Dark Venus ― Maud Allan and the Myth of the Femme Fatale

Focusing on the late 19th and early 20th century obsession with woman as femme fatale, this book looks at beliefs about women’s bodies and sexuality. Dancer Maud Allan came to embody the image of the femme fatale. In 1918 she brought a libel case against an MP who accused her in print of lesbianism. There was a belief in some circles that "New Women" like Maud were a cause of the war. To others, she and her kind were a sinister fifth column. Allan, fondling on stage the severed head of John the Baptist whose death she had demanded as her prize for dancing, expressed elements of sexual perversion, including sadism, necrophilia and incest, that were truly terrifying to Edwardian society. This is a close examination of attitudes to women in the Belle Epoque and beyond. 

Wendy Buonaventura is a writer, dancer and choreographer. Her books include Serpent of the Nile: Women and Dance in the Arab World and Something in The Way She Moves: Dancing Women from Salome to Madonna.