MAPACA

Mid-Atlantic Popular &
American Culture Association

At first, she is the sweet kitten. But then she rages at you, and turns on you. The femme fatale, according to Janey Place, is “the dark lady, the spider woman, the evil seductress who tempts man and brings about his destruction” (47). She is a typical client in a detective story. Normally, we view the femme fatale as sexy, walking into a PI’s office, holding a cigarette and speaking seductively, lips smeared with a delicate red lipstick that probably costs more than what the PI would charge her for a job. But, there are other ways she can appear in a PI’s life. A femme fatale may take many different forms, according to what a situation may require of her. Rather than simply fixating on her physical appearance to identify her, one should also look to her qualities and characteristics. The perfect example of an unobvious femme fatale is Orfamay Quest from Raymond Chandler’s novel The Little Sister. The novel follows PI Philip Marlowe as he depends, yet again, on his keen powers of observation and intimate knowledge of The City of Angels. The action begins with Orfamay Quest, “a small, neat, rather prissy looking girl” (6) seeking Marlowe’s services. She asks him to search for her brother, Orrin. Soon after he takes on the job, Marlowe stumbles upon a drunken superintendent, with an ice pick in his neck and a “retired optometrist,” also with an ice pick in his neck. Most importantly, Marlowe also encounters Los Angeles starlets Mavis Weld and Dolores Gonzales, who, although do not have ice picks in their necks, are ice-cold femme fatales. Reading these three women of The Little Sister more closely shows Chandler turning the sexually attractive yet dangerous and deceiving figure of the femme fatale inside out.