"In the striking works of pre-Raphaelite, Symbolist and Art Nouveau artists and in their literary parallels, Patrick Bade uncovers an extraordinary, disturbing world of sexual fantasy and a remarkably pervasive image of woman as destroyer, enchantress, priestess, siren, sphinx and angel of death, the femme fatale becambe the sinister new heroine of an entire generation of one of the most powerful symbols of change in late nineteenth-century society."--back cover.