than being its passive recipient.11 As Bronfen notes, the femme fatale always makes conscious choices to behave the ways she does, but only so that she can ‘break out of a condition she can no longer tolerate’.12 She thus invites our empathy, or at least our understanding. And, while we may not condone what she does, we can at least try to recognize why she has to do it. Such exigent underpinnings of the femme fatale’s behaviour are, however, typically ignored or refuted by audiences who encounter her in both biblical and cultural texts. Rather, they prefer to gaze upon her scandalous body, relishing her deviance.13 Alternatively, they condemn her violence as a signifier of her gendered amorality. Indeed, we have already seen this process at play in Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives, where, time and again, her character is viewed through a lens of dangerous feminine subversion; other perspectives, it appears, are not available. But what if we could remedy this myopia? Can we instead read Judges 16 through a new lens, which allows us to draw upon the classic tropes of the femme fatale in order to reinterpret and deconstruct them within a more dynamic framework? What if we look beyond the overused rhetoric of Delilah’s lethal sexuality, exploring instead the contours of her literary landscape, which necessitate her adopting the role of fatal woman? What if we locate her in Jordan’s ‘place of rage’, where her

8. Bronfen, Night Passages, 298; Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale, 6−8; Sasa, Femme Fatale in American Literature, 2−3, 23. 9. A Place of Rage is a 1991 documentary by Pratibha Parmar, which celebrates the vital roles of African American women in civil rights, Black Power and feminist movements. Poet June Jordan refers to a ‘place of rage’ in one of her poems during this film. Cited in Halberstam, ‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence’, 187−8. 10. Grossman, Rethinking the Femme Fatale, 21; see also Sasa, Femme Fatale in American Literature, 18; Boozer, ‘Lethal Femme Fatale’, 21. 11. Halberstam’s fascinating article explores the redemptive potential of women’s ‘imagined violence’ in depth; she argues that ‘female violence transforms the symbolic function of the feminine within popular narratives and simultaneously challenges the hegemonic insistence upon the linking of might and right under the sign of masculinity’ (‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence’, 191). 12. Bronfen, Night Passages, 298. 13. Grossman, ‘Film Noir’s “Femme Fatales” Hard-Boiled Women’, 19–23. Similar sentiments are expressed by Farrimond, ‘Bad Girls in Crisis’, 85.

152

152

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

violence and treachery become the means of her survival? In Chapters 2 and 3, I made a start on this process, noting some of the alternative possibilities for filling the gaps surrounding Delilah’s character in Judges 16 and her cultural afterlives. In this chapter, I explore these possibilities in more depth. By doing so, however, I am not denying for a moment that Delilah is a fatal woman – certainly, she plays a decisive role in Samson’s downfall and the violence subsequently perpetrated against him. Rather, I  re-examine and complicate the significances we ascribe to the femme fatale – both culturally and, in particular, with regard to Delilah’s characterization. I  want to begin peeling away the layers of pejorative meaning that have been attached to her afterlives across the centuries, and focalize her performance as a fatal woman from her perspective and through her eyes. In order to perform this task, I draw on two cultural texts in which I have detected the same fabula presented in Judges 16: the strongman brought to his knees by a woman’s treachery. I could have discussed many more texts here – this fabula is ubiquitous – but, limited by space, I chose two texts in which I see allusions to the Samson and Delilah narrative sparkle particularly brightly. These are Raymond Chandler’s 1940 novel Farewell My Lovely and an episode from the BBC series Sherlock, ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, written by Steven Moffatt. Both texts implicitly retell the same story of the fatal woman we encounter in the Samson and Delilah narrative, repositioning her within new historical and cultural contexts. They thus enable us to consider Delilah’s reputation as a femme fatale from fresh interpretive angles. Moreover, each of the texts invites us to reflect on two key aspects of the femme fatale persona that we have focused on in previous chapters:  Farewell My Lovely casts a hard-boiled eye on the intersections that exist among the femme fatale’s gender, sexuality and social status; ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, meanwhile, queries articulations of gender and gender subversion within the femme fatale fabula. Considering each of these in turn, I create new interpretive prisms through which we can consider Delilah’s persona in Judges 16, looking at the narrative events through her eyes, and thus destabilizing her ubiquitous characterization as a treacherous femme fatale. On saying this, however, I do not want my own interpretive afterlives for Delilah to gloss over the ethically questionable nature of her behaviour in the biblical narrative. The cultural texts I  discuss in this chapter therefore acknowledge the dangerous consequences of the femme fatale’s behaviour, and neither shies away from the complex ethical questions that surround her (at times violent) actions. Both texts, however, in their own way, uncover new understandings of the femme fatale without linking her violence and treachery over-simplistically to her gender or sexuality. In other words, these cultural texts certainly affirm that the women in question are fatal women; nevertheless, they radicalize and deconstruct common perceptions about this iconic figure, inviting us to reimagine the multilayered intersections among her gender, her sexuality and her behaviour. The femmes fatales in these texts do not perpetrate acts of violence and treachery simply because they are women, or because they are sexually Other, or because they subvert gender norms. Rather, each text invites the possibility that a woman’s capacity for violence is indelibly interwoven with the patriarchal discourses and power structures that

153

4. Delilah Redux

153

Figure 4.1 Lara Pulver and Benedict Cumberbatch as Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes in ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’, BBC, 2012. Image courtesy of Photofest.

construct her sociocultural location, forcing her into intolerable situations  – places of rage – beyond her control. Reading these texts together with Judges 16, I therefore intend to construct alternative interpretive afterlives for Delilah, which I hope will complicate and reframe our understanding of her as a femme fatale. Of course, reading a biblical narrative alongside contemporary cultural texts inevitably raises questions about intertextuality and the thorny issue of ‘authorial intent’. By forging connections between Judges 16 and two contemporary narratives, I am not suggesting that the creators of these narratives consciously or unconsciously had this particular biblical tradition in mind during their creative process. As I have made clear, the Judges 16 fabula (the strong man defeated by a treacherous woman) has been told and retold in countless traditions and genres across space and time. Ultimately, though, the ‘authorial intent’ of Chandler and Moffatt vis-à-vis this biblical tradition should not unduly concern us. For I  am drawing upon the theory of intertextuality in its broadest sense here, acknowledging that, ultimately, ‘no text is produced and received in isolation from other texts’.14 Rather, all texts (be they literary, visual or aural) are interconnected, 14. Stefan Alkier, ‘Intertextuality and the Semiotics of Biblical Texts’, in Reading the Bible Intertextually, ed. Richard B. Hays, Stefan Alkier and Leroy A. Huizenga (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009), 3. The theory of intertextuality was explained by Julia Kristeva in her

154

154

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

shaped by their assignations with previous texts and subsequently shaping texts that are created thereafter. Roland Barthes describes this intertextual process as a unique interlacing of texts into ‘a tissue, a woven fabric . . . woven entirely with citations, references, echoes, cultural languages (what language is not?), antecedent or contemporary, which cut across it through and through in a vast stereophony’.15 Or, as Emily Colgan explains, intertextuality establishes ‘a perpetual process of deferral from one text to another, in an infinite fabric of texts that constitutes the symbolic universe. Texts spill over into other texts, shattering notions of direct, linear communication, as each texts becomes an intersection of a text where at least one other text can be read’.16 In other words, a text always reveals to us ‘fragments of open discourse’ which let us eavesdrop on the unceasing conversations that each text has with those coming before it and those that follow.17 These conversations can coax us to read ancient and contemporary texts ‘fruitfully alongside one another’,18 regardless of their historical and geographical distance; for each may still echo the other in terms of their shared structures, themes, vocabularies and motifs. Yet, at the same time, new texts always transform those previous texts with which they share a dialogical encounter, breathing contemporary significance and life into the story.19 With regard to biblical texts, J. Hillis Miller suggests that they too are transformed and ‘translated’ as they cross the ‘border’ from their ancient contexts to new locations, where their encounters with other texts can inspire ‘innumerable other moments of reading’.20 The two cultural texts in which I  see Judges 16 thus ‘translated’ (Farewell My Lovely and ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’) relate that same timeless and terrifying fabula of the strongman brought to his knees by a woman’s wiles, but both play with this fabula in ways that invite us to rethink creatively (and perhaps subversively) the shapes and flavours of its characters and plot lines.21 Intentionally or not, these texts can therefore rouse us to contemplate afresh the Samson and Delilah story, adding new depths and possibilities to our readings. They therefore essay ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’, in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (Oxford: Blackwell, 1986), 34–61. 15. Roland Barthes, Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (London:  Fontana Press, 1977), 159−60. 16. Emily Colgan, ‘Analogies with Anathoth: Reading Land, Reading Jeremiah in the Paintings of Michael Shepherd’, in The Bible and Art:  Oceanic Perspectives, ed. Caroline Blyth and Nasili Vaka’uta (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 13. 17. Marianne Grohmann, ‘Psalm 113 and the Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:110): A Paradigm for Intertextual Reading?’ in Hays, Alkier and Huizenga, Reading the Bible Intertextually, 120. 18. Alison Jack, The Bible and Literature (London: SCM Press, 2012), 69. 19. Colgan, ‘Analogies with Anathoth’, 12−13. 20. J. Hillis Miller, ‘Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth’, in The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, ed. Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996), 214, 222. 21. Bal, Lethal Love, 38–9.

155

4. Delilah Redux

155

offer us a taste of the myriad potentials we have to encounter and engage with the femme fatale – without turning away from her, without condemning her, but with an endless desire to meet her gaze.

When Raymond Met Delilah: The Femme Fatale in Farewell My Lovely Like many of its hard-boiled literary siblings, Raymond Chandler’s Farewell My Lovely thrills its readers with an elegant and pacy plot, and a repertoire of characters that includes an equally elegant and pacy fatal woman.22 Wealthy socialite Helen Grayle’s delectable and dangerous presence within the novel embodies that poisonous cocktail of sexuality, treachery and avarice we typically encounter in the culturally created femme fatale. This heady mix of danger and desire epitomizing Helen’s characterization may also remind us of a number of Delilah’s afterlives, which we encountered in Chapters 2 and 3. Within these afterlives, audiences are often invited to gaze upon Delilah, like Helen, as a fatal woman whose risqué allure is the source of her treachery and violence. Yet Helen succeeds in both affirming and challenging these common cultural assumptions about the fatal woman; she therefore beckons us to destabilize Delilah’s cultural and interpretive depictions as a ‘femme fatale par excellence’, coaxing us to reinvestigate the ambiguities that envelop her biblical persona and discern their alternative shades of meaning. Following the pattern of many hard-boiled novels from this era, Farewell My Lovely relates the complex quest of a heroic private eye (in this case, Chandler’s Philip Marlowe) as he wanders through crime-engrained shadows and urban night spaces, rubbing against corruption and violence wherever he goes. Narrated in the first person, the novel traces Marlowe’s attempts to unravel the tangled threads of Helen’s past relationship with the dangerously strong and highly volatile ex-con Moose Malloy, who is searching for her after his recent release from prison. As Marlowe follows both characters through the twisting paths of the narrative, he uncovers a tale of deception and sexual treachery, which finally explodes into fatal violence at the story’s climax. Helen’s past relationship with Malloy comes back to haunt her, as does her previous betrayal of him, which resulted in his arrest and imprisonment. As the story nears its end, Marlowe contrives a meeting between the former lovers and, in a scene he fails to anticipate, witnesses Helen shooting Malloy before making her escape. The book ends with Marlowe learning of Helen’s death, at her own hand, after she is tracked down by the police. Within this stylish novel, Chandler unfolds before us a world where – amused or aghast  – we watch Helen play fast and loose with 1940s American gender orthodoxies. Oozing sexual confidence, self-assurance and defiance, she woos male friends in clubs and casinos, disdainful of staying home with her elderly husband. She drinks even our hardened private eye under the table and boldly

22. This discussion of Farewell My Lovely was developed from an earlier article I wrote, ‘When Raymond Met Delilah’. It is used here with the blessing of the journal editor.

156

156

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

seizes the sexual initiative when she encounters anyone who whets her interest. Indeed, the first time we meet her, we look on, intrigued, as she plies both herself and Marlowe with drinks until his inhibitions melt like the ice in his scotch and he succumbs to her advances. Throughout the story, Marlowe’s feelings towards Helen remain a complex mix of fascination, desire and mistrust; in his eyes, her physical sensuality mirrors her moral ambiguity, as though one could not exist without the other. Although he is clearly intrigued (and a bit smitten) by her beauty, a wary cynicism undercuts his desire. Seeing her photograph for the first time, he ranks her as ‘a blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window’,23 thus immediately associating her physical appearance – her to-be-looked-at-ness – with a strong element of male danger. In Marlowe’s mind, Helen’s sensual allure is intoxicating, making even the most saintly, heavenward-gazing individual commit the most unsaintly of acts. Yet, despite acknowledging Helen’s dangerousness, Marlowe cannot keep away. As he savours Helen’s photograph, his fantasies run unchecked: ‘Whatever you needed . . . she had it’, he muses, nudging us to gaze with him at her image, and to visualize her as an object of our desire rather than a subject in her own right.24 Accepting Marlowe’s invitation, we stare at Helen with him – perhaps with longing, perhaps with disapproval, but always  – always  – fascinated. Even the warnings Marlowe receives from another character, the homely and sensible Anne Riordan, do not immediately dampen his (or our) enthralment with Helen, whose blonde presence glows throughout this novel, lighting up every page on which she appears. Frustrated by his fascination with Helen, Anne snaps at Marlowe: ‘a woman like that – with her looks – can’t you see’.25 For Anne, Helen’s explicit and unconventional sensuality confirms her identity as a treacherous femme fatale. Helen murders Malloy because she is a woman ‘like that’ – a venomous blonde with sensual lips and a smile Marlowe could feel in his hip pocket. Desperate to cling onto the life that marriage to a rich, liverish husband afforded her, she does not think twice before filling her former lover’s belly with lead. As Marlowe admits to Anne as they discuss Malloy’s murder, ‘I think she meant to kill anybody she had to kill. She had a lot to fight for.’26 In the end, though, such untamed female violence cannot go unchecked; like many femmes fatales in hard-boiled literature, Helen has to be destroyed, ironically by her own hand. And yet, while we watch Marlowe ultimately heeding Anne’s warnings and settling down with this safe, conventional and colourless woman, we are left wondering whether Helen still bewitches, bothers and bewilders him, her captivating looks and enigmatic deadliness forever tangled together in his dreams.

23. Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely (Camberwell:  Penguin Books, 2009 [1940]), 97. 24. Ibid; see also Thomas, ‘Dream of the Empty Camera’, 428–30. 25. Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, 99. 26. Ibid, 299.

157

4. Delilah Redux

157

Nevertheless, woven through Chandler’s characterization of Helen Grayle are a number of shimmering threads, which offer us glimpses of her persona that complicate or even subvert her typical categorization as a femme fatale. These glimpses invite us to contemplate her not as a figure of malignant sexuality but as a subject of her own narrative, whose subversion of traditional gender norms is necessitated by insufferable contexts of violence, poverty and threat.27 Throughout this novel, Chandler conjures up a woman haunted by her past relationship with a vicious and volatile man, a woman who, desperate to escape this relationship, betrays him to the police. We see a woman who feels impelled to change her identity and appearance in order to protect herself, and who, alone and vulnerable in 1940s Los Angeles, marries an affluent and well-connected husband to ensure some sense of social and financial security. Whenever something comes along that threatens this security, such as an inquisitive private eye or a blackmailing playboy, she refuses to tolerate these threats, resorting instead to violence in order to protect herself from a life and fate she never wished for. Meanwhile, Malloy lumbers dangerously through the novel, searching for his former lover with a chilling single-mindedness, and wreaking deadly violence wherever he goes. With his grotesque size and strength, he seems unstoppable, evading the police, agitating Marlowe, killing a nightclub owner and beating to death an elderly woman, both of whom refused to help him find his girl. Offering these details, Chandler may again be inviting us to recognize that Helen kills her ex-lover as a last, desperate act of self-defence. Rather than submissively accepting his threatening presence, she retaliates against social conventions of female passivity and weakness in a frantic attempt to stop Malloy from destroying the safe space of her new life. We can thus identify Helen as a femme fatale inhabiting a place of rage, whose violence is borne of necessity, not malice. Rather than being the quintessence of deadly femininity, she becomes the embodiment of women’s powerlessness in a world where men traditionally call the shots. As well as highlighting the exigency that drives Helen’s violent actions throughout this novel, Chandler also invites readers to query the significance of her femme fatale persona by exposing it as a protective facade – a disguise she adopts in an effort to shield herself from harm. As the novel nears its end, we discover that the character of ‘Helen Grayle’ is nothing but an invention – an illusion – conjured up by Malloy’s former girlfriend, nightclub singer Velma Valento, in order to vanish from the scene after she betrays him to the police. We learn that Velma has abandoned her singing career and stepped out of her ‘very ordinary’ looks and ‘strictly assembly line’ prettiness28 to reinvent herself, changing her name, 27. Bronfen, ‘Female Side of Crime’, 76; Grossman, ‘Film Noir’s “Femme Fatales” ’, 19– 23. See also Steve Neale, ‘ “I Can’t Tell Anymore Whether You’re Lying”: Double Indemnity, Human Desire and the Narratology of Femmes Fatales’, in Hanson and O’Rawe, Femme Fatale, 188. 28. This bland description of Velma given by Marlowe when he looks at her photograph stands in stark contrast to his desirous gaze when poring over a picture of this same woman dressed up in the persona of Helen Grayle (Chandler, Farewell My Lovely, 34).

