Masaryk University - Masarykova univerzita

Masaryk University Faculty of Arts

Department of English and American Studies English Language and Literature Teaching English Language and Literature for Secondary Schools

Bc. Nikola Wiedermanová

Daddy’s Girl Growing up The Portrayal of Female Adolescence in Selected Fairy-Tale Figures by Angela Carter Master‟s Diploma Thesis

Supervisor: Prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc., M.A.

2012

I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently, using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography. …………………………………………….. Bc. Nikola Wiedermanová

I would like to thank my supervisor, prof. Mgr. Milada Franková, CSc. M.A., for all her kind guidance and valuable advice. I would also like to thank all who supported and encouraged me while I was writing this thesis, especially my family and my dear friends from the Department of English and American Studies.

One is not born a woman, but rather becomes one. – Simone de Beauvoir

Table of Contents 1 Introduction………………………………………………………………………….....3 1.1 The Fairy Tale and its Feminist Rewritings.…………………………………5 1.2 The Work of Angela Carter………………………………………………...10 1.2.1 The Magic Toyshop.........................................................................11 1.2.2 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories………………………….13 1.2.3 Nights at the Circus. ………….…………………………………..16 1.3 Young Female Fairy-Tale Figures: Old and New…………………………..18 1.4 Feminist Foregrounding: Body, Voice and Gender………………………...21 1.4.1 Body………………………………………………………………21 1.4.2 Voice……………………………………………………………...22 1.4.3 Gender…………………………………………………………….24 2 New Bodies, New Sensations………………………………………………………...26 2.1 First Menstruation…………………………………………………………..26 2.2 A New Body………………………………………………………………..30 2.3 Virginity…………………………………………………………………….37 2.4 Chapter Conclusion…………………………………………………………41 3 Mothers and Other Mother Figures…………………………………………………..42 3.1 The Mother Myth…………………………………………………………...42 3.2 Women‟s Relationships in Patriarchy………………………………………45 3.3 Mothers and Mother Figures as Girls‟ Role Models……………………….49 3.4 A Brothel as an Alternative…………………………………………………53 3.5 Chapter Conclusion…………………………………………………………56 4 From Fathers to Husbands……………………………………………………………57 4.1 Father-Daughter Incest……………………………………………………...57

-1-

4.2 Sex and Desire……………………………………………………………...61 4.3 Marriage…………………………………………………………………….68 4.4 Chapter Conclusion…………………………………………………………70 5 Heroines in Process…………………………………………………………………...72 5.1 Melanie of The Magic Toyshop…………………………………………….72 5.2 Protagonists of “The Bloody Chamber” and “The Tiger‟s Bride”…………75 5.3 Fevvers of Nights at the Circus……….……………………………………78 5.4 Chapter Conclusion…………………………………………………………79 6 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………81 Works Cited……………………………………….……………………………………84 Resume…………………………………………………………………………………87

-2-

1 Introduction In this master thesis, adolescence of female fairy-tale figures of selected texts by Angela Carter is analyzed. The studied works are the novels The Magic Toyshop (1967) and Nights at the Circus (1984) and the collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979). Many of the characters of these books are girls at the end of their childhood or young women on the threshold of their adulthood, who in the course of the stories go through their puberty and adolescence and ultimately grow up and become women or at least significantly advance in this direction. Obviously, the process of growing up brings along many new roles and challenges. The girls‟ bodies are changing, their sexuality is developing; their relationships and roles are altering as well – they are starting to take care of themselves, entering first partnerships and marriages, having first sex, and much more. And in all this, they are choosing who they want to be, learning to fend for themselves and trying to incorporate some fun and pleasure along the way. The analysis here starts with the most obvious aspect of adolescence – physical changes, which include first menstruation, new (sensual) awareness of the developing body, or – in the case of Fevvers of Nights at the Circus – of growing a pair of wings and learning how to use them to fly. Because adolescent girls are moving into roles occupied by their mothers, stepmothers, aunts and nannies, next it is explored what influence these characters have on the young heroines, to what extent the girls follow in their footsteps, and, importantly, what their mutual relationships are. Special attention is paid to the “mother myth” that Carter deconstructs. The thesis then continues with the topic of the relationship with fathers, husbands and other men, and of living in a patriarchal world, where the violence on and abuse of women is an everyday reality. Relationships with men are explored also from the more positive side of love and

-3-

affectionate sex, and the traditional pattern of marriage is discussed as well. Still further in the thesis, it is attempted to answer questions of how the heroines themselves reflect on the changes and the development they are going through and how the things that happen to them in their adolescence shape them. The fact that the adolescence of the selected female figures is interpreted in fairy-tale terms leads to another dimension of the analysis. As is shown here, the genre of fairy tale has become a patriarchal project to keep women in their places, and this has become especially visible in the female characters of the genre. Thus it is discussed here how Carter‟s portrayal of young heroines reflects back on its classical counterpart. Given the fact that the fairy tale was significantly altered under the patriarchal influence, it seems natural that this thesis is grounded in feminist theory, especially of the French feminist thinkers of the second half of the twentieth century. The feminist concepts followed in this thesis are those of the female body, voice and gender. This thesis shows that Carter‟s young fairy-tale heroines grow up to be independent women who reflect on their development and actively influence their lives. In a way, they do not have any other option. In the world of Carter‟s texts, all roles that young women are traditionally expected to have are deconstructed. The women are not pure in their virginity but well aware of their sexuality and active in the search for its realization. They cannot hope that in marriage they will live in love and partnership, because husbands can turn out to be one‟s fiercest enemy. Also motherhood is shown as not everything it is cracked up to be. When all the certainties and stereotypes are taken away from them, the heroines need to accept the responsibility for themselves and their lives and learn how to make use of every bit of the power they have. Main secondary sources that were used for the analysis here include the collection of scholarly essays Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale, which offers various

-4-

views of Angela Carter‟s fairy-tale work; Cristina Bacchilega‟s study Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies, which extensively deals with Carter‟s The Bloody Chamber, and Linden Peach‟s work Angela Carter, where she analyzes and evaluates all Carter‟s work with a special focus on the development of her novel. The feminist aspect of this thesis is supported by Ann Rosalind Jones‟s essay “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of „L‟Ecriture Feminine‟” and Sandra M. Glibert‟s study “Life‟s Empty Pack: Notes toward a Literary Daughteronomy,” where she analyzes the woman‟s psycho-sexual development in terms of the father-daughter incestuous relationship. Angela Carter does not provide straightforward solutions to the questions her texts pose. As Franková remarks, her answers remain hidden under a rich layer of images, allegories and allusions (47). It also seems that in every meaning that the reader discovers in her texts, there is an aspect, perhaps only a detail, which serves to undermine it. Thus this thesis inevitably offers only one out of many possible readings of Carter.

1.1 The Fairy Tale and its Feminist Rewritings Although the idea that comes to one‟s mind with the term „fairy tale‟ may be one of a notoriously known story for children such as “Cinderella”, “Little Red Riding Hood,” or “Three Little Pigs,” scholars and writers over the past few decades have shown that there is much more to the genre of fairy tale than that. In her study Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction, Susan Sellers overviews some theories on the nature and characteristics of the genre. For example, as she notes, for Maria Tatar, the “crucial identifying feature is the way fairy tale reverses all the conditions outlined at the beginning of the story” (9). Cronan Rose sees fairy tales as “embryonic

-5-

stories of development” (10), and also Bruno Bettelheim focuses on the social and psychological function when he claims that fairy tales “symbolically present the path to independent existence by reducing the complicated and difficult process of socialization to its constituent paradigms” (10). In the The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English, Bacchilega reminds us that it is characteristic of fairy tales that they “perform magic” and that “they have traditionally fulfilled complex, even conflicting, desires, and they have done so with ease, reassuring predictability, dazzling variety and adaptability” (“Fairy Tale” 231). The listing of various definitions of the fairy tale could continue for much longer, yet for the purposes of this thesis it is more important to note the feminist approaches and strategies. The connection between women and the fairy tale has been complex and somewhat double-edged: on the one hand, many scholars have acknowledged and researched the women‟s role in telling and shaping the stories, on the other hand, it seems that at some point this originally oral, flexible and women-dominated genre got under the spell of canonization forces and was significantly altered. Haase takes note of the significance of women for the tale and of the tale for women when he mentions that “storytelling is a semiotically female art,” as was purportedly argued by Karen E. Rowe by “pointing not only to women‟s traditional roles of storytellers but also to the ways they have been represented as the spinners of tales in folktale collections, frame stories, and literary tales. She showed that through their association with the fates, fairies, and spinning, women are identified with the art and power of spinning tales” (17). Some scholars have gone even further when searching for the link between the fairy tale and women. Haase remarks how Göttner Abendroth influentially argues that “fairy tales reflect the practices and customs of prehistorical societies, which were in her view „primarily matriarchal societies‟” and that they “contain remnants of a prehistoric

-6-

matriarchal mythology” (15). In this view, fairy tales did not only belong to the women‟s sphere of power because they were told, shaped and kept alive by them, but also because they carried evidence of their once prominent social status. However, it appears that women lost the power connected with the genre. Haase mentions Jack Zipes‟s research into the history and sociology of fairytale: “In specific sociohistorical contexts Zipes demonstrated how the folktale had been appropriated and reappropriated by European and American writers as a special discourse on sociocultural values and how that fairy-tale discourse was intended to function in the socialization of children – especially in its modeling of gender-specific identity and behavior” (10). Thus the fairytales we know today are loaded with prescriptions on what was once established as appropriate. The development of European fairy tales over the past few centuries is recognized as an instance of such appropriation and reappropriation: Women tellers, as „oral informants,‟ and women characters abound in this literary tradition, but their words are arranged, cut, embellished by Charles Perrault (Les Histoires ou contes du temps passé, 1697), the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen in the 19th century, L.Frank Baum‟s The Wizard of Oz and Disney‟s glittery films and picture books in the 20th century – to list only the most prominent names. […] And as the audience for fairy tales increasingly narrowed to children and women, the wise girl, the bawdy wife, the brave sister, the bold maiden were hidden away. (Bacchilega “Fairy Tale” 231) It is significant here that the change of audience and the limitations put on female heroines are connected. Fairy tales gradually became the socialization stories that Zipes suggests, and at the same time children came to be exposed to very little female power

-7-

through the stories. Young girls thus had fewer strong female role models to follow and young boys were not shown that female power was at all possible. It is interesting that despite this ideological shift, the tales – or at least their plots – somehow seem to have stayed the same. As Haase points out, Ruth Bottigheimer studied alternations the Grimms made when recording the originally oral tales and their eventual effects: Bottigheimer demonstrated how the Grimms‟ editorial interventions – including their apparently simple lexical revisions – weakened oncestrong female characters, demonized female power, imposed a male perspective on stories voicing women‟s discontents, and rendered heroines powerless by depriving them of speech, all in accord with the social values of their time. (11) It is suggested here that relatively minor changes in wording, point of view and ways of narration brought about significant changes in the values and power dynamics the tales carried. Thus stories that probably came into being when the fairy tale had still been a women-dominated genre now started to work against them and to serve as a tool to keep them in their place in a patriarchal society. Given this ironic development, it comes as no surprise that feminist writers have tried to repossess the genre of fairy tale, rediscover its lost dimensions and use it again for their own good. As Bacchilega notes, there has been a long tradition of female rewriting of fairy tales. This tradition has now stretched over three centuries and has been present in works of such writers as Charlotte Brontë, Christina Rossetti or Jean Rhys. The late twentieth century brought about a real boom in rewriting and reappropriating of fairy tale, with writers Angela Carter, Margaret Atwood, Anne Saxton, Emma Donogue, Marina Warner and many others contributing to this development (“Fairy Tale” 233).

-8-

Yet many critics are skeptical about whether it is possible and worth the effort to revive the lost voices and viewpoints of fairy tales. Susan Sellers researches into the various attitudes to this issue and in this context mentions Purkiss, who is convinced that “the endeavour to retrieve a buried or marginal voice has the paradoxical function of endorsing the original myth.” Sellers goes on to the postcolonial critic Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who even suggests “that it is impossible to restore a voice that has been dispossessed, since the very act serves to re-cover it” (27). It is perhaps true that every reading of a rewritten fairy tale brings to life also its stereotypical version enforced by the Disney cartoon, but maybe these stereotyped and canonized versions should not be overrated. Sellers quotes Elizabeth Bronfen‟s persuasion that “the disruption caused leaves traces” (28), and perhaps today‟s fairy-tale canon is not disruption-proof. Sellers expresses her own optimistic idea of the strategies and functions of feminist rewritings of fairy tales: “Feminist rewriting could […] include ironic mimicry and clever twists as well as whole gamut of tactics that would open the myth from the inside as well as out, leaving in place enough of the known format to provide evocative points of reflection for its readers, but also encompassing different possibilities and other points of view” (29). This approach reminds us of planting a woodworm into a wooden construction and letting it live there and build its small mazes, only to find out years later that it has made the construction dysfunctional. Angela Carter herself says about the undermining effects of rewriting: “I am all for putting new wine into old bottles, especially if the pressure of the new wine makes the old bottles explode” (qtd in Makinen 5). The numerous writers who have told and written their versions of fairy tales obviously believe that it is still possible to rescue the genre of fairy tale for women and make it a women‟s tool of coding and carrying their experience once again.

-9-

1.2 The Work of Angela Carter Angela Carter (1940 – 1992) is a well-known and prize-winning postmodern British writer and literary critic. Her daring and experimental work has been regarded as pioneering by some and as controversial or even insulting by others. Following Linden Peach‟s listing, over twenty-six years, Angela Carter completed nine novels: Shadow Dance (1966), The Magic Toyshop (1967), Several Perceptions (1968), Heroes and Villains (1969), Love (1971), The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffmann (1972), The Passion of New Eve (1977), Nights at the Circus (1984) and Wise Children (1991); five collections of short stories: Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces (1974), The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979), Black Venus (1985) and American Ghosts & OldWorld Wonders (published posthumously in 1993); and several works of non-fiction, including for example The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History (1979), Nothing Sacred: Selected Writings (1982) and Expletives Deleted: Selected Writings (1992). Importantly, Angela Carter also edited and translated The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977) and Sleeping Beauty and Other Favourite Fairy Tales (1982) and also edited two collections for Virago: The Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1990) and The Second Virago Book of Fairy Tales (1992). Carter is also an author of four collections of children‟s stories and four radio plays (2). One of the threads winding through all her work would probably be what Gerrard calls “mocking iconoclasm” (qtd in Peach 2) – the effort to playfully uncover and undermine rigid but false assumptions people have about the world and the society they live in. Angela Carter famously wrote that she was “in the demythologizing business” (qtd in Sage 79). In an interview, she explains what she means by this: “Well, I‟m basically trying to find out what certain configurations of imagery in our society, in our culture, really stand for, what they mean, underneath the kind of semireligious

- 10 -

coating that makes people not particularly want to interfere with them”(Interview). This effort could be traced in all her work, disguised in many forms and strategies. Fairy tales are certainly a rich source of false ideologies, and yet they are special, due to their folk origin. As Carter says about her fairy-tale writing: “This is how I make potato soup” (qtd in Sage 79), which Sage interprets as that “fairy tales are less than myths […]. They are volatile, anybody‟s” (79). In this understanding, fairy tales offer themselves to rewriting, deconstructing and being shaped into new or once-andfuture versions. As many fairy tales historically appeared in a number of coexisting variations, the process of multiplying the versions of fairy tales in order to offer other viewpoints seems fully in accordance with the genre‟s nature. Because any attempt to characterize Carter‟s fairy-tale work in general would by far exceed the space of this introduction, it may be better to look specifically at the texts analyzed here, at their stories, their fairy-tale features, and the receptions and critiques of them.

