Black Widow. Legend and Reality

The black widow, her sinister image is found on the pages of many works for more than one hundred years. For the first time its appearance is noted in medieval European legends. With minor variations, the plot in them is the same - a cunning and predatory beauty can make an indelible impression on men. They come across entirely influential and wealthy. Their fate is sad: after marrying a cunning seductress they do not live long. They suddenly die of incomprehensible diseases, a hint that they have not had recently. A black widow, inheriting the state, moves through life further in search of new booty and new adventures.

Is it smoke without fire?

Perhaps a black widow is nothing more than an impressive poetic image and an abstract symbol of evil? Or do these ladies meet in some places? Of course, there were a lot of real historical prototypes of the insidious poisoner in history. Their biographies are constantly featured on the pages of the "yellow press" and other tabloid fiction. Most often, the main characters of these novels are able to handle natural substances at the level of graduates of the school "Hogwarts." And the motives of their actions are banal and uncomplicated: to get her husband into the grave and get his fortune. Many thus recoup for all the evil that they had to endure on the threshold of adolescence. But in the classical works of this genre, everything is far from being so primitive. In them, as a rule, a black widow is a woman who has a special gift. More precisely, it would be called a curse, which is most often unknown to itself and opens gradually, as the plot develops. The main property of this curse is that it condemns to death all those who love it. And the main character, the black widow, faces a very difficult moral choice: how to live and what to do with your supernatural gift. Of course, in the Middle Ages, the entire Holy Inquisition bravely fought against such ladies with all the arsenal of means and tools at its disposal. Needless to say, what is this luxurious material for screenwriters of all formats? In the cinema, this image is exploited throughout the history of its existence. This commercially successful symbol brings a good income to everyone, from the creators to the performer of the leading role, inclusive.

From legend to reality

As long as the black widow is a book or a television series, then, as they say, and hell with it ... But this name is increasingly found in TV news reports about committed terrorist acts by the method of self-explosion. Those who do this, call themselves just this phrase. Most often these are real widows of extremists who died in the war. The terrorist underground appropriates this name to them, and the "black widows" wrapped around by the belts of shahids are sent to the Moscow subway. It is interesting to note that, apart from terrorists, this name - "black widow" - denotes a particularly poisonous species of spiders, widespread in many countries of the world. There are more than thirty varieties. And they are very dangerous.