Dangerous Women

Sleep, Gustave Courbet, 1866, Petit Palais–Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris, Paris. © Photo Josse/Leemage from Dangerous Women: The Perils of Muses and Femmes Fatales by Laure Adler and Élisa Lécosse (Paris: Flammarion, 2010).Throughout history, women have been objects of love, fascination and fright. For centuries, the world has cast an ambivalent gaze upon them, simultaneously venerating and mistrusting them, and men have feared the fair sex and its might when it comes to love and desire. For, when in love, a woman grows strong, bewitching, mysterious. By capturing and seducing a man, she has the power to disturb the so-called natura...