1.2.1 The Magic Toyshop Carter‟s second novel, The Magic Toyshop (1967), tells a story of fifteen-yearold Melanie and her two younger siblings, who lose their parents in an airplane accident and have to move to London to live with Uncle Philip, whom they have never seen before. Uncle Philip, a toymaker and an owner of a toyshop, turns out to be an autocratic brute, who manipulates the lives of all around him: his mute wife Margaret and her two brothers, Finn and Francie. Melanie has a hard time getting used to her new ascetic life, but tries to create ties to her new family and even starts a relationship with Finn. As the events around her forced enactment of Leda‟s story and the uncovered

- 11 -

unfaithfulness of Aunt Margaret culminate, Uncle Philip sets the house on fire. Melanie and Finn together manage to escape. Because of the character of Uncle Philip and the way all inhabitants of his house seem subordinated to him, this novel can be read as a critique of, or – as Makinen calls it – as a “disquietingly savage analysis of patriarchy” (3), which she sees as characteristic of Carter‟s novels of the 1960s and 1970s. The numerous fairy-tale features that can be traced in this novel include the motif of orphaned children who go to live with a new family and have to face hardships there, and also the setting of a toyshop and the possibility that toys may become alive – as is suggested in the theatre play where Melanie is raped by a puppet-swan – is fairytale-like. Furthermore, Uncle Philip‟s house, with its corridors, numerous rooms and atmosphere of fear and mystery strongly reminds of Bluebeard‟s castle. Of the fairy-tale features that Linden Peach observes, it is worthwhile to mention the theme of transgression and its punishment. As she notes on the genre of fairy tale: “The stories acquired a moral which often arose out of a young girl being punished or brought to „wisdom‟ through realizing the foolishness of transgression” (74). Peach sees such a transgression in Melanie‟s trying on her mother‟s wedding dress, which was followed by the airplane crash and their forced leaving for London (73). It is important for the purposes of this thesis that in The Magic Toyshop, fairy-tale elements reach to the bare plot of the story and to the fate of the main female character. In this way, the character‟s experience and development can be discussed within the extended frame of the genre of fairy tale.

- 12 -

1.2.2 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) is a collection of ten short stories that can be seen as rewritings of classical fairy tales such as “Beauty and the Beast,” “Bluebeard,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Snow White” or “The Sleeping Beauty.” Carter strategically plays with the classical tales. Among other things, she transposes the stories into modern times where there are trains, cars and telephones, she tells the story or lets the story be told from the heroine‟s point of view, or she explores the various possible backgrounds behind the tales. Perhaps most significantly, and in a sharp contrast with the tales in the Grimms‟ or Perrault‟s versions, Carter‟s characters are sexual beings and her tales are charged with eroticism. Carter opens the fairy tales to new readings and new meanings, and she achieves this also by offering more – often somewhat contrary – variations on the same tale. For example, the fairy tale “Beauty and the Beast” is rewritten into two different short stories, the fairy tale “Little Red Riding Hood” into three. It is suggested that this multiplicity aims to activate the reader: “By providing stories that can be read as echoing one another […], Carter prompts readers to view a particular type of situation from a variety of perspectives” (Roemer 108). But it seems that the stories not only “can be read as echoing one another,” but they even have to be read in this way, in the context of the whole collection. Crunelle-Vanrigh shows the necessity of contextual reading on the example of the story “The Courtship of Mr Lyon”: “Not one of the stories at play in The Bloody Chamber can be said to signify in itself, though it can be enjoyed on its own. The meaning of “Courtship” is constructed through a process of referring to other texts. Coming from, and pointing back and forward, to other stories, it is only one signifier in the process of referring to other, absent signifiers.” She goes on to mention that “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” is thus intertwined with “The Tiger‟s

- 13 -

Bride,” but also with “The Snow Child” and “Wolf-Alice” (139). It is significant that generally the stories of this collection are not only interconnected with the stories with which they share the underlying fairy tale, but also with (all) others. Every tale thus needs to be read in the context of the whole collection, even if this may in a way disrupt the tale that is being read. Although the stories of the collection are obviously postmodern texts, this does not mean that they are devoid of their fairy-tale roots. On the contrary, Bacchilega is convinced that Carter brings to life forgotten aspects of the genre. She states in connection with the “Little Red Riding Hood” stories of the collection: I want to argue that Angela Carter‟s postmodern rewritings are acts of fairy-tale archeology that release this story‟s many other voices. As an enthusiastic listener/reader of both folk and literary tales, and as a writer who draws from many versions, oral and literary, Carter tells tales that reactivate lost traditions, trace violently contradictory genealogies, and flesh out the complex and vital workings of desire and narrative. (Postmodern Fairy Tales 59) It is then remarkable that although Carter works within the traditions of the genre and with well-known tales, she makes a full use of the authorial influence of a teller of the tales. The aspects of the fairy tales that Carter as their teller chooses to emphasize, including the portrayal of sexual and power relations, have often been seen as controversial and disconcerting. Indeed, Carter‟s collection The Bloody Chamber has had not only many enthusiastic reviewers, but also many upset critics. Interestingly, Bruhl and Gamer notice: “Perhaps the primary irony surrounding the reception of The Bloody Chamber is that it has generated the most controversy among feminist critics”

- 14 -

(147). They also remind us that Angela Carter earned from feminist theoreticians many denominations on behalf of her work: “a pseudofeminist” (Dworkin), “an apologist fleeing to a „literary sanctuary‟ outside of political criticism” (Kappeler), or “the high priestess of post-graduate porn” (Sebestyen) (149). Bacchilega overviews still other critics of Carter‟s The Bloody Chamber: also from a feminist point of view, Patricia Dunker criticizes Carter for working within the fairy tale, for “rewriting the tales within the strait-jacket of their original structures” (Bacchilega Postmodern Fairy Tales 51).” Dunker is convinced that Carter in this way inevitably reinforces the rigid patterns of female sexuality: “By amplifying these images, conflicts, and transformations [of the fairy tales], Carter‟s revisions simply confirm sado-masochistic arrangements instead of conceiving of “women‟s sexuality as an autonomous desire” (51). As Bacchilega further reports, Robert Clark sees Carter‟s feminist merits as doubtful as well. In his view, Carter‟s fictions generally “offer their readers a knowledge of patriarchy” yet reinscribe “patriarchal attitudes” (51). These are only a few of the critical voices that have been raised in response to The Bloody Chamber, and especially to its sexual politics. Considering the sources of problematic reception of The Bloody Chamber, Bruhl and Gamer observe that what makes it “problematic for both student and critical audiences is the glee with which it mixes disciplines and refuses to draw recognizable battlelines” (148). As an example they offer the story “The Bloody Chamber,” which on the one hand works as a “critique of sadomasochism,” but on the other hand includes such descriptions of the satin nightdress or leather clothes that suggest that the heroine is complicitous in sensual desires (149). Certainly, many situations and scenes of this kind can be found in Carter‟s texts, and they show that her characters are not simply good or bad, and the fictitious world of her fairy tales is not only black and white, but has many colours in many shades.

- 15 -

1.2.3 Nights at the Circus The novel Nights at the Circus (1984), narrates the story of Fevvers, a young winged woman and a famous circus aerialist. At the beginning, Fevvers gives an interview and an account of her life to an American journalist Walser, who decides to join the circus as a clown and follow her incognito to Petersburg and then over Siberia to Japan in order to reveal her as a hoax. They fall in love with each other and in the end become a couple, after many adventures, including Fevvers‟s saving Walser from a Siberian shaman. There are many characters and their numerous stories are introduced in the novel as well, among others those of other inhabitants of Madame Schreck‟s museum of women monsters, of other artists of the circus or of the female convicts in a Siberian penitentiary, but Fevvers‟s story remains central. She is a unique character; half-woman, half-bird; she is symbolically, as Madam Nelson says, “the pure child of the century that just now is waiting in the wings, the New Age in which no women will be bound down to the ground (Nights at the Circus 25). Financially independent, experienced and ambitious, she really is, in a way, an embodiment of a new, liberated woman. But she is no simplistic character, and many opposing elements meet in her: she is a performing star with Cockney roots, a virgin who knows the tricks of a prostitute, and a diamond lover with a big heart. As for the fairy-tale aspects of this novel, although it cannot be seen as a rewriting of a specific tale, many fairy-tale motifs can be traced here. Fevvers is a hatched orphan on her journey to love and happiness, which – together with her changing feelings of beauty and ugliness – evokes Andersen‟s tale “The Ugly Duckling.” It is also put forth here that her adoptive mother, Lizzy, does tricks and magic. Furthermore, certain polemics or mirroring of fairy tales can be found here, for

- 16 -

example in the characters of Madame Schreck‟s museum. For instance, the girl called the Sleeping Beauty, suddenly, on the day of her first period, starts to sleep more and more, until she spends no more than a few minutes a day awake. Such, in a way medicinal description of excessive need to sleep offers itself to physiological and psychological rationalizations like diseases, or depression, or self-denial and allows the reader to see the well-known fairy-tale character of Sleeping Beauty in a new light. Or, another inhabitant of the museum, Wonder, of unusually short height, looks back on the time she spent with seven men of similar height that she met when they performed “The Snow White”: “„Suffice to say I traveled with them seven long months, passed from one to another, for they were brothers and believed in share and share alike. I fear they did not treat me kindly, for, although they were little, they were men‟” (68). It is thus put forward that excessive sleep may not only be caused by thorns and cohabiting with seven men may not be only idyllic, and that perhaps this is only a beginning of uncovering of what is not right in fairy tales. Also in this way Carter explores meanings of folk tales, opens them to new readings and reveals the ideologies inscribed in them. It has been proposed that Nights at the Circus can be seen as a continuation of previous works. Linden Peach writes: “Carter‟s works are best read not as independent texts, but as part of an ongoing process of writing. Whilst to some degree this may be true of any author, it is especially true of Carter” (22). This dimension of Carter‟s writing will prove useful for this thesis, as the powerful character of Fevvers will be at times taken here as an answer to the questions posed by young female heroines of her other works. However, although Carter‟s writing can be seen as one process, it cannot be said that it did not change. The process Linden Peach talks about is a development. Merja Makinen observes the progress made between Carter‟s first and last works:

- 17 -

This is not to argue that the latter novels are not also feminist, but their strategy is different. The violence in the events depicted in the earlier [of the 1960s and 1970s] novels (the rapes, the physical and mental abuse of women) and the aggression implicit in the representations, are no longer foregrounded. While similar events may occur in these last two texts [Nights at the Circus and Wise Children], the focus is on mocking and exploding the constrictive cultural stereotypes and in celebrating the sheer ability of the female protagonist to survive, unscathed by the sexist ideologies. (3) Given the scope of the text analyzed here and this development, it follows that the experience of the heroines ranges from going through abuse and recovering from it or fighting out their own inner space in a restrictive environment - as in The Magic Toyshop or “The Bloody Chamber” – to withstanding attempted abuse by fleeing from it and ridiculing it, as Fevvers does in Nights at the Circus. Thus a whole range of women‟s experience is offered for the analysis here. 1.3 Young Female Fairy-Tale Heroines: Old and New Because young fairy-tale heroines of Carter‟s fiction are analyzed in this thesis, it is perhaps useful to have a brief look at how young women are stereotyped in classical fairy tales, and how Carter‟s heroines tend to differ. As has been already mentioned, fairy tales became by a certain point in history loaded with patriarchal ideology. According to Jack Zipes, fairy tales thus turned into a “social project” which served ideological purposes. Bacchilega explains his thesis: “In relation to gender, this social project has been to produce bold and entrepreneurial boys, silent and accepting girls, heterosexual scenarios with happy endings” (“Fairy Tale” 231). There are numerous examples that quickly come to one‟s mind that support this

- 18 -

view. Cinderella dutifully accepts her fate of the unloved stepdaughter, for which she is rewarded by a marriage with a prince, who energetically decides to find her according to her cute high-heeled shoe. In “Snow White”, silence and acceptance are taken to extreme when its protagonist sleeps for a long time and waits for a prince to rescue her. Red Riding Hood disobeys and takes a shortcut through the woods, for which she is punished by almost losing her grandmother‟s and her own life; and is only lucky to be rescued by a woodcutter. Although it would not be impossible to find fairy tales where a girl or a woman is an active agent and is rewarded for it, the tales that Bacchilega lists as best known in the late twentieth century (“Cinderella,” “Snow White,” “Red Riding Hood,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Sleeping Beauty”) very much confirm Zipes‟s thesis (“Fairy Tale” 231). It can be seen that the behaviour fairy tales hold as appropriate for young women radically differs from what is acceptable and desired in young men. In fact, as many scholars notice, boys and girls in fairy tales are judged by double standards. Zipes for example maintains: “What is praiseworthy in males, is rejected in females, the counterpart of the energetic, aspiring boy is the scheming, ambitious woman…Women who are powerful and good are never human” (qtd in Sage 67). If they are to be good, heroines in fairy tales are limited to only a small number of possible ways of conduct, and the already mentioned acceptance and waiting seem to be the safest options. Such is the message on socialization that girls and young women have been offered. Also Angela Carter notices this strong tendency towards passive heroines, which becomes an object of her criticism and rewritings. About the girls who just wait for their princes and other rescuers, she writes: “To be the object of desire is to be defined in the passive case. To exist in the passive case is to die in the passive case – that is, to be killed. This is the moral of the fairy tale about the perfect woman” (gtd in Sage 68). But

- 19 -

Carter does not throw the baby out with the bath water, although she is aware of the tight pigeonholes made for fairy-tale heroines. As Sage notes: “Carter, while registering with grim humour and clarity the awful legacy […], still sees in the genre a means by which a writing woman may take flight” (68). Many scholars deal with Carter‟s female fairy-tale characters and notice their empowerment. To give an example, in her preface to a Carter‟s collection, Marina Warner succinctly expresses what Carter achieves with her rewritings in this aspect: Angela Carter continues […] one of her original and effective strategies, snatching out of the jaws of misogyny itself, „useful stories‟ for women. […] She turns topsy-turvy some cautionary folk tales and shakes out the fear and dislike of women they once expressed to create a new set of values, about strong, outspoken, zestful, sexual women who can‟t be kept down. (qtd in Haase 9) Female characters of the kind described here certainly represent a significant departure from the passive and thus self-destructive girls of classical versions. To conclude, it has been outlined here what the classical representations of young women generally signify and that Carter ventures to create new models. In the thesis, this question of the stereotypical or stereotype-defying message on young heroines is also followed, in terms of the behaviour for which they are rewarded or punished, whether they are passive and accepting or rebellious, self-conscious, strong personalities to be.