158

158

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

appearance, voice and mannerisms in order to become Helen Grayle – stunning blonde and glittering socialite. Yet, throughout the novel, we overhear whispers of Helen’s illusory nature, long before Marlowe discovers her real identity. Our hardboiled hero notes on more than one occasion that her presence reminds him of an act – something that is not quite real. In one scene, after speaking to her on the phone, he feels as though he has just ‘talked to someone that didn’t exist’.29 Later, as he sits with Helen-Velma in his apartment, waiting for Malloy to arrive, the full realization of Helen’s ‘Grade B Hollywood’ artificiality30 hits him square between the eyes; her mask is peeled away, and all that remains is smoke and mirrors – an act that allowed Velma to escape her former lover and build a new and safer life. As a disguise, the persona of the femme fatale is therefore not some marker of Velma’s perversity, but a masquerade she adopts simply to stay alive. It is telling that, at the end of the story, as she attempts to evade the police after shooting Malloy, Velma returns to her old job as a nightclub singer. Discarding her ‘Helen’ costume – losing her blondeness, changing her name, terminating her life as a wealthy socialite – her vulnerability returns, ultimately with fatal effect. Without her femme fatale guise as ‘armour’, the world is too perilous a place for her to survive. As the novel ends, we watch Marlowe receive news of Helen’s death. Despite her multifaceted portrayal throughout this narrative, we are left with an uneasy sense that, amidst the ethical complexities and convolutions of the story, Helen’s selfdestructive act by no means restores the moral order. Any sense of moral absolutism is clouded by Marlowe’s own emotional responses to the diverse characters and situations he has encountered along the way. While his gaze continues to regard the now-dead Helen as a perpetrator of unacceptable violence, we are left with a typical Chandleresque refusal to grant his characters or readers any satisfactory sense of closure.31 There is no tidy ending here, no promise of redemption or remedy for a hopelessly corrupt and horribly brutal world. Marlowe’s concluding thoughts about Helen are undoubtedly ambivalent, recalling her as both victim and victimizer, trapped within the misogyny of her cultural milieu. He condemns her violence, yet is also compelled to ask questions  – wondering why, asking what if, tentatively raising the possibility that Helen’s life and death had some form of redemptive meaning. These questions remain unanswered, and we are left uncertain whether Marlowe quite believes what he is saying. Again, Chandler invites us to gaze upon Helen as someone who is as much casualty as criminal, who responded to the threat of misogynistic violence and disruption with violence and disruption of her own,32 and whose sexuality and sexual allure were not so much the source of her treachery as simply marks of who she was, or who she felt she had to be in order to survive. Encountering Helen in this light – gazing beyond her

29. Ibid., 285. 30. Ibid., 292. 31. John Hilgart, ‘Philip Marlowe’s Labour of Words’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44, no. 4 (2002): 368–92. 32. Thomas, ‘Dream of the Empty Camera’, 433.

159

4. Delilah Redux

159

seductive curves and sensuous mouth to understand the context that informs her place of rage – we can therefore start to see her as more than a stereotyped cliché of venomous feminine sexuality. Rather, she is a woman with her own complex story to tell, a woman who is attempting to liberate herself from an unbearable narrative world. If we fail to recognize this, we simply categorize her, like Anne Riordan does, as ‘a woman like that  – with her looks’, thereby reaffirming our cultural preconceptions about the sexual and moral deviance of the femme fatale. As we pursue the enigmatic Helen Grayle through the hard-boiled pages of Farewell My Lovely, we overhear snatches of intertextual conversations taking place between her and the equally enigmatic Delilah of Judges 16. As we saw in Chapters  2 and 3, Delilah is often portrayed, like Helen, as a ‘woman like that’, whose perverse sexuality and irresistible allure prove fatal to even the strongest man. And yet, by inviting the figure of Helen Grayle to sojourn in the gaps that surround Delilah in this biblical narrative, we can search out areas of familiarity and affinity between these two literary characters. This in turn inspires us to complicate and re-evaluate Delilah’s representation as the manipulative and dangerously erotic femme fatale. To initiate this rendezvous between Delilah and Helen, let us first consider Delilah’s possible motives for betraying Samson to the Philistines. As we noted earlier, creators of Delilah’s afterlives often attribute these motives to her vicious feminine treachery, obsessive vengeance or heartless avarice – all common tropes found in cultural constructions of the femme fatale. Particularly, her willingness to accept the Philistines’ generous payment is often judged as a wholly negative characteristic of her persona. She betrayed Samson for a good few fistfuls of shekels and thus becomes a heartless mercenary whose every act is driven by cold, hard greed. Nevertheless, the Judges 16 text does not pass explicit judgment on Delilah’s acceptance of a financial reward. Indeed, Delilah’s reasons for betraying Samson are left far from clear. The Philistines offer her a large amount of money – she does not demand this amount from them, nor does she reject previous offers of lesser sums. Instead, she appears to accept the initial amount tendered and starts immediately on the task of earning it. Is this really a sign of her avarice?33 Does accepting a sum of money (however large) automatically render her a mercenary femme fatale? Would she be judged in a less negative light if she had accepted a smaller financial reward, or had done the deed for no reward at all? What is more, any accusation of avarice inherently carries a charge that the person values material wealth above all else, even human life. Yet surely avarice is a luxury afforded only to the wealthy; for the person who has nothing, accepting an offer of something (no matter how great or small) may be more a matter of good sense, or even survival, than one of greed. Just as Helen Grayle sought financial security in order to survive the harsh socio-economic realities facing single women in 1940s America, might not Delilah have assented to the Philistines’ proposal because it was the only practical way she could survive within her own narrative

33. Clanton, Daring, Disreputable and Devout, 66–7; Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 145.

160

160

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

world? Her socio-economic status is another gap in this biblical narrative; if, as the text may suggest, she had no family or kinship support networks, she would have been in a precarious situation, both socially and economically, given biblical women’s typical dependence on male kin for financial provision. While she seems to have had a house (vv. 9, 12), there is nothing to suggest that she enjoyed a secure financial or social status within her community.34 And, while we might see her solitary existence and lack of kinship ties as a sign of her independence, ‘strong personality’35 or sexual freedom,36 this is not to say that Delilah relished – or even chose – the situation she was in.37 Perhaps, like Helen, life without financial and social stability (in the form of an expedient marriage) held little appeal for her, given the lack of alternative opportunities within her literary landscape enabling single women to thrive or even survive. Delilah may therefore have accepted the Philistine elders’ generous offer to play the role of Samson’s treacherous love interest because she was worn down by grinding poverty during this precarious time of war and unrest.38 After all, the price proposed by the elders (a total of 5,500 silver shekels) was incredibly high; perhaps we should regard their excessive generosity as a narrative device, which nudges us towards a pragmatic understanding of why Delilah, living in a harsh, war-torn environment seemingly without kith or kin, accepted this offer. By filling in this gap to reflect Delilah’s socio-economic insecurity, we can at least admit the possibility that, like Helen, her willingness to don the masquerade of a femme fatale in exchange for a cash reward was borne not of cupidity but exigency.39 As Streete argues, ‘Delilah may well be trying, without any male mediation, to make the wisest choices she can for her own survival.’40 As well as facing possible economic pressures, Delilah may have had other plausible reasons for seeking to rid her life of Samson’s presence. After all, she had every cause to fear him, given his past history of deadly violence against countless local Philistines, as well as his indirect role in his former bride’s death (14.19; 15.1-8). As I  noted in Chapter  2, the biblical text remains silent about Delilah’s emotional attachment to the Hebrew strongman, only telling us that he loved her (16.4). And, while this love may well have been genuine, we cannot presume that she welcomed it, or that she even felt safe  – physically or sexually  – in his presence. Like Helen, who still perceived the explosively violent Malloy as a very real threat to her security despite his claims that he still loved her, perhaps Delilah

34. Exum, Plotted, Shot, and Painted, 215. 35. Matthews, Judges and Ruth, 159. 36. Klein, ‘Book of Judges’, 62. 37. Smith, ‘Delilah’, 110. 38. As Fewell notes, ‘Doubtless, as a woman alone, Delilah finds that the love of a wanted man is no match for the security of wealth’ (‘Judges’, 79; also Bal, Lethal Love, 51). 39. Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 145. 40. Streete, Strange Woman, 55. See also Fewell, ‘Judges’, 79; Leneman, ‘Portrayals of Power’, 145; Mieke Bal and Christine van Boheemen, ‘The Rhetoric of Subjectivity’, Poetics Today 5 (1984): 357; Victor, ‘Delilah’, 249.

161

4. Delilah Redux

161

too regarded the volatile Samson as a threat to her personal integrity. Remember, Helen was desperate to stop Malloy from finding her or learning about her past betrayal – we can perhaps understand (if not condone) her final act of violence against him in terms of a desire to end his life before he could turn his devastating strength against her. So too might Delilah have dreaded Samson discovering her complicity with the Philistines, especially given his previous deadly responses to those who betrayed his trust. This would have been a persistent and intolerable source of anxiety for her; in her place of rage, she would have felt compelled to grasp whatever opportunities of escape were offered to her and to use any sources of power at her disposal – particularly, her emotional hold over Samson – to effect that escape.41 This may also explain why, after Samson feeds her misinformation about the source of his strength for a third time, she asks him, ‘How can you say “I love you” when your heart is not with me?’ (v. 15). Her question here may betray both her frustrations and her fears; if Samson really does not ‘love’ her, he would be more likely to harm her if he discovered her plan to betray him. The money she earned by delivering him to the Philistines may therefore have been a secondary concern for her, overshadowed by a powerful desire to evade the lovesick attentions of this capricious warrior. As Parisi notes, readers have to remember that Delilah was operating in a world of ‘male anger’ before they label her as an avaricious femme fatale.42 To judge her acceptance of the Philistines’ silver solely as a sign of her cupidity ignores other possible, and just as plausible, ‘fillings’ for this textual gap, which could invite a much more empathic audience response. There is, of course, another layer to Delilah’s relationship with Samson that we should consider. As I  mentioned in Chapter  2, although her cultural and interpretive afterlives often assume she was his consensual lover, she may instead have been the unwilling recipient of his coercive sexual attentions. Like Velma (Helen’s alternative persona), Delilah is confronted by the single-minded attentions of this hugely volatile and violent man. What options did either woman really have to withhold consent to any sexual advances made by their persistent suitors? This question is rarely addressed in Delilah’s afterlives or in literary readings of Farewell My Lovely, but these women’s encounters with gender violence remain possible within both of these texts. Their willingness to betray the men who ‘loved’ them can thus be understood as the only way they can retaliate against their abuser, rather than as a sign of their amoral treachery. Moreover, Delilah’s potentially aggressive treatment of Samson after his capture by the Philistines (16.19) likewise takes on different shades of meaning if we focalize events through her eyes as a survivor of sexual violence. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, this verse suggests that she may have physically or sexually abused Samson at the moment of his capture, the verb ‘nh (of which Delilah is the subject and Samson the object) denoting a sense of ‘to humiliate, or afflict’. Yet, instead of

41. As Klein notes, ‘Delilah strikes Samson at the one spot where he has no strength’ – that is, his love for her (‘Book of Judges’, 65). See also Smith, ‘Samson and Delilah’, 55. 42. Parisi, ‘Discourse and Danger’, 270.

162

162

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

highlighting her cruelty, what if we understand her behaviour here as a form of retaliation, acted out against the man who had until then subjected her body to sexual and physical violation? Like Helen, Delilah may use violence as a means of keeping control, of maintaining her safety in a hostile world of patriarchal power and of ensuring that those who have violated (or who threaten to violate) her are halted in their tracks. Rather than simply being ‘a woman like that’, both of these female characters may adopt the masquerade of the fatal woman because their narrative presence is sculpted by exigency and a powerlessness that is not of their own making. We may not condone their use of violence, but we can at least try to comprehend why they resort to it. These intertextual conversations between Judges 16 and Farewell My Lovely have, I hope, unveiled new portrayals of Delilah’s biblical character, inviting us to reconceptualise her literary role as femme fatale. That being said, however, my aim here is not to dispute or erase every reference to Delilah as a fatal feminine presence within her afterlives. I have no objection to her being portrayed, like Helen, as a beautiful, sexually autonomous woman whose irresistible allure makes men go weak at the knees. For all we know, the author of the Judges 16 tradition may have envisioned Delilah thus, or at least imagined her donning such a guise in order to fulfil her dangerous mission. What I do challenge, though, are the assumptions that often lie embedded within such portrayals of the femme fatale, which are both maintained and subverted in Chandler’s depiction of Helen Grayle: the assumption that such feminine allure by default renders a woman a deadly presence; the assumption that women who break traditional gender roles and claim their right to sexual self-determination leave a trail of intolerable chaos in their wake; the assumption that female violence can be sourced in women’s ‘perverse’ sexuality and moral cupidity rather than in their need to retaliate against the violence they encounter. With Helen Grayle, we are at least offered the possibility that her eroticism is less a marker of deadly femininity than a costume she had to wear in order to survive within the patriarchal restraints of her narrative world. We should likewise consider this possibility when evaluating Delilah’s character within Judges 16. By exploring the gaps in this biblical narrative alongside Chandler’s novel, we can begin to destabilize those cultural and interpretive afterlives that pin down Delilah as a fatal woman – a ‘woman like that’, whose life is guided by her cupidity and perverse sexuality. Instead, we recognize that, like Helen, she embodies a terrible vulnerability, borne of social disenfranchisement and the perpetual threat of violence. Like Helen, she occupies a place of rage, trapped between a rock (poverty and social powerlessness) and a hard place (the lethally temperamental Samson). And, like Helen, she thus retaliates with her own violence and treachery, in order to grasp some financial security and rid herself of a dangerously volatile suitor. Unlike Helen, though, Delilah seems to get away with it – rather than being destroyed, she apparently survives to fight another day. We are thus invited to accept and experience her destabilizing presence in the narrative and, like readers of Farewell My Lovely, are perhaps left at the end without any neat solutions, but rather with many unanswered questions to contemplate about this enigmatic fatal woman.

