Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari [Hardcover]

Pat Shipman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 31, 2007

Mata Hari was the prototype of the beautiful but unscrupulous female agent who uses sexual allure to gain access to secrets, if she was indeed a spy. In 1917, the notorious dancer Mata Hari was arrested, tried, and executed for espionage. It was charged at her trial that the dark-eyed siren was responsible for the deaths of at least 50,000 gallant French soldiers. Irrefutably, she had been the mistress of many senior Allied officers and government officials, even the French Minister of War: a point viewed as highly suspicious. Worse yet, she spoke several European languages fluently and travelled widely in wartime Europe. But was she guilty of espionage? For all the publicity Mata Hari and her trial received, key questions remain unanswered. These questions concern not only her inadequate trial and her unproven guilt, but also the events in her personal life. What propelled Margaretha Zelle, destined to be a Dutch schoolteacher, to transform herself into Mata Hari, the most desirable woman in early 20th-century Paris? She danced before enthusiastic crowds in Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Madrid, Monte Carlo, Milan and Rome, inspiring admiration, jealousy, and bitter condemnation. Pat Shipman's brilliant biography pinpoints the powerful yet dangerous attributes that evoked such strong emotions in those who met Mata Hari, for hitherto the focus has been on espionage, not on exploring the events that shaped her life and caused her to transform herself from rural Dutch girl to international femme fatale.

--This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Executed as a German spy by the French in 1917, the notorious Mata Hari was born Margaretha Zelle in 1876, the spoiled daughter of a prosperous Dutch merchant who would later abandon her to the care of relatives after a humiliating bankruptcy and his wife's death. She married a much older, jealous, heavy-drinking and insolvent officer stationed in Indonesia who probably gave her and her children syphilis; the disastrous union ended after her young son died of poisoning, possibly from a botched syphilis cure, and Margaretha relinquished custodial rights to her daughter. Financially destitute, Margaretha reinvented herself in Paris as Mata Hari, gaining fame and fortune performing in various stages of undress in exotic dances that evoked the East, and she collected a series of highly placed, fawning lovers. Shipman (The Man Who Found the Missing Link) makes a good case that Mata Hari was a naïve, innocent scapegoat for a demoralized French military that had endured heavy losses and mutinous troops, and that she was also the victim of a hypocritical, rigidly moralistic patriarchy offended by her shameless sexuality. Shipman offers an engrossing biography of an unusual woman for whom, she says, the truth was whatever she wanted it to be; unfortunately, the book is somewhat marred by repetitious prose and digressions. Photos. (Aug.)
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Review

“An engrossing tale that sheds new light on a mysterious woman.” (Atlanta Journal-Constitution )

“Both suspenseful and shocking . . . Shipman tells her story with interest and spirit.” (Los Angeles Times )

“[E]ngrossing . . . casting Mata Hari’s rise and fall against the background of her life, the turmoil of World War I and, ultimately, the moral standards of the era. . . . Shipman teases out the details with a novelist’s skill. (Bloomberg News )

“The melodramatic true story of a mythic grand horizontal, told with clarity and understanding.” (Kirkus Reviews )

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 464 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow; 1St Edition edition (July 31, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060817283
• ISBN-13: 978-0060817282
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,106,590 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Double-Dealing Sexists vs. Naive Self-Promoter, August 22, 2007

By 

S. Michael Bowen "Big Shake" (Spokane, WA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari (Hardcover)

She was a slut, so she *must* have been a spy. In the hysterical waning days of World War I, illogic like that put Mata Hari in front of a firing squad. And when you need to blame someone for half a million dead French soldiers, what's wrong with a little patriarchal thinking?
Hauled off to the Dutch West Indies by her brutal military officer of a husband, Margaretha Zelle MacLeod remade herself in the Paris of the Belle Époque as an "international woman" famous for her pseudo-Hindu -- and, more to the point, nearly nude -- dances. Lascivious and famous for it -- she craved a man in uniform -- she wasn't exactly inconspicuous. When French spymasters tried to make use of her, it was like the CIA getting angry because they'd recruited Madonna and now everybody was recognizing her.
Mata Hari's notoriety and world travel make her the subject of a new biography about once every decade. The contribution of Pat Shipman's *Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari* lies mostly in detailing the lives of army wives in Indonesia (stifling heat, concubines, syphilis) and in sifting the evidence (mostly manufactured) of Mata Hari's ostensible spying on behalf of Germany. Trained as an anthropologist, Shipman veers toward academese in the West Indies chapters, however; she tends to quote primary documents (legal, military and amatory) too extensively.
Mata Hari, meanwhile, always impulsive but enterprising, drifted to Paris but refashioned herself as an "artistic" dancer; she sought out officers, then drifted into dabbling at espionage. Amusingly, she didn't know or much care about troop movements in the Great War (unless they affected her Russian boyfriend). Oh, sure, she had a motive against the Germans: They'd confiscated her white cloak and several of her favorite furs.
Caught at the nexus of sexism, scapegoating and her own naiveté, Mata Hari was an unsuspecting butterfly caught in a master manipulator's net. (There are bumbling police inspectors in her story, but also double agents.) Emphasizing that Mata Hari loved men too much and the truth too little, Shipman doesn't push the feminist angle. But today, if they only had flimsy evidence against her, would they be able to shoot Madonna?

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Emme Fatatle, October 5, 2007

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Barbara And Byron Skinner - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari (Hardcover)

A good biography of one of the 20th. Centuries most interesting spys/nonspy...Professor Shipman writes a no hold barred tale of Mata Hari...The book is really two stories. The first is how Margaretha Zelle born of Dutch parents became Mata Hari...Margaretha Zelle was a woman of enormous talents in language who mastered besides her native Dutch, German, French, English and Spanish along with with the languages of the Dutch East Indies where she pent her years as a young woman married to a Dutch Colonial Officer...Marrage, an abusive husband and the hard colonial life were not for her and after a few years she divorced here husband and returned to Holland...This was the begaining of her transformation from a wife and mother to a performer and a high priced courtesan...The second story was how she got involved in espionage and spying or not...Professor Shipman lays out the "factual information" we have on Mata Hari and then leaves it to the reader to determine if Mata Hari was a spy or because of her notarity and the fact that she had been a paid mistress of some many powerful men it was best to silence her...The reader has to determine if she was an agent for the Germans, French, both or some other country, the facts are not clear...If you like an honest well scribed book then you will enjoy Femme Fatle, but don't expect the author to spoon feed you any speculative ending.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful!, March 13, 2008

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L. Hlusko - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Femme Fatale: Love, Lies, and the Unknown Life of Mata Hari (Hardcover)

I read for escape, and when I can also learn something along the way then it's even better. Shipman gives us a wonderfully written and fast-paced exciting book. You really feel sympathy for Mata Hari and pain at the horrible traps she walked into. What a wonderful snap-shot of that time in European history. I truly enjoyed every word in this book and highly recommend it.