- 20 -

1.4 Feminist Foregrounding: Body, Voice and Gender 1.4.1 Body Because this thesis deals with female adolescence, of which the changes of the body are an integral part, it is necessary to have a look at how the concept of the female body is formulated in the feminist theory and thus in what terms it will be followed here. According to Peach‟s account, in the 1960s and 1970s, Anglo-American feminist writers started to represent the female body in a revolutionary way in order to challenge the “Western tradition‟s denial of women‟s experiences of their own bodies.” The portrayals of the female body included depictions of bodily changes and bodily fluids, which “subverted the body‟s sense of closure” (76). This was supported by works of French feminists like Julia Kristeva, Luce Irigaray or Helene Cixous, who, as Jones writes, also “in general believe that Western thought has been based on a systematic repression of women‟s experience” (247). It has been suggested that this denial resulted in women themselves being at a loss how to think of their bodies; but that this is something that can be changed. Jones explains Irrigaray‟s position: She continues her argument that women, because they have been caught in a world structured by man-centered concepts, have had no way of knowing or representing themselves. But she offers as the starting point for a female self-consciousness the facts of women‟s bodies and women‟s sexual pleasure, precisely because they have been so absent or so misrepresented in male discourse. (250) As a remedy it is thus proposed to fully acknowledge the existence of one‟s body and one‟s sexual pleasure, take them as magnitudes to be taken into account and not let them

- 21 -

become invisible again. In this context, one must think of the female fairy-tale characters that once again become sexual beings in Carter‟s fiction. Apart from the French feminists, Judith Butler is seen by Lorna Sage as another theoretician whose work opened new ways of approach to Carter‟s writing. Sage sees her description of bodies that “wear” our “cultural history” as well-fitting to Carter‟s work. In Judith Butler‟s view, “the body is a field of interpretive possibilities, the locus of a dialectical process of interpreting anew a historical set of interpretations which have become imprinted on the flesh” (qtd in Sage 71). Bodies are thus seen as not existing only on their own, in a vacuum, but in the frame of our cultural history. Carter is very open in her descriptions of the (sexual) female body. In the texts analyzed here, the female body is portrayed in many situations, including the first menstruation and sexual activities; in the torture chamber in “The Bloody Chamber,” the reader can even find out about dead bodies of the Marquis‟s previous wives. In her tales, Carter‟s interest in the link between sexuality, pornography and politics becomes evident. She more closely pursues this issue in her study The Sadeian Women. In this thesis, the concepts of body and sexuality are followed in terms of how the maturing female body – with its functions and fluids – is represented and to what effect, of how the heroines approach their developing bodies and their sexuality and how aware they are of their bodily needs and desires, but also of what assumptions about female bodies and sexuality are passed on them, and how their bodies are approached by those around them, especially by their partners.

1.4.2 Voice Another category that is followed in this thesis is women‟s voice – a means of one‟s expression and assertion. The question of how women can express themselves has

- 22 -

been a crucial issue for feminists: If language is a carrier of patriarchal ideology, then in what language and on what terms can women freely speak? Kristeva and Cixous propose that women should express themselves outside of the patriarchal language, through language of the body and through silence, so that “silence becomes speech and body becomes speechifier” (qtd in Gilbert and Gubar 518). This seems a potentially powerful reversal, but certainly has its failings. As has been already mentioned, the silence of fairy-tale heroines has not served women well. Furthmore, the question arises of how women can contribute to the general discourse with their bodies and their silences. Xaviere Gauthier summarizes this problem: “As long as women remain silent or speak in a body language […], they will be outside the historical process. But of they begin to write and speak as men do, they will enter history subdued and alienated” (qtd in Gilbert and Gubar 519). It seems then that women‟s language and ways of expression need to be a balancing act between these two sides. In the texts discussed here, Carter plays with the possibilities of focalization and narration to give the heroines‟ expression and experience larger space. In some of the works, the events are only followed from the heroine‟s point of view, as is the case of for example The Magic Toyshop, “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” or “The Company of Wolves;” other stories are told directly by their protagonists, as for example “The Bloody Chamber” or the opening part of Nights at the Circus. It is interesting that in these two texts the heroine defies and survives patriarchal violence, the stories they then tell work against the patriarchal order twice – once in their content, once in the fact that they are told by a female protagonist. In the studied texts it is observed whether and how the young heroines use their voices or whether they remain silent, what examples of self-expression they are given

- 23 -

by women around them, and also how they give account of themselves, how they word their experience and tell their stories.

1.4.3 Gender The third concept that serves as a basis for analysis here is the concept of gender. It is a particularly potent concept for fairy tales, because, as has been noted, fairy tales have served as guidance on how to socialize into gender-appropriate roles. As Mari Mikkola overviews, in the 1960s, feminists started to use the term „gender‟ to distinguish biological differences between the two sexes from social/psychological ones and to talk about the latter. This distinction has been generally accepted. Nowadays it is also commonly assumed that gender is a social construct. As Mikkola further explains, this means that gender categories (women and men) and gendered traits ascribed to them (being caring or ambitious) are, according to Haslanger, the “intended or unintended product[s] of a social practice.” It is also believed that masculinity and femininity are products of nurture - of how individuals are brought up. In the process, females gradually acquire feminine qualities and learn how to act accordingly and thus become women. In this process of becoming a woman or a man, the power distribution and the rules of patriarchal society apply, so that women are socialised into subordinate social roles: they learn to be submissive, caring, ideally seeing their fulfillment in creating the hearth and home (Mikkola). Carter is very experimental about gender, which can be observed for example on the theme of transvestites, which appears in her work and can be traced for example in the figure of Fevvers, in which the traits of female and male characters are mixed. Sellers mentions Ward Jouve‟s observation that “Carter wants to sever the link between biology and gender” (115). Opinions on how successful she is with this project differ,

- 24 -

but it is clear that she sets out to deconstruct gender as another category that limits the freedom of men and women. In this thesis, it is attempted to find out what the message on the female socialization is in the rewritten fairy tales. It is also analyzed what information and advice the heroines become on how to be a woman, how they reflect on their womanhood, how they gradually create it and grow into it, and also how the stereotyped gender roles occur and develop in their relationships.

- 25 -

2 New Bodies, New Sensations When Fevvers of Nights at the Circus talks about the physical changes of her puberty, she describes them as the “marvellous blossoming of my until then reticent and undemanding flesh” (23). In her wording it can be seen how the girls‟ bodies that were taken for granted suddenly start to “be there” and to change on many levels: they start to look, function and feel differently and through them, a whole new dimension opens up to the young heroines. In this chapter it is discussed how they view and experience this little revolution that their bodies start.

2.1 First Menstruation While it seems somewhat absurd and out-of-place to wonder whether heroines of fairy tales menstruate and how it is solved when for example Sleeping Beauties sleep for long periods of time, Carter is open and literal when it comes to this issue. The reader often finds out that the girls have just begun to menstruate and also how they feel about it and how they put up with it psychologically and physically. First menses of a girl is often taken as the first significant sign that she is growing up into a young woman; it is a sign that the body is prepared for reproduction. It is also a reminder of the roles that she will most probably take in her life: a man‟s sexual partner, a mother and a homemaker. First menstruation is in a way a promise of the future and brings along expectations but also anxiety. This becomes visible when it is explained why Melanie of The Magic Toyshop feels uncomfortable when she has to climb a tree up to her bedroom: Since she was thirteen, when her periods began, she had felt she was pregnant with herself, bearing the slowly ripening embryo of Melaniegrown-up inside herself for a gestation time the length of which she was

- 26 -

not precisely aware. And, during this time, to climb a tree might provoke a miscarriage and she would remain forever stranded in childhood, a crop-haired tomboy. (20) In this passage it is put forward that although since her first menses Melanie is aware of the fact that she will be a mature woman soon and that this will take her to in a sense qualitatively different state, she fears that this process of transformation may still go wrong, that she will interrupt it somehow and it will not be completed. A woman‟s menses is also a tangible source of her difference from a man and often a source of shame and a lack of understanding. It thus seems that menstruation can be a symbol not only for being a woman, but also for being a woman in a men‟s world. A girl who starts to menstruate needs to come to terms with all this. But maybe sometimes a girl decides not to accept it and looks for an avoidance strategy. Perhaps in this way one can approach the story of the Sleeping Beauty of Nights at the Circus. As Fevvers narrates in the interview with the young handsome journalist Walser, the Sleeping Beauty, whom she met in the museum of women monsters, was a country currate‟s daughter, cheerful and smart, but on the day when her menstruation started began to sleep more and more, until she spent awake only a few minutes of a day (63). The first menses and the beginning of excessive sleep seem to be more than just a coincidence. Perhaps the sleep was the girl‟s avoidance strategy, as it is known to be the case with depressions or states of self-denial. Perhaps as her flow started, she unconsciously or through her body realized what there was in stock for her, and decided to have a long sleep instead. However, menses is portrayed generally positively in the texts analyzed here. It is suggested to be a milestone and also a precious and powerful thing. This can be observed for instance when Wolf-Alice of the short story of the same title in The Bloody

- 27 -

Chamber, a girl brought up by the wolves and having adopted only the very basics of human conduct, is trying to figure out the cause of her first flow. Her first theory is connected to wolves, the dearest part of her life: The moon had been shining into the kitchen when she woke to feel the trickle between her thighs and it seemed to her that a wolf who, perhaps, was fond of her, as wolves were, and who lived, perhaps, in the moon? must have nibbled her cunt while she was sleeping, had subjected her to a series of affectionate nips too gentle to wake her yet sharp enough to break the skin. (152) Not only was the theory connected to the beloved wolves, but also to a demonstration of their fondness for her achieved through delicate nibbling of her genitals. Wolf-Alice instinctively searches for a positive reasoning of her first menstruation. In accordance with this observation, Bacchilega in her analysis of Carter‟s stories based on the story of “Little Red Riding Hood” concludes that Carter here economically and symbolically revalues women‟s menstrual and birth blood and shows it as empowering. Bacchilega also mentions Irigaray‟s thesis that blood was formerly equaled with life itself, but as a symbol of wealth has been replaced by for example gold, penis or child (Postmodern Fairy Tales 66). Menstruation is thus portrayed as something that may give power rather than take it away, if approached positively. Another example of Carter‟s positive portrayal of menstruation blood, although not connected to the first menses, can be found in Nights at the Circus. In the Siberian penitentiary for women who murdered their husbands, Olga Alexandrovna, one of the prisoners, starts to communicate with Vera Andreyevna, a guard that brings her food. But because the ways of communication are limited to secret notes, and paper and something to write with are scarce, these two women and soon also all others in the

- 28 -

prison make use of the inks that their bodies offer. They thus write and draw “in blood, both menstrual and veinous, even in excrement, for none of the juices of the bodies that had been so long denied were alien to them” (217). In accordance with the French feminist theory, the women prisoners of the Siberian panopticon befriend the fluids of their bodies and express themselves through them. Communicating in this way, the prisoners and their guards manage to make a plan of rebellion against the Countess, the head of the House of Correction, in which they succeed and thus regain their freedom. Reflecting on this powerful use of menstrual blood that results in becoming free, Michael notes: “Olga thus uses one of the most overt emblems of femaleness, traditionally used to set women apart as inferior to men, as a means of empowerment; she literally writes herself into subjecthood with her menstrual blood” (516). Because Olga and other prisoners set out to found a new, women-only colony, it can be suggested that they write themselves into a new world. This resonates with Jones‟s explanation of the treatment of bodily fluids in French feminism: “[…] To the extent that the female body is seen as a direct source of female writing, a powerful alternative discourse seems possible: to write from the body is to recreate the world” (252). Olga and her peers do exactly this; they turn to their bodies for a means that would enable them to change their situation and find also their bodily fluids, including menstrual blood, and they write themselves into freedom and into a new existence and thus recreate their world. To conclude, first menstruation is a moment for the girl to start to realize what her future roles will be and to try find where she stands in the new situation. Although it is connected to feelings of anxiety and uncertainty, menstrual blood is not portrayed as a source of shame, but as a precious thing and a possible source of energy and power that can be used later in life for the girl‟s own good.

- 29 -

2.2 A New Body A girl‟s puberty brings along many physical changes. The body develops from a little girl‟s body into one of a young woman. Breasts, hips, belly and skin change and the body acquires new functions and brings new feelings, often to bewilderment of its owner. Obviously, also fairy-tale characters go through puberty, although their tellers usually do not make this known as Carter does. In her texts, for example, the reader finds out about the Red Riding Hood character of “The Company of Wolves” that “her breasts have just begun to swell” and “she has just started her woman‟s bleeding” (141). Suddenly, thus described, the character and then the whole story obtain a new dimension, of a reality of the body. Living in the new body is a huge novelty and the girls need to get used to the new situation. They need to discover their new curves, shapes, and what the new body feels like when touched. As it is read in the very first paragraph of the novel The Magic Toyshop, Melanie spends long hours of the summer on this mission: The summer she was fifteen, Melanie discovered she was made of flesh and blood. O, my America, my new found land. She embarked on a tranced voyage, exploring the whole of herself, clambering her own mountain ranges, penetrating the moist richness of her secret valleys, a physiological Cortez, da Gama or Mungo Park. For hours she stared at herself, naked, in the mirror of her wardrobe; she would follow with her finger the elegant structure of her rib-cage, where the heart fluttered under the flesh like a bird under a blanket, and she would draw down the long line from breast-bone to navel […], and she would rasp her palms against her bud-wing shoulderblades. (1)

- 30 -

From this powerful passage, it follows that Melanie tries to acknowledge the changes of her body and embrace its new form and appearance. She feels no anxiety or shame because of her body or her exploring efforts; on the contrary, as the end of the passage reads, she would laugh and do cartwheels out of joy. She simply has fun exploring her new body. Many departures from fairy tales can be seen here, from the portrayal of the changes on the female body caused by puberty to the exploration of one‟s body and the enthusiasm that goes with it. As has been proposed about the passage: “[Carter] undermines [the] inscribed ideology by emphasizing what the misogynistic fairy stories suppressed, an adolescent girl‟s excitement about her body and the discovery of her emerging sexuality” (Peach 75). This observation about Carter‟s subversion of fairy tales by breaking their silence about a girl‟s sexuality and her joy over it is also in accordance with Irigaray‟s and Cixous‟s persuasion that “if women are to discover and express who they are, [in opposition to being represented in the patriarchal discourse], they must begin with their sexuality. And their sexuality begins with their bodies” (Jones 252). Thus such a portrayal of a pubescent girl enjoying her body has significant consequences for the (fairy-tale) discourse, because it forces upon it a space for unambiguously positive descriptions of the changing female body and the woman‟s relation to it. Although it may seem that Melanie‟s body and the mirror are the only participants in this game of discovery, in fact, also the cultural and social images connected to the female body are at play here. Melanie performs for herself little sketches from cultural history: she poses in the style of Pre-Raphaelites or Toulouse Lautrec (The Magic Toyshop 1), or, after she reads Lady Chatterley’s Lover, she sticks forget-me-nots in her pubic hair (2). She experiments with what it means to have a female body in the twentieth century, after numerous artists and writers portrayed and

