The Art of Seduction: An Indispensible Primer on the Ultimate Form of Power

Content Warning: The source material includes references to suicide, sexual assault, domestic violence, and incest.

The preface briefly traces the history of seduction, arguing that historically, women’s only power was through men’s vulnerability: sex. Women historically used this power to intrigue men visually, then “lure them away from the masculine world of war and politics and get them to spend time in the feminine world—a world of luxury, spectacle, and pleasure” (xix). Men would fall in love with women, women would withdraw, and men would chase them. Greene argues that seduction then became an “art, the ultimate form of power and persuasion” (xx) through the use of psychological tactics. Seduction, as women’s “warfare,” gave them agency and power.

Men began to use seduction in the 17th century, adding language to their techniques. This resulted in two versions of seduction, appearance or language. Political leaders, actors, and artists also learned to seduce their enemies and audiences through psychological methods like charisma.

Greene shows seducers how to make people fall in love using psychological strategies for malleability before leading them toward sex. Seducers know that people want pleasure, and Greene claims that people want to be pushed past their resistance: “seduction is a form of deception, but people want to be led astray…If they didn’t, seducers would not find so many willing victims” (xxiv).