163

4. Delilah Redux

163

A Scandal in Sorek If Chandler’s Helen Grayle invites us to remain sensitive to Delilah’s gendered location within the narrative context of Judges 16, then our next cultural text takes us a step further, offering us multiple portrayals of Delilah that query and challenge the very significance of gender within her femme fatale afterlives. In ‘A Scandal in Belgravia’ (hereafter ‘Belgravia’) – an episode from the BBC series Sherlock43 – we encounter not one but two characters who, I argue, play a Delilah-type role within the story. This adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ (1891), introduces us to the dazzling dominatrix Irene Adler, whose razor-sharp wits and intoxicating blend of sensuality and danger render her a worthy opponent of Sherlock Holmes (Figure 4.1).44 Throughout much of the episode, she manipulates and misleads the great detective into deciphering a top-secret government code, which she then sells to Sherlock’s arch nemesis – master criminal Jim Moriarty. This proves disastrous for Sherlock, threatening to destroy his prized reputation as the world’s only ‘consulting detective’. And, while he eventually redeems himself, thwarting Irene’s plans to extort vast sums of money from the British government, we are left with the strong suspicion that he has been decidedly shaken and stirred by his encounter with this extraordinary woman. Within this story, then, we can recognize some familiar tropes of our Judges 16 intertext. Like Samson, Sherlock is a man who believes he is infallible; nevertheless, he lets himself fall for the flattery and emotional manipulation of a woman, offering her information that renders him dangerously vulnerable. And, like Delilah, Irene appears to adopt the role of the femme fatale, whose dangerous cocktail of smooth words and steely nerves can hoodwink even the most powerful of men. Yet ‘Belgravia’ is a little like a kaleidoscope  – with just the slightest shift in perspective we are confronted with a new pattern of meaning that bears resemblance to, but is uniquely different from, the original. Through this alternative perspective, the characters of Sherlock and Irene do not stay confined to their respective roles of Samson and Delilah; rather, as I  demonstrate, both Sherlock and Irene sashay back and forth between these roles, playing the parts of both Samson and Delilah interchangeably, even simultaneously. In other words, it is not just la femme fatale Irene who adopts the persona of Delilah from our

43. The Sherlock series was created in 2010 by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat for the BBC. It relocates Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s nineteenth-century literary figures from his canon of Sherlock Holmes stories in a new, contemporary context, with each episode based (loosely) on one of these stories. 44. Space does not permit a full comparison between Conan Doyle’s ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ and Moffatt’s retelling, but for further details, see, for example, Benedick Turner, ‘There’s a Name Everyone Says: Irene Adler and Jim Moriarty in Sherlock’, in Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes: Essays on Film and Television Adaptations since 2009, ed. Nadine Farghaly (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015), 21–39.

164

164

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Judges 16 intertext; Sherlock  – l’homme fatal?  – fits snugly into this role too. The plot of this episode revolves around Irene’s mobile phone, which contains a range of incendiary photographs, information and secrets that Sherlock has been commissioned (by the British royal family, no less) to purloin. When he finally gets hold of the phone, he needs to crack the passcode to access its contents, which Irene admits are her only source of social and personal power. Sherlock eventually succeeds, after deducing that the passcode betrays Irene’s infatuation with him;45 bereft of her phone, she is therefore rendered perilously vulnerable. Within this crucial strand of the drama, Sherlock thus adopts the familiar contours of a Delilah-type persona, squeezing from his quarry her most valuable secret. Irene, meanwhile, appears less like Delilah than Samson, a figure whose sole source of strength is discovered and compromised by the person to whom she has formed a deep emotional attachment. These queer twists and turns in ‘Belgravia’ therefore compel us to contend with the deeply gendered significance of Delilah’s characterization in both Judges 16 and her innumerable afterlives, particularly the way that her gender so often plays a crucial role in readers’ identification of her as a fatal woman. Stated another way, ‘Belgravia’ complicates the conventional gendering of this typically female figure, compelling us to dislocate the ‘femme’ from the femme fatale, and to interrogate the gendered discourses that usually construct this iconic figure. And so, when we consider Delilah’s biblical character through our ‘Belgravia’ lens, we are confronted with her potential for infinite gender queerness, occupying as she does a textual space where traditional categories of masculine and feminine keep slipping and colliding, inevitably exposing their artificiality and impermanence.46 @TheWhipHand – Irene Adler as Femme Fatale When we first glimpse Irene Adler in ‘Belgravia’, we see her (both literally and metaphorically) from ‘behind’; having just completed a phone call to Moriarty, she sashays away from us, the camera capturing only her back from the shoulders down. Through her black lace negligee, we catch a titillating peep of stocking tops, and watch, intrigued, as she walks towards an open door through which we can glimpse a young woman tied to a bed. ‘Well now, have you been wicked, your highness?’ asks Irene, thwacking the air with a stiff, black leather riding crop. ‘Yes, Miss Adler’, comes the enthused reply. The bedroom door is closed, and we are left wondering who this intriguing figure is and what part she will play in the unfolding drama.

45. Spoiler alert: The screen of Irene’s phone displays the message ‘I AM ---- LOCKED’, with the four-digit passcode requiring to be entered therein. Sherlock’s discovery of Irene’s emotional attachment finally leads him to conclude correctly that the passcode is ‘SHER’. 46. For further discussion of the fluidity of gender roles and performativity in Judges 16, see Gafney, ‘Womanist Midrash’, 49–72.

165

4. Delilah Redux

165

In our second encounter, the camera hides Irene’s face from us again, focusing fetishistically on her manicured hand as she caresses a newspaper photograph of Sherlock before reaching to flex that riding crop. We learn shortly afterwards that she is a dominatrix and purveyor of ‘recreational scoldings’,47 whose recent shenanigans have included two political scandals and the marriage breakup of a prominent author (she had affairs with the author and his wife). Indeed, throughout this episode, Irene’s femme fatale credentials positively glitter. She is a rootless traveller, occupying the shady spaces of the classic noir world – dark London streets, decadent Belgravia dwellings, abandoned power stations – flitting between these spaces like a cat burglar.48 Like the biblical Delilah, she appears to be without kith or kin, and thus remains beholden to no one. And, again like Delilah, she rejects the traditional feminine roles of wife and mother; indeed, she is more likely to sleep with someone else’s wife than be one herself, while the only ‘baby’ she seems to cherish is her precious phone.49 A  citizen only of hyperspace, her website is filled with dark and decadent images of her barely clad body, while her Twitter name is @TheWhipHand. Sex and pain, scandal and desire, pleasure and danger – even before we can fully see her, Irene exemplifies the archetypal neonoir fatal woman. From the tips of her blood-red lacquered nails to the ice-pickthin heels of her Christian Louboutin stilettos, she is the iconic embodiment of a deadly and hyperfeminine sexuality. What is more, she is openly and pansexually queer, seeking out sensual diversions wherever she desires, thereby scorning dominant heteronormative discourses.50 Travelling restlessly in pursuit of power and pleasure, the people she encounters simply become the means by which she achieves these goals. In other words, Irene prefers to forge her own path in life, regardless of the dangers inherent in her journey or the enemies she makes along the way. As she tells Sherlock on more than one occasion, ‘I make my way in the world; I misbehave.’ When Irene is finally revealed to us ‘in full’, we watch, intrigued, as she prepares to meet Sherlock for the first time. Abandoning an enviable wardrobe of lush

47. To quote Sherlock’s brother, Mycroft Holmes. 48. Irene literally acts like a burglar on a number of occasions, and seems most at ease when she is entering and exiting premises through a window. 49. In an attempt to discover where Irene has hidden her phone, Sherlock conspires with John to set off her smoke detector. At the sound of the alarm, Irene immediately looks to a mirror in her living room, behind which is hidden her wall safe. Sherlock tells her that, in the event of a fire, a mother will inevitably look to her child (that which she wants to protect most). Irene’s primary concern, however, appears to be her phone, which lies safely (for now) in the safe. As Sherlock locates the safe, he turns to Irene and says, ‘Really hope you don’t have a baby in here.’ In a sense, she does. 50. Of course, Irene’s sexual fluidity does prevent her from having a clear sexual identity or orientation. We are instead encouraged to view her as a sexualized body, but not necessarily as a character with a defined sexual self. Thanks to Prior McRae for pointing this out in a personal conversation.

166

166

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

designer frocks, she appears before him (and her audience) completely naked, carrying her eroticism like a minaudière.51 Yet, even bereft of clothes, she remains a figure of hyperfeminine allure;52 her face is exquisitely made up, her hair styled into an elaborate coiffure, and, as she struts into the room to meet Sherlock, we cannot help but notice she is once again wearing those iconic Louboutin stilettos. Straddling Sherlock’s legs as he sits awkwardly on her couch, she is the quintessence of to-be-looked-at-ness – a woman fulfilling her designated role as object of the desirous gaze. Yet, throughout ‘Belgravia’, Irene Adler is far from just a visual object to arouse our passions. Like those femmes fatales of noir and neo-noir cinema, she is a gender-bending figure who holds far greater influence and agency than is traditionally ascribed to more conventional, less scandalous female characters. Indeed, she twists established gendered boundaries at every turn, revealing that beneath her excessively feminine masquerade lies a steely core that is more typically associated with masculine claims to power. Whether draped in Alexander McQueen’s hyperfeminine couture,53 her transparent negligee or Sherlock’s favourite Belstaff overcoat, she appears comfortable in a man’s world, negotiating fearlessly with both Sherlock’s brother Mycroft Holmes (played by Mark Gatiss) and Jim Moriarty (Andrew Scott)  – two exceptionally powerful and dangerous men. Just as impressively, she enjoys a power play with ‘the most powerful family in Britain’54 – the British royal family – making them aware of some compromising photographs she has recently taken of a young royal client (the recipient of the black stockings and riding crop, we presume). Moreover, she is not averse to using violence when she needs to, efficiently disabling some armed CIA agents before overpowering Sherlock with her riding crop and a sedative-filled syringe when he refuses to return her cherished phone. In all these scenarios and more, Irene interweaves her sexuality with a facility for violence to impressive effect. Like the post-feminist neo-noir fatal women we encountered in Chapter 1, she uses her sex as a weapon to acquire power, pleasure and profit.55 In her role as dominatrix, she appears to enjoy an impressive hold

51. A minaudière is a small, decorative clutch bag; this French term can also mean ‘coquettish woman’. Thanks to Kathy Smith for telling me about this double meaning. 52. Turner, ‘There’s a Name Everyone Says’, 26–7. 53. For a fascinating discussion of Alexander McQueen’s fatal woman fashion aesthetic, see Caroline Evans, ‘Desire and Dread: Alexander McQueen and the Contemporary Femme Fatale’, in Body Dressing, ed. Joanne Entwhistle and Elizabeth B. Wilson (Oxford:  Berg Publishers, 2001), 201−14. 54. As Sherlock describes them. 55. For an interesting discussion of Irene Adler in Sherlock, see Maria Alberto, ‘ “Of Dubious and Questionable Memory”:  The Collision of Gender and Canon in Creating Sherlock’s Postfeminist Femme Fatale’, in Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 66–84. While I do not agree with Alberto’s overall reading of Irene’s character, I concur with her evaluation of Irene as a post-feminist femme fatale.

167

4. Delilah Redux

167

over her clients, purloining from them ‘pictures, information, anything I  might find useful’, which she then stores on her precious phone. On more than one occasion Sherlock wonders how she has become privy to some piece of restricted knowledge; each time, she explains that her clients tell her things because ‘I know what they like’. Knowledge is power, and to acquire that knowledge, she utilizes the only resources in her possession  – her intellect and her sexuality. Her role as dominatrix may be a classically feminine form of sexual performance,56 where female sexual authority is tolerated (temporarily at least) within strictly regulated boundaries. Yet Irene refuses to conform to these boundaries, insisting that the same violence, power and dominance she enjoys with clients in the privacy of her boudoir can be attained in other areas of her life. And therein lies her dangerousness as a fatal woman: a woman who uses her irresistible sexual allure to (quite literally) beat her victims into submission; a woman who embraces a perverse predilection for treachery and deceit; and a woman whose hyperfeminine masquerade cannot quite conceal her predilection for ‘masculine’ pursuits of violence, sex and the procurement of power. By occupying both masculine and feminine spaces, Irene is at first an object of intrigue for Sherlock. At times, he appears to admire her daring forays into traditional ‘masculine’ territories of aggressive action and razor-sharp intellect;57 yet he laps up her feminine performances too, particularly when they serve to massage his own ego. Irene flirts relentlessly with Sherlock, and he responds  – not by displaying an overtly sexual interest, but rather, by smugly showcasing his impressive intellect. His fascination with Irene’s gender subversion, however, almost proves his undoing; for this femme fatale’s uncanny allure reveals his intellectual and emotional weaknesses, which Irene exploits in order to outplay him during their quick-witted (and weirdly sensual) repartee. Sherlock’s Achilles’ heel is the pleasure he takes from showing off his formidable brainpower, particularly when his audience is as appreciative (and as intellectually capable) as Irene. After bathing in her flirtatious flattery, he arrogantly reveals the solution to a top-secret government code at her behest, which she then passes on to Moriarty. In this fateful moment, Sherlock fails to understand the wider context in which this game is being played. Irene has duped him with her honeyed adulations, thereby revealing that he is less adroit – and more naïve – than she. By thus robbing him of his intellectual superiority and exposing a rare glimpse of his vulnerability, she essentially emasculates Sherlock, just as she has emasculated those other

56. Turner, ‘There’s a Name Everyone Says’, 26. 57. Sherlock gets his first glimpse of Irene when Mycroft shows him photographs taken from her website, where she is posed in an array of erotic costumes. Sherlock flicks through these dispassionately; yet, when he hears she is negotiating with the royal family about some compromising photographs stored on her phone, he appears deeply impressed, almost titillated, by her ability to manipulate this powerful institution: ‘Oh, a power play. A power play with the most powerful family in Britain. Now that is a dominatrix. Ooh, this is getting rather fun, isn’t it?’

168

168

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

clients who yielded up their secrets after submitting to her seductive charms.58 To paraphrase Mycroft, she is therefore every inch the deadly dominatrix, whose power can bring a nation – and even Sherlock himself – to their knees. Thus, Irene’s characterization throughout ‘Belgravia’ appears to reflect many of the same classic tropes of the femme fatale that we encountered in Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives. Like Irene, Delilah is regularly swathed in mystery and intrigue by the creators of these afterlives, arousing audiences with her provocative blend of hypersexual femininity, gender disruption and the thrilling promise of forbidden pleasures. Moreover, Irene’s noiresque locales (the dark, ‘monstrous spaces’59 of London nightscapes, louche bedrooms, decadent websites and shadowy, abandoned buildings) may remind us of Delilah’s reputation within so many of her afterlives as the exotic Other. For, although played by white actor Lara Pulver, Sherlock’s Irene seems perpetually draped in a ‘darkness’ that divulges her alien otherness. Like many of her femme fatale sisters in classic film noir, she occupies a narrative position that compels her to embody traditional ‘attributes of blackness’60 – her murky locations, obscure provenance and outré sexuality – which continually threaten to seep into Sherlock’s white, bright world of moral certitude. She thus exemplifies the dangerousness of the feminine Other, whose alien presence poses a perpetual threat to the perceived inviolability of masculine whiteness. Nevertheless, while Irene’s portrayal in ‘Belgravia’ mirrors many characteristics of the deadly femme fatale used so ubiquitously in Delilah’s afterlives, it can also direct us to view Delilah’s persona in Judges 16 from new perspectives, focalizing this biblical narrative through her eyes. That is, by paying close attention to both texts, we can overhear an intertextual conversation taking place between Irene and Delilah, which subverts many common assumptions about their status as fatal women. To explain what I mean, consider, for example, Delilah’s proficient deception of Samson. Her interpretive and cultural afterlives typically attribute such skilled duplicity to her sexuality, assuming that Samson revealed the secret of his strength because he was simply unable to resist her potent allure. Yet Irene reminds us that the femme fatale relies as much on her razor-sharp wits as her sensuous curves. The long-term plan she hatches to deceive Sherlock is carefully plotted, dizzyingly complex and meticulously executed, and, while she utilizes her sensuous charms to flirt relentlessly with him, the most effective weapon in her arsenal proves to be her intellect and quick thinking. In other words, it is her brains, not her body, which finally enable her to ensnare her prey. Guessing that

58. See Rhonda Lynette Harris Taylor, ‘Return of “The Woman”:  Irene Adler in Contemporary Adaptations’, in Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 52; Lindsay Katzir, ‘I Am Sherlocked: Adapting Victorian Gender and Sexuality in “A Scandal in Belgravia” ’, in Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 109–10. 59. Diawara, ‘Noir by Noirs’, 262. 60. Ibid.; Lott, ‘Whiteness of Film Noir’, 544.