- 31 -

represented it, and she tries to get somehow orientated in the whole array of images. For instance, she finds that she is “too thin for a Titian or a Renoir” (2) or that she feels “particularly wicked” when posing for Lautrec (1). At the same time, Melanie is aware of the expectations projected on a woman‟s body that must be met to call it beautiful. These naturally influence the way she perceives herself and her future chances. One of the expectations that Melanie realizes and wants to conform to concerns her slimness. She shovels large portions of bread pudding into her brother‟s plate from fear what it would do to her: “She was afraid that if she ate too much of it she would grow fat and nobody would ever love her and she would die virgin” (3). Melanie feels scared that if she does not meet the demands she thinks are projected on her body, her future will be hopeless. The process of the discovery of her new body is for Melanie somewhat double-edged. On the one hand, she feels joy over her body as it is, on the other hand, she measures her body against an ideal of beauty. However, it should be said that Melanie sees her body as only one amongst many things that have the potential to decide on her future. For instance, when she watches her five-year-old sister, she thinks: “Is Victoria retarded? […] Will I have to stay at home and help Mummy look after her and never have a life of my own?” (7). Thus it seems that she considers various scenarios, and her body is not the only parameter in them. All in all, putting her fears aside, it is suggested that Melanie receives as much fun as she can from experimenting with her new self. At times she can even let go of the idea that her beauty and her body are there to be given at a lover‟s or a groom‟s disposal. When she is trying on her mother‟s wedding dress, is posing in it and sees in the mirror how pretty she looks, she wonders: “Moonlight, satin, roses. A bride. Whose bride? But she was, tonight, sufficient for herself in her own glory and did not need a groom” (16). It can be proposed that what Melanie experiences here draws close to

- 32 -

jouissance, a concept – as Jones explains - appropriated by the French feminists (Kristeva, Irigaray, Cixous and Wittig) as “the direct reexperience of the physical pleasures of infancy and of later sexuality,” which is a form of resistance to the institutions and signifying practices of a patriarchal culture (248). In her experiments of the summer, Melanie embraces her emerging sexuality in a private joy and thus deepens her relationship with her body, although this does not take place in a vacuum and she needs to work out the cultural and social demands and influences. For Fevvers of Nights at the Circus, physical puberty is even more challenging. Her small toy-wings that she has had since the age of seven develop, to her great dismay, into a fully-fledged pair. In her interview with the young journalist, she openly talks about the moment when her wings appear in their new form: “For, as my little titties swelled before, so these feathered appendages of mine swelled behind until, one morning in my fourteenth year […], I spread. […] I had taken off my little white nightgown in order to perform my matutinal ablutions at my little dresser when there was a great ripping in the hind-quarters of my chemise and, all unwilled by me, uncalled for, involuntarily, suddenly there broke forth my peculiar inheritance – these wings of mine! Still adolescent, as yet, not half their adult size, and moist, sticky, like freshly unfurled foliage on an April tree. But, all the same, wings.” (24) Perhaps every girl going through puberty to some extent feels that the changes in her body come willfully and are unprecedented, but Fevvers can be quite sure that no woman has had a body of her kind before. Therefore no-one can advise her how to deal with the new, alien part of body that suddenly grows on her back.

- 33 -

Following the appearance of her wings, Fevvers, aided by her adoptive mother Liz, sets out to discover what the potential of her wings is and whether she can eventually fly, or whether she is rather an ostrich-like creature that can spread wings but not hover on them. This turns out to be a dangerous and lengthy project. In her first attempt to fly, she jumps off a mantelpiece in the drawing room, goes straight to the floor and ends up with a nosebleed and bruises. But, importantly, she experiences an almost imperceptible moment of being carried by the air. In order to discover the technique of flight and physical properties of the air, Fevvers and Liz watch birdmothers teach their young how to fly and study expert books, until one day, months after the appearance of Fevvers‟s wings, there comes the moment when Liz pushes Fevvers over the edge of the roof of the brothel, and she flies. Untrained and new to the motion, though, she quickly tires herself and on her return to the roof almost plummets to the ground. Nevertheless, she discovers that her body is “a little boat that [can] cast anchor in the clouds” (Nights at the Circus 27-35). Although she still needs to learn a lot of lessons, she already knows what her body is capable of. As she further narrates to Walser, her wings and the possibilities they gave her naturally started to determine her plans for the future. She tells him: “I saw my future as criss-crossing the globe for then I knew nothing of the constraints the world imposes; I only knew by body was the abode of limitless freedom” (41). Having discovered its potential, Fevvers sees her body as the source of unlimited liberty, which feels somewhat out-of-place in a world full of limitations. Fevvers with her wings becomes, according to Peach, “the embodiment of freedom” (134). It can be suggested that Fevvers embodies freedom in a number of ways. Firstly, her wings provide her body with unprecedented possibilities, when she can move, travel and view things in fashions unknown to (other) human beings. Further, they give her the opportunity to make a

- 34 -

living and live an independent life. Also, through creating the image of an artistic aerialist, Fevvers decides what she wants to convey, and how she wants to be perceived. And as it will be argued in chapters that follow, Fevvers‟s unique origin of hatching out of an egg and being brought up by a group of loving prostitutes frees her from the limiting views and behavioural patterns that she would acquire in the classical Oedipal setting. It can be suggested that Fevvers‟s unique experience of physical puberty can be inspirational for young girls. The message it conveys is that a woman needs to embrace her body in its peculiarity, learn about its functioning and explore its potential, and then it can liberate her. Because even winged Fevvers has to learn how to fly, and if she were not brave enough to find out what her wings can do, she would never learn to use them and they would uselessly dangle on her back, making her more of a strange than a wonderful creature. Like to Fevvers, also to Melanie of The Magic Toyshop it pays off that she learns to know and appreciate her body. Consoling the fragile Aunt Margaret who breaks down with tears, she suddenly realizes the strength coming from her body: “Cradling the worn, sad woman, Melanie felt herself to be very strong, young and vital and tough. She knew and trusted her firm, quick, resilient body, fed on wholesome food all its life, washed and tended so carefully”. For a while she wonders whether the repressive environment of Uncle Philip‟s house will cause her to weaken, but then she resolves to be “too strong to be withered” (138). Melanie knows her body and trusts it and feels it can help her face difficulties. However, given Carter‟s interest in disrupting all possible stereotypical categories, it comes as no surprise that Fevvers, her female embodiment of liberty can hardly be seen as a conventional female character, and that she even has a streak of a cripple in her. It has been proposed that the character of Fevvers does not conform to

- 35 -

gender stereotypes, but represents both typically feminine and typically masculine features. As Michael writes: “Fevvers is altogether an ambivalent figure who threatens traditional binary categories: she possesses both masculine strength and authority as well as feminine charms and wiles” (499). This can be observed for instance when Walser, who is interviewing her and starts to be charmed by her, suddenly begins to fear that she is actually a man and he is falling for a transvestite. At the same time, depending on the point of view, Fevvers can be looked at not as a beautiful winged woman artist, but as a freak of nature or a hunchback. The idea of Fevvers as a humpback is very much present in the novel, as it is her disguise when she does not want to be seen in her real nature. The plan originally comes from Ma Nelson, the runner of the brothel of Fevvers‟s childhood, who devises it in order to discourage inquisitive clients. And when Fevvers‟s body is not marveled at or covered up, she can be seen as a monster. This point of view is suggested in the novel when she becomes one of the living showpieces in Madame Shreck‟s museum of women monsters. The fact that Carter makes her symbol of freedom a monster reminds of her statement from The Sadeian Woman that “a free woman in an unfree society will be a monster” (qtd in Bacchilega Postmodern Fairy Tales 52). Although it was originally noted in the context of female sexuality, it also rather neatly fits Fevvers character, who is a free woman in a world full of limitations, and can be seen as a monster. Discussing the character of Fevvers, Sage reflects also on Jack Zipes‟s observation of different fairy-tale socialization patterns for girls and for boys (which has been already discussed in the Introduction) where it is concluded that, in contrast with strong male fairy-tale characters, “women who are powerful and good are never human” (qtd in Sage 67). Sage notices that this is true also for the winged heroine Fevvers, as she is “indeed powerful and good and not exactly human” (67). Thus the winged artist not only

- 36 -

embodies the possible freedom and liberty of women, but also magnifies the restricting prescriptions about what a woman should be like in order to exist within the given categories. To summarize what has been said in this subchapter, Carter portrays the bodily changes of her young women and also how they come to terms with them. Melanie of The Magic Toyshop and Fevvers of Nights at the Circus take the discovering of their bodies as a mission in which they manage to befriend their physicality. In this process, Melanie puts up with the social and cultural expectations on her body, and Fevvers with the great challenge of having wings that are capable of flight. For both of them, their bodies become a source of their strength and energy.

2.3 Virginity Another aspect of a woman‟s youth that Carter portrays and sets out to deconstruct is a girl‟s virginity. According to Carter, the redeeming purity of the virgin is consolatory nonsense (qtd in Peach 9). Fairy tale‟s practices of desexualizing women and making them only sexual objects and not subjects are for Carter unacceptable. Her young heroines feel the power of their sexuality and their conduct is often motivated by it. By making her virgins sexually motivated, Carter undermines the rigid virgin/whore binary – the patriarchal view that women are sexually either completely untouched and unaware, or exceedingly and improperly active, and that there is no option in between. One of the tales where the young virgin‟s sexuality moves the events forward is “The Company of Wolves.” As Franková observes, the heroine here is driven by the “curious unrest of her virginity” to leave for the woods and the wolf (49). Indeed, as it is read in the story, virginity is her way of being, which, surprisingly, makes her feel dauntless and safe: “She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own

- 37 -

virginity. She is an unbroken egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver” (“The Company of Wolves” 141). Feeling secure and self-confident, Red Riding Hood insists on going through the woods to visit her grandmother, although she knows well that as for the wolves it is the worst time of the year (140-41). It seems that she wants to challenge herself and that she even hopes there will be a danger in the woods she will have to face. Her longing curiosity is further revealed when she meets a handsome huntsman in the woods. They agree to compete about who will arrive first at her grandmother‟s house, and if he wins, she has to give him a kiss. Despite the rising moon, she then purposefully drags her feet to make sure that the lad wins the bet and they will kiss (143). Furthermore, on her arrival at the grandmother‟s house, she is “a little disappointed to see only her grandmother sitting beside the fire” (145). Although a virgin, she is obviously eager for sexual encounters. But, of course, it is not the grandmother who is sitting by the fire, but the handsome huntsman turned werewolf. The girl quickly sees that, having devoured her grandmother, he now wants her, but reaches for the boldness and confidence of her virginity and realizes her strength. The reader finds out her reaction to the werewolf‟s threat that he will eat her: “The girl burst out laughing; she knew she was nobody‟s meat” (147). Thus, putting her fears aside, the girl eventually becomes the werewolf‟s partner in the striptease and in their “savage marriage ceremony” (147). It perhaps surprisingly appears as if the wished for an encounter of this kind when she left her mother‟s house. Also other virginal heroines of the texts analyzed here are eager for sexual experience. For example, Melanie of The Magic Toyshop, who has already plotted various imaginative scenarios concerning her wedding night but has not been kissed yet,

- 38 -

welcomes Finn‟s decision to change this: “She waited in an agony of apprehension. If it was going to happen, it must happen and then she would know what it was like to be kissed, which she did not know, now. At least she would have that much experience, even if it was only Finn who kissed her” (105). Melanie does not mind that she will not get her first kiss from someone more attractive and loving than Finn; she is content with the sheer fact that she will at last begin with her love life. Later, when they practice for the show that Uncle Philip devised, in which Melanie in the part of Leda is raped by a huge puppet-swan, they come close together in an embrace and Melanie is quite sure that it is the moment when she will lose her virginity: “He lay as close as a sheet to a blanket; and he smelt of decay, but that no longer mattered. Shuddering, she realised that this no longer mattered. She waited tensely for it to happen” (149). As she does when she is kissed for the first time, Melanie, impassioned, opens herself to the experience and lets it come to her, and is rather upset when Finn decides not to advance. This analysis attempts to show that in their virginity, (some of) Carter‟s young female heroines enthusiastically expect their first sexual encounters and go forward to meet them; which speaks against the following Duncker‟s criticism of The Bloody Chamber: “Carter envisages women‟s sensuality simply as a response to male arousal. She has no conception of women‟s sexuality as autonomous desire” (qtd in Benson 38). If it is accepted that Red Riding Hood is driven by the disquieting power of her virginity, which seems to be quite neatly suggested in the text, it can be said that she is a sexual being long before she strips and is stripped by the werewolf, although the specific expression of her sexuality naturally comes in interaction with him. However, the fact that virgins in Carter‟s texts are sexual beings does not mean that they know how to manage the powers of their sexuality and are able to safely face the situations in which it leads them. As Franková notes, by deconstructing the myth of

- 39 -

a pure virgin, Carter gives her heroines the freedom to decide on themselves and their bodies, but this freedom involves also the responsibility for their choices and the necessity to bear consequences (49). And it seems that in their desire, the young women cannot see as far as to the consequences. Melanie, for instance, focused on the new experience, cannot see what Finn can see – that the situation is cunningly prepared by Uncle Philip, who wants the two of them to have sex and thus to “pull Melanie down” (The Magic Toyshop 152). Neither does Red Riding Hood of “The Company of Wolves” seem to realize how dangerous her conduct is. On a similar note, the young heroine of “The Bloody Chamber,” seduced by an older, rich and mysterious suitor, is almost murdered and is only very lucky to be rescued by her provident mother. Carter further undermines the virgin/whore binary by making Fevvers of Nights at the Circus the “Virgin Whore,” as she was known in the whole city of London due to the fact that she was an employee of Ma Nelson‟s brothel (she posed there as a Little Amour and later as Winged Victory), but never had any clients herself. In fact, Fevvers remains a virgin until the very end of the novel, where she unites with her beloved journalist Walser. It seems interesting that Fevvers remains a virgin for so long when it is considered that she in a way sees her virginity as a commodity that can be cashed, should the need arise. As she narrates to Walser about a financially interesting offer she was given: “For what Mr Rosencreutz is willing to pay for the privilege of busting a scrap of cartilage was quite sufficient to set my entire family up in comfort” (81). It appears that Fevvers views her virginity pragmatically and that it is more important for her to be able to look after her family than to remain in the innocent state. However, in both appointments that Fevvers goes to because of the promised money, she finds out that it is not her virginity the two men want to get her rid of, it is her life: Mr

- 40 -

Rosencreutz wants to sacrifice her in a ritual and the Grand Duke wants to turn her into one of his ingenious toys. In these life-endangering situations, Fevvers is saved by the equipment and knowledge she received in her native whorehouse. She is quicker than Mr Rosencreutz in tossing her sword she got from Ma Nelson (83), and masturbates the Grand Duke, escaping in the moment of his orgasm (192). Thus it can be said that her whore-aspect of her personality saves both her life and virginity. To conclude, it seems that Carter plays with the rigid assumptions of female sexuality and the pigeonholes of virgins and whores. Her young girls are charged with eroticism and eager for sexual experience, and her winged heroine Fevvers, brought up in a brothel, who is willing to cash her virginity, in the end paradoxically loses it out of love. But virginity for Carter is a dangerous state, because its desires and aspirations outweigh the experience and information the girls have; thus her young heroines often dangerously play with fire.

2.4 Chapter Conclusion As has been shown here, to Carter‟s young female fairy-tale figures, the physical changes of puberty and adolescence suggest unknown potentialities and horizons. The girls and young women perceive and explore their new bodies and start intimate relationships with them. Contrary to stereotypical expectations, the virginal girls of the analyzed texts are well aware of their budding sexuality and seek opportunities for its further exploration. All in all, it can be suggested that Carter returns young girls and women to their bodies and lets them face the joys and perils of it.

- 41 -

3 Mothers and Other Mother Figures In their puberty and adolescence, girls grow into and prepare for new roles – of adult women, of mothers, of their mothers‟ friends. They look up to their mothers and other mother figures for advice and model behaviour which would guide and inspire them. The young women‟s relationships with their mothers, aunts and other women change; they become their equals and possible rivals. In this chapter it is discussed how the role of the mother is portrayed in the analyzed texts, what kind of role models the mother figures of the texts are for their wards, what is proposed as characteristic of women‟s relations in patriarchy, and whether there is any possible alternative.

