UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DE MINAS GERAIS PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM LETRAS: ESTUDOS LITERÁRIOS FLÁVIA FORCATHO Postmodern Politics: Feminism, Identity, and Gender in Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus, ​ ​ ​ ​ and Other Selected Works Belo Horizonte 2019 FLAVIA FORCATHO Postmodern Politics: Feminism, Identity, and Gender in Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus, ​ ​ ​ ​ and Other Selected Works Dissertação de mestrado apresentada ao Programa de Pós-Graduação em Estudos Literários da Faculdade de Letras da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, como requisito parcial para obtenção do título de Mestre em Letras: Estudos Literários. Área de concentração: Literaturas em Inglês ​ Linha de pesquisa: Literatura e Políticas do Contemporâneo ​ Orientador: Sandra Regina Goulart Almeida ​ Belo Horizonte Faculdade de Letras Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais 2019 Acknowledgements I would like to thank CAPES and Pós-Lit for the financial support that has enabled this research. I also thank Professor Sandra Regina Almeida Goulart, my advisor, for her thoughtful guidance during these two years and some months. I want to thank Professor Luiz Fernando Sá for the important help during the project stage of this research, and Glaucia Renate Gonçalves for introducing me to my beloved Angela Carter four years ago and advising me on my first Carter study. Moreover, I thank Professors Julio Jeha, Marcel de Lima Santos, and José dos Santos, who were not directly involved in the production of this thesis but have been inspiring sources of knowledge over the last eight years. I thank Rodrigo for firmly and sincerely believing in me, and tirelessly saying so; my colleagues Amanda and Marcela for their careful reading of my work and important suggestions; Samira, Marina, Silvia, Giovanni, Ícaro and David for the company and exchanged advice; Leandro for so many cafezinhos in the hallways while lending this exhausted friend an ear; and Danton, for the unexpected company and care in these final months. I sincerely thank all of those who have supported me anyhow and at any point of this process. Acima de tudo, agradeço aos meus pais por estarem há vinte e seis anos possibilitando e encorajando ininterruptamente o meu crescimento. “Strategies of writing and of reading are forms of cultural resistance.” — Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn’t ​ “She’s much too big for any single book to contain.” — Edmund Gordon on Angela Carter, The ​ Invention of Angela Carter Abstract This thesis examines the fiction of Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus ​ ​ ​ and other selected works, to shed light on the relation between feminism and postmodernism in her writings. I compare a selection of fictional works by Carter in order to analyze the evolution of her approach to feminist theory. I argue that a progressive enrichment of Carter’s discussions of feminism and gender is verifiable, as well as her gradual transition into more postmodern theorization and aesthetics. For the analysis of identity in line with feminist and postmodern criticism, I rely mostly on Susan Stanford Friedman’s notion of identities as continually constructed, profoundly marked by temporal and spatial axes, and shaped by a number of constituents together with gender. In view of the growing number of critical readings of Carter that resort to Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, I seek to investigate not only the similarities between Carter and Butler but also their divergences. I contend that Carter’s and Butler’s conceptualizations of gender differ in the former’s stress on the sexed body as important for feminism, which is notable in Nights at the Circus. In this ​ ​ sense, Carter is better placed together with gender theorists who, unlike Butler, embrace levels of strategic gender essentialism as reaction to the advances of postmodern relativization. As to desire, I adopt a Lacanian perspective for The Magic Toyshop that ​ reveals desire in the novel as culturally, rather than organically, experienced, and I argue that Nights at the Circus challenges compulsory heterosexuality and reflects upon the possibility ​ of more equal heterosexual relationships. Keywords: Angela Carter; postmodernism; feminism; gender; identity; subjectivity; performativity; essentialism. Resumo Essa dissertação examina a ficção de Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop, Nights at the Circus ​ ​ ​ e outras obras selecionadas, para iluminar a relação entre feminismo e pós-modernismo em sua obra. Comparou-se ficções escritas por Carter a fim de analisar a evolução de sua abordagem à teoria feminista. Argumenta-se que há um progressivo enriquecimento das discussões de Carter acerca de feminismo e