"The Female of the Species" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling originally published in 1911. [1] Its title and refrain ("The female of the species is more deadly than the male.") have inspired the titles of numerous subsequent works (see The Female of the Species (disambiguation)).
Kipling begins the poem by illustrating the greater deadliness of female bears and cobras compared to their male counterparts, and by stating that early Jesuit missionaries to North America were more frightened of Native women than male warriors. He continues by giving his thoughts on how male and female humans differ and why the female "must be deadlier than the male," saying that females can be single-minded - often to the point of being dangerous - because they were solely made for child-rearing. An example is contained in these lines: "She who faces Death by torture for each life beneath her breast may not deal in doubt or pity, must not swerve for fact or jest. These be purely male diversions, not in these her honour dwells."
Kipling's description of the stubborn nature of women that makes them good mothers and wives implies that they are unsuitable to hold leadership positions in the broader community. Kipling writes that "man, the coward" has a "timid heart," and so may choose to include women in leadership positions out of foolishness ("fear, or foolishness, impels him").
"The Female of the Species" and its refrain have been referenced in numerous other works:
In Greek mythology, Andromeda is the daughter of Cepheus, the king of Aethiopia, and his wife, Cassiopeia. When Cassiopeia boasts that she is more beautiful than the Nereids, Poseidon sends the sea monster Cetus to ravage the coast of Aethiopia as divine punishment. Queen Cassiopeia understands that chaining Andromeda to a rock as a human sacrifice is what will appease Poseidon. Perseus finds her as he is coming back from his quest to decapitate Medusa, and brings her back to Greece to marry her and let her reign as his queen. With the head of Medusa, Perseus petrifies Cetus to stop it from terrorizing the coast any longer.
Filk music is a musical culture, genre, and community tied to science fiction, fantasy, and horror fandom and a type of fan labor. The genre has existed since the early 1950s and been played primarily since the mid-1970s. The genre has a niche but faithful popularity in the underground.
A femme fatale, sometimes called a maneater, Mata Hari, or vamp, is a stock character of a mysterious, beautiful, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, deadly traps. She is an archetype of literature and art. Her ability to enchant, entice and hypnotize her victim with a spell was in the earliest stories seen as verging on supernatural; hence, the femme fatale today is still often described as having a power akin to an enchantress, seductress, witch, having power over men. Femmes fatales are typically villainous, or at least morally ambiguous, and always associated with a sense of mystification, and unease.
"Female of the Species" is a song by English rock band Space, released as their fourth single and second single proper from their debut album, Spiders (1996), on 27 May 1996. The song reached number 14 on the UK Singles Chart and earned a silver certification from the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) in October 2019. It became the band's only charting single in both the United States and Canada.
Deadlier Than the Male is a 1967 British crime and mystery film directed by Ralph Thomas and starring Richard Johnson and Elke Sommer. It is one of the many take-offs of James Bond produced during the 1960s, but is based on an already established detective fiction hero, Bulldog Drummond.
Leslie Fish is an American folk musician, author, and anarchist political activist.
Frank Hayes is an American musician prominent within the science fiction/fantasy genre and culture known as filk. He is also an authority on information technology and, as senior news columnist for Computerworld magazine, has contributed numerous writings on the subject for more than two decades.
Ookla the Mok is a filk band fronted by Rand Bellavia and Adam English (b.1970). The two met as undergraduates while attending Houghton College in 1988, and the majority of their performances have been at science-fiction conventions or in their hometown of Buffalo, New York. The band is named after a character from the Ruby-Spears Productions cartoon Thundarr the Barbarian, created by Steve Gerber.
Steve Macdonald is an American filk singer/songwriter, who also appears at Renaissance Faires as "Gallamor the Bard". He served for several years as the Pegasus Award Evangelista, and was responsible for many changes in the award process that led to much greater participation among the voting base. He was inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame in 2006.
Jordin T. Kare was a physicist and aerospace engineer who researched laser propulsion. He was responsible for Mockingbird, a conceptual design for an extremely small reusable launch vehicle, and was involved in the Clementine lunar mapping mission. Kare also conceived the SailBeam interstellar propulsion technique. In the science fiction fan community, he was a composer, performer and recording artist of filk music.
"Cold Iron" is a poem written by Rudyard Kipling published as the introduction to Rewards and Fairies in 1910. Not to be confused with Cold Iron.
"Recessional" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was composed for the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria, in 1897.
Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is an American sci-fi and fantasy author and filk musician. As an author, she collaborated on several novels in the Batman and Star Wars franchise with Michael Reaves, and as a filk musician, she is a three-time Pegasus Award winner.
"March of Cambreadth" is the signature song of American singer, musician and songwriter Alexander James Adams, previously known as Heather Alexander. The song is well known in filk, Renaissance fair and Society for Creative Anachronism circles. It has been featured in novels by Mike Shepherd, John Ringo and S.M. Stirling. It has also been parodied extensively.
The Female of the Species may refer to:
"The Ballad of East and West" is a poem by Rudyard Kipling. It was first published in 1889, and has been much collected and anthologized since.
FilKONtario is a fan-run convention in the Greater Toronto Area, Ontario area dedicated to filk, the music of science fiction and fantasy fandom. Established in 1991, it is the only filk convention in Canada. In its fifth year (1995), the convention initiated the Filk Hall of Fame, which continues to recognize those who have made significant contributions to filk music and the filk community, worldwide. This international awards program is administered through FilKONtario, with an international jury.
The winged, divine horse Pegasus has been a prominent figure in modern popular culture.
"The Little Red Cap" is a poem by Carol Ann Duffy published by Picador as a part of her 1999 collection of poetry titled The World's Wife. The book consists of poems that are based on old stories and tales in which she reshapes in terms of modern day culture. Duffy is known for her trait to take previous stories, tales, etc. and change them into her own "What you can do as a poet is take on a story and make it new" she once said to Barry Wood in an interview. Duffy's Little Red Cap is a great model of her style of poetry in the collection. The World's Wife was created based on stories of heroes that were an inspiration to her. Duffy also believed that these tales and stories did not interpret the truth. Duffy's belief in feminist literary criticism is apparent as she believed that in order to find the truth, the female character was to be dominant. Most of Duffy's poetry has feminist interest. She found that the original Little Red Cap fairy tale was an example of feminism in both fairy tales and English literature. She then found a personal connection within the original story line to help form a dominant female character in her writing.
"Deadlier Than the Male" is a song written by American singer-songwriter Scott Walker under his real name of Scott Engel with UK record producer Johnny Franz. The song was first recorded and released by Walker's pop group The Walker Brothers as their eighth single in 1966. The accompaniment was directed by Reg Guest. The song was the title track for the 1967 British action film Deadlier Than the Male which featured the character of Bulldog Drummond.