Feminism and Postmodernism in the Novels of Angela

GOTHIC TIMES: FEMINISM AND POSTMODERNISM IN THE NOVELS OF ANGELA CARTER JOHN SEARS UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD 1993 PhD THESIS SUBMITTED MARCH 1993 SYNOPSIS. The problematic relationship between feminism and postmodernism manifests itself, in contemporary fiction by women, as a conflict between political and aesthetic practices which is ultimately waged upon the ground of subjectivity. Angela Carter's novels offer an extended exploration of subjectivity which utilises, in many ways self- consciously, the ongoing theorisation of subjectivity and related notions - notably desire, gender and power - which characterises contemporary feminist and postmodernist philosophy. This thesis offers a series of readings of Carter's novels which traces their engagement with particular aspects of the theorisation of subjectivity. It attempts to present Carter's novels as examples of how the aesthetic and the political can to a certain extent be combined, and of how feminist political practice can be both represented and problematised in the postmodernist fictional text, while postmadernist aesthetic practices are also exploited but problematised in and by that exploitation. The Introduction explores the relationship between feminist and postmodernist theories of the subject, through a survey of theorists from both 'camps' and a brief survey of contemporary women novelists, before discussing the critical neglect of Carter's fiction. Chapter 2 explores more extensively the confluence of feminist, postnadernist and psychoanalytic models of the subject and offers an exemplary reading of a short story by Carter, in order to demonstrate certain stylistic and thematic characteristics of her fiction. In particular, psychoanalytic models of subjectivity are examined. The succeeding two Chapters address Carter's early (pre-1972) novels in order to explore the development of her fictional career from its context of 1960s British fiction, and trace the progressive elaboration of certain thematic preoccupations in their nascent form. Three further Chapters individually address each novel in Carter's 'trilogy' so as to demonstrate how each text explores a particular aspect of the construction of the postmodern self. The Conclusion offers a reading of Carter's fiction as extensively engaged, both at a formal and a thematic level, with the deconstruction of conventional notions of the self in order to expose the political interests invested in those notions. Carter's last novel is also addressed in the context of this discussion, as are the ways in which Carter's fiction offers contributions to the feminist/postmodernist debate as discussed throughout the thesis. Throughout the thesis, extensive reference is made to critical and theoretical works which elucidate or impinge upon the themes addressed in Carter's novels, and Carter's own comments in interviews and in her critical texts are also utilised. CONTENTS Introduction: Postmodern Women's Writing 1 Chapter 2: Theories of Identity and Schizophrenia 43 Chapter 3: Angela Carter's Early Fiction 77 Chapter 4: The Magic Toyshop and Heroes and Villains 111 Chapter 5: Desire and Postmodernism: The Infernal 139 Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman Chapter 6: Gender and Postmodernism: The Passion of 171 Sew Eve Chapter )(: sights at the Circus 211 Conclusions: Angela Carter's Fiction in the Postmodern 249 World Bibliography 283 Introduction: Postmodern Women's Writing. But what is postmodernism? I can propose no rigorous definition of it, any more than I could define modernism itself. For the term has become a current signal of tendencies in theatre, dance, music, art and architecture; in literature and criticism; in philosophy, psychoanalysis and historiography; in cybernetic technologies and even in the sciences. The most wonderful strength of feminism is and always has been its diversity and its heterogeneity. 2 Cultural phenomena that resist definition or interpretation are certain to stimulate the inquisitive minds of theorists and critics, and never more so than when those theorists and critics find themselves sharing the historical domain of such phenomena. The very contemporaneity of postmodernism, as an aesthetic periodisation, and feminism, as a political movement, effectively demands attention, for if we are unable or do not care to interpret our own age, what hope have we of adequately interpreting the past? This is particularly true of the two phenomena indicated above - postmodernism and feminism - because the sheer range of their combined cultural influence, and the significance or import of that influence, suggests that together they comprise what may be described without exaggeration as a major shift of paradigm in Western culture. As a result of this major paradigm shift, almost every academic discipline concerned with contemporary culture has been affected, and has been urged to re-examine its assumptions - scientific, aesthetic, ontological, structural, religious, political - with a rigorously critical eye. Together, feminism and postmodernism and the disciplines -1- they have influenced have been engaged in an ongoing and radical questioning of the very status and assumptions of Western 'being'. The answers they seem to be pointing to, if they be answers in the traditional sense of the word, are far from comforting or reassurinz to Western societies. Given this initially challenging perspective, postmodernism and feminism may equally be denounced as threatening or welcomed as liberating, but such reactions would reveal more about the ideolooical orientations of the interpreter than any qualities intrinsic to either phenomenon. Either way their significance can no longer be ignored or underestimated, and the extent of any reaction to their appearan,e and development on the scene of cultural debate merely reiterates the extent of their significance to that scene. Nevertheless the sheer quantity of theoretical and critical material produced to date iL th debate concerning feminism and postmodernism also signifies a large degree of controversy over the precise nature of the objects of this debate, a controversy which has its basis in one vital aspect of the theoretical/ critical process - the need to define the object of theoretical and critical attention. The difficulties encountered in attempting to define or even delimit either feminism or postmodernism are entirely consistent with the • breadth of application that the terms enjoy. Indeed a characteristic shared by both phenomena is precisely their resistance to reductive strategies of interpretation and easy definition. Instead, an expansive assertion of difference, disjunction and disparity confronts and -2- contradicts any move towards definition. This is equally true from the perspectives of both feminism and postmodernism, so that adherents to _either (or both) would deny - as Ihab Hassan and Leslie Dick do - the unity implicit in the process of naming their positions as feminist/postmodernist. Thus, with respect to postmodernism, E.A. Grosz writes of a recognition and celebration of multiple perspectives, positions, viewpoints, in the face of a demand for a singular, cohesive, unified position of consensus [...] a broad diversity of approaches, methods, objects and attitudes. Similar assertions of postmodern pluralism may be found in most overviews of postmodernism. 4 The demand for singularity which Grosz and others describe constitutes the position of what I want to term the object of resistance, against which postmodernism (particularly in its more political manifestations) is largely oriented. Fredric Jameson argues, in an essay which is still of major significance to the debate over postmodernism, that "postmodernisms C...] emerge as specific reactions against the established forms of high modernism, against this or that high modernism which conquered the university, the museum, the art gallery network and the foundations" While Jameson goes to some lengths to stress the ultimate inadequacy of a crudely historicist periodisation of cultural 'movements', the argument remains that postmodernism constitutes some kind of reaction against unitary, homologising cultural forces. Similarly with feminism - Linda Hutcheon who, like Jameson, uses the plural, argues that "there are almost as many feminisms as there are feminists", and she goes on to suggest that 'feminisms' would appear to be the best term to use to designate, not a consensus, but a multiplicity of points of view whi_h nevertheless do possess at least some common denominators. What is understood by the term 'feminism' will vary between individuals, and will range from such direct political activity as the 'eaual rights' campaigns to academic projects concerned with redefining the literary tradition. The object of resistance for feminism is easier to define than that for postmodernism, but what is significant is that both phenomena are consciously oriented along the lines of opposition, and this shared position would seem to indicate an affinity which is neverless difficult to detect. The relationship between postmodernism and feminism, as historically co-existent and (in many ways) highly political phenomena, is problematical to say the least, and will be addressed below. For now I want to concentrate on a particular problem which is shared by postmodernism and feminism. I want to argue in this thesis that the common resistance to definition discussed above is a product of a more fundamental problem which effectively implies that the shared concerns of postmodernism ant_ feminism

Load more