gênero, bem como uma gradual transição estética e teórica em direção ao pós-modernismo. A análise de questões de identidade baseou-se centralmente no trabalho de Susan Stanford Friedman, que retrata identidades como sendo continuamente construídas, profundamente marcadas por elementos temporais e espaciais, e moldadas por uma série de constituintes além de gênero. Em vista do crescente número de leituras críticas de Carter que recorrem à teoria de performatividade de gênero de Judith Butler, buscou-se investigar não apenas as correspondências entre Carter e Butler, mas também suas divergências. Defende-se que as concepções de gênero de Carter e Butler diferem quanto à ênfase da primeira no corpo sexuado como elemento importante para o feminismo, o que é notável em Nights at the Circus. Nesse sentido, Carter é mais ​ ​ adequadamente associada a teóricos de gênero que, ao contrário de Butler, fazem uma reflexão sobre o essencialismo estratégico de gênero como resposta aos avanços da relativização pós-modernista. Quanto ao desejo, utiliza-se uma fundamentação Lacaniana que revela o desejo em The Magic Toyshop como cultural, e não organicamente, vivenciado, e ​ ​ argumenta-se que Nights at the Circus questiona a heterossexualidade compulsória e reflete ​ ​ acerca da possibilidade de relações heterossexuais mais igualitárias Palavras-chave: Angela Carter; feminismo; pós-modernismo; gênero; essencialismo; ​ performatividade de gênero. Contents Introduction .............................................................................................................................8 1. Between Myth and Materiality: Angela Carter’s Feminisms .......................................22 1.1 “It felt like Year One” — Shadow Dance .........................................................................35 ​ ​ 1.2 “A new territory lay there, in which she must live” — The Magic Toyshop ....................43 ​ ​ 1.3 “I was the subject of the sentence written on the mirror” — Fireworks ..........................51 ​ ​ 1.4 “Myth is a made thing, not a found thing” — The Passion of New Eve ..........................55 ​ ​ 1.5 “She knew she was nobody’s meat” — The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories ..........61 ​ ​ 1.6 “Is she fact or is she fiction?” — Nights at the Circus .....................................................68 ​ ​ 2. Juggling with Being: the Politics of Representation in Angela Carter’s Geographics of Identity ..................................................................................................................................74 2.1 Inherent Selves Versus Synthetic Identities in The Magic Toyshop ​ ..................................82 2.2 The Textual Self and Its Negotiations in Nights at the Circus ..........................................92 ​ ​ 3. “Flesh Comes to Us out of History” — Sex, Gender, and Desire in The Magic Toyshop ​ and Nights at the Circus .......................................................................................................111 ​ ​ 3.1 The Magic Toyshop: Dismantling Gender Essentialism, Unveiling Cultural Desire, ​ ​ Considering Violent Masculinities ........................................................................................116 3.2 Nights at the Circus: Rewriting Female Monsters, Retreating to Sexed Bodies, Rethinking ​ ​ Sexual Encounters..................................................................................................................133 Final Remarks .....................................................................................................................154 Works Cited .........................................................................................................................159 Introduction Feminism has hardly been a peaceful and homogenous affair. In Sarah Gamble’s words, it has always been “a dynamic and multifaceted movement,” so that “to read feminism’s history … is to uncover a record of debates, schisms and differing points of view” (Routledge Companion viii). In the 19th century, for example, feminists battled for equal ​ ​ rights in relation to white men while remaining generally unbothered by racial inequality and the predicaments of women of color. Twentieth-century feminism was particularly marked by the division into liberals and radicals and a growing awareness of the need for plural feminisms, reinforcing the movements’ tendency towards ideological and/or strategical partitions. Separations and multiplications have so recurred that, in the present century, the word “feminist” may be preceded by a dizzying number of labels — liberal, radical, black, Chicana, Asian, indigenous, socialist, conservative, intersectional, eco-, trans-; the list goes on. Postmodern thinking has greatly contributed to the expansion of this list. In The ​ Postmodern Condition, Jean-François