There’s No Place Like Home…Anymore: Domestic Masquerade & Faux-Housewife Femme Fatale in Barbara Stanwyck’s Early 1940’s Films

Barbara Stanwyck’s performance as Phyllis Dietrichson is considered to be the quintessential femme fatale. Despite this, the consideration of her other femme fatale performances is minimal. Her contribution to the canon of the subversive figure can be located in her engagement with the domestic, specifically her disruption and transformation of domestic spaces through the utilization of her sexuality and sexualized image. This thesis will explore the ways her characters in the early 1940’s films BALL OF FIRE, DOUBLE INDEMNITY, and CHRISTMAS IN CONNECTICUT are narratively and formally positioned as cinematic fatales in their representation and use domestic masquerade and gender performance in order to prove their narrative agency.