You’ve asked for it

You’ve asked for it

by marlies|dekkers

He gasped when he saw the first flash of lethal red lace. She smiled, pulling the zipper down a little further. “You are perfect,” he said. “My Venus.” The fool. She was nobody’s Venus. She was a devil in a blue dress, a red-lipped rebel with a cause. And he was a goner, caught in her web. “Tempt me,” he moaned. Hmm, why not have a little fun before the final, fatal stroke? “You’ve asked for it,” she said, and with a cat-like shrug, the Temptress let the dress slip from her shoulders.

We all know the typical femme fatale as she appears in numerous American hard-boiled detective stories: the purring, curvy sex bomb with painted-on red lips who enters the detective’s office with ‘trouble’ written on her forehead. Endlessly fascinating, but purely a figment of the male imagination. Whereas this clichéd, one-dimensional character is fatal only by accident, Agatha’s seductress possesses hidden depths. She is divers, dominant and violently active. Like her creator, she is a woman who refuses to be held back by what life throws at her. Agatha’s temptress seeks any means to rise above her lot in life and is actually not much different from her male characters in that regard. To get what she wants, she is not afraid to use her special, lethal weapon: her feminine seductiveness. And even though this didn’t always guarantee her a happy ending in Agatha’s books, it did make the Temptress a woman ahead of her time: the original feminine feminist.

“The world is very cruel to women. They must do what they can for themselves.” (Agatha Christie)

 

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by marlies|dekkers

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