Hall, Suzanne (1991) Interpretation, gender, and the reader : Angela Carter's self-conscious novels. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2508/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] INTERPRETATION, GENDER, AND THE READER: ANGELA CARTER'S SELF-CONSCIOUS NOVELS Suzanne Hall Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the Department of English Literature University of Glasgow June 1991 Suzanne Hall, 1991 CONTENTS Abstract iii ............................................... Acknowledgements ......................................... v Introduction 1 ............................................. Chapter 1: Nights at the Circus: Reporting, Reviewing, Reading 34 ...................................... Chapter 2: Interpreting Desire: Centres and Margins in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman 85 ................................................. Chapter 3: The Character of Angela Carter's 'Characters': The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, Love, and The Passion New Eve 134 of ..................................... Chapter 4: The Character of 'Woman' and the Question of Pornography in The Passion of New Eve The Sadeian Woman 202 and .................................. Chapter 5: The Liberation of the Female Subject? --I: The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, and The 262 Passion of New Eve ................................. Chapter 6: The Liberation of the Female Subject? --II: the Circus 327 Nights at ................................... 384 Bibliography ........................................... Appendix 403 ............................................... iii ABSTRACT INTERPRETATION, GENDER, AND THE READER: ANGELA CARTER'S SELF-CONSCIOUS NOVELS by Suzanne Hall This thesis attempts to account for the unusual problems raised for interpretation by the works of Angela Carter, as well as the particular pleasures which they provide. It demonstrates how Carter's self-conscious novels speculate about the very nature of fiction and, in doing so, challenge conventions which govern the way we interpret not only fiction but also ourselves and our world. The second half of the thesis is concerned with issues of sexual difference, specifically the strategies used by Carter to demystify the false universals which govern gender politics. Chapter 1 engages with both Nights at the Circus and a selection of reviews of Carter's work in order to establish the particular reader/text relationships which her fiction demands. The breakdown of the traditional distinction between centre and margins in The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman is the focus of Chapter 2: this chapter incorporates Jacques Derrida's model of invagination in its examination of the distinctive intertextual qualities Carter's work displays. Chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate an important strategic technique employed by Carter's novels to expose and exploit specific reading conventions which underlie the interpretation of character, identity, and gender. Chapter 3 shows how four novels, The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, Love, and The Passion of New Eve, promote a 'realist' mode of reading character whilst continually reminding the reader that character is a construction, in order to demonstrate the power of the conventions which create the illusion of knowable individuals both within and outside fiction. Chapter 4 shows how The Passion of New Eve foregrounds a central feminist question, 'What is a Woman? ' This chapter examines the ways in which Carter utilises gender stereotypes, particularly those used to define the female body, in order to debunk them. It also contains an iv account of the debate about pornography which Carter's work has excited amongst critics. Finally, Chapters 5 and 6 discuss the New Eve figures which recur across Carter's fiction and examine the affirmative feminist politics which sustain it. Chapter 5 asks the question, 'What constitutes a liberated female subject? ' while Chapter 6, returning to Nights at the Circus, celebrates Fevvers as just such a figure. Each chapter demonstrates how Carter's work continually anticipates readers' responses and dramatises its own fictional procedures. Each chapter also attempts to illuminate, from a variety of perspectives, the liberating 'reading space, ' which her fiction opens up. V ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First, I would like to thank my supervisor, Dorothy Porter, for her close and careful readings. A number of other people have read drafts of individual chapters and offered invaluable critical commentary. All have proffered not only their professional expertise but also both enthusiasm and support. I am grateful to Elin Diamond, Hugh English, Tom Furniss, Cleo Kearns, George Kearns, Christine Roulston, and Cynthia Scheinberg for their insights, their time, and their care. I would especially like to acknowledge Cora Kaplan, who stepped in at a crucial moment nearing the end of this project, and whose thoughtful and enlightening advice proved an enormous boost to my morale. To my parents I owe special thanks for their transatlantic nurturing; and thank you to my daughter Laura Catherine Attridge who has taught me so much as she and the thesis have grown together. Finally, I would like to dedicate this thesis to Derek Attridge with love and with gratitude. His endless, endless patience has enabled me to accomplish what, on so many occasions, seemed the impossible. INTRODUCTION Just as anything that wants to call itself a novel is a novel, by definition, so fiction can do anything it wants to do. I think it can do more things than we tend to think it can. Angela Carter' 1 John Haffenden, Novelists in Interview (London: Methuen, 1985), p. 79 (henceforth referred to as Novelists). Introduction 2 Although Angela Carter is widely accepted as being among the major contemporary novelists in Britain, there is still very little extended criticism of her work and no booklength study. Since I began work on this thesis in 1985, the bibliography of Carter studies has grown steadily. At the time of writing, however, there are only twenty-three published articles (in English), and only half of these engage specifically with her novels; the others deal largely with her short fiction, particularly her controversial rewritings of fairytales in The Bloody 2 Chamber. In many ways, journalism is perhaps the most productive medium for situating contemporary novelists, and there are a large number of reviews--the publication of a new work by Carter is always an event for the general reader even if the published fiction has enticed relatively few academics. The quality of review material, of course, varies enormously, but some of the commentary on Carter's work is very suggestive. This may, in part, reflect Carter's own journalistic skills, and her particular style of writing. Reviewers tend to polarise 3 into those who love and those who hate her work, and part 2A series of articles about the pornographic tendencies of The Bloody Chamber have been published. summarise their arguments in Chapter 4. All references to Carter's work will be to the editions listed in Bibliography 1, and page numbers will be given in the text. 3 This is not always so obvious in reviews after Nights at the Circus and the film The Company of Wolves, which established Carter's reputation more firmly. Subsequent antipathetic reviewers attempt to disguise Introduction 3 of the aim of this thesis is to ascertain what it is about Carter's writing which generates such extreme responses. Many reviewers identify Carter as a writer concerned with transformation and change, whose writing is affirmative and constructive in a way that much contemporary fiction, particularly fiction by women, is not. But, although these reviewers try to specify the sorts of change which Carter's fictions appear to promote, several also admit that it is extremely difficult to do so. The reviews highlight the problem of interpretation, the specific difficulties that readers--not necessarily academics--have with Carter's fiction; and this is a continuing concern of the thesis. I have incorporated a survey of these reviews into the first chapter, and draw on a selection to inform the rest of the thesis. (The Appendix gives full details of all reviews consulted. ) What the reviews demonstrate most vividly is how difficult it is to place Angela Carter's work. One of the tasks of this thesis is to account for what is special about her work; one of the tasks of this introduction is to situate Carter's fiction by describing briefly how it resembles or differs from that of other contemporary 4 writers, and 'feminist' writers in particular. Carter's fiction, however, resists categorization: her work does their intense distaste for her work behind a rather reluctant recognition of her writing skills. 4 Reviewers also attempt to place Carter's fiction by identifying literary influences; see Chapter 2. Introduction 4 not fit comfortably into any particular school of writing, and has been given