Fictional representations of women as spies have recurrently traced the dynamic of women's changing roles in British and American culture. With reference to popular fiction, film and television Violent Femmes examines the figure of the female spy as a nexus of contradictory ideas about femininity, power, sexuality and national identity. The female spy has long exerted a strong grip on the popular imagination. As Schirmann has written: ‘In our current language, her name is used as a symbol – a symbol of espionage, a symbol of venal female seduction’ (Schirmann 2001: 11). But the enduring interest in Mata Hari, and therefore the meaning connected to her story, formed in the crucible of the Great War, reflects on wider themes about the individual’s relationship to the state and identity.
Narratives about Mata Hari revived ancient fears of women’s erotic power, a theme that reflected concerns about women’s changing social and economic status. Moreover, the body of literature and the new linguistic meanings attached to this female icon offer insight into how popular understandings of the intelligence services, before and after the war, gained currency. Mata Hari’s story is also remarkable because it is among the best-documented cases of a First World War espionage trial, rich in detail about how female agents were recruited and trained and how they operated.
ESPIONAGE AGENT TRIAL
Her 1917 trial by French prosecutors for passing intelligence to the enemy fused notions of female sexuality and national betrayal to create an enduring myth against which later female agents would be measured. In the historiography of intelligence, Margaretha Zelle MacLeod, aka Mata Hari, occupies a unique position.
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