Margarete Gertrude Zelle was born on August 7, 1876 in Holland. Her father owned a hat store that was successful until 1889. Her parents divorced after going bankrupt, and her mother died shortly after in 1891. Her father placed her and her siblings into the care of different relatives after remarrying in 1893. Margarete was taken in by her godfather in Sneek. During her stay there, she attempted to become a teacher, but after inappropriate conduct with the head of the college she was attending, she was forced to leave. After her disgrace to her godfather, she went to live with her uncle in The Hague.
At the young age of 18, Margarete responded to a personal advertisement of 38 year old Rudolph MacLeod, a Dutch officer seeking a prospective wife. The two met and despite the many differences between them, were quickly married in July 1895. On January 30, 1897, Margarete gave birth to their first child, Norman John. Her daughter, Jeanne Louise was born on May 2, 1898. Theirs was not a grandiose marriage. Norman John died in 1899 after falling very ill. There was controversy over his death and most think he was poisoned.
The marriage was not grandiose and happy. MacLeod was an alcoholic, an adulterer, and an abuser. In 1902, MacLeod abandoned Margarete, taking his daughter with him. Margarete successfully fought for custody. In 1905, Margarete was forced to give up her daughter after MacLeod failed to pay support. (Lloyd 31)
After divorcing MacLeod, Margarete assumed the alias Mata Hari, which means eye of day in Malay. A common practice of entertainers during this time period was to create an elaborate background and events surrounding themselves. Mata Hari was no exception. She claimed to be the daughter of Dutch royalty and...
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After a 45-minute deliberation, the jury sentenced her to death. On October 15, 1917, Mata Hari was executed by firing squad. According to rumors, to escape her charms, the squad members were blindfolded during the execution. Another rumor says she was offered a blindfold but rejected it. None of the former lovers was willing to pay for the burial and the body ended up in the dissecting room of a Paris municipal hospital. (Mikolchak 292)
Mata Hari has become synonymous with the ideologies of espionage, double agents, courtesans, and erotic dance. She was brave, adventurous, mysterious, beautiful, seductive, and above all – innocent. Bentley suggests that Mata Hari, due to her lust for attention, would be pleased by her long standing legacy. Almost 100 years later, she is still being reenacted in movies, novels, plays, and dance performances all over the world.
Margaret married a navy purser named John Bowie Timberlake. They had three children together, one whom died while still an infant. When John was gone at sea, John Eaton entered the picture again, escorting Margaret on drives and to parties. The rumors flew around town of Margaret and Eaton’s supposed affair, and of her husband’s drunkenness. The people around town were all saying that the reason Timberlake kept sailing was to avoid his wife’s obvious philandering. Timberlake was soon reassigned to the Mediterranean squadron. The Mediterranean was very hot and contained few friendly ports in those days, making it a less than pleasant assignment. Timberlake died while in the Mediterranean, the official cause was pulmonary disease. ...
Saikaku, Ihara. Life of a Sensuous Woman. The Longman Anthology of World Literature. (Vol. D) Ed. Damrosch. New York: Pearson, 2004. 604-621. [Excerpt.]
In the book, Marie Antoinette: The Last Queen of France , the author, Evelyne Lever,
In 1842 Macdonald took a break from his responsibilities. He traveled to Scotland to visit his relatives, this would be a trip that would change his life forever. It was this time in Scotland that Macdonald met his cousin Isabella Clark, Macdonald?s future wife. The two got along really...
In Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, she presents a number of very interesting facts regarding the ways that the sexual imagery of men and women respectively are used in the world of film. One such fact is that of the man as the looker and the female as the looked upon, she argues that the woman is always the object of reifying gaze, not the bearer if it. And “[t]he determining male gaze projects its fantasy onto the female figure, which is styled accordingly. In their traditional exhibitionist role women are simultaneously looked at and displayed, with their appearance coded for strong visual and erotic impact so that they can be said to be connote to-be-looked-at-ness” (487). Mulvey makes the claim that women are presented and primped into this role of “to-be-looked-at-ness”. They are put into films for this purpose and for very little other purposes. However, this argument cannot be incorporated with The Treasure of the Sierra Madre; the existence of women in the film is extremely insignificant to an extent that could be considered absent. “In a world ordered by sexual imbalance,” male serves as the dominant figures with which the viewer can identify, women only appear in the film for a very short moment of time. For instance, the appearance of women is only shown when Howard rescues the ill child in the village and his return to the village for hospitality reception...
