Cherchez la femme

Cherchez la femme (French: [ʃɛʁʃe la ˈfam]) is a French phrase which literally means "look for the woman."

The expression comes from the 1854 novel The Mohicans of Paris by Alexandre Dumas (père). The first use in the novel reads:

Cherchez la femme, pardieu ! cherchez la femme !

The phrase is repeated several times in the novel. Dumas also used the phrase in his 1864 theatrical adaptation, which reads:

Il y a une femme dans toutes les affaires ; aussitôt qu'on me fait un rapport, je dis : « Cherchez la femme ! »

Translated into English this reads:

There is a woman in every case; as soon as someone brings me a report, I say, "Look for the woman!"

The phrase embodies a cliché of detective pulp fiction: no matter what the problem, a woman is often the root cause. The phrase has thus come to refer to explanations that automatically find the same root cause, no matter the specifics of the problem. In his 1963 detective novel The Chill, Ross Macdonald's sleuth Lew Archer offers a wry analysis of the concept, stating: "When a woman is murdered, you ask her estranged husband where he was at the time. It's the corollary of cherchez la femme."

In the beginning of the movie Gold Diggers of 1937, Glenda Farrell says to the other chorus girls, "Girls, from now on, you're looking at a new Genevieve. A gal who starts with that old Mountie slogan, "Get your man." To which Joan Blondell replies, "And ends with the old police slogan, "Cherchez la femme."

The phrase is employed in the 1942 movie Tales of Manhattan. In the mock trial of Avery L. 'Larry' Browne (Edward G. Robinson's character), the inebriated classmate interjects "Cherchez la femme". It also appears in the film Dr. No (1962).

The phrase appears in the film Carry On Doctor (1967), where Fred (Julian Orchard) uses it in a more literal sense, simply referring to looking for a woman who Ken (Bernard Bresslaw) has seen and taken a fancy to.

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Wikipedia