The purpose of this paper is to look at Mosley’s treatment of the femme fatale figure in this novel. Mosley followed Chandler’s lead in weaving a quest narrative around femme fatale Daphne Monet in his first novel, Devil in a Blue Dress (1990). Walter Mosley, an African American detective fiction writer, adapted the hard-boiled formula popularised by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler, but altered it to address socio-political issues concerning the condition of African Americans in the post-World War II era. The progenitors of the hard-boiled genre of detective fiction popularised the figure of a sexually seductive and promiscuous woman who betrays men for material gain. In the twentieth century, the figure finds space in literary and cinematic endeavours, particularly in crime fiction and noir thrillers. Associated with evil temptation, the femme fatale is an iconic figure that has been appropriated into folklore, literature, and mythology. The phrase “femme fatale” is a well-known figure in the literary and cultural representations of women. IAFOR Journal of Arts & Humanities, 9(1). Dangerous Femininity: Looking into the Portrayal of Daphne Monet as a Femme Fatale in Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress. Author: Prerana Chakravarty, Tezpur University, Assam, IndiaĬitation: Chakravarty, P.
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