At the age of nineteen she met and married Louis Jones. Together they had two children Gail and Teddy (who later died in 1970 from kidney failure). While trying to get used to raising a family and having a career, she received a call from an agent, who had seen her at the Cotton Club, about a part in a movie. Her controlling husband allowed her to be in “The Duke is Tops” and also the musical revue “Blackbirds of 1939."
Since the beginning of time, women have been seen as different from men. Their beauty and charms have been interpreted as both endearing and deadly to men. In the Bible, it was Eve’s mistake that led to humanity’s exile from the Garden of Eden. However, unlike in the Bible, in today’s world, women who drive men to ruin do not do so through simple mistakes and misunderstandings, they do so while fully aware of what effects their sexuality can cause. One thing remains constant through these portrayals of women, and that is that they are portrayed as flawed creations and therefore monstrous. It is a woman’s sex drive and sexuality that can lead to her monstrosity. The femme fatale is an enticing, exquisitely beautiful, erotic character who plays the ultimate trick of nature: she displays her beauty, captures the man and goes in for the kill. Films such as Adrian Lyne’s Fatal Attraction and stories such as Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and Sir Gawain the Green Knight use the femme fatale as a means of making a woman into a monster; the femme fatale can never win in the battle of the sexes. But what is it that makes the femme fatale such a dangerously character for the hero as well as the readers or viewers?
Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun was one of the most successful painters of her time. Over the course of her life, spanning from 1755-1842, she painted over 900 works. She enjoyed painting self portraits, completing almost 40 throughout her career, in the style of artists she admired such as Peter Paul Rubens (Montfort). However, the majority of her paintings were beautiful, colorful, idealized likenesses of the aristocrats of her time, the most well known of these being the Queen of France Marie Antoinette, whom she painted from 1779-1789. Not only was Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun the Queen’s portrait painter for ten years, but she also became her close, personal friend. She saw only the luxurious, carefree, colorful, and fabulous lifestyle the aristocracy lived in, rather than the poverty and suffrage much of the rest of the country was going through. Elisabeth kept the ideals of the aristocracy she saw through Marie Antoinette throughout her life, painting a picture of them that she believed to be practically perfect. Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun’s relationship with Marie Antoinette affected her social standing, politics, painting style, and career.
Saikaku, Ihara. Life of a Sensuous Woman. The Norton Anthology of World Literature. 3rd Ed. Volume D. Ed. Martin Puchner. New York: Norton, 2013. 591-611. Print.
Disney’s 1998 classic tale, Mulan, is renowned as a timeless film, one that inspires young girls everywhere. It is by far the most girl-power filled film in the Disney Princess franchise due to its eponymous heroine who goes to war in place of her father by impersonating a male soldier. Not only does she singlehandedly save the whole country of China, but she also manages to get a husband in the process, with whom she lives happily ever after. Although this sounds like the perfect tale of girl power, some more sinister themes lay beneath the innocuous, picturesque surface.
Dr. Manganelli depicts a mixed-race woman, which was a figure of intense interest to Victorian writer Charles Kingsley, who wrote in the voice of the mixed-race female and imagines her as “an embodiment of undisciplined desire, at once dangerous and deeply alluring to men” (Manganelli 501). Marie is already pushed into a performative role, when her sexuality is connected to her African blood, which makes her into a spectacle for white suitors. While the white females were safely shielded away from the white men looking for a sexual adventure, women of African descent were first displayed at the auction block and therefore already performing, however involuntarily.
Marie was born in Warsaw, Poland on November 7, 1867. Her polish name was Maria Sklodowska but everyone called her Manya. Her parents were teachers and all they talked about how school was school was so important and she needed to study hard. Manya was one of the smartest kids in her school; she finished high school at only 15 years old! When Marie was a teenager she received a gold medal, she worked so hard in school that when it was over she just fell apart. Her father sent her away to her family for a year in the country because of it. When Marie was eight her older sister Zofia, caught typhus fever and had died, about two years later her mother died from tuberculosis, Marie cried her heart out; she had lost the two people she loved most. With all of her families love and su...
...eable quality in a woman is her beauty. In addition, Duffy makes the protagonist annihilate her husband even though in the original myth, Medusa was decapitated, thereby challenging the speculations that a characteristic of women is to be defend less and insubstantial, dating back to ancient times, by showing that women too are vengeful conquerors.
but had left because she did not like the religious environment. For a woman of
Taboo: Perspectives on the Poetic Fiction of Yvonne Vera. By Robert Muponde. Harare: Weaver, 2003. 109-14. Print.