169

4. Delilah Redux

169

Sherlock would be impervious to her sexual allure, Irene deduces that, in order to beat the cleverest man in England, she needs to employ her own considerable intellect to first uncover his weaknesses. These weaknesses, as she learns, are his constant cravings for both intellectual stimulation and adulation. Irene’s plan thus revolves around baiting Sherlock by exploiting these chinks in his armour, offering him a puzzle to solve while playing the role of adoring audience. At one point in the episode, she deprives him of this audience by feigning her death; her sudden absence leaves Sherlock in a state of mourning, as though bereft of the flattery with which she had showered him. On her return, his delight is apparent, and it is at this point Irene offers him the top-secret code, which he cracks, quite literally, in seconds. As Mycroft notes bitterly to Sherlock once Irene’s plan comes to light, ‘One lonely, naïve man desperate to show off. And a woman clever enough to make him feel special . . . Because this was textbook. The promise of love, the pain of loss, the joy of redemption. Then give him a puzzle and watch him dance.’ Irene’s intelligence  – her uncanny ability to uncover and exploit others’ vulnerabilities – is what renders her such a dangerous persona in ‘Belgravia’. And, if we turn our attention back to Judges 16, we can recognize this same quality emanating from Delilah’s character too. While the narrator remains silent about her sexual presence in this narrative, they reveal, quite clearly, her intellectual presence, which proves key to her orchestration of Samson’s downfall.61 That is, Delilah does not seduce Samson in this text  – she outwits him. Like Irene, she realizes that, to discover the source of Samson’s strength, she must first discern his weakness  – the soft spot she needs to target in order to render him fatally vulnerable. And, reading through the narrative, we learn (just as Delilah learns) that Samson’s biggest foible is the sound of a woman’s voice. When women speak to Samson, they seem to diminish him, causing him to act out in ways that threaten his masculinity and prestige. His first wife’s relentless pleading (Judg. 14.16-17) impelled him to reveal the secret of his riddle, which ultimately lost him his marriage and his honour among the local Philistine community. Consequently, as I mentioned in Chapter 2, Delilah adopts a similar approach, showering Samson with words that are both persistent and persuasive, and ultimately driving him to do something  – anything  – to make her stop. Her constant questioning and ‘nagging’ (16.13, 15-16) wear him down until he blurts out his biggest secret just to make her stop talking (v. 16), thereby sealing his own fate. In stark contrast, the prostitute at Gaza remains silent throughout her brief narrative encounter with Samson (16.1-3); reduced to her function as an object to satisfy Samson’s sexual pleasure, she thus serves as an effective counterpoint to the mouthy women who sap his strength. Indeed, this silent and sexualized woman only serves to bolster his masculinity, allowing him to uproot the city gates of Gaza and carry them off in a showy display of strength and machismo (v. 3). Samson, it appears, performs best when his women remain tight lipped.

61. As Gafney notes, Delilah uses her ‘wits and her will’ to ‘best’ Samson (‘Womanist Midrash’, 68).

170

170

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

Irene’s intellectual sparring match with Sherlock therefore encourages us to look with fresh eyes at Delilah’s characterization in Judges 16. Compared to those countless interpretive and cultural afterlives that accentuate her sexualized lethality, we can instead identify her as a character distinguished by sharp wits and a canny ability to discern the weaknesses of her enemies. Her voice – not her body – becomes her most dangerous weapon when it comes to defeating Samson, and she uses it with impressive efficiency. And, unlike Irene, who serves up her intellect with a generous side order of seductive moves, Delilah’s own sexual presence remains unarticulated within our biblical intertext. Her speeches to Samson are laden with sentiment, but she talks of ‘love’ and ‘emotions’, not sex and desire. Delilah is first and foremost a woman of words in this narrative, and it is her words that ultimately get the job done. This insight into Irene’s and Delilah’s cerebral cunning also raises another point, which likewise encourages us to re-examine both women’s reputations as dangerous and unscrupulous femmes fatales. Throughout this television episode, the audience is allowed access to Irene’s inner world; by following her story, her relationships and the roles she plays in unfolding events, we learn her strengths and her vulnerabilities, her hopes and her anxieties. These insights into her point of view compel us to turn towards her character and understand her narrative presence as far more than an amoral, fatal woman who takes capricious pleasure in destroying her prey. For example, one of the features we notice most about Irene is the vulnerability that coils around her character. From the first time we encounter her, we glimpse the perilous place that she occupies and the dangerous forces with which she repeatedly has to contend. At the start of the episode, we overhear a telephone conversation she is having with Moriarty, where she apparently makes him a business proposition. At this stage, we have not even seen Irene, and are privy only to Moriarty’s end of this conversation; his words, however, leave us in no doubt about the unequal power balance within this duo’s relationship. Moriarty is poised to kill Sherlock and his friend, John Watson, just as Irene phones him; yet, on hearing Irene’s offer, Moriarty chooses to stay the execution. At this moment, the audience remains in the dark about the nature of her offer, but the ferocity of Moriarty’s response is terrifying. ‘Say that again!’ he erupts. ‘Say that again, and know that if you’re lying to me, I will find you and I will skin you.’62 Irene clearly reassures him that her plans are bona fide, as he then responds by telling her, ‘If you have what you say you have, I’ll make you rich. If you don’t, I’ll make you into shoes.’ Irene is clearly negotiating here with a powerful and massively volatile man. And, while he may offer her a generous reward for her business, their relationship is founded on the perpetual threat of violence. As a woman who appears to travel alone, who has little or no support network or recourse to legitimate forms of justice, we are reminded just how vulnerable she is. She exists in a psychotically

62. Italics denote actor Andrew Scott’s emphasis in this line.

171

4. Delilah Redux

171

gendered world of male aggression – a place of rage that shapes her behaviour and her responses to those she encounters. She fraternizes with the dangerous and the powerful out of necessity, forever fending off their threats of violence with a protective violence of her own. Her own power is contingent on using her erotic allure and quick wits to wrest valuable secrets from her clients, which she then stores on her phone. Her possession of these secrets affords her a certain ‘leverage’ against those who may wish to do her harm; as she explains to Sherlock, ‘I like to know that people will be on my side exactly when I need them to be.’ She therefore insists repeatedly to him that the phone is her only source of security, which she depends upon for her safety and survival: ‘That camera phone is my life, Mr Holmes. I’d die before I let you take it. It’s my protection.’63 Thus, when Sherlock tries to steal the phone, she has no option but to stop him, using whatever means she has at her disposal. Similarly, when armed CIA agents storm into her Belgravia apartment to steal her phone, her violent response can be understood as simply a desperate attempt to stay alive. After her booby-trapped wall safe dispatches one of these agents, she and Sherlock disarm the others in a flurry of punches and pistol whippings. When Sherlock notes with some surprise that she appears calm despite the fact that her booby trap has just killed a man, she responds coolly:  ‘He would have killed me. It was self-defence in advance.’ When her life is on the line, violence is Irene’s only option – it is a matter of exigency for her, an act of retaliation and self-preservation, rather than some perverse predilection to destroy life. In other words, these acts of violence are not markers of her dissolute persona, but serve to remind us of her vulnerability and the fragility of her existence within her own place of rage. So yes, Irene is a fatal woman – a femme fatale par excellence – but only because she has to be in order to stay alive. As Lara Pulver (the actor who plays Irene) notes, ‘All of her actions are completely from a place of fear and protection.’64 And, while her occupation as a dominatrix may indelibly stain her sexuality with the lurid hues of violence, control and the infliction of pain, it is, once again, a source of her survival (one of the few sources to which she appears to have access), granting her the social and economic power she needs to flourish in a darkly gendered world. Yet, as Antonija Primorac reminds us, hers is but a ‘temporary power’, contingent on her performance as a fetishized object of desire.65 Irene’s overall vulnerability therefore raises doubts about those post-feminist claims (discussed in Chapter 1) that a woman’s sexuality is an effective source of her social and sexual agency.

63. Sherlock seems to recognize Irene’s dependence on this phone for her personal safety. When talking to Mycroft about her, he describes it as her ‘get-out-of-jail free card’ and her ‘protection’. 64. Quote taken from the audio commentary of ‘Belgravia’, included on the BBC DVD of Sherlock, season 2 (2012). 65. Antonija Primorac, ‘The Naked Truth: The Postfeminist Afterlives of Irene Adler’, Neo-Victorian Studies 6, no. 2 (2013): 103.

172

172

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

For, despite (or perhaps because of) her erotic currency, Irene’s autonomy remains fragile within ‘Belgravia’, forever reliant on her ability to negotiate the whims, threats and demands of those who occupy the more ‘orthodox’ spaces of male power and authority.66 As Mark Gatiss, co-creator of the Sherlock series notes, ‘She’s living in a strange, dangerous world of currents and political shenanigans and doing an incredible job of surviving by her wits.’67 Reflecting this discussion of Irene’s precarious security back onto the Judges 16 narrative, we glimpse Delilah’s own vulnerability as she negotiates a path through the dangerous narrative minefields of political subterfuge, endless military struggles and the ever-present threat of male violence. Like Irene, Delilah forges a partnership with influential male figures in her community – the five Philistine elders who approach her to help them capture Samson. While these men never explicitly threaten Delilah, and while they reward her generously for her work, there is, nevertheless, the possibility that the unequal power balance between these two parties leaves Delilah exposed to the prospect of violence. As a (seemingly) lone woman living in a volatile war zone, would she really have been able to refuse their request?68 The Hebrew word used to designate these leaders is seren, a Philistine loanword often translated as ‘elder’, ‘lord’ or ‘leader’, usually understood to be a cognate of the Greek tyrranos (‘tyrant’); the use of this word as a moniker for the five Philistine leaders who approached Delilah may hint at the dangerous power these men hold over her.69 Might we see them in a similar light to Moriarty, whose offer to make Irene ‘rich’ was also premised

66. Interestingly, such a ‘failure’ on Irene’s part to be a strong feminist hero in this story is treated by a number of scholars as some form of ‘character flaw’ rather than a critique of the patriarchal power systems which render her ‘failure’ inevitable. See, for example, essays by Maria Alberto, Rhonda Taylor and Benedick Turner in Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes; see also Carol Nelson Douglas, ‘Why Can’t They Get Irene Adler Right?’ Mystery Scene, Summer 2013, 26–27. Available online:  https://www.mysteryscenemag. com/ 20- articles/ articles/ 3237- why- cant- they- get- irene- adler- right?highlight=WyJhZG xlciIsImFkbGVyJ3MiXQ (accessed 28 April 2017). I agree with Grossman, however, that such a negative response to the femme fatale is unhelpful, in that it ‘leaves little room for compelling discussions about female agency and its relationship to society and culture’ (Rethinking the Femme Fatale, 8). 67. Quote taken from the audio commentary of ‘Belgravia’. 68. As I indicated in Chapter 2, Delilah is not introduced in terms of her relationships with male kin or her membership in any particular family, house or tribe. This may suggest that she simply had no near kin in this region. 69. Alter, Ancient Israel, 189; also Pressler, Joshua, Judges, and Ruth, 222; Soggin, Judges, 254. The Hebrew term seren is used exclusively to refer to Philistine leaders (e.g. Josh. 13.3; 1 Sam. 5.8, 11; 6.4, 12, 16, 18; 7.7; 1 Chron. 12.19). It most likely denotes some form of political and military leader or other high-level administrator who oversaw one of the five cities that made up the Philistine pentapolis (Gaza, Ashkelon, Ekron, Ashdod and Gath). See also Webb, Judges, 399.

173

4. Delilah Redux

173

on his threat of unspeakable violence should she fail in her mission? As Exum notes, threats form a ‘highly effective’ strategy used by patriarchy to exert control over women.70 The Philistine tyrants’ arrangement with Delilah may therefore not be so much a straightforward business proposition as an assurance of the very conditional nature of the deal about to be struck and the inherent guarantee that unfulfilled business ‘agreements’ would meet with violence. Delilah, then, might be seen as more a victim of these tyrants than their co-conspirator; saying ‘no’ to them could, in her mind, have been out of the question. Her role in their plans to capture Samson may therefore point less to the contemptible actions of an unprincipled femme fatale than the exigent actions of a terribly vulnerable woman.71 Moreover, Delilah’s active participation in Samson’s capture and eventual demise may likewise take on new meaning if we weave it into a dialogue with Irene’s similarly abusive treatment of Sherlock throughout this episode. When Sherlock first takes her phone, Irene asks for it back, reminding him that it is her only source of ‘protection’. When he refuses to give it back, she injects him with a sedative and beats him with her riding crop until he drops it. Picking up the phone, Irene stands over Sherlock, tormenting him as he lies incapacitated on the floor. ‘It’s been a pleasure,’ she tells him, stroking his cheek with the end of the crop. ‘This is how I want you to remember me, as the woman who beat you.’ Once again, the audience is encouraged to recognize the exigency that underlies Irene’s violence here; in taking her phone, Sherlock poses a real threat to her safety. She thus acts from a place of rage to avert this threat and protect herself from harm. Bearing this in mind, we might then reconsider Delilah’s violence against Samson in Judg. 16.19 (both her complicity in his hair cutting and her ‘tormenting’ him afterwards) as a necessary response perpetrated within her own place of rage. Like Irene, she may have felt compelled to strike out against a man whom she regarded as posing a genuine risk to her security and survival. As I  already noted in my discussion of Farewell My Lovely, the ambiguous narrative of Judges 16 leaves open the possibility that Delilah may have felt physically and/or sexually threatened by the unwanted attentions of this volatile Hebrew warrior. By betraying Samson to the Philistines and playing a decisive role in his loss of power, she eradicated his potential for violence, thereby sending a clear message that she was no longer prepared to tolerate these threats. For, like Irene, Delilah can only move from a place of rage into a place of safety by twisting normative gender roles, so that the female body becomes a source, rather than a recipient, of aggression, while the male body is

70. Exum, Fragmented Women, 87, 90. Smith notes that Delilah’s unusual independence may not necessarily have been regarded as a source of her power or autonomy, but rather as a marker of her vulnerability. As she suggests, ‘A woman without male support may well have been seen as an object for pity rather than congratulation’ (‘Delilah’, 110). 71. Smith, ‘Samson and Delilah’, 46; also Gafney, ‘Womanist Midrash’, 67.

174

174

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

transformed into a site of abuse, rather than its perpetrator. And, whether we fully condone either women’s actions or not, their unsanctioned violence has an undeniable and unpredictable power to challenge the ‘might and right’ of patriarchal aggression, reminding us that retaliation may be a potent antidote against the hopelessness of vulnerability.72 ‘Brainy Is the New Sexy’ – Sherlock as a Fatal Femme At the start of my discussion of ‘Belgravia’, I promised not one but two Delilahs, so let me now oblige. I want to suggest that, with the introduction of Sherlock’s character as an alternative ‘Delilah’ figure, we can begin to query (or queer) the ubiquitous practice of identifying femaleness as an intrinsic and defining feature of the femme fatale. As I demonstrate, both Irene and Sherlock behave in similar ways throughout this episode, but our responses to and interpretations of their actions are often shaped significantly by our engagement with their gender. That is, while Sherlock and Irene both fulfil a Delilah-type role in ‘Belgravia’  – both wresting from the other the primary source of their power – we tend to evaluate these behaviours very differently, critiquing Irene for being a treacherous femme fatale, while lauding Sherlock for his dexterous wit. This inconsistency, I believe, is informed by those dominant discourses within our own sociocultural milieus, which shape our conceptualizations of gender scripts and norms. In other words, we evaluate Irene differently (and more negatively) from Sherlock because she is a woman – and more particularly, an explicitly sexualized woman – rather than because her behaviour is significantly different from his. That Sherlock and Irene both enact the same ‘fatal person’ role in ‘Belgravia’ is unambiguous throughout this drama. Right from the start, we recognize that their characters are acting in tandem; they mirror each other’s behaviours and responses, swapping in and out of their respective Samson and Delilah roles, until it is hard to see where one performance begins and the other ends. Near the start of the episode, Sherlock sits in Buckingham Palace flicking through photographs of Irene that have been taken from her website; the camera darts back and forth to the woman herself, standing outside her swish Belgravia apartment as she swipes through images of Sherlock on her phone. In this scene, both are unwitting objects of the other’s gaze, and both discern the other as their quarry. A  little later, as the duo prepare to meet each other for the first time, they both take time to don the perfect disguise; the language each uses in this process again accentuates the mirroring of their characters. As Sherlock rifles through his wardrobe, searching for the ‘right armour’, Irene likewise tries on various outfits before opting for her ‘battledress’ (her naked body).73 Sherlock puts on a clerical dog collar and invites

72. This is discussed by Halberstam, ‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence’, 191; see also Pidduck, ‘The 1990s Hollywood Fatal Femme’, 72. 73. The mirroring between these characters becomes even more pronounced when Irene solves a seemingly inexplicable crime while temporarily donning Sherlock’s famous Belstaff overcoat.

