EVIL SISTERS;

Dijkstra, Bram

ISBN 10: 0394569458 / ISBN 13: 9780394569451

Published by Alfred A Knopf, New York, 1996

About this Item

Black paper covered boards, silver titles on black cloth covered spine. Book body clean, signed and inscribed by the author on the front free end paper. White photo-illustrated dust jacket shows light wear to edges, mild scuffing to covers, price intact, archival bordart protected. Signed and Inscribed By Author.

Seller Inventory # 41739

Bibliographic Details

• Title: EVIL SISTERS
• Publisher: Alfred A Knopf, New York
• Publication Date: 1996
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0394569458
• ISBN 13: 9780394569451
• Binding: 1/4 Cloth
• Edition: Stated First Edition.
• Condition: Good +
• Dust Jacket Condition: Good +
• Signed: Signed by Author(s)
• Seller catalogs:
  • Books

About this title

Synopsis

Bram Dijkstra's new book, ten years in work, is a stunning inquiry into the idea of woman as seductress: how, in many areas of twentieth-century high and popular culture, the female came to be portrayed as a regressive, primitive force whose sexuality could destroy the social order, undermining the supremacy of the white male - and shows the devastating historical effects of this portrayal.
Dijkstra begins his analysis with the 1915 silent film A Fool There Was, in which Theda Bara first embodied our century's vision of the Vamp - kohl-eyed, predatory, seducing respectable men and destroying them with her voracious appetite. The part played by turn-of-the-century biologists, gynecologists, psychologists, geneticists, and sociologists in helping to develop distorted ideas of gender, sex, and race is examined. And Dijkstra shows how these distortions have been reflected in painting; in popular and literary fiction, from Bram Stoker's Dracula to the novels of Conrad, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Faulkner; and in cinema's femmes fatales, from Louise Brooks, Garbo, and Dietrich to the fatal women of the 1990s. Finally, the book makes shockingly clear how the parallel paths of the new style of misogyny and racism merged in the 1920s during the rise of nationalist politics - converging in Hitler's Mein Kampf and the politics of genocide.

About the Author

Bram Dijkstra is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of California, San Diego.