3.1 The Mother Myth Before it is discussed what influence mothers and other mother figures have on their (surrogate) daughters, it must be noted that Carter does not agree with any kind of glorification of a mother figure as a soother and ultimate giver, but is convinced that such an idea of the mother is another construct that makes people unfree. She writes: “All the mythic versions of women, from the myth of the redeeming purity of the virgin to that of the healing, reconciling mother, are consolatory nonsenses; and consolatory nonsense seems to me a fair definition of myth, anyway. Mother goddesses are just as silly a notion as father gods” (qtd in Peach 9). In Carter‟s view, the mythical mother figure is generally a manipulative exaggeration. As is shown here, the characters of mother figures of the analyzed texts vary, as their behaviour and their relationships with their daughters do. This span of possibilities that Carter offers includes the mighty and heroic mother of “The Bloody Chamber” who obeys her sixth sense, decodes her daughter‟s distress as a call for help and comes to rescue her from certain death, but this is just one mother figure among many and certainly does not seem to be a typical one. It

- 42 -

must be also pointed out that although Carter attempts to dismantle the mother myth, she does not strip her mothers of all significance. Rather, as Sellers argues, “Carter‟s attack has been directed against certain manifestations of the archetype rather than the mother or origin per se” (115). However, in the context of fairy tales it seems to be inevitable to somehow undermine the image of a mother who is always good, loving and self-giving, because this image was artificially instituted as the only possibility during the recording and canonization of fairy tales. As has been noted: “The Grimms were also responsible for changing the wicked mother figure in many tales to a wicked stepmother character so as not to challenge prevailing beliefs about motherhood” (Roemer and Bacchilega 10). Thus the earlier representation of mothers that included also less good, giving and self-sacrificing examples was narrowed and distorted to only one possible picture and everything else was rendered impermissible and unthought-of. In her tales and novels, Carter shows that there are more possibilities of being a mother. To mention those that would probably be unheard-of in classical fairy tales, for example, Wonder of Nights at the Circus, an unusually short and petite woman whom Fevvers gets to know in the museum of women monsters, is sold by her mother to a French pastrycook who serves her in cakes as a surprise (66). The mother of Mignon of the same novel is killed by her husband for “lying down with soldiers from a nearby barracks” (128). Another mother of this novel, Olga Alexandrovna, kills her husband who abuses her, is put into prison and leaves behind an orphan boy (211). Apart from the criminal and unfaithful mothers, there are also mothers who are rather weak and improvident, as Red Riding Hood‟s mother, who “cannot deny her” and lets her go off through the woods, despite the obvious perils it entails (141). It might be suggested here that Red Riding Hood‟s mom is so good that it is actually harmful for the daughter; and the myth of the good mother works against itself. To give one final example of mother

- 43 -

behavior that would probably not be found in classical fairy tales, Liz, Fevvers‟s adoptive mother, observes bird-moms teach their young to fly and sees what she adopts as her own teaching strategy: “[…] Why, as it dithered there, its loving mother came right up behind it and shoved it clean off the edge!” (Nights at the Circus 33) Deciding on this risky step, Lizzie hopes that with her help, Fevvers has already adopted enough of the art of flying and that this fly-or-die attempt turns out successful. In Carter‟s texts, a wider scope of mother behaviour can be found, which seems more natural and truthful than only the narrow given pattern of the mother figure. One might suggest that the mother myth that establishes a caring, self-sacrificing mother who is always there for her children and their father as the only possibility of motherhood eventually serves to keep women in their place. Although the mother myth suggests female power, it only seems to be power that is acceptable within the patriarchal frame. It has been suggested that motherhood lies at the very heart of patriarchy. As Gallop writes: As Chodorow – among others – has shown us, the institution of motherhood is a cornerstone of patriarchy. Although the father may be absent from the pre-Oedipal, patriarchy constitutes the very structure of the mother-child dyad. The early mother may appear to be outside patriarchy, but the very idea of the mother (and the woman) as outside culture, society, and politics is an essential ideological component of patriarchy. (322) This observation seems to find its manifestation in Nights at the Circus when Lizzie and Fevvers, going through the Siberian forest, find an improvised hut and inside it a woman who has just given birth to her baby and now is burning up with fever. Because Liz and Fevvers (Sophie) are just discussing the issue of marriage and Liz tries to warn

- 44 -

Fevvers against the institution, Liz uses the sight of the poor woman who has become a victim of her mother role as her argument: “„[…] This tableau of a woman in bondage to her reproductive system, a woman tied hand and foot to that Nature which your physiology denies, Sophie, has been set here on purpose to make you think twice about turning from a freak to a woman‟” (283). Although the birth of a child may be seen as an intimate moment between the mother and her child that deserves a special approach and a ritual, this appreciating attitude may easily turn against the mother and she is moved to the periphery to struggle on her own for her and her child‟s lives. Thus although the mother is celebrated on surface, in reality she is victimized. The mother myth seems to work just in this way: although in its face value it celebrates the unique role of women for their children, their sacrifices and nurturing and life-giving abilities, in fact it restricts women by offering them very limited options and modes of behaviour. Carter does not comply with this distorting representation of mothers but shows that they are only people who can be strong or weak, good or bad, and can approach their mother role in various ways.

3.2 Women’s Relationships in Patriarchy As girls are growing up, the relationships between them and other women are changing. Girls become adult women‟s equals, peers and in a way also successors. They begin to see what the relationships between women are and to be a part of them. Here it is looked at the nature of some of the relationships between daughters and their (surrogate) mothers and at the influence the mothers have on the young heroines. One of the possible constellations of the mother-daughter relationship is sisterhood and sympathy based on their common fate and hardship. This is for example the case of Melanie of The Magic Toyshop and her Aunt Margaret. They both have to

- 45 -

put up with the hardness of living in Uncle Philip‟s house. This includes obeying him in everything, having no money on one‟s own, not being allowed to wear trousers and generally calculating at every moment what to do so as not to make him angry. In such an environment, they become friends and support for one another and there seems to develop a silent understanding between them. This becomes visible when Aunt Margaret sadly explains to Melanie that she cannot give her any money to buy presents because she is given none herself. Melanie tries to be supportive: “„I understand,‟ said Melanie. An ancient, female look passed between them; they were poor women pensioners, planets round a male sun” (140). They both know that they are dominated and manipulated and try to ease their burden by offering each other warmth and sympathy. Peach reads the passage in terms of a unique connection between the two women that is however anchored in their inferior position: “The look that passes between them is evidence of a deeper female bond. […]. However, the word „bond‟ is double-edged; the women are also brought together by their shared economic dependency upon men” (93). Their friendship may be seen as rising out of necessity; crudely speaking, it can be put forth that it is much easier for women to be loving, understanding and sympathetic to each other, when neither of them is given anything from the man‟s wealth or privileges. However, when the women (or just one of them) see themselves as competing for the man‟s favour, the relationship changes drastically and they become rivals. Such a situation is depicted in the tale “The Snow Child.” Here, when the Count and the Countess are out riding, there, out of the Count‟s wish, appears a beautiful young girl. Since the moment the Count sits her on his horse, there is only one thing on the Countess‟s mind: “How shall I be rid of her?” (113) The Countess hates the girl from the very beginning, sees a danger in her and wants to destroy her. Bacchilega observes:

- 46 -

“In this snow-covered landscape, the only relationship possible between women is one that reproduces itself as rivalry, as struggle to survive at the other woman‟s expense” (Postmodern Fairy Tales 38). This view is supported by the fact that whenever the Count decides to give something to the girl or when he defends her against the Countess, the Countess is stripped of her clothes, or her shoes, until she is “bare as a bone and the girl furred and booted” (113). It seems that when the Count directs his kindness and goodwill to one of the women, the other is inevitably endangered. Perhaps the Countess of “The Snow Child” is afraid that she will be forgotten by the Count, who will love the young girl instead and she, forlorn, will be doomed. Indeed, it appears to be the case in fairy tales that young women overtake the positions of older ones and replace them. This is put forward for instance in The Magic Toyshop, where Melanie tries on her mother‟s wedding dress and then sees this as the cause of her parents death: “„It is my fault,‟ she told the cat. Her voice wavered like waterweed. „It is my fault because I wore her dress. If I hadn‟t spoilt her dress everything would be all right. Oh, Mummy!‟” (24) Melanie blames herself for her mother‟s death, as if there were some kind of a rule that there cannot co-exist a mother and a daughter who are both in the prime of their lives, as if the life went necessarily from the mother to the daughter, making the daughter mature and the mother die. The events of “The Werewolf” or of “The Company of Wolves” can be read along the same lines. In “The Werewolf,” the girl cuts off her grandmother‟s hand when she is a wolf, initiates the grandmother‟s beating and eventually moves into her house and prospers there (136). In “The Company of Wolves,” Red Riding Hood ends in her grandmother‟s bed with the wolf who a moment ago devoured her (147). Discussing this phenomenon in the Red Riding Hood tales, Bacchilega reminds that in certain versions of this tale, the (grand)mother and the girl are seen as central characters and the wolf only as a

- 47 -

connection between them that helps in the shift from the grandmother to the granddaughter. The violence committed on the grandmother then acquires a new meaning: “By eating the flesh and drinking the blood, the young girl incorporates the grandmother‟s knowledge and takes her place” (Postmodern Fairy Tales 56). Bacchilega sees this passing on of experience, knowledge and life energy from a (grand)mother to a young girl as a “form of woman-centered genealogy” (56). On the other hand, one can pose the question why it is not possible for the women to live side by side and perhaps only transform their relationship to adapt it to the new reality that the girl is now a mature woman. Gilbert, discussing the principles and circumstances of a girl‟s psychosexual development in patriarchy, notices this pattern of replacement and suggests that it is connected to the limits imposed on women: “It is as if the very idea of the daughter‟s quest must necessarily kill the female progenitor, […] to emphasize the unavailability of female power” (369). Thus it can be concluded that although the relationships of women of different generations are significantly influenced by the limited power and space they have in patriarchal society, it seems that at least certain continuation of female experience, knowledge and energy can be ensured. In this subchapter, some relationships that come into being between women living in a patriarchal setting have been explored. These include the friendship of women growing from their common lot, rivalry between them and the principle that a young woman tries to replace the one before her, which springs from their limited positions. However, it must be said that although Carter acknowledges the existence of these relationship patterns, they are not the only possible ones for her. As will be shown in the subchapter dealing with a brothel as an alternative and later in the subchapter about incest, Carter opens more varieties of women‟s relationships than the stern ones analyzed here.

- 48 -

3.3 Mothers and Mother Figures as Girls’ Role Models A mother is certainly a strong role model for a daughter. Girls and young women usually receive from their mothers a lot of information about how to be an adult woman and how to be a mother and a wife. The mother‟s experience is passed on to her daughter not only verbally but also through model behavior that can be both objectively observable and subtle. It is questionable how well the model behaviour serves the daughter; but it is also up to her to actively reflect on what is offered and to adopt or refuse it. Around Melanie of The Magic Toyshop, there are in the course of the story different mother figures who provide her with varied messages on how to be an adult woman. There is Mrs. Rundle, Melanie and her siblings‟ babysitter and the housekeeper, who, although not married, decides she will rather be a mistress than a miss: “She adopted the married form by a deed poll on her fiftieth birthday as her present to herself. She thought „Mrs‟ gave a woman a touch of personal dignity as she grew older. Besides, she had always wanted to be married” (3). This step of Mrs. Rundle seems to be an interesting coping strategy. Because she was not married and was thus deprived of the respect it would have given her and of the pleasures and memories connected to married life, she at least decided to use the married form and to convince herself that her fantasies about her husband are actually her memories. However, this decision also suggests that she considers remaining unwed to be somewhat second-rate. This is also what Melanie starts to think and what becomes a source of her anxiety. The reader can look into her thoughts: “„I hope I get married. Oh, how awful if I don‟t get married. I wish I was forty and it was all over and I knew what was going to happen to me‟” (6). The parallel between Mrs. Rundle‟s and Melanie‟s attitudes is adumbrated in the similarity of their prayers. It is read in the novel:

- 49 -

Melanie prayed: “Please God, let me get married. Or, let me have sex.” […] Mrs. Rundle prayed, astonishingly: “Please, God, let me remember that I was married as if I had really married.” For she knew she could not fool God by virtue of the deed poll. “Or, at least, she continued,” “let me remember that I had sex.” Only she phrased it less bluntly. (8) Mrs. Rundle most probably does not tell Melanie that marriage may not be the only way to happiness. Right the other way round, Mrs. Rundle probably passes to Melanie the idea that the only way to live in respect and happiness is to be married. Another woman who becomes a surrogate mother for Melanie and who inevitably serves as a possible model for her is Aunt Margaret, Uncle Philip‟s wife. For the most part of the novel, Aunt Margaret seems totally subdued to her husband. She seems to patiently accept the suffering that he brings her and Melanie often wonders why this is so, why she lets all this happen to her and why she chose him for her husband. As Melanie finds out from Finn towards the very end, the surprising agenda behind Aunt Margaret‟s unhappy marriage is that she and her brother Francie are incestuous lovers. Finn tells Melanie: “„They are lovers. They have always been lovers. […] They are everything to each other. That is why we have stayed here, since Francie and Maggie…‟” (194). It is thus revealed that Aunt Margaret and her brothers have a reason to stay at Uncle Philip‟s and that they even exploit him in a way, but it is not clear whether the advantages of it outweigh the negatives. It is also open what Melanie learns from this, but perhaps she at least sees that, contrary to appearances, Aunt Margaret has her own will and her ways and pursues a goal that she has chosen. It is put forth in the text that Melanie can understand her and her peculiar preferences. When Finn asks her after the revelation whether she would like to get back the pearls that she gave to Aunt Margaret, she replies: “„No. I love her.‟ It was true. As she spoke, she felt

- 50 -

the love, warm and understanding, inside her. And she loved Francie, too, there was no helping it” (195). Melanie‟s sympathy and love for these two people is stronger than any tendencies to judge them. Aunt Margaret thus becomes an unusual role model for Melanie. In the end, it is up to Melanie to reflect on the behavior that she sees in the women who become her surrogate mothers and add them to the array of possibilities of being a woman that she already knows, this being for example a vague memory of what her mother was like (“„My mother,‟ said Melanie, invoking her with difficulty, „wore hats and gloves and sometimes sat on committees‟” [116]). Generally speaking, both Mrs. Rundle and Aunt Margaret are inventive in terms of their pursued goals and their strategies; however, the message for Melanie appears to be ambiguous. Another young woman of the texts analyzed here, the heroine of “The Bloody Chamber,” a version of the Bluebeard story, has a very powerful role model in her eccentric and heroic mother, who, already in her young age, showed an extraordinary ability to survive and to save others in desperate situations. The heroine realizes what a strong personality her mother is: “My eagle-featured, indomitable mother; what other student at the Conservatoire could boast that her mother had outfaced a junkful of Chinese pirates, nursed a village through a visitation of plague, shot a man-eating tiger with her own hand and all before she was as old as I? (“The Bloody Chamber” 8) In addition to this, she had her will and married for love (8). After her husband died in a war, she had a hard time but tried to make it possible for her daughter to have a career and lead a life of her choice; when times were difficult, she sold all her jewelry, even her wedding ring, to pay her daughter‟s fees at the conservatory (15). This mother may be seen as another extreme, for how is it possible for a daughter of such a heroic mother to follow in her footsteps? It seems that the young bride respects and admires her mother but feels she cannot be as extraordinary as her. Similarly to her mother, though,

