![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Pat Shipman (who teaches anthropology at Penn State and has published several other books) falls very much into the second camp, with the additional twist that she reads Mata Hari's tale from a contemporary feminist vantage point. More recently, as unknown or suppressed information has surfaced, doubts have been raised both about her culpability and about the motives of the French officials who hounded her. Early ones tended to toe the French line and argue that she was indeed a spy for the kaiser's Germany and that her execution was warranted. That may be true of most people who were in the headlines nearly a century ago, but in her case it's a pity, because her life's story is a humdinger and because the charge that sent her before the firing squad and into popular lore - that she actively and effectively spied for Germany - almost certainly was false.ĭespite the relative obscurity into which she has fallen, her story has been told innumerable times and continues to attract biographers. These days Mata Hari's name probably pops up most frequently in crossword puzzles, where solvers come across clues such as "Spy Mata" or "Infamous Hari" or, for the full eight letters, "Executed WWI spy." Her name has been reduced to one of those essentially useless bits of information with which the modern mind is cluttered. ![]()
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