The Deranged Femme Fatale in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl

Abstract

Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl presents one of the most intelligently portrayed deranged heroines in recent times. She attains the tag of a Femme Fatale archetype. The classical Femme Fatales delved within the outline that conventional patriarchy and society had set for her. The Femme Fatales have taken on various forms and demeanors since their arrival into the literary and cultural arena. They have been the ‘preying’ mantis, the bloodsucking vampire, a lethal siren or wanton courtesan. The protagonist of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, Amy Elliot Dunne represents the most evolved form of Femme Fatale depictions.  She chooses to be the excruciatingly sly beauty who attempts an absolute annihilation of the patriarchal structures around her. Her childhood trauma and subsequent psychological disability goes into making her the Femme Fatale that she later becomes. Amy Dunne’s psychological state is not what we call ‘normal’; however, she turns this disability into her armor, as well as her weapon, to defy the patriarchal norms she is forced to adhere to. Thus, by making her disability her shield, she turns out to be the most evolved form of the Femme Fatale character type.