- 51 -

she has her will and decides on her marriage, although her mom is not sure it is a good step, as is revealed when she asks: “„Are you sure you love him?‟ „I‟m sure I want to marry him,‟ I said. And would say no more” (8). Unfortunately, she almost pays with her life for the decision to marry the Marquis. It turns out that he is a sadistic maniac who takes pleasure in killing his wives in various ways. Interestingly, on the threshold of the forbidden chamber where the newly married woman is to discover her husband‟s true, horrible nature, she realizes how much of her mother‟s character she inherited: “Until that moment, this spoiled child did not know she had inherited nerves and will from the mother who had defied the yellow outlaws of Indo-China. My mother‟s spirit drove me on, into that dreadful place, in a cold ecstasy to know the very worst” (33). In the moment of her horror initiation, the girl reaches for the strength that comes to her from her mother and realizes how much she takes after her. On the other hand, it might be proposed in the passage that the inherited fearless temperament led her to the dangerous place, but it is debatable whether she is able to face the horrid situation and survive it. In the end, she is rescued by her mother, who, alarmed by an earlier telephone call in which the daughter irrationally cries about luxurious bath taps, rushes into the castle and shoots the Marquis dead. Although the daughter probably lacks the extraordinary heroism and resources of her mother and is powerless face to face with her brutal husband, still it is suggested that what her mother taught her serves her well. Thanks to the professional career as a pianist that she pursues, inspired and supported by her mother, she gets to know Jean-Yves, a blind piano tuner hired by her husband, who is her consoler in the most dreadful moments of her life, helps her mother get into the castle and who eventually becomes her beloved partner. It might be said that mother-figures give ambiguous examples to their daughters. Although both Mrs. Rundle and Aunt Margaret devise original strategies of integrating

- 52 -

their real selves and the expectations projected on them, it is disputable how well these serve to Melanie. On the other hand, the advantage of it seems to be that Melanie can observe various women figures and choose herself what suits her. The main character of “The Bloody Chamber” has an unusually strong mother as a role model, but it seems that she still needs to figure out what this means to her. All in all, daughters are not copies or little versions of their mothers or minders, but need to decide on their own who they want to be.

3.4 A Brothel as an Alternative It is remarkable that Carter has her symbol of women‟s freedom, the character of Fevvers of Nights at the Circus, born and raised outside of the usual nuclear family. In fact, Fevvers was not even born but hatched out of an egg; abandoned by her parents but found by affectionate Lizzie. She narrates to Walser: “And she who found me on the steps at Wapping, me in the laundry basket in which persons unknown left me, a little babe most lovingly packed up in new straw sweetly sleeping among a litter of broken eggshells, she who stumbled over this poor, abandoned creature clasped me at that moment in her arms and out of the abundant goodness of her heart and took me in” (12). A hatched foundling taken by a prostitute with a big heart and brought up in a brothel, Fevvers is neither an inheritor of the lot of the women before her, nor a product of the nuclear family‟s Oedipal setting (in which, following Freudian psychoanalysis, “the girl child acquires a secondary and inferior sense of identity to the male child” [Peach 135]). In his discussion of Fevvers‟s unique origin, Michael acknowledges Barrett‟s conclusion that “it is within the family that masculine and feminine people are

- 53 -

constructed and that the categories of gender are reproduced” and expresses his persuasion that “the production of new forms of subjectivity requires new family structures and ideologies” (Michael 503). From the very beginning of her life, Fevvers lives in a unique structure and can therefore become a unique personality. The brothel where Fevvers grows up is portrayed in most ideal terms. As Fevvers confides to Walser, she is grateful for where and how she was brought up, for she was looked after and reared by the women as if she were “the common daughter of half-a-dozen mothers” (21). Also, she was never treated unkindly or badly by them but was always “given the best of everything” (22). Furthermore, the house of prostitution is depicted as a residency of a group of ambitious and entrepreneurial woman, who are busy with their pastimes and their education before their labour begins (27). Thanks to the skills and plans they thus develop, they are able to find a new means of living after the runner of the brothel, Ma Nelson, tragically dies (44-45). The environment in which Fevvers grows up is in many ways unparalleled. The relationships between the women there seem to be devoid of rivalry and envy. Although they are dependent on men, these are their customers and the transactions with them are rationalized and based on business. Paradoxically it could be proposed that, although prostitutes, the professional women who in their free time develop their skills and knowledge and who live in harmony with each other are ideal role models for little Fevvers. Fevvers was brought up by a whole group of women living together, by a small community. As has been already noted, Michael sees this “new family structure” as a pre-condition of Fevvers‟s unique subjectivity. The idea of a community as a family structure has been developed by a number of thinkers. Crowder mentions Wittig‟s approach: “By replacing the mother-child dyad with the tribal commune as the social

- 54 -

unit, Wittig‟s works at one stroke eliminate relations of inequality and power, expressed in psychoanalytic terms in the Oedipal conflict” (123). However, although the arrangement in which a commune replaces the nuclear family seems to free the child from the negatives of the traditional roles, Carter probably cannot be seen as a supporter of the feminist idea of women-only associations that should serve as alternatives to patriarchal society. The doubt about such schemes is expressed for example in Lizzie‟s ironic reaction to the news about the group of ex-convicts who set out to establish a female-only colony and plan to use a donator‟s sperm for reproduction. Lizzie wonders: “„What‟ll they do with the boy babies? Feed‟em to the polar bears? To the female polar bears?‟” (241) Lizzie, although clearly a feminist and an adversary of marriage, uncovers the impracticability of such a project. It is a paradox but a brothel is shown as a much better solution to the problematic position of women in society and to the relations between men and women, because it does not exclude men or strips them of the significance they have, but at the same time leaves the women enough space and power. Furthermore, according to Carter, this arrangement is also more sincere and acknowledging to women, as they are at least “decently paid on the nail and boast fewer illusions about a hireling status that has no veneer of social acceptability” (qtd in Michael 503). The more respectable social status of married women is shown to be only illusory. By making her emblematic heroine Fevvers a daughter of a group of prostitutes, Carter suggests a new, reverse view of a brothel. It becomes an institution where the relationships between men and women are more transparent and where women have more space for themselves, for their pastimes and their ambitions. Also what Fevvers learns and observes in the environment, including the women‟s relationships, is depicted in very positive terms. Furthermore, as was mentioned earlier, the brothel is the

- 55 -

very place where Fevvers for the first time experiences that she hovers on the air, which can be read as the first promise of her unusual abilities and her freedom.

3.5 Chapter Conclusion In this chapter it has been shown how much the lives of women are influenced by the inevitably patriarchal setting. Although they are on the surface celebrated by their mother role, in fact it keeps them in place. They can be each other‟s friend in need, but they are as well rivals competing for a man‟s favour. Young heroines of the texts can often watch how the life of their mother figures is limited by their positions in relation to men. Carter seeks remedy in uncovering such confinement and rigidity and offers an alternative as well. In her brothel of Nights at the Circus, the matrix of mutual dependency of men and women becomes transparent and free of appearances and this paradoxically seems to liberate the women. The brothel is thus portrayed as a place where women can act freely and be real friends to each other and good mothers to Fevvers, who is thus brought up as knowing no restraints to her liberty.

- 56 -

4 From Fathers to Husbands To a certain extent, a girl‟s adolescence can be seen in terms of leaving the care and protection of the mother and entering the world which works according to the father‟s rules. In the following three subchapters, it is analyzed how the heroines adapt to the new realities and the new phase of their lives. At the same time, it is discussed how their relations with men change in connection with the fact that they are becoming mature women and sexual objects.

4.1 Father-Daughter Incest Father figures of the analyzed texts seem to be even more problematic than mothers. In her discussion of Carter‟s male characters, Peach quotes Jouve‟s observation that father figures in Carter‟s work are “attacked, deconstructed, shown to be hollow or vulnerable” (83). Indeed, in the texts analyzed here, there is most probably not one positive father figure. Fathers that could be good or at least normal are absent or dead; Melanie‟s father in The Magic Toyshop dies in the plane crash, the father of “The Bloody Chamber” is killed in war, Red Riding Hood‟s dad is “away in the forest” (“The Company of Wolves” 141). Other fathers are gamblers or incompetents who lose all their property and their daughters, as is the case in “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” or in “The Tiger‟s Bride.” The negative father figure is taken into extreme and at the same time mocked in the character of Uncle Philip of The Magic Toyshop, a brutish and an obviously psychologically disturbed toymaker, who does not like people playing with his toys (86). As a girl is growing up into a young woman, the relationship between her and her father is becoming troublesome. In the essay “Life‟s an Empty Pack: Notes toward a Literary Daughterognomy,” Sandra M. Gilbert convincingly shows that the western

- 57 -

cultural pattern of a girl‟s development is one of father-daughter incest. Because it is remarkable how much the conclusions of this essay can be followed in Carter‟s texts, it is used here as the basis for the analysis of the relationship between the father and his maturing daughter. First the essay is overviewed here and then it is analyzed how the uncovered principles are portrayed in Carter‟s texts and how they are further worked with and undermined. To summarize the main points of Gilbert‟s essay, the coming of age of a daughter is seen as “an entry of the daughter into a culture shaped by the codes of the father” (364). A daughter needs to leave the world created by her mother and to enter the world dominated by her father and working according to his rules. In this, the girl is figuratively told: “You must bury your mother, you must give yourself to the father” (364). For the father, his maturing daughter represents the embodiment of all his longings, stretching from his childhood sweetheart to the all-giving mother. In addition to this, fathers see their daughters as belonging solely to them alone (373). Further it is suggested that incestuous behaviour is a continuum and that women in patriarchal culture are encouraged to behave incestuously and marry men who resemble their fathers: men who are taller, richer and have more power than the women themselves (372). Other principles rooted in patriarchal society include the impossibility for a daughter to inherit father‟s wealth (358), the tendency that a daughter replaces her female progenitor (already discussed in the subchapter on women‟s relationships)(369) and the daughter‟s incestuous desire for her father which results in renouncing more „natural‟ desires for her lover/brother, for her mother and her self (371). Carter‟s short story “The Snow Child” is a tale about a young woman‟s initiation by incest stripped to its bare plot. Out on a horse ride, the Count tells the Countess what girl he would like to have and once he says it, there she is: “As soon as he completed

- 58 -

her description, there she stood, beside the road, white skin, red mouth, black hair and stark naked; she was the child of his desire […]” (113). Such a depiction of a nude young girl with red lips has strong sexual connotations; furthermore, the fact that the girl was born out of his wish chimes in with the idea that a father sees in his daughter all his desires come true. Basically, the whole plot of the tale is that a girl is born out of her father‟s wish, her mother sees her as a dangerous rival and wants to destroy her, the father has sex with her and she melts and disappears. The youngster has no other purpose in her life than to fulfill her father‟s wish. At the same time, she is a passive heroine taken into extreme. It is telling that her actions are described in a minimal number of words: “So the girl picks a rose; pricks her finger on the thorn; bleeds; screams; falls” (114). By allowing the heroine as little space of the text as possible, her passivity is magnified. Carter further mocks the incest through an outspoken description of the sexual act: “Weeping, the Count got off his horse, unfastened his breeches and thrust his virile member in to the dead girl. The Countess reined in her stamping mare and watched him narrowly; he was soon finished” (114). Carter makes the Count not only incestuous but also necrophilic and his lets wife watch the act knowingly, with the satisfaction that her rival is dying. Many other examples of incestuous behaviour of fathers toward their daughters or wards can be traced in the texts analyzed here. For example, Melanie is forced by Uncle Philip to play Leda in an enactment of „Leda and the Swan‟ story. It becomes basically a staging of Melanie‟s rape. It is proposed that Melanie senses the real meaning of the puppet show. The reader finds out about Melanie‟s feelings: “But it was not precisely the swan of which she was afraid but of giving herself to the swan” (162). Melanie is vicariously raped by her Uncle, and also other young girls are treated willfully by their fathers. In the tale “The Tiger‟s Bride,” the father loses his daughter in

- 59 -

cards. She realizes what the transaction revealed about her position; she is thought of and treated as property. She says: “You must not think that my father valued me less than a king‟s ransom; but, at no more than a king‟s ransom.” (78). The fact that she is much valued does not change anything, in her father‟s eyes she is still an asset. In the short story “The Bloody Chamber,” significant elements of the incest pattern can be observed as well. The Marquis is “rich as Croesus” (11), while his brideto-be is a poor conservatory student; he is also much older and much more experienced than her. She narrates: “I was seventeen and knew nothing of the world; my Marquis had been married before, more than once, and I remained a little bemused that, after those others, he should have now chosen me” (10). In their relationship, he is the older, richer, more experienced one, and she is a little child compared to him. Furthermore, in accordance with the patriarchal dictum that a maturing girl must forget her mother and start to be there only for her father, the heroine feels as if she were losing her mom: “And, in the midst of my bridal triumph, I felt a pang of loss as if, when he put the gold band on my finger, I had, in some way, ceased to be her child in becoming his wife” (7). In this story, however, the patriarchal status quo that a daughter exists for the father/husband only and he can do whatever he pleases with her is disrupted. The already analyzed moment where, on the threshold of the torture chamber, the heroine starts to think about her mother and what she takes after her could be possibly read as her realization of where the desire for a father-figure has led her and the wish that she could return to the world of her mother. In the end, her mom revives her again to the mother-world when she shoots her husband dead. The ending of the story shows further significant departures from the rules of the father world (as are put forth in Gilbert‟s essay). The rescued bride inherits from her husband a huge fortune, which goes against the observation that daughters rarely inherit from their fathers; she finds a lover in the

- 60 -

blind, young piano tuner from the nearby village, who is certainly not another father figure; and all three of them live together, which defies the principle about a daughter replacing her female progenitor. Although it is the mother who so remarkably changes the events, the daughter also struggles to be an active character. It is suggested that she is aware of the dangers of being passive. She wonders about whether she caused the terrible fate to come to her: “„Who can say what I deserve or no?‟ I said. „I‟ve done nothing; but that may be sufficient reason for condemning me‟” (45). The girl‟s rescue might be seen as a joint venture of her and her mother, for it is after all the daughter‟s telephone call that alarms her mother and that eventually results in the happy ending. The theme of incest can appear in numerous shades and forms. Carter‟s novel The Magic Toyshop offers an unusual handling of this topic in the incestuous relationship between Aunt Margaret and her younger brother Francie. Interestingly, here the incest works against the patriarch. What has worked for so long against girls and women is thus turned against the very makers of the scheme. All in all, it can be said that Carter does not avoid the problematical issue of father-daughter incest, but makes it impossible to overlook, as for example in the minimalistic and mocking tale “The Snow Child” or in the staged rape of Melanie of The Magic Toyshop. In “The Bloody Chamber,” Carter has a heroic mother disrupt the incestuous principles and regain her daughter back to her world of free and empowered women. It is also suggested that an active heroine can to an extent fight or face incestuous tendencies from her father, but a passive one is fully at his mercy.

