In this class so far, the books we have read tend to undermine the women in the story to better highlight the masculine superiority and subvert the importance of women in society drawing clear divisions between the gender roles. These clear lines constantly place women in a subordinate role tomen, and more often than not, they only represent a road block for the men to overcome. The femme fatale is a staple of the noir genre which portrays women as temptresses who causes disaster for the man she sets her sight on, but in “The Expendable Man” we do not really have a character who fits into that femme fatale description. The book is ambiguous about gender stereotypes in the same way it is ambiguous about racial descriptions. Bonnie Lee Crumb does not embody the typical femme fatale, even though she causes disaster for Hugh and Ellen does not cause disaster, but is too beautiful for Hugh to ignore. The other women in this story are not pushed to the fringe supporting roles, but are portrayed as their own individuals. With a woman writing the story, Dorothy B. Hughes give her audience a new perspective of society within the genre of noir.
While Bonnie Lee, or Iris as Hugh knew her, takes advantage of Hugh using her age and her race, she does not operate as a conventional femme fatale. Hugh only acts to help her out of pity rather than any fatal attraction. Playing with how Iris uses her youth and innocence more than her femininity, Hughes is demonstrating to the reader, the other ways a woman can function within her society and manipulate her surroundings. Racial differences play a huge role in Iris’s ability to take advantage of Hugh, but there is much more to her than her fatal interactions that lead to her death. She is a child, still in highschool, with no real experience in the adult world, but she is able to make her way through it with success until she places her faith in her naive love story. Restrictions of gender placed on women severely limits her autonomy and independence, but nonetheless, Iris finds a way to get what she wants until the end.
Similarly, Ellen is restricted by her race, but since she boasts the advantage of a higher class family, her connections allow her a much higher level of individuality. Her beauty and status afford her a certain level of fatal attraction, but instead of causing the disaster for Hugh, she is the catalyst that saves him from becoming the expendable man that gets framed for murder. Bringing in a white lawyer with incredible ambitions was her idea, and Skye’s work keeps him out of the press and preserves his future. Iris leads Hugh to disaster, but her naivety prevents her from the full embodiment of the femme fatale. Ellen embodies the dangerous beauty of the femme fatale, but her presence saves Hugh’s life and career changing the perspective of gender roles, and allowing for women to take more control over their identities in society without totally deviating from the noir genre.