Evil Sisters: The Threat of Female Sexuality in Twentieth-Century Culture

An incisive study of the role of woman as seductress and the evolution of distorted ideas of race, gender, and sex examines the devastating impact of this portrayal of women and the links among misogyny, racism, and the rise of nationalist politics, as embodied by Hitler. 10,000 first printing.

In Evil Sisters Bram Dijkstra, a professor of comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego, has taken on the task of detailing the various threats female sexuality is said to have posed throughout this century. Some of these so-called threats seemed alarming; for example, many leading intellectuals from early in the century believed that women were in pursuit of semen to fulfill their reproductive need. Others blamed war as a female creation. He shows how the link of women to vampires was particularly damaging. An interesting historical look at imagery that crops up in today's society.