175

4. Delilah Redux

175

John to punch his face (so that he can play the role of a wounded vicar), while Irene chooses a lipstick shade to wear that she describes simply as ‘blood’. Both characters are therefore playing decidedly similar roles, and although Sherlock’s masquerade is that of respectable masculinity – an injured vicar with a bleeding face – rather than Irene’s hyperfeminized battledress, the end result is essentially the same: like Delilah, each of these characters is trying to lure the other into a relationship that is, undoubtedly, saturated with deceit. As well as mirroring each other in their use of masquerade, Irene and Sherlock also adopt a similar approach in their Delilah-like efforts to extract the other’s secrets and thus denude their quarry of their primary power source. As I mentioned earlier, Irene applies a razor-sharp intellect as well as her feminized body to manipulate Sherlock’s emotions (his egotistical pride), to the point that he leaps at the chance to solve, at her request, a top-secret government code. Likewise, Sherlock uses his notorious deductive skills to reveal Irene’s emotional attachment to him (more of which below), thereby allowing him to access and unlock the secret information on her phone. More than this, though, both Irene and Sherlock are, like Delilah, not averse to using violence against their ‘Samson’ substitute in order to achieve these goals. While Irene’s aggression towards Sherlock involves the visceral and emotional cruelty of sharp needles, a riding crop and a humiliating verbal assault against his reputation, Sherlock’s own attack on Irene is equally harsh. By uncovering her phone’s access code, he essentially deprives her of her only source of power and protection. As Lindsay Katzir notes, ‘Her phone, or more precisely, the sensitive information stored within it, both protects and endangers Irene’s body:  its presence provides her with leverage to ensure her safety, and its loss exposes her to physical harm. Sherlock asserts dominance over Irene’s body by finally unlocking her phone.’74 And, while she begs him to help her at this point, reminding him of her utter vulnerability without the phone, Sherlock remains coldly indifferent to her pleas (in fact he appears more than a little smug). Handing the unlocked phone over to his brother Mycroft (his own version of the Philistine elders perhaps), his only concern here is to receive his ‘reward’ – an acknowledgment from Mycroft that his damaged reputation and his status as consulting detective par excellence have been redeemed. Once again, Sherlock and Irene mirror each other in their aggressive duplicity, and we can perceive a deliberate slippage between their characters, as both vie to play the part of Delilah – discloser of secrets, betrayer of trusts, breaker of hearts, source of danger. Meanwhile, both fit equally comfortably into the role of Samson, a character whose power poses a threat to their opponent (be it Moriarty or the British establishment) and who must therefore be denuded of that power. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that, despite all their similarities, both Sherlock and Irene perform the part of Delilah with their own distinctive (and distinctively gendered) style. While Irene offers us hypersexualized and hyperfeminized dominatrix Delilah, Sherlock’s rendition of this role is utterly

74. Katzir, ‘I Am Sherlocked’, 109−10.

176

176

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

bereft of sexualized nuance. Indeed, his lack of sexuality is emphasized throughout this episode in a number of ways, rendering his contrast with Irene’s excess of sexuality even starker. When Mycroft first tells Sherlock about the infamous dominatrix Irene Adler, he advises him not to be ‘alarmed’ because the case is ‘about sex’. Sherlock replies that sex does not alarm him, to which Mycroft replies, ‘How would you know?’ Sherlock’s dissociation from a sexualized self is later reaffirmed by Irene, who tells him near the end of the episode that Moriarty’s nickname for him is ‘the virgin’. Even Sherlock himself verifies this facet of his character; when he finally guesses that Irene’s phone password betrays her feelings for him, he derides her for letting her heart rule her head. ‘I’ve always assumed that love is a dangerous disadvantage’, he tells her, as he unlocks her phone. ‘Thank you for the final proof.’ For Sherlock, sentiment is a ‘chemical defect found on the losing side’. By resisting such sentiment himself, and by taking advantage of Irene’s sexual desires, he claims a victory for cold, chemical logic over the dangerous vagaries of love. Thus, just as Delilah outwitted Samson by manipulating his feelings for her, so too does Sherlock ultimately defeat his ‘Samson’ when he exploits her emotional ties to him. In the phone-unlocking scene, Sherlock mirrors perfectly Delilah’s fatal woman performance in Judg. 16.19, depriving Irene of her power and mocking her newly-acquired vulnerability; he also emulates Irene’s own earlier act of duplicity, in that, like her, he wrings information from his quarry by identifying and attacking their vulnerabilities. Most pertinently, however, Sherlock enacts his treachery without any recourse to a sexualized script. As the seeming epitome of ‘masculine’ reason and logic here,75 he thus confirms the way that betrayal is typically gendered within cultural scripts and discourses. When perpetrated by a woman, it is, more often than not, understood to originate from her duplicitous sexuality, as we witness in Delilah’s numerous cultural and interpretive afterlives. Yet when that same betrayal is enacted by a man, it is interpreted as an emotionless, cerebral event, the result of a cold, clear – and decidedly un-sexualized – intellect. Irene, however, complicates this picture by adopting both masculine and feminine traits of deception. In her super-sexualized dominatrix disguise, she masks her own impressive brainpower with a distracting display of feminine allure; yet, as I mentioned earlier, it is her intellect, not her body, which ultimately allows her to manipulate Sherlock. Contemplating these gendered acts of duplicity performed by Sherlock and Irene in light of Delilah’s biblical characterization, we can thus reflect on her betrayal of Samson in a new light. Like Sherlock, Delilah’s manipulation of Samson in Judges 16 is bereft of explicitly sexualized content. True, she toys with his emotions, accusing him of not loving her enough to share the secret of his strength (vv. 13, 15-16). Yet her use of sentimental language here is just a means to an end, rather like Sherlock’s own stage-management of Irene’s desires. Midway through ‘Belgravia’, the couple share an intimate moment together, where Irene flirts

75. Taylor, ‘Return of “The Woman” ’, 56.

177

4. Delilah Redux

177

audaciously while Sherlock appears to respond, touching her wrist and staring into her eyes. We eventually discover that he was simply assessing her pulse rate and pupil dilation for physiological signs of her infatuation, which he then utilizes against her to deduce the access code to her phone. Delilah’s method of betrayal – her manipulation of Samson’s emotions – is therefore no different to Sherlock’s, yet we identify his as a signifier of ‘masculine’ logic while so often assuming that hers is seasoned with the ‘feminine’ flavours of duplicitous eroticism. By mirroring Delilah’s modus operandi here, Sherlock therefore affirms her subversion of those gendered scripts that sexualize a woman’s treachery, and reminds us instead that her deception is the consequence of her impressive intellectual prowess, rather than her sexual allure. Nonetheless, while we might coo appreciatively at Sherlock’s brilliant powers of deduction in this scene, we are all too aware that these same powers have a fatal potential. By unlocking her phone and handing it over to his brother, Mycroft, Sherlock renders Irene horribly vulnerable. Without the phone as her ‘protection’, she has no ‘get-out-of-jail free card’, and no leverage with which she can safely negotiate her own perilous landscape. Sherlock appears to be aware of this, telling Mycroft, ‘If you’re feeling kind, lock her up. Otherwise let her go. I doubt she’ll survive long without her protection.’ In response, Irene pleads with him to reconsider: ‘Please, you’re right. I won’t even last six months.’ Yet Sherlock remains unmoved by her tearful pleading. After all, she has wreaked havoc, threatening his life, his friends’ lives, his reputation and the security of his beloved England. Taking this into account, we might understand, or even sympathize with, his desire to put an end to her fatal potential. And, thinking about Delilah in this light, perhaps we can likewise see her own seemingly cold-hearted betrayal of Samson as an urgent necessity rather than the selfish whim of a capricious femme fatale. Like Sherlock, Delilah may have felt similarly impelled to rid herself and her community of a dangerously volatile character, whose actions inspired a never-ending stream of violence and conflict. Creators of Delilah’s interpretive and cultural afterlives do not often ascribe such a motive to her actions, yet this remains a plausible means of filling in the gaps surrounding her biblical characterization. It also challenges us to look at the narrative through her eyes, considering the events that may have compelled her, out of exigency, to play the role of fatal woman. And, equally importantly, because this same motivation is shared by our male hero, Sherlock, we are reminded that Delilah’s own merciless treatment of Samson is not simply because she is a woman; rather, she betrays Samson because she is a woman who is trapped in an intolerable situation – a place of rage – from which she has to do something – anything – in order to survive. Of course, those of you who have watched ‘Belgravia’ realize that things do not end quite yet. In the closing scenes, Mycroft informs John that, after losing her phone (and hence her protection), Irene was beheaded by a terrorist cell in Karachi. Yet this too turns out to be a final act of deception, perpetrated together by both of our Delilahs. Back in 221B Baker Street, we see Sherlock scrolling through the texts on Irene’s phone (which he insisted on keeping), pausing at the last one, which simply reads, ‘Goodbye, Mr Holmes.’ The scene cuts to a grainy,

178

178

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

video-recorded nightscape, where the figure of a woman, wearing a black hijab and abaya, kneels on the ground. It is Irene, trapped, we presume, in Karachi. As she sends a farewell text to Sherlock, a masked man stands behind her, holding a massive scimitar. Is this the end for Irene? Has she been foisted into the role of the femme fatale who is fated for destruction at the end of her narrative? Well, no, as it turns out. Just as Irene closes her eyes, waiting for death, she hears a sensuous gasp – the sound of her own text alert, which she had programmed into Sherlock’s mobile phone. Opening her eyes, she realizes that the man who stands beside her is Sherlock. ‘When I say run, run!’ he whispers. And thus the scene fades back to Baker Street, where we see a smiling Sherlock tuck the phone safely away into a drawer. For some interpreters of ‘Belgravia’, this closing scene only reasserts Sherlock’s masculinity, while affirming Irene’s role as a narrative device that asserts his ‘truly astounding superiority’.76 Others suggest that it also confirms Irene’s loss of agency, rendering her helpless without male help, while putting her ‘in her place’ as a signifier of women’s oppression.77 Yet, I  would like to offer an alternative reading, which subverts the familiar trope of the femme fatale’s inevitable demise and celebrates, instead, her freedom and survival. Sherlock and Irene – our two ‘fatal’ Delilah figures (our personnes fatales) – come together here to reassert their mutual strength in the face of danger. Irene is about to succumb to the violence of misogyny, which punishes those fatal women who lay claim to agency and power. Sherlock, meanwhile, remains liberated, reminding us that men whose behaviour mirrors that of the femme fatale are more likely to be rewarded than punished. Perhaps, then, we can see Sherlock here as one Delilah reaching out to another, insisting that this gendered disparity, which betrays the misogyny inherent in the femme fatale trope, has to be subverted. Irene, meanwhile, need not be viewed as a helpless victim, but rather as a character who simply has to survive. For, if ‘Belgravia’ leaves us with one message, it is that ‘fatal’ actions (carried out by both men and women) are often reactions to danger and threats perpetrated from a place of rage; these reactions, moreover, are as likely to protect as they are to destroy. In his role as Delilah, Sherlock has to dismantle a threat he feels both to himself and to all that he holds dear; Irene, too, offers us a Delilah whose own violence testifies to the violence with which others threaten her. In other words, both characters, regardless of their gender, are simply trying to protect themselves here. Their mutual mirroring of Delilah throughout this episode therefore demands that we look beyond this biblical figure’s gender and her sexuality to see how these features of her persona intersect with other factors in the narrative to compel her responses to the world. And, as both of our ‘Belgravia’ Delilahs go on to survive another day, they also invite us to keep the biblical Delilah alive and kicking in our own conscience, extracting her from those cultural and interpretive afterlives that dismiss her as a force too dangerous to endure.

76. For example, ibid., 57; Douglas, ‘Why Can’t They Get Irene Adler Right?’ 77. For example, Primorac, ‘Naked Truth’, 103.

179

C ONCLUSION

Close your eyes and think of Delilah. Whom do you see? What does she look like? A shapely and sensuous femme fatale, sheathed in shimmering silks and Oriental jewel tones? An earthly chimera  – half woman, half beast  – whose treacherous talons gouge and claw her prey? Perhaps you might conjure her up with the chiaroscuro contours of the noiresque spider woman, whose lethality is etched upon her ‘dark’ body and whose presence evokes ‘something more than night’. Or instead you may invoke her in the vibrant hues of the neo-noir femme fatale, whose rule-breaking sexuality leaves scars of erotic violence upon the bodies of her hapless victims. And maybe, just maybe, Delilah may haunt your dreams as an amatory figure of terrifying queerness, her hyperfeminine masquerade betraying a gender-bending core of masculine power. Of course, after reading this book, you may have an entirely different vision of Delilah, which destabilizes her ubiquitous afterlives as a dangerously sexualized femme fatale. You may think of her instead as a woman who is trapped in a brutally gendered place of rage, desperate enough to do anything in order to survive. You may recognize her vulnerability as the object of Samson’s desires, and see in her eyes a frantic need to be rid of this volatile suitor. You may even suspect that she is a victim of this Hebrew strongman’s coercive sexual attentions, driven to enact her own retaliatory violence against him in order to make her escape. And yet, while you identify her as a vulnerable presence within the Judges 16 text, you may also be alert to her strengths, and the power that she wields to sustain her narrative survival. You may applaud her razor-sharp intellect, which she uses to extract from Samson the secret of his strength. You may recognize and celebrate her bravery and nerve, as she single-handedly succeeds where whole armies of Philistines had failed. And, while you may frown at her violence and treachery, you can at least understand them, not as signs of her sexualized depravity, but as exigent responses to an intolerable literary life. This bustling throng of afterlives for Delilah may seem disorienting at first, contradicting and clashing with each other as they jostle to catch our eye. And yet, as I  reiterated throughout this book, they are all viable afterlives, given the multiple gaps and ambiguities that surround Delilah’s character in Judges 16. Filling in these gaps and ambiguities with our own distinctive imaginings, we create a vision of Delilah that recognizes her status as a fatal woman, but, at the same time, complicates this status by viewing her narrative landscape through her eyes. Rather than dismissing her as a deadly femme fatale, whose erotic sexuality

180

180

Reimagining Delilah’s Afterlives as Femme Fatale

emasculated Samson, we stop to ask why she is a femme fatale, looking beyond our own dominant gendered discourses to really see and understand the forces that shape her textual persona. In doing so, we begin to subvert and deconstruct the toxic ideologies that have encased the femme fatale across space and time, challenging the misogyny that often lies rooted in her multiple creations. As I  stressed in my introduction, the fatal woman is a cultural construct, created during times of social unease as a potent symbol of gendered chaos and disaffection. As such, she reinforces and sustains dominant cultural ideologies about women’s marginal placement in the world and the inherent dangers of their agency and empowerment. For this reason alone, we need to reimagine and reclaim the fatal woman’s cultural presence by challenging those gendered discourses that condemn her, and by enfolding her in new lights of understanding. Given her ubiquity, this is no small task. But I have made a start here, inviting Delilah to share her story with us. I  have delighted in her company, and hope that you too have enjoyed spending time with this deliciously complex femme fatale.

