Femme Fatale

May 14, 2007
E
xecuted 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.