4.2 Sex and Desire As has been already shown, Carter‟s young women characters, although virgins, are erotically charged, aware of the new bodily sensations and full of expectancy. With

- 61 -

time, opportunities arise for them to find realizations of these feelings in sexual relationships. However, because the sexual partners are most often men, they are challenged to learn to understand them and embrace them in their difference but not to lose anything of their own personality along the way. This may not be an easy task. The heroine of “The Tiger‟s Bride” reflects on the gap between her and men: “I was a young girl, a virgin, and therefore men denied me rationality just as they denied it to all those who were not exactly like themselves, in all their unreason” (78). She sees men as a different species, but assumes that this will somewhat change with her wider experience with them. It seems that discovering men‟s ruthlessness is quite a common part of first sexual experiences. Such an unhappy introduction into sexual life is the case of the heroine of “The Bloody Chamber.” After her first sex with the Marquis, she feels “infinitely disheveled by the loss of [her] virginity” (20) and cradles her hurt body to comfort it (21). The Marquis says consolingly: “My dear one, my little love, my child, did it hurt her? He‟s so sorry for it, such impetuousness, he could not help himself; you see, he loves her so…” (21). Although these are apologetic words, it is not difficult to see that in fact he tries to manipulate her into believing that sexual love and its practices are beyond her understanding, that it is him who knows the rules of their love and therefore sets them, and, finally, that she will have to accept that love will hurt her. For Carter, “all sexual reality as political reality,” (qtd in Bruhl and Gamer 152) and this principle can be well observed in this instance of the Marquis‟s treatment of his bride. By setting the rules and the terms, he tries to take over her sexuality. The bride is aware of the power her husband has over her. After he leaves for urgent business and she stays on her own, she contemplates about him as about the “mysterious being who, to show his mastery over [her], had abandoned [her] on their wedding night” (26).

- 62 -

But sexuality and desire are complex matters and although the girl feels overpowered by her husband, she is also aware of the intense sensations sex inflamed in her. She recalls the moment after he had abandoned her: “I lay in our wide bed accompanied by, a sleepless companion, my dark newborn curiosity. I lay in bed alone. And I longed for him. And he disgusted me” (26). She is conscious of her mixed feelings which include desire, anticipation and repulsion. Still later, after the young woman discovers the dark secrets of the forbidden chamber, the rules and practices of her husband overwhelm her so much that she is thunderstruck when she sees that more forms of enchantment and desire are at all possible. When the piano tuner visits her while she is practising in the middle of the dreadful night, she literally passes out because of the novelty of his gentleness. She narrates: “After the dreadful revelation of that bloody chamber, it was his tender look that made me faint” (38). Also the fact that a man she fancies is her equal is new for her, and she realizes the power it: “Although he was scarcely more than a boy, I felt a great strength flow into me from his touch” (39). Her falling for the piano tuner can be read as evidence that although the Marquis dominates her and it is him who initiates her into sex, she is able to think of her sexuality independently to the extent that she welcomes an alternative to him, although its form shocks her. There seems to be had more positive energy and pleasure out of more equal and democratic sexual relations that involve both partners‟ rules, wishes and needs. An intriguing portrayal of women‟s developing sexuality is provided in the two mutually reflecting „Beauty and the Beast‟ stories of The Bloody Chamber, namely in “The Courtship of Mr. Lyon” and “The Tiger‟s Bride.” In both of these tales, a daughter is forced by her father‟s circumstances to become a companion for the Beast, which is at first terrible for her, but gradually she voluntarily becomes the Beast‟s partner and

- 63 -

lover. The heroines of the stories are attracted by the Beasts and at the same time scared of their difference and of what it would do to them. When the girl of “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” sends the Beast a bunch of flowers as an expression of gratitude that he helped her father and let her go, she realizes the array of feelings connected to him: She sent him flowers, white roses in return for the ones he had given her; and when she left the florist, she experienced a sudden sense of perfect freedom, as if she had just escaped from an unknown danger, had been grazed by the possibility of some change but, finally, left intact. Yet, with this exhilaration, a desolating emptiness (59). The Beast represents to her something she deeply longs for but cannot easily give in to because she is afraid it would change her. However, it is suggested in the two stories that the heroines actually have more potentiality to change than it may at first seem. As Beauty of “The Tiger‟s Bride” thinks: “The Tiger will never lie down with the lamb; he acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal. The lamb must learn to run with the tigers” (79). It is put forward here that the lamb can change, that there is a tiger quality in it that can develop; that there is a beast in a woman which can become a partner for the Beast. It is possible to see the beast as a symbolic representation of woman‟s libido, as for example Makinen does. She writes: “Beasts signify a sensuality that the women have been taught might devour them, but which, when embraced, gives them power, strength and new awareness” (10). When the young women start to develop their sexuality in their relationships with the Beasts, it will most probably change them, but chances are that it will not harm them. It is ironic that in the texts analyzed here, the inhuman Beasts appear to be better lovers than the experienced, self-confident and self-centered Marquis; for they do not set forth any given terms and conditions of sexual conduct. Thus the mutual getting to

- 64 -

know and getting used to the other is for the Beasts and Beauties a process that engages both parties and gives space to both of them. The sentence quoted earlier here, that the Beast “acknowledges no pact that is not reciprocal” (79) thus gains another meaning. Surprisingly, Beasts are partners for Beauties also in their fear and apprehension. In both tales, it is proposed that they are afraid of their young human companions. For example, when the girl of “The Tiger‟s Bride” comes to her lover, nude and open to things to happen, she senses his fear: “He went still as stone. He was far more frightened of me than I was of him” (82). Beasts and Beauties of the two tales are gradually beginning to know each other and to lose barriers; they are creating their relationships and influencing each other. For example, in “The Courtship of Mr Lyon,” it is read: “He forced himself to master his shyness, which was that of a wild creature, and so she contrived to master her own […]” (57). Both of them are unaccustomed to each other‟s company but they both try to come closer to one another. Although the heroines need to come to terms with the Beasts‟ difference and with what it does to their sexuality, they do not submit themselves to their bestial companions; they are sexual subjects; they are knowledgeable and initiative. This is revealed for instance in the following passage of “The Courtship pf Mr Lyon” where the Beast kisses Beauty good night: “She stayed stock-still, transfixed; she felt his hot breath on her fingers, the stiff bristles of his muzzle grazing her skin, the rough lapping of his tongue and then, with a flood of compassion, understood: all he is doing is kissing my hands” (57). The girl appears to already have certain knowledge of sex and finds the Beast‟s attempt to kiss her clumsy but sweet. Crunelle-Vanrigh sees this passage as evidence that some of Carter‟s fairy-tale heroines have “an awareness of sex that would have been foreign to heroines of classical fairy tales” (131). It might be said that this holds truth also for heroines‟ sexual initiative: it would have been perhaps even more

- 65 -

foreign to classical fairy-tale female figures, but is possible and even quite common in Carter‟s figures. The heroine of “The Tiger‟s Bride” bravely acts on her own initiative when she, as has been already mentioned, goes to the Beast naked and full of expectations. At the moment when the Tiger‟s bride visits him in his chamber, there opens the realm of their intimacy and sharing. The young woman decides to usher the two of them there: “The beast and his carnivorous bed of bone and I, white, shaking, raw, approaching him as if offering, in myself, the key to a peacable kingdom in which his appetite may not be my extinction” (82). In her initiative, she offers herself to him in a way that respects them both and that is a fruitful compromise between them. They together create a space where they can meet in their instincts, desire and love. For the purposes of the analysis here, the two „Beauty and the Beast‟ tales are followed as having one plot, but it is not to suggest that they are the same. Many differences between them could be found, in which they intertextually reflect on one another. An important distinction between the two stories comes at their ends. In “The Courtship of Mr Lyon,” the Beast becomes a man, when the girl starts to see him in that way; in “The Tiger‟s Bride,” on the contrary, the woman turns into a beast when her human skin is licked off and fur appears. It might be proposed that both of the transformations happen in accordance with the women‟s wishes and needs. The heroine of “The Courtship of Mr Lyon” dearly loves her father and enjoys the worldly pleasures and thus stays on the human side of the line and her Beast becomes more of a man. The final lines of the story suggest that their marriage is quite normal, a union of a male and female that are both human: “Mr and Mrs Lyon walk in the garden, the old spaniel drowses on the grass, in a drift of fallen petals” (62). On the other hand, the girl of “The Tiger‟s Bride,” who is sick of her father and of her position, turns into a beast and thus

- 66 -

destroys for her the human world in which she was made a property. The destruction of her old world can be read in the description of the consequences of the Beast‟s purring during their love play: “The reverberations of his purring rocked the foundations of the house, the walls began to dance. I thought: „It will all fall, everything will disintegrate‟” (83). The symbolic house that represents her father‟s dominance and the roles which were prepared for her falls down and she eventually becomes free in her animality. Thus, either in staying human or turning into a beast, both heroines of the stories go only as far in their change as they can and as is pleasant and useful for them. As it follows from the two tales, a woman‟s sexual wishes and limits have their significance, and, if respected, serve well to both partners. A woman is an active sexual subject on her own, and creating a couple‟s sexual life should be seen as an interactive and mutual project rather than as subjecting the woman to the man‟s rules. Carter is a supporter of “absolute sexual license for all the genders” (qtd in Bruhl and Gamer 154). Thus, for example, a woman can be dominant and a man submissive if it works for them. It appears that the liberty to sexually behave according to one‟s needs and wishes is independent of both gender stereotypes and the previous experience. Such “sexual license” for women is symbolically represented in Fevvers‟s first sex. Because of her unusual physiology, she can have sex in one position only. In their intimate moment, Walser remembers this piece of information: “Her released feathers brushed against the walls; he recalled how nature had equipped her only for the „woman on top‟ position and rustled on his straw mattress” (Nights at the Circus 292). Thus Fevvers loses her virginity in the position „on top.‟ Although she is reportedly the inexperienced one, she dominates and determines what is going to happen. To conclude this subchapter, in exploring their sexuality and finding opportunities for its realization, Carter‟s young female characters have to face the

- 67 -

difference between them and their male counterparts and the attempts to colonize their sexuality. If the heroines follow their instincts, make use of their knowledge and potential and are active and initiative in their sexuality, their sexual partnerships become a source of energy and balance. Gender stereotypes or any other imperatives should not pose any limits. It appears that the proposal here is that the only way not to be devoured by the Beast is to become its equal; and the only way not to be harmed by sexuality is to actively approach, co-create and enjoy it.

4.3 Marriage A classical fairy-tale ending involves a wedding and the conclusion that the couple “lived happily ever after.” Marriage is seen as the destination toward which all events, efforts and challenges are directed. It is the most typical form of a happy ending, especially for a young heroine. In Carter‟s texts, marriage is not the haven of rest it is in classical fairy tales. It can be possibly happy, as it is for Mr and Mrs Lyon of “The Courtship of Mr Lyon,” but it can also be fateful, as it almost becomes for the heroine of “The Bloody Chamber.” Fevvers‟s adoptive mother Lizzie of Nights at the Circus is a passionate adversary of marriage. When they walk through the Siberian forest in order to find Fevvers‟s beloved Walser, who lost their company when the train they were travelling on exploded, Liz warns Fevvers against the dangers of the institution. She tells Fevvers that marriage would put an end to her (financial) independence: “„Orlando takes his Rosalind. She says: “To you I give myself, for I am yours.” And that,‟ she added, a low thrust, „goes for a girl‟s bank account, too‟” (280). Liz wants Fevvers to understand how, in certain aspects, marriage would inevitably limit her. She also warns her against a rushed union that would diminish her personality:

- 68 -

“The heart is a treacherous organ and you‟re nothing if not impetuous. I fear for you, Sophie. Selling yourself is one thing and giving yourself away is quite another but, oh, Sophie! what if you rashly throw yourself away? Then what happens to that unique „meness‟ of yours? On the scrap-heap, that‟s what happens to it! I raised you up to fly to heavens, not to brood over a clutch of eggs!” (282) Liz expresses her rock-solid conviction that marriage is not an option for somebody as unique as Fevvers and that she would betray her own self. Actually, Liz is skeptical of the institution of marriage in general, for she is persuaded that it is not all it is cracked up to be, that its inner dynamics are not exactly democratic or egalitarian. She says: “What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different!” (21) Liz does not see marriage as the unique union of a man and a woman in which the rights and needs of both partners are fulfilled in love an understanding, but as an institution in which a woman is in no different position than a prostitute; only the externals are different. The character of Liz offers an interesting analysis of marriage. On the one hand, she mentions the fact that “true lovers‟ reunions always end in a marriage” (280), on the other hand, she argues that marriage poses a serious danger for an independent young woman. She contrasts the view of marriage as a romantic union of two lovers with the bleak reality it often brings. Michael concludes that by comparing wives to prostitutes and reminding us of the idealistic image of wedlock, Carter “reduc[es] marriage to nothing more than an unquestioned custom grounded in a false ideology of happiness” (504). Carter thus shows that marriage is another construct that manipulates people, in this case especially women. In her deconstruction of marriage, Carter does not suggest that a loving and happy relationship between a man and a woman is impossible. But she shows that in

- 69 -

marriage, a woman can be in jeopardy and that it is perhaps better to live in a less stereotypical and more transparent union. In “The Bloody Chamber,” the two partnerships that the heroine has in the course of the story are powerfully contrasted. Her marriage with the Marquis is almost deadly to her. In her second relationship, she probably opts for unwed cohabitation only. It is not clear whether she is married to her beloved piano-tuner, but given that their cohabitation is the source of much rumour, it may not be the case. To make it still more an unusual home, all three of them – the young woman, her partner and her mother – live together. The heroine narrates: “We lead a quiet life, the three of us. […]. We know we are the source of many whisperings and much gossip but the three of us know the truth of it and mere chatter can never harm us” (49). Renfroe sees the young woman‟s decision to settle with her lover and her mother as “similar to, and perhaps even more radical than, her mother‟s defiant choice a generation earlier” (98). Renfroe thus acknowledges the heroine‟s autonomous approach to her lifestyle as brave and mature. All in all, it is proposed in the analyzed texts that there is a possible danger in following the stereotype of marriage, and maybe it is better to look for an alternative.

4.4 Chapter Conclusion It has been revealed her that there are many forces that seek to subject a young woman. A girl‟s father sees her as an embodiment of his wishes and as belonging to him, which seems to have a bleak effect of incestuous tendencies. Other men may want to take over the woman‟s sexuality and make her accept their rules only. But Carter shows that the heroines need not necessarily succumb to men‟s effort to dominate them. Her young heroines are shown as self-confident, self-reflecting subjects. If they stand up for themselves, do not accept partnerships other than equal, make use of the power they

- 70 -

have and search for what makes them happy, men have to accept them in that way. In Carter‟s portrayal of relationships between men and women, one can see her persuasion mentioned for example by Franková that women are partially responsible for their position in the society (50). In her young heroines she shows that when a woman wants to change her situation, she can find a way to do so.

- 71 -

5 Heroines in Process In the last chapter of the thesis, it is analyzed how the protagonists themselves reflect on the process of growing out of their children shoes and becoming adult. This chapter deals with the questions whether they see themselves as changing and how they conceptualize the change. Some of the heroines of the analyzed texts tell their stories directly and it is then looked at how they voice their experience. In telling the stories of their adolescence and early adulthood, the heroines create their autobiographies. Peach reminds us about the power of this genre: “Autobiography is one of the strategies by which women can take responsibility for their own sense of self in a restricted and restrictive environment or milieu, challenging the traditional appropriation of women‟s lives and histories by men. Self-making is an essential element in women‟s autobiography […]” (133). By telling their stories on their own, the heroines are in charge of them and do not let them be distorted or censored by others.

