The construction and perception of the femme fatale are at the center of my dissertation. She is the most alluring, terrifying and frightening phenomenon, and she is the source of castration anxiety. I draw from the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Lacan, and other contemporary writers to demonstrate how we read representations of the femme fatale in reality, literature, and film noir.

In this dissertation, I also intend to show how bisexuality is a counterpoint to homosexuality and is part of the calculus of the feminized male with phallic fantasies. What's more, I wish to discuss how these sexual tendencies create the predispositions for misogynistic behavior. I will argue how the femme fatale, both real and imaginary, poses threats to the male psyche and masculinity. I will also discuss how sexual fantasies, the oedipal child, and the primal scene intersect in the literature of Ernest Hemingway, and the fiction of Jim Thompson and Dashiell Hammett. Looking at the crisis of masculinity and the existence of the femme fatale, I will talk about how each plays itself out in both the novel and film adaptation.

The analysis of the detective novels and their adaptations to the film is also part of this dissertation. For many this analytic approach rests entirely on the analyses of story structure. I use the Sophoclean paradigm to re-conceptualize the oedipal tensions between the detective and the criminal and to draw a parallel between psychoanalyst as detective and analysand as criminal—these individuals have committed criminal acts and now suffer, feel guilt, and emotions associated with these actions.

Since the detective is the epitome of the male persona and mythic hero, I show that beneath these constructed identities is the opposite of what readers and viewers perceive. Like the limitations of a structural analysis of story, so the perceived images of masculinity may not be present. They merely may be chimera—palimpsests of what they really are—sensitive, homoerotic, and victims of their own insatiable appetites and weaknesses against the lure and seductions of the femme fatale.