181

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbott, Megan E. The Street Was Mine: White Masculinity in Hardboiled Fiction and Film Noir. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Abbott, Megan E. ‘“Nothing You Can’t Fix”: Screening Marlowe’s Masculinity’. Studies in the Novel 35, no. 3 (2003): 305–24. Abrams, Jerold J. ‘From Sherlock Holmes to the Hard-Boiled Detective in Film Noir’. In Conrad, Philosophy of Film Noir, 69–88. Ackerman, Susan. Warrior, Dancer, Seductress, Queen: Women in Judges and Biblical Israel. New York: Doubleday, 1998. Ackerman, Susan. ‘What if Judges Had Been Written by a Philistine?’ BibInt 8 (2000): 33–41. Alberto, Maria. ‘ “Of Dubious and Questionable Memory”: The Collision of Gender and Canon in Creating Sherlock’s Postfeminist Femme Fatale’. In Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 66–84. Alkier, Stefan. ‘Intertextuality and the Semiotics of Biblical Texts’. In Hays, Alkier and Huzienga, Reading the Bible Intertextually, 3–21. Allen, Virginia M. The Femme Fatale: Erotic Icon. New York: Whitston, 1983. Alter, Robert. ‘Samson without Folklore’. In Text and Tradition: The Hebrew Bible and Folklore, edited by Susan Niditch, 47–56. Semeia Studies. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1990. Alter, Robert. Ancient Israel. The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings. New York: W. W. Norton, 2013. Amit, Yairah. ‘I Delilah: A Victim of Interpretation’. In First Person: Essays in Biblical Autobiography, edited by Philip R. Davies, 59–76. Biblical Seminar 81. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Auerbach, Erich. Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in Western Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003. Auld, A. Graeme. Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. Daily Study Bible. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1984. Bade, Patrick. Femme Fatale: Images of Evil and Fascinating Women. London: Ash and Grant, 1979. Bal, Mieke. Lethal Love: Feminist Literary Readings of Biblical Love Stories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1987. Bal, Mieke. Death and Dissymmetry: The Politics of Coherence in the Book of Judges. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988. Bal, Mieke. ‘Dealing/with/Women: Daughters in the Book of Judges’. In Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, edited by Alice Bach, 317–33. New York: Routledge, 1999. Bal, Mieke, and Christine van Boheemen. ‘The Rhetoric of Subjectivity’. Poetics Today 5 (1984): 337–76. Barthes, Roland. Image Music Text. Translated by Stephen Heath. London: Fontana Press, 1977. Baruch, Elaine Hoffman. ‘Forbidden Words – Enchanting Song: The Treatment of Delilah in Literature and Music’. In To Speak or Be Silent: The Paradox of Disobedience in the Lives of Women, edited by Lena B. Ross, 239–49. Wilmette: Chiron Publications, 1993.

182

182

Bibliography

Bauer, Robin. Queer BDSM Intimacies: Critical Consent and Pushing Boundaries. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Bell, Melanie. Femininity in the Frame: Women and 1950s British Popular Cinema. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010. Berger, John. Ways of Seeing. London: Penguin, 1990. Bielski, Sarah. ‘The Femme Fatale as Seen in the Works of J. K. Huysmans, Felicien Rops and Aubrey Beardsley’. Art Criticism 17, no. 1 (2001): 46–54. Binias, Silke. Symbol and Symptom: The Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century and Feminist Criticism. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2007. Birchard, Robert S. Cecil B. DeMille’s Hollywood. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2004. Bird, Phyllis A. ‘“To Play the Harlot”: An Inquiry into an Old Testament Metaphor’. In Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel, edited by Peggy L. Day, 75–94. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989. Blenkinsopp, Joseph. ‘Structure and Style in Judges 13–16’. JBL 82 (1963): 65–76. Blier, Steven. ‘The Secret of Samson’s Strength’. Opera News 62, no. 12 (28 February 1998): 8–12. Blyth, Caroline. The Narrative of Rape in Genesis 34: Interpreting Dinah’s Silence. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. Blyth, Caroline. ‘When Raymond Met Delilah’. Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 4, no. 1 (2014): 41−63. Bohmbach, Karla G. ‘Names and Naming in the Biblical World’. In Meyers, Craven and Kraemer, Women in Scripture, 33–9. Boling, Robert G. Judges: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. New York: Doubleday, 1975. Bonhomme, Denise. The Poetic Enigma of Alfred de Vigny: The Rosetta Stone of Esoteric Literature. Victoria, BC: Trafford Publishing, 2003. Boozer, Jack. ‘The Lethal Femme Fatale in the Noir Tradition’. Journal of Film and Video 51, nos 3–4 (1999–2000): 20–35. Borde, Raymond, and Étienne Chaumeton. Panorama du Film Noir Américain: 1941– 1953. Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1955. Borde, Raymond, and Étienne Chaumeton. ‘Towards a Definition of Film Noir’. In Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader, 17–25. Borde, Raymond, and Étienne Chaumeton. A Panorama of American Film Noir (1941– 1953). Translated by Paul Hammond. San Francisco: City Lights, 2002. Braun, Heather. The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale in British Literature, 1790–1910. Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press; Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2012. Brenner, Athalya. The Israelite Woman: Social Role and Literary Type in Biblical Narrative. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1985. Brenner, Athalya, ed. A Feminist Companion to Judges. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993. Bronfen, Elisabeth. ‘Femme Fatale: Negotiations of Tragic Desire’. New Literary History 35, no. 1 (2004): 103–16. Bronfen, Elisabeth. ‘The Female Side of Crime: Film Noir’s Femme Fatale and the Dark Side of Modernity’. In Crime Culture: Figuring Criminality in Fiction and Film, edited by Bran Nicol, Eugene McNulty and Patricia Pulham, 71–89. London: Continuum, 2011.

183

Bibliography

183

Bronfen, Elisabeth. Night Passages: Philosophy, Literature, and Film. Translated by Elisabeth Bronfen and David Brenner. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013. Bronner, Leila Leah. ‘Valorized or Vilified? The Women of Judges in Midrashic Sources’. In Brenner, Feminist Companion to Judges, 78–86. Chandler, Raymond. Finger Man. London: Ace, 1960. Chandler, Raymond. Farewell My Lovely. Camberwell: Penguin Books, 2009 [1940]. Clanton, Dan. Daring, Disreputable and Devout: Interpreting the Bible’s Women in the Arts and Music. New York: T&T Clark International, 2009. Clines, David J., ed. Dictionary of Classical Hebrew. 9 vols. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 1995–2016. Colgan, Emily. ‘Analogies with Anathoth: Reading Land, Reading Jeremiah in the Paintings of Michael Shepherd’. In The Bible and Art: Oceanic Perspectives, edited by Caroline Blyth and Nasili Vaka’uta, 11−28. London: Bloomsbury, 2017. Conrad, Mark T., ed. The Philosophy of Film Noir. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2005. Copjec, Joan, ed. Shades of Noir. London: Verso, 1993. Cowie, Elizabeth. ‘Film Noir and Women’. In Copjec, Shades of Noir, 121–65. Craciun, Adriana. Fatal Women of Romanticism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Crenshaw, James L. ‘The Samson Saga: Filial Devotion or Erotic Attachment?’ ZAW 86 (1974): 470–504. Crowell, Bradley L. ‘Good Girl, Bad Girl: Foreign Women of the Deuteronomistic History in Postcolonial Perspective’. BibInt 21 (2013): 1–18. Davies, Eryl W. The Dissenting Reader: Feminist Approaches to the Hebrew Bible. Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003. Davies, Philip R. Yours Faithfully: Virtual Letters from the Bible. London: Equinox, 2004. DeMille, Cecil B. The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille. Edited by Donald Hayne. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1959. Diawara, Manthia. ‘Noir by Noirs: Toward a New Realism in Black Cinema’. In Copjec, Shades of Noir, 261–78. Dick, Bernard F. ‘Columbia’s Dark Ladies and the Femmes Fatales of Film Noir’. Literature/ Film Quarterly 23, no. 3 (1995): 155–62. Dijkstra, Bram. Idols of Perversity: Fantasies of Feminine Evil in Fin-de-Siècle Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Doane, Mary Anne. ‘Film and the Masquerade: Theorizing the Female Spectator’. Screen 23 (1982): 74–87. Doane, Mary Ann. Femmes Fatales: Feminism, Film Theory, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge, 1991. Donahue, Anne T. ‘Florence and the Machine: Delilah’. Rookie, 21 October 2015. Available online: http://www.rookiemag.com/2015/10/florence-and-the-machinedelilah (accessed 28 April 2017).Douglas, Carol Nelson. ‘Why Can’t They Get Irene Adler Right?’ Mystery Scene, Summer 2013, 26–7. Available online: https://www. mysteryscenemag.com/20-articles/articles/3237-why-cant-they-get-irene-adler-right?h ighlight=WyJhZGxlciIsImFkbGVyJ3MiXQ (accessed 28 April 2017). Dow, Bonnie J. Prime-Time Feminism: Television, Media Culture, and the Women’s Movement since 1970. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Dyer, Richard. ‘Postscript: Queers and Women in Film Noir’. In Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 123–30.

184

184

Bibliography

Edwards, Katie B. Admen and Eve: The Bible in Contemporary Advertising. The Bible in the Modern World 48. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012. Erickson, Todd. ‘Kill Me Again: Movement Becomes Genre’. In Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader, 307–30. Evans, Caroline. ‘Desire and Dread: Alexander McQueen and the Contemporary Femme Fatale’. In Body Dressing, edited by Joanne Entwistle and Elizabeth B. Wilson, 201–14. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2001. Exum, J. Cheryl. ‘Delilah’. In Meyers, Craven and Kraemer, Women in Scripture, 68–9. Exum, J. Cheryl. ‘Lethal Woman 2: Reflections on Delilah and Her Incarnation as Liz Hurley’. In Borders, Boundaries and the Bible, edited by Martin O’Kane, 254–73. JSOTSup 313. London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002. Exum, J. Cheryl. Plotted, Shot, and Painted: Cultural Representations of Biblical Women. 2nd rev. edn. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2012. Exum, J. Cheryl. Fragmented Women: Feminist (Sub)versions of Biblical Narratives. 2nd edn. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2015. Facos, Michelle. Introduction to Nineteenth Century Art. Florence, KY: Routledge, 2011. Farghaly, Nadine, ed. Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes: Essays on Film and Television Adaptations since 2009. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2015. Farrimond, Katherine. ‘Bad Girls in Crisis: The New Teenage Femme Fatale’. In Waters, Women on Screen, 77–89. Farrimond, Katherine. ‘“Stay Still So We Can See Who You Are”: Anxiety and Bisexual Activity in the Contemporary Femme Fatale Film’. Journal of Bisexuality 12, no. 1 (2012): 138–54. Fewell, Dana Nolan. ‘Judges’. In Women’s Bible Commentary, edited by Carol A. Newsom and Sharon H. Ringe, 73–83. Expanded edn. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. Finley, Erin. ‘One of These Days These Boots Are Gonna Walk All over You: An Examination of the Femme Fatale’s Evolution’. In Beauty and the Abject: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Corrado Federici, Leslie Anne BoldtIrons and Ernesto Virgulti, 211–23. Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature 88. New York: Peter Lang, 2007. Fishelov, David. ‘Roads Not Taken, Taken by the Adapter: The Case of Biblical Samson’. Connotations 18 (2008–9): 28–47. Fishelov, David. Dialogues with/and Great Books: The Dynamics of Canon Formation. Eastbourne: Sussex Academic Press, 2012. Fisher, Burton D., ed. Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah. Opera Classics Library Series. Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2005. Fisher, Burton D., ed. Camille Saint-Saëns’s Samson and Delilah. Opera Journeys Libretto Series. Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2007. Flory, Dan. ‘Ethnicity and Race in American Film Noir’. In Spicer and Hanson, Companion to Film Noir, 387–404. Forouzan, Elham and David J. Cooke. ‘Figuring Out La Femme Fatale: Conceptual and Assessment Issues Concerning Psychopathy in Females’. Behavioral Sciences and the Law 23 (2005): 765–78. Foster, Gwendolyn Audrey. ‘Queer Aesthetics of Film Noir: Born to Kill’. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 28 (2010): 80–5. Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge and the Discourse on Language. Translated by A. M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.

185

Bibliography

185

Foucault, Michel. The History of Sexuality, Volume 1: An Introduction. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. Foucault, Michel. ‘Truth and Power’. In Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972−1977, edited by Colin Gordon, 109−33. Translated by Colin Gordon, Leo Marshall, John Mepham and Kate Soper. New York: Pantheon Books, 1980. Fronius, Helen, and Anna Linton, eds. Women and Death: Representations of Female Victims and Perpetrators in German Culture 1500–2000. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2008. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth. New York: Free Press, 1992. Gafney, Wil. ‘A Womanist Midrash of Delilah: Don’t Hate the Playa Hate the Game’. In Womanist Interpretations of the Bible: Expanding the Discourse, edited by Gay L. Byron and Vanessa Lovelace. Semeia Series. Atlanta: SBL Press, 2016. Gaillard, Franҫoise, and Colette Windish. ‘Naked but Hairy: Women and Misogyny in Fin de Siècle Representations’. South Central Review 29, no. 3 (2012): 163–76. Galpaz-Feller, Pnina. Samson: The Hero and the Man. The Story of Samson (Judges 13–16). Bible in History. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006. Gates, Philippa. Detecting Men: Masculinity and the Hollywood Detective Film. Cultural Studies in Film/Video. Albany : State University of New York Press, 2006. Gates, Philippa. Detecting Women: Gender and the Hollywood Detective Film. Cultural Studies in Film/Video. Albany : State University of New York Press, 2011. Georgievska-Shine, Aneta. ‘Rubens and the Tropes of Deceit in Samson and Delilah’. Word & Image: A Journal of Verbal/Visual Enquiry 23 (2007): 460–73. Gledhill, Christine. ‘Klute 1: A Contemporary Film Noir and Feminist Criticism’. In Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 20−34. Gray, John. Joshua, Judges, Ruth. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans; Basingstoke: M. Morgan & Scott, 1986. Grimes, William. ‘She Who Wields the Scissors, Wields Power’. New York Times, 8 December 1996. Grohmann, Marianne. ‘Psalm 113 and the Song of Hannah (1 Samuel 2:1-10): A Paradigm for Intertextual Reading?’ in Hays, Alkier and Huzienga, Reading the Bible Intertextually, 119–35. Grossman, Julie. ‘Film Noir’s “Femme Fatales” Hard-Boiled Women: Moving Beyond Gender Fantasies’. Quarterly Review of Film and Video 24 (2007): 19–30. Grossman, Julie. Rethinking the Femme Fatale in Film Noir: Ready for Her Close-Up. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009. Grossman, Julie. ‘“Well, Aren’t We Ambitious,” or “You’ve Made up Your Mind I’m Guilty”: Reading Women as Wicked in American Film Noir’. In Hanson and O’Rawe, Femme Fatale, 199–213. Gruenwald, Ithamar. ‘A Technique of the Midrash: Linkage by Sound Patterns’. Hasifrut 1 (1968–9): 726–7, 763. Gunn, David M. Judges. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2005. Guthridge, I. Great Women in History and Art. Middle Park: Medici School Publications, 1995. Halberstam, Judith. ‘Imagined Violence/Queer Violence: Representation, Rage, and Resistance’. Social Text 37 (Winter 1993): 187–201. Hales, Barbara. ‘Projecting Trauma: The Femme Fatale in Weimar and Hollywood Film Noir’. Women in German Yearbook: Feminist Studies in German Literature and Culture 23 (2007): 224–43.

