1. Lilith, Medusas, Sirens and other Femme Fatales
Menacing Femininity:
Lilith, Medusas, Sirens and other Femme Fatales

2. Man fears that his strength will be taken from him by woman, dreads becoming infected with her femininity and then proving himself a weakling.
Sigmund Freud, “The Taboo of Virginity”, 1918.

3. Lilith – basrilief - Mesopotamia 1950 B.C.

4. Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Lilith, published 1870
republished with the title
Body’s Beauty 1881

5. Dante Gabriel
Rossetti,
Lady Lilith
1863

6. Of Adam's first wife, Lilith, it is told (The witch he loved before the gift of Eve,) That, ere the snake's, her sweet tongue could deceive, And her enchanted hair was the first gold. And still she sits, young while the earth is old, And, subtly of herself contemplative, Draws men to watch the bright web she can weave, Till heart and body and life are in its hold.

7. The rose and poppy are her flower; for where Is he not found, O Lilith, whom shed scent And soft-shed kisses and soft sleep shall snare? Lo! as that youth's eyes burned at thine, so went Thy spell through him, and left his straight neck bent And round his heart one strangling golden hair.

8. John Collier
Lilith
1892

9. Simeon
Solomon
The Head of Medusa
1884

10. Dante Gabriel
Rossetti,
Astarte Siryaca

11. John William
Waterhouse
Mermaid
1901

12. Herbert Draper, Ulysses and the Syrens 1909

13. Philip Burne Jones
The Vampire

14. Aubrey Beardsley,
illustration to
Oscar Wilde’s
Salome
1894