186

186

Bibliography

Hall, Stuart. ‘Race, Culture, and Communications: Looking Backward and Forward at Cultural Studies’. Rethinking Marxism 5 (1992): 10−18. Halperin, David M. One Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on Greek Love. New York: Routledge, 1990. Halton, Charles. ‘Samson’s Last Laugh: The Ś/ŠHQ Pun in Judges 16:25-27’. JBL 128 (2009): 61–4. Hanson, Helen, and Catherine O’Rawe, eds. The Femme Fatale: Images, Histories, Contexts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010. Hanson, Helen, and Catherine O’Rawe. ‘Introduction: “Cherchez la femme” ’. In Hanson and O’Rawe, Femme Fatale, 1–8. Hart, Lynda. Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Harvey, Sylvia. ‘Woman’s Place: The Absent Family of Film Noir’. In Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 35–46. Hays, Richard B., Stefan Alkier and Leroy A. Huizenga, eds. Reading the Bible Intertextually. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009. Head, Edith, and J. K. Ardmore. The Dress Doctor. Kingswood: Little Brown & Co., 1960. Hedgecock, Jennifer. The Femme Fatale in Victorian Literature: The Danger and the Sexual Threat. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. Heller, Reinhold. The Earthly Chimera and the Femme Fatale: Fear of Women in Nineteenth Century Art. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981. Herzberg, Bruce. ‘Samson’s Moment of Truth’. BibInt 18 (2010): 226–50. Hilgart, John. ‘Philip Marlowe’s Labour of Words’. Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44, no. 4 (2002): 368–92. Hoffmann-Curtius, Kathrin. ‘Constructing the Femme Fatale: A Dialogue between Sexology and the Visual Arts in Germany around 1900’. In Fronius and Linton, Women and Death, 157–85. Hollinger, Karen. ‘Film Noir, Voice-Over, and the Femme Fatale’. In Silver and Ursini, Film Noir Reader, 243–59. Hornsby, Teresa J. ‘Gender Role Reversal and the Violated Lesbian Body’. Journal of Lesbian Studies 3, no. 3 (1999): 61–72. Horsley, Lee. The Noir Thriller. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Horsley, Lee. Twentieth-Century Crime Fiction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Huysmans, J. K. À Rebours. New York: Dover Publications, 1969. Ipsen, Avaren. Sex Working and the Bible. London: Equinox, 2009. Jaber, Maysaa Husam. Criminal Femmes Fatales in American Hardboiled Crime Fiction. Crime Files. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. Jack, Alison. The Bible and Literature. London: SCM Press, 2012. Jackson, Melissa A. Comedy and Feminist Interpretation of the Hebrew Bible: A Subversive Collaboration. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. James, Nick. ‘Nicolas Roeg: The Last British Romantic’. Sight and Sound 21, no. 3 (2011): 28–30. Jankowiak, William, and Angela Ramsey. ‘Femme Fatale and Status Fatale: A CrossCultural Perspective’. Cross-Cultural Research 34 (2000): 57–69. Jones, Amelia. ‘“She Was Bad News”: Male Paranoia and the Contemporary New Woman’. Camera Obscura 25–6 (1991): 297–320. Kahr, Madlyn. ‘Delilah’. The Art Bulletin 54 (1972): 282–99. Kaplan, E. Ann. Women and Film: Both Sides of the Camera. New York: Methuen, 1983. Kaplan, E. Ann, ed. Women in Film Noir. 2nd edn. London: BFI Publishers, 1998.

187

Bibliography

187

Karssen, G. Book 2: Her Name Is Woman. Colorado Springs, CO: Navpress, 1991. Katzir, Lindsay. ‘I Am Sherlocked: Adapting Victorian Gender and Sexuality in “A Scandal in Belgravia” ’. In Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 98–117. Kermode, Frank. The Sense of an Ending. New York: Oxford University Press, 1967. Klein, Lilian R. The Triumph of Irony in the Book of Judges. JSOTSup 68. Bible and Literature 14. Sheffield: Almond Press, 1988. Klein, Lilian R. ‘The Book of Judges: Paradigm and Deviation in Images of Women’. In Brenner, Feminist Companion to Judges, 55–71. Klein, Lilian R. ‘A Spectrum of Female Characters in the Book of Judges’. In Brenner, Feminist Companion to Judges, 24–33. Klein, Lilian R. From Deborah to Esther: Sexual Politics in the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003. Köhler, Ludwig, Walter Baumgartner and Johann Stamm. The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament. Koury, P. A. Yes, Mr. De Mille. New York: Putnam, 1959. Kozlovic, Anton Karl. ‘The Construction of Samson’s Three Lovers in Cecil B. DeMille’s Technicolor Testament, Samson and Delilah (1949)’. Women in Judaism 7 (2010): 1–31. Kranidas, Thomas. ‘Dalila’s Role in Samson Agonistes’. Studies in English Literature, 1500– 1900 6 (1966): 125–37. Kristeva, Julia. ‘Word, Dialogue and Novel’. In The Kristeva Reader, edited by Toril Moi, 34−61. Oxford: Blackwell, 1986. Krutnik, Frank. In a Lonely Street: Film Noir, Genre, Masculinity. Florence, KY: Routledge, 1991. Lalvani, Suren. ‘Consuming the Exotic Other’. Critical Studies in Mass Communication 12 (1995): 263–86. Lamarr, Hedy. Ecstasy and Me: My Life as a Woman. New York: Penguin, 1966. Langmuir, Erika. The National Gallery Companion Guide. London: National Gallery Publications, 1994. Lazarewicz-Wyrzkowska, Ela. ‘Samson: Masculinity Lost (and Regained?)’. In Men and Masculinity in the Hebrew Bible and Beyond, edited by Ovidiu Creangǎ, 171–88. The Bible in the Modern World 33. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2010. Ledger, Sally. The New Woman: Fiction and Feminism at the Fin de Siècle. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997. Leighton, Anne. ‘The American Matron and the Lilies’. Harper’s Magazine, December 1946. Leneman, Helen. ‘Portrayals of Power in the Stories of Delilah and Bathsheba: Seduction in Song’. In Culture, Entertainment, and the Bible, edited by George Aichele, 139–55. JSOTSup 309. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000. Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Femininity, and Representation. Gender, Racism, Ethnicity. London: Routledge, 1996 Llewellyn-Jones, Lloyd. ‘The Fashioning of Delilah: Costume Design, Historicism and Fantasy in Cecil B. DeMille’s Samson and Delilah (1949)’. In The Clothed Body in the Ancient World, edited by Liza Cleland, Mary Harlow and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, 14– 29. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2005. Locke, Ralph P. ‘Constructing the Oriental “Other”: Saint-Saëns’s “Samson et Dalila”’. Cambridge Opera Journal 3 (1991): 261–302. Lockyer, H. The Women of the Bible. London: Pickering & Inglis, 1967. Lopate, Phillip. ‘Judges: Tests of Weakness. Samson and Delilah’. In Congregation: Contemporary Writers Read the Jewish Bible, edited by D. Rosenberg, 70– 97. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.

188

188

Bibliography

Lott, Eric. ‘The Whiteness of Film Noir’. American Literary History 9 (1997): 542–66. Loughlin, Gerard. ‘Biblical Bodies’. Theology and Sexuality 12 (2005): 9–27. Luciani, D. ‘Samson: l’amour rend aveugle’. VT 59 (2009): 323–6. Łuczyńska-Hołdys, Małgorzata. Soft-Shed Kisses: Re-Visioning the Femme Fatale in English Poetry of the 19th Century. Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013. McCann, J. Clinton. Judges. Louisville, KY: John Knox Press, 1989. McClintock, Anne. Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest. London: Routledge, 1995. McGrail, Peter. ‘Eroticism, Death and Redemption: The Operatic Construction of the Biblical Femme Fatale’. BibInt 15 (2007): 405–27. McKenzie, John L. The World of Judges. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1966. McRobbie, Angela. The Aftermath of Feminism: Gender, Culture and Social Change. London: Sage Publications, 2009. Maine, David. The Book of Samson. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007. Mainon, Dominique, and James Ursini. Femme Fatale: Cinema’s Unforgettable Lethal Ladies. New York: Limelight Editions, 2009. Maslin, Janet. ‘The Book of Samson’. New York Times, 5 November 2006. Available online: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/arts/05iht-bookmon.3401187.html?_r=0 (accessed 28 April 2017). Matthews, Victor H. Judges and Ruth. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Maxfield, James F. The Fatal Woman: Sources of Male Anxiety in American Film Noir, 1941–1999. Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Presses, 1996. Menon, Elizabeth K. Evil By Design: The Creation and Marketing of the Femme Fatale. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2006. Meredith, Betsy. ‘Desire and Danger: The Drama of Betrayal in Judges and Judith’. In AntiCovenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible, edited by Mieke Bal, 63–78. Sheffield: Almond Press, 1989. Meyer, Stephen C. Epic Sound: Music in Postwar Hollywood Biblical Films. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015. Meyers, Carol L., Toni Craven and Ross Shepard Kraemer, eds. Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Named and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000. Miller, J. Hillis. ‘Border Crossings, Translating Theory: Ruth’. In The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between, edited by Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, 207−23. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996. Milton, John. ‘Samson Agonistes’. In The Poetical Works of John Milton. Project Gutenberg. Available online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/1745/1745-h/1745-h.htm - link2H_4_ 0075 (accessed 28 April 2017). Minogue, Valerie. ‘The Tableau in “La Colère de Samson”’. The Modern Language Review 60, no. 3 (1965): 374−8. Mizejewski, Linda. ‘Dressed to Kill: Postfeminist Noir’. Cinema Journal 44, no. 2 (2005): 12–17. Mobley, Greg. The Empty Men: The Heroic Tradition of Ancient Israel. Anchor Bible Reference Library. New York: Doubleday, 2005. Mobley, Greg. Samson and the Liminal Hero in the Ancient Near East. New York: T&T Clark International, 2006.

189

Bibliography

189

Modleski, Tania. Feminism without Women: Culture and Criticism in a ‘Postfeminist’ Age. New York: Routledge, 1991. Montrelay, Michèle. ‘Inquiry into Femininity’. m/f 1 (1978): 83–101. Mulvey, Laura. ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18. Musa, Aysha. ‘Reading Solomon J. Solomon’s Samson against the Book of Judges’. FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts 23 (Winter 2016): 1–10. Myles, Robert J. ‘Terminating Samson: The Sarah Connor Chronicles and the Rise of New Biblical Meaning’. Relegere: Studies in Religion and Reception 1 (2011): 329–50. Naremore, James. More than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2008. Neale, Steve. ‘ “I Can’t Tell Anymore Whether You’re Lying”: Double Indemnity, Human Desire and the Narratology of Femmes Fatales’. In Hanson and O’Rawe, Femme Fatale, 187–98. Negra, Diane. Off-White Hollywood. London: Routledge, 2001. Neroni, Hilary. The Violent Woman: Femininity, Narrative, and Violence in Contemporary American Cinema. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2005. Newsom, Carol A., Sharon H. Ringe and Jacqueline E. Lapsley, eds. Women’s Bible Commentary. 3rd edn. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2012. Niditch, Susan. ‘Samson as Culture Hero, Trickster, and Bandit: The Empowerment of the Weak’. CBQ 52, no. 4 (1990): 608–24. Niditch, Susan. Judges: A Commentary. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. Nordau, Max. Degeneration. London: William Heinemann, 1895. Available online:  https://archive.org/details/degeneration035137mbp (accessed 28 April 2017). Ogdon, Bethany. ‘Hard-Boiled Ideology’. Critical Quarterly 34, no. 1 (1992): 71–87. Os, Henk van, ed. Femmes Fatales 1860−1910. Antwerp: Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten, 2002. Os, Henk van. ‘A Framing for the Femme Fatale’. In van Os, Femmes Fatales, 1–19. Os, Henk van. Stories of Images. Amsterdam: Salomé-Amsterdam University Press, 2002. Paramount Studios. Cecil B. DeMille’s Masterpiece Samson and Delilah. Hollywood: Paramount, 1949. Parisi, Hope. ‘Discourse and Danger: Women’s Heroism in the Bible and Dalila’s SelfDefence’. In Spokesperson Milton: Voices in Contemporary Criticism, edited by Charles W. Durham and Kristin Pruitt McColgan, 260–74. Selinsgrove, PA: Susquehanna University Press, 1994. Pepper, Andrew. ‘The “Hard-Boiled” Genre’. In Rzepka and Horsley, Companion to Crime Fiction, 140–51. Pidduck, Julianne. ‘The 1990s Hollywood Fatal Femme: (Dis)Figuring Feminism, Family, Irony, Violence’. Cineaction 38 (1995): 64–72. Place, Janey. ‘Women in Film Noir’. In Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 47–68. Pressler, Carolyn. Joshua, Judges, and Ruth. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2002. Primorac, Antonija. ‘The Naked Truth: The Postfeminist Afterlives of Irene Adler’. NeoVictorian Studies 6, no. 2 (2013): 89–113. Projansky, Sarah. Watching Rape: Film and Television in Postfeminist Culture. New York: New York University Press, 2001.

190

190

Bibliography

Rabinowitz, Paula. Black and White Noir: America’s Pulp Modernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2002. Rivière, Joan. ‘Womanliness as a Masquerade’. International Journal of Psychoanalysis 10 (1929): 303–13. Rolls, Alistair, and Deborah Walker. French and American Noir: Dark Crossings. New York: Palgrave, 2009. Rowlett, Lori. ‘Violent Femmes and S/M: Queering Samson and Delilah’. In Queer Commentary and the Hebrew Bible, edited by Ken Stone, 106–15. JSOTSup 334. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2001. Rudy, Kathy. ‘Sex Radical Communities and the Future of Sexual Ethics’. Journal of Lesbian Studies 3 (1999): 133–42. Rutledge, David. Reading Marginally: Feminism, Deconstruction and the Bible. Leiden: Brill, 1996. Ryan, Roger. Judges. Readings: A New Biblical Commentary. Sheffield: Sheffield Phoenix Press, 2007. Sarna, Nahum. ‘Delilah’. EncJud 5:539. Sasa, Ghada Suleiman. The Femme Fatale in American Literature. Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2008. Sasson, Jack M. ‘Who Cut Samson’s Hair? (And Other Trifling Issues Raised by Judges 16)’. Prooftexts 8 (1988): 333–46. Scherer, Barrymore Laurence. ‘Song of the Orient’. Opera News 62, no. 12 (28 February 1998): 18–23. Schneider, Tammi J. Judges. Collegeville, MI: Liturgical Press, 2000. Scholz, Susanne. ‘Judges’. In Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley, Women’s Bible Commentary, 113−27. Schrader, Paul. ‘Notes on Film Noir’. Film Comment 8, no. 1 (1972): 8–13. Schwartz, Matthew B., and Kalman J. Kaplan. The Fruit of Her Hands: A Psychology of Biblical Women. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2007. Segert, Stanislav. ‘Paranomasia in the Samson Narrative in Judges XII–XIV’. VT 34, no. 4 (1984): 454–61. Sherwin, Miranda. ‘Deconstructing the Male: Masochism, Female Spectatorship, and the Femme Fatale in Fatal Attraction, Body of Evidence, and Basic Instinct’. Journal of Popular Film and Television 35, no. 4 (2008): 174–82. Shokoff, James. ‘The Feminine Ideal in the Masculine Private Eye’. Clues 14, no. 2 (1993): 51–62. Showalter, Elaine. Sexual Anarchy: Gender and Culture at the Fin de Siècle. London: Virago Press, 1992. Siff, Myra J. ‘Samson’. EncJud 17:749−52. Silver, Alain, and James Ursini, eds. Film Noir Reader. New York: Limelight Editions, 1996. Simon, Ulrich. ‘Samson and the Heroic’. In Ways of Reading the Bible, edited by Michael Wadsworth, 154–67. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1981. Smith, Carol. ‘Samson and Delilah: A Parable of Power?’ JSOT 76 (1997): 45–57. Smith, Carol. ‘Delilah: A Suitable Case for (Feminist) Treatment?’ In Judges: A Feminist Companion to the Bible (Second Series), edited by Athalya Brenner, 93–116. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999. Snyder, Josey Bridges. ‘Delilah and Her Interpreters.’ In Newsom, Ringe and Lapsley, Women’s Bible Commentary, 138−41. Snyder, Scott. ‘Personality Disorder and the Film Noir Femme Fatale’. Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 8, no. 3 (2001): 155–68.

191

Bibliography

191

Sobchack, Vivian. ‘Lounge Time: Postwar Crises and the Chronotype of Film Noir’. In Refiguring American Film Genres: History and Theory, edited by Nick Browne, 129–70. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1998. Soggin, J. Alberto. Judges: A Commentary. 2nd edn. Translated by John Bowden. Old Testament Library. London: SCM Press, 1987. Spicer, Andrew. Film Noir. Inside Film. Harlow : Pearson Education, 2002. Spicer, Andrew, and Helen Hanson, eds. Companion to Film Noir. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2013. Stables, Kate. ‘The Postmodern Always Rings Twice: Constructing the Femme Fatale in 90s Cinema’. In Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 164–82. Stanton, Elizabeth Cady. The Woman’s Bible: A Classic Feminist Perspective. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2002. Stone, Ken. Sex, Honor, and Power in the Deuteronomistic History. Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1996. Stott, Rebecca. The Fabrication of the Late-Victorian Femme Fatale: The Kiss of Death. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992. Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Women in Sacred History: A Series of Sketches Drawn from Scriptural, Historical and Legendary Sources. New York: JB Ford, 1873. Straayer, Chris. ‘Femmes Fatales or Lesbian Femmes: Bound in Sexual Différance’. In Kaplan, Women in Film Noir, 151–63. Streete, Gail Corrington. The Strange Woman: Power and Sex in the Bible. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1997. Sullivan, Nikki. A Critical Introduction to Queer Theory. New York: New York University Press, 2003. Sully, Jess. ‘Challenging the Stereotype: The Femme Fatale in Fin-de-Siècle Art and Early Cinema’. In Hanson and O’Rawe, Femme Fatale, 46–59. Suwabe, Koichi. ‘The Case of the Femme Fatale: A Poetics of Hardboiled Detective Fiction’. Journal of American Literature Society of Japan 2 (2003): 55–72. Tasker, Yvonne. Working Girls: Gender and Sexuality in Popular Cinema. London: Routledge, 1998. Tasker, Yvonne. ‘Women in Film Noir’. In Spicer and Hanson, Companion to Film Noir, 353–68. Tasker, Yvonne, and Diane Negra, eds. Interrogating Postfeminism: Gender and the Politics of Popular Culture. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007. Taylor, Rhonda Lynette Harris. ‘Return of “The Woman”: Irene Adler in Contemporary Adaptations’. In Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 40−65. Thomas, Ronald R. ‘The Dream of the Empty Camera: Image, Evidence, and Authentic American Style in American Photographs and Farewell, My Lovely’. Criticism 36, no. 3 (1994): 415–58. Tischler, Nancy. Legacy of Eve: Women of the Bible. Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1977. Tomura, Myuki. ‘A Prostitute’s Lived Experiences of Stigma’. Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 40 (2009): 51–84. Toorn, Karel van der. ‘Judges xvi 21 in the Light of the Akkadian Sources’. VT 36 (1986): 248–53. Trimmer, Sarah. Sacred History, Selected from the Scriptures, with Annotations and Reflections. 2nd edn. 6 vols. London: R&R Gilbert, 1817. Turner, Benedick. ‘There’s a Name Everyone Says: Irene Adler and Jim Moriarty in Sherlock’. In Farghaly, Gender and the Modern Sherlock Holmes, 21–39.

192

192

Bibliography

Vickery, John B. ‘In Strange Ways: The Story of Samson’. In Images of God and Man: Old Testament Short Stories in Literary Focus, edited by B. O. Long, 58–73. Sheffield: Almond Press, 1981. Victor, Royce M. ‘Delilah – A Forgotten Hero (Judges 16:4-21)’. In Joshua and Judges, edited by Athalya Brenner and Gale A. Yee, 235–55. Texts @ Contexts. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013. Walters, Suzanna Danuta. ‘Postfeminism and Popular Culture: A Case Study of the Backlash’. In Film and Gender: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies. IV: Re-visioning Feminism(s), edited by Sue Thornham and Niall Richardson, 107–35. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. Waters, Melanie, ed. Women on Screen: Feminism and Femininity in Visual Culture. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Webb, Barry G. The Book of Judges. New International Commentary on the Old Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012. Wager, Jans B. Dames in the Driver’s Seat: Re-Reading Film Noir. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005. Weeks, Jeffrey. Sexuality and Its Discontents: Meanings, Myths and Modern Sexualities. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985. Weinkauf, Mary S. ‘Dalila: The Worst of All Possible Wives’. Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 13 (1973): 135–47. West, Shearer. Fin de Siècle. London: Bloomsbury, 1993. Wong, Gregory T. K. Compositional Strategy of the Book of Judges: An Inductive, Rhetorical Study. VTSup 111. Leiden: Brill, 2006. Wurtzel, Elizabeth. Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. New York: Anchor Books, 1999. WWD. ‘The Decades’. 28 September 1998. Available online: http://go.galegroup.com/ps/i.d o?id=GALE%7CA21181062&v=2.1&u=learn&it=r&p=AONE&sw=w&asid=6c3f14eec 27061be157e9414dcd57f24 (accessed 28 April 2017). Yee, Jennifer. ‘Colonial Virility and the Femme Fatale: Scenes from the Battle of the Sexes in French Indochina’. French Studies LIV (2000): 469–78. Younger, K. Lawson, Jr. Judges and Ruth: The NIV Application Commentary. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002. Zeisler, Andi. Feminism and Pop Culture. Berkeley : Seal Press, 2008. Žižek, Slavoj. The Art of the Ridiculous Sublime: On David Lynch’s Lost Highway. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000. Zwick, Reinhold. ‘Obsessive Love: Samson and Delilah Go to the Movies’. In Samson, Hero or Fool? The Many Faces of Samson, edited by Eric Eynikel and Tobias Niklas, 211–36. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

193

INDEX OF AUTHORS Abbott, M. E. 31, 32 Abrams, J. J. 27, 28 Ackerman, S. 54, 58, 59, 60, 67, 72, 73, 75–6, 81 Alberto, M. 166, 172 Alkier, S. 153 Allen, V. M. 4, 11, 14, 16, 17, 23 Alter, R. 60–1, 63, 68, 70, 80, 172 Amit, Y. 75–6 Ardmore, J. K. 125 Auerbach, E. 2 Auld, A. G. 75 Bade, P. 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22 Bal, M. 5, 7, 53, 60, 66, 69, 73, 81, 154, 160 Barthes, R. 154 Baruch, E. H. 115 Bauer, R. 61 Bell, M. 35 Berger, J. 95, 98 Bielski, S. 23 Binias, S. 3, 10, 15, 18 Birchard, R. S. 121 Bird, P. A. 66 Blenkinsopp, J. 75 Blier, S. 113 Blyth, C. 1, 62 Boheemen, C. van. 160 Bohmbach, K. G. 53 Boling, R. G. 57, 69, 80 Bonhomme, D. 90, 91 Boozer, J. 4, 38, 39, 41, 45, 47, 48, 150, 151 Borde, R. 27, 30, 35 Braun, H. 16 Brenner, A. 54, 77 Bronfen, E. 16, 17, 28, 29, 31, 33, 35, 37, 38, 39, 149, 150, 151, 157 Bronner, L. L. 54 Chandler, R. 25, 26, 27, 31, 34, 152, 153, 155, 156, 157, 158, 162, 163 Chaumeton, E. 27, 30, 35

Clanton, D. 2, 51, 69, 79, 113, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 159 Clines, D. J. 54, 56 Colgan, E. 154 Cooke, D. J. 9 Cowie, E. 36 Crenshaw, J. L. 58, 63, 77–8, 80 Crowell, B. L. 75, 77, 78 Davies, E. W. 4 Davies, P. R. 66 DeMille, C. B. 122 Diawara, M. 32, 33, 168 Dick, B. F. 28 Dijkstra, B. 17, 18, 23, 25, 98, 111 Doane, M. A. 9, 16, 18, 23, 30, 42 Donahue, A. T. 118 Douglas, C. N. 172, 178 Dow, B. J. 48 Dyer, R. 36 Edwards, K. B. 17, 44, 49, 143 Erickson, T. 40 Evans, C. 166 Exum, J. C. 1, 51, 56, 58, 59, 67, 69, 70, 71, 74, 76, 77, 80, 83, 84, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 99, 105–6, 107, 114, 117, 120, 124, 128, 133, 134, 136, 137, 139, 141, 143, 146, 148, 150, 160, 173 Facos, M. 12, 20 Farrimond, K. 45–6, 49, 151 Fewell, D. N. 2, 64, 160 Finley, E. 10, 19, 23 Fishelov, D. 2, 121, 127, 136 Fisher, B. D. 113 Flory, D. 32 Forouzan, E. 9 Foster, G. A. 38 Foucault, M. 2, 3, 61 Fronius, H. 4 Frymer-Kensky, T. 64, 75

194

194

Index of Authors

Gafney, W. 53, 75, 82, 84, 164, 169, 173 Gaillard, F. 13, 15 Galpaz-Feller, P. 54, 55–6, 60, 77, 80 Gates, P. 41, 48 Georgievska-Shine, A. 92, 93, 94 Gledhill, C. 28, 35, 36 Gray, J. 54, 56 Grimes, W. 139 Grohmann, M. 154 Grossman, J. 4, 7, 31, 150, 151, 157, 172 Gruenwald, I. 55 Gunn, D. M. 85, 121 Guthridge, I. 82 Halberstam, J. 46, 151, 174 Hales, B. 29 Hall, S. 7 Halperin, D. M. 61 Halton, C. 72 Hanson, H. 16 Hart, L. 46 Harvey, S. 38, 39 Hays, R. B. 153 Head, E. 125 Hedgecock, J. 4, 23 Heller, R. 15, 17, 18, 23 Herzberg, B. 133 Hilgart, J. 158 Hoffmann-Curtius, K. 4, 15, 19, 23 Hollinger, K. 36 Hornsby, T. J. 61 Horsley, L. 25, 26, 31, 32, 42 Huysmans, J. K. 10–11 Ipsen, A. 73 Jaber, M. H. 32 Jack, A. 154 Jackson, M. A. 71–2, 75 James, N. 138 Jankowiak, W. 3, 6 Jones, A. 48, 49 Kahr, M. 94 Kaplan, E. A. 95 Kaplan, K. J. 58, 63, 67 Karssen, G. 82 Katzir, L. 168, 175 Kermode, F. 21

Klein, L. R. 55, 56, 63, 66, 74, 75, 78, 80, 81, 160, 161 Koury, P. A. 123, 133 Kozlovic, A. K. 59, 63, 68, 72, 73, 79, 82, 123, 127, 133, 134 Kranidas, T. 87, 88, 89 Kristeva, J. 153–4 Krutnik, F. 26, 29, 37 Lalvani, S. 20, 24 Lamarr, H. 128 Langmuir, E. 92 Lazarewicz-Wyrzkowska, E. 69 Ledger, S. 22 Leighton, A. 38 Leneman, H. 52, 56, 59, 63, 69, 112, 115, 159, 160 Lewis, R. 24 Llewellyn-Jones, L. 121, 123, 124, 125, 126, 128 Locke, R. P. 113, 114, 115, 116 Lockyer, H. 82 Lopate, P. 60, 125, 130, 135 Lott, E. 32–3, 168 Loughlin, G. 61 Luciani, D. 63 Łuczyńska-Hołdys, M. 4, 15, 16 McCann, J. C. 63 McClintock, A. 20, 78, 98 McGrail, P. 115 McKenzie, J. L. 57 McRae, P. T. 15, 26, 45, 137, 165 McRobbie, A. 43, 44 Maine, D. 86 Mainon, D. 123 Maslin, J. 86 Matthews, V. H. 66, 160 Maxfield, J. F. 31, 36, 82 Menon, E. K. 15, 18 Meredith, B. 69 Meyer, S. C. 122, 124, 126, 134 Miller, J. H. 154 Milton, J. 86–90 Minogue, V. 91 Mizejewski, L. 46 Mobley, G. 53, 60, 75 Modleski, T. 43

195

Index of Authors Montrelay, M. 34 Mulvey, L. 95, 124 Musa, A. 106 Myles, R. J. 118 Naremore, J. 32, 40 Neale, S. 157 Negra, D. 24, 25, 97, 126 Neroni, H. 3, 28, 41, 47, 48, 49 Niditch, S. 55, 59, 69, 77, 135 Nordau, M. 11, 23 Ogdon, B. 32 O’Rawe, C. 16 Os, H. van. 111 Parisi, H. 68, 161 Pepper, A. 25 Pidduck, J. 46, 174 Place, J. 3, 9, 28, 29, 36, 37 Pressler, C. 56, 63, 64, 75, 172 Primorac, A. 172, 178 Projansky, S. 43, 46 Rabinowitz, P. 32 Ramsey, A. 3, 6 Rivière, J. 18 Rolls, A. 38 Rowlett, L. 60, 61, 77 Rudy, K. 62 Rutledge, D. 4 Ryan, R. 63, 65, 66, 67, 80 Sarna, N. 56 Sasa, G. S. 151 Sasson, J. M. 59, 60, 62, 68, 69 Scherer, B. L. 115, 116 Schneider, T. J. 74 Scholz, S. 70 Schrader, P. 38 Schwartz, M. B. 58, 63, 67 Segert, S. 54–5 Sherwin, M. 44, 46 Shokoff, J. 26, 31 Showalter, E. 21, 22, 23 Siff, M. J. 80 Simon, U. 55, 56

195

Smith, C. 51, 63, 67, 83, 84, 160, 161, 173 Snyder, J. B. 2, 5, 148 Snyder, S. 38 Sobchack, V. 37, 38 Soggin, J. A. 56, 69, 75, 172 Spicer, A. 27, 29, 31, 40, 42 Stables, K. 3, 9, 21, 42, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 147 Stanton, E. C. 63 Stone, K. 70 Stott, R. 16, 20, 22, 23, 24 Stowe, H. B. 63–4 Straayer, C. 31, 42 Streete, G. C. 63, 77, 160 Sullivan, N. 61, 78 Sully, J. 10 Suwabe, K. 26, 37, 38 Tasker, Y. 33, 42, 47 Taylor, R. L. H. 168, 172, 176 Tischler, N. 63, 79 Tomura, M. 74 Trimmer, S. 64, 79 Turner, B. 163, 166, 167, 172 Vickery, J. B. 72 Victor, R. M. 56, 58, 59, 63, 75, 81, 160 Wager, J. B. 30, 35, 36 Walker, D. 38 Walters, S. D. 43 Webb, B. G. 56, 58, 60, 65, 68, 69, 72, 75, 77, 78, 80, 172 Weeks, J. 61 Weinkauf, M. S. 86–7, 89 West, S. 11, 16, 22, 23 Windish, C. 13, 15 Wong, G. T. K. 75 Yee, J. 20, 24 Younger, K. L. 56, 75, 80 Zeisler, A. 43 Žižek, S. 21, 36, 42 Zwick, R. 127, 142

196

197

INDEX OF BIBLICAL TEXTS HEBREW BIBLE Genesis 3 16.16 24.67 29.18 29.30 29.32 30.3 34 34.2 38  39 50.23

114 70 58 58 58 58 59, 60 62 58, 70 77 77 60

Exodus 12.29 22.16

55 64

Numbers 25.1–18 31 27.1–11

77 77 66

Deuteronomy 22.29 70 28.53 65 28.55 65 Joshua 2 2.1 13.3

76, 81, 66, 77 72 172

Judges 4–5 13–16 13–15 13 14–15 14.1–3 14.5–6 14.16–17

76, 77 77, 138 113 66 66, 67, 128 58, 76 92 169

14.17 14.19 15.1 15.6 15.9–13 16 16.1–3 16.1 16.3 16.4 16.5 16.6 16.8–9 16.8 16.9 16.10 16.12 16.13 16.15–16 16.15 16.16–17 16.16 16.15 16.17 16.18–20 16.18 16.19

16.20 16.23–30 16.23 16.28–30 17.10 19.24 20.5

65 62 65 62, 104 75 Everywhere 55, 76, 169 65, 72 169 58, 65, 74, 127 64, 68, 80, 142 80, 131 68 68 72 131 68, 72 131, 139, 169 169 65 65 169 131 108 80 68, 69 68, 69 n. 93, 92, 94 n. 27, 102 n. 44, 104, 118, 144 n. 157, 173, 176 83, 105 82 86 117 80 n. 137 70 n. 96 70 n. 96

1 Samuel 1.5 5.8 5.11

58 172 172

198

198

Index of Biblical Texts 1.10 7.1–27 25.15

64 55 64

Job 3.12 7.3 30.17 31.2 31.9 32.18 33.15 34.20

59, 60 55 55 69 64 65 55 55

58.34

Song of Songs 1.3–4 1.7  2.1 3.1–4

59 59 114 55, 59

2 Kings 4.20 6.4

60 55

Ruth 1–4 3.8

66, 77 55

Isaiah 29.2 29.7 37.10 51.13 66.12

65 65 69 65 60

6.4 6.12 6.16 6.18 7.7 18.20 28

172 172 172 172 172 59 66

2 Samuel 3.25 13 13.1 13.12 13.14 13.22 13.32

64 62 58 70 70 70 70

1 Kings 11.1

Jeremiah 6.5 19.19 20.7

55 65 64

Ezekiel 14.9

64

Psalms 6.6 78.36 91.5

55 64 55

Proverbs 1−9

Lamentations 1.2 55 5.11 70 Esther 2.17

58

1 Chronicles 12.19

172

2 Chronicles 11.21

58

APOCRYPHA

77

Judith 8.1–8

73

NEW TESTAMENT Matthew 26.15

80