5.1 Melanie of The Magic Toyshop Although Melanie of The Magic Toyshop does not tell her story directly, the narrative is focalized from her perspective and the reader can look into her thoughts. In the course of the story, Melanie goes through an abrupt change that turns her life upside down. She loses her parents and together with her two younger siblings moves to Uncle Philip‟s. Her life could not change more. Until now she lived in a supportive and loving environment, now she has to come to terms with living in the house haunted by Uncle‟s oppression. She was used to relative luxury, to taking baths and pampering herself, now she has to do without hot water and proper toilet paper. She does not even go to school anymore but works in the toyshop. This drastic turn that her life takes naturally results in her confusion about who she is. This is further reinforced (and also symbolized) by

- 72 -

the fact that there are no mirrors in her new home where she could see what she looks like. She is unsure she would even know she is looking at herself: “She was seized with panic, remembering that she had not seen her own face for so long. „Do I still look the same? Oh, God, could I still recognise myself?‟ (103) In her new home, her life drastically alters and so does Melanie herself. The changes are so fast and so significant that Melanie loses her old sense of self. It is not only the novelty of her new home that is challenging for the protagonist, but also the oppressive nature of it. In her mind, Melanie tries to take a step back from the everyday reality of living at Uncle Philip‟s. She imagines she is at the peaceful place painted on the plates she puts away, and she likes to watch other people through the door of the shop to see that life goes on. She also considers the option of leaving the place: “„I suppose I could run away. […] I could get a job and live by myself in a bedsitting room, like the girls in stories and magazines ‟” (78). But Melanie realizes it is not a realistic plan and that there is not much she can do. She wishes to be older, more mature and more experienced in order to be able to have more liberty and more options at her hand. She regards her age to be her bad luck: “Her youth was a rock round her neck, her albatross. She was too young, too soft and new, to come to terms with these wild beings whose minds veered at crazy angles from the short, straight, smooth lines of her experience” (136). However, it can be observed that on the one hand she wishes to grow up and be more autonomous and independent; on the other hand, she is afraid of it. The fact that she fears growing up is proposed for example in the choice of books she reads at Uncle Philip‟s. The reader finds out: “She never touched the few adult books, and she hid the copy of Lorna Doone, but she clung to the rest as if they were lifebelts” (91). Melanie probably wants to cling to her childhood for just a little longer and thus

- 73 -

reads her childhood books only, as if in hope that she could stop the time and forever remain a child. But for Melanie - as for all young women - there is no real way of returning to childhood. Melanie seems to be aware of this. With time, her fears of what the future might bring disappear. After she comes out relatively unharmed of the enactment of Leda‟s rape and, significantly, after Finn stands up for her and destroys the puppet that molested her, she stops being afraid of her adulthood because she knows she will not be completely lost and alone in it. With this newly found energy and self-confidence, Melanie decides to get rid of the relicts from childhood. She starts with giving away her dresses to Aunt Margaret: “She would give her her own dress. She had plenty more; and, even if she had not, she could live off the fat of fifteen (nearly sixteen) years of nice clothes” (186). She feels she can stop clinging to her childhood and move on because she was pampered enough and brought up to be strong and independent. Melanie decides to give Aunt Margaret also her confirmation pearls and enjoys the symbolic power of this gift: “Melanie slid them round her neck and would not take „No‟ for an answer. Let it all go, let it all go” (189). Melanie takes the difficult but powerful step and says goodbye to her old self. At the end of the novel, Uncle Philip sets his house on fire and Melanie escapes with Finn and is thus forever separated from her sister Victoria and brother Jonathon and also from her new family consisting of Aunt Margaret and Francie. Nothing is left there for her; there is only she and Finn. In the shock, Melanie thinks of her teddy bear only. She says: “„My bear. He‟s gone. Everything is gone!‟” (200) And with her bear, which she took with her from her old home and to which she hid her pajamas (which she was growing out of anyway) and which was her consoler, also her childhood is gone for good and now she realizes she needs to be adult and it seems she is ready for it.

- 74 -

5.2 Heroines of “The Bloody Chamber” and “The Tiger’s Bride” In the collection The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, two female characters narrate how they were forced by the circumstances to grow up. These are the protagonists of “The Bloody Chamber” and “The Tiger‟s Bride.” The heroine of “The Bloody Chamber” tells the story of her marriage to the Marquis, of how he courted her until she married him, seduced by the unknown luxurious mysteries he offered, of the days of their short marriage and their first sex, of her daring exploration of all his castle including the forbidden chamber and of how he almost murdered her but eventually got killed by her mother. In the end of her narrative, she moves into the present and mentions also the circumstances of her life now, her new partner and the music school that she started. It cannot be easy for her to tell a story which includes her unwise decision to marry the Marquis, a murder attempted on her and the details of their intimate moments. It is not surprising that it is difficult for her to confess what happened behind the walls of the aristocrat‟s castle. Manley notices about her narrative: “She only gradually […] develops a sufficiently strong subject position from which to attempt to tell her own story” (91). However, although her voice quivers, she is brave enough to tell her story and does not stop until the listener/reader knows it all. It looks like the protagonist thinks of herself in two phases: before and after she discovers the contents of the forbidden chamber. It seems that she is only a child when she enters it but a grown-up woman when she leaves. Interestingly, she calls herself often a „child‟ when she speaks about events that happened before entering the chamber, but not once afterwards. From her story it follows that at the very moment when she was exploring the place of torture, she realized what impact it was making on her: “Each time I struck a match to light those candles round her [of one of Marquis‟s previous wives] bed, it seemed a garment of that innocence of mine for which he had

- 75 -

lusted fell away from me” (“The Bloody Chamber” 34). At that forlorn place, the heroine moves definitely away not only from her childhood, but also from the role of the Marquis‟s bride and from his projected demands on her. Renfroe writes about the consequences that the terrible experience brought her: “It is the girl‟s daring and disobedient exploration of the forbidden chamber that actually changes her, develops her, and allows her to see her husband, and more importantly herself, from a more knowledgeable perspective” (97). Contrary to classical fairy tales in which women‟s curiosity is punished, here it eventually enriches her and makes her a more insightful person. It might be said that if forbidden chambers are this powerful a source of women‟s experience, it is understandable why they are devised in such a way that women cannot leave them alive. The knowledge of their husbands, of the world and most significantly of themselves that they gain there makes them strong personalities, and powerful women are undesirable in patriarchal society. Although the protagonist herself sees the exploration of the torture chamber as the moment when she grew up, she still needs to process the whole experience and the part that she played in it. It is put forward in the story that she feels ashamed about what happened to her. The very last paragraph of the tale reads: “No paint nor powder, no matter how thick or white, can mask that red mark on my forehead; I am glad he cannot see it – not for fear of his revulsion, since I know he sees me clearly with his heart – but, because it spares my shame” (“The Bloody Chamber” 49). It might be suggested that the shame she feels is connected to the “potentiality of corruption” she sensed in herself even before they got married (12). Perhaps she feels ashamed because she knows why she married him in the first place. Her feeling of guilt seems to be remorse for something she has done as an active participant. It might be proposed that, if the red mark on the protagonist‟s forehead is seen as a symbol of a heroine‟s active participation that is not always pure

- 76 -

and blameless, the whitening and camouflaging layer put on it can be understood as the classical fairy tales‟ effort to erase and silence any examples of a young woman‟s conduct that would reveal her as an active agent, perhaps with a potential for controversies or trespassing. However, as Carter seems to show, this can never be entirely achieved, just as the mark on the girl‟s forehead cannot be covered up. Also the main character of “The Tiger‟s Bride” has to grow up quickly. She sees the day when she is left at the Beast‟s palace as the day when she comes of age. This is proposed when she looks back on the gossip she used to hear about beast-like creatures when she was little and realizes the wider circumstances: “I knew well enough the reason for the trepidation I cozily titillated with superstitious marvels of my childhood on the day my childhood ended. For now my own skin was my sole capital in the world and today I‟d make my first investment” (70). She begins to see her position of a young woman who has nothing and has limited options of conduct. She realizes that being undefended and having nobody to rely on but herself is the essence of her adulthood. Later in the story, when she is free to go, she considers the options that are available to her. She can return to her father who treated her like a property when he bet her in cards, but decides that the mechanic toy that serves her as a maid would do just as well in that position: “I will dress her in my own clothes, wind her up, send her back to perform the part of my father‟s daughter (81). Another option is to explore the possibilities of staying with the Beast. The Beast is a creature from a different world; as the reader can find out, “nothing about him reminded [her] of humanity” (79). As was already uncovered in the discussion on desire and sexuality, the heroine takes the initiative and goes to visit the Beast at night, and eventually turns into a beast herself. It seems that she decides that to be an inhuman beast is better than to be a mechanical woman. Bacchilega notes on the transformation Beauty opts for: “The metamorphosis

- 77 -

of the furiously silent daughter into the tiger‟s bride […] subverts the humanistic and patriarchal order” (Postmodern Fairy Tales 98). It is interesting that such a mighty change springs from the very limited position that she has. When she goes to the Beast, she bets everything on the possibility that there is something that could connect them and that would enable them to be together. She does not hesitate to use the little power that she has and wins a whole new existence.

5.3 Fevvers of Nights at the Circus In the whole first part of the novel Nights at the Circus, the winged heroine Fevvers gives an interview to the young American journalist Walser. She gives an account of all her life, starting with how she was found by the prostitute Liz, continuing with her childhood in the brothel and the following bleak days in the museum of women monsters, and finishing with the promising development of her career. Her manners are unrestrained (she occasionally burps and farts), and so is her narration. She includes everything she finds worth telling, also her first menstruation, all juicy details from her home brothel, the fact that she is a virgin, and much more. It is her, not the journalist, who decides how the interview advances. As Peach observes, Fevvers “tak[es] control of her own story-history and assert[es] herself as the author of her own words and actions” (132). Fevvers is not ashamed of herself or any part of her story and is not afraid of the impact her words make. Her way of telling her life story is so powerful that Walser feels enchanted by her voice: “Her voice. It was as if Walser had become a prisoner of her voice, her cavernous, somber voice, a voice made for shouting about the tempest, her voice of a celestial fishwife” (43). Fevvers gives an account of herself and her life in such a way that she charms and overpowers even the journalist who hopes to reveal her as a hoax.

- 78 -

It is significant that Fevvers speaks also about her negative experience, about situations when she is abused or endangered. In Madame Schreck‟s museum, although she goes there voluntarily to earn a living for her family, she lives in poor conditions and receives no pay at all. Twice she is almost murdered by men who are attracted by her uniqueness. However, Fevvers is always able to fend for herself and to escape unharmed, although sometimes her escape is very narrow. By giving this account of her power and ability to survive, she breaks the dictum that “human culture is bound by rules which make it possible for a woman to speak but which oblige her to speak of her own powerlessness” (Gilbert 358). Her story is one of oppression and its defiance. It does not even matter that Fevvers is quite an unreliable narrator. It is more significant in this context that she makes sure that she can tell her story the way she wants, does not shy away from its negative content or the strength and singularity it brings her.

5.4 Chapter Conclusion As far as the reader can look into the heroines‟ minds or deduce from the way they tell their stories, they see themselves as changing and moving into new phases of their lives, which is often accompanied by uncertainty and pain. Yet it seems that it is exactly the ordeal that eventually makes them stronger and more adult. For example, the protagonist of “The Bloody Chamber” regards her exploration of the torture chamber and of the fate her husband prepared for her as the moment when she comes of age, for Beauty of “The Tiger‟s Bride” such a milestone is being lost in cards and left to the Beast. It seems that the heroines‟ growing up and becoming adult is an ongoing and never really finished process. This does not mean that they remain children forever; it is rather to suggest that once they discover the possibilities of self-making, they probably

- 79 -

cannot stop. Many of the analyzed characters are portrayed as having finished a phase of their development, but at the same time it is clear that there are new challenges in front of them. At the moment when Melanie of The Magic Toyshop loses everything in the fire and realizes she must be adult, she clearly has a lot of work and difficulties ahead. Also Fevver of Nights at the Circus will need to figure out how to be happy in a relationship or even marriage with Walser and not lose her uniqueness, not to mention that first they will have to find a way out of the Siberian wilderness. It seems that for Carter‟s female fairy-tale figures, there is no „happy ever after.‟ For young women of classical fairy tales, marriage seems to be the point which signifies that they have come of age and that they can stop developing; for Carter‟s character there is no similar certainty. They have grown up to be independent beings who decide on their lives, and cannot but go on with actively shaping them and being responsible for their own happiness.

- 80 -

6 Conclusion The aim of this master thesis was to analyze how the adolescence of fairy-tale figures of selected works of Angela Carter is portrayed and how it can be understood in the wider frame of the genre of fairy tale and its rewritings. The theme of female adolescence and socialization carries special significance because of the complicated role of the fairy tale for women. Once the genre was a vessel of female experience and power, but in time has been significantly reshaped into educative stories instructing young girls how they should behave and what they should aspire to in their lives. The interest here lay in Carter‟s deconstruction of the rigid and outlived stereotypes that seem to determine the lives of women characters, and in the new message about fairytale figures‟ youth that Carter inscribes into her stories and novels. The discussed texts here were the collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories and the two novels The Magic Toyshop and Nights at the Circus. Thus the analyzed figures spanned from very traditional fairy-tale heroines like Red Riding Hood, Snow White, Bluebeard‟s bride or Beauty of “Beauty and the Beasts” to novel protagonists in whom fairy-tale features can be traced and whose stories resemble a fairy-tale storyline. Due to the intertextuality of Carter‟s writing, the characters were analyzed as if mirroring each other and being with each other in a dialogue. In suggesting more than one possible reading and one solution, Carter relies on the reader to be able to find his or her way through the stories. In activating the reader of the fairy tales, Carter promotes the folk dimension of the genre and at the same time gives it a postmodernist coat. In this thesis, the categories of the female body, voice and gender were followed. When it comes to the female body, it is revealed that the characters overcome their anxiety and embrace their changing bodies, despite any images of what they should look

- 81 -

like. Their bodies become sources of energy and possibility. When they thus befriend the bodies, they accept also their sexual instincts. Importantly, the heroines become sexual subjects first and only then sexual objects. However, the protagonists are not freed from the negatives of the patriarchal world they inhabit. Their bodies can become colonized by their manipulative fathers or dominating husbands. But they can be also used for one‟s liberty and happiness. Winged Fevvers is a case in point; but, controversially, also the prostitutes of her home brothel seem to benefit from the way they use their bodies. Apart from the body, voice and self-expression is another thing that Carter returns to girls of the fairy tale. It is not only words that the protagonists speak through. The ambiguous Aunt Margaret of The Magic Toyshop stops speaking on her wedding day, but expresses herself through her body when she is unfaithful to her oppressive husband with her own brother. Red Riding Hood of “The Company of Wolves” significantly laughs when the wolf threatens he will eat her. Other characters tell their own stories, which is in the case of Fevvers of Nights at the Circus and the protagonist of “The Bloody Chamber” a story of women‟s defiance of men‟s brutality. The category of gender is perhaps the most complex one. Carter does not limit her heroines to the accepted gender roles. They often do things that are considered as characteristic of men: they pursue professional careers, bravely solve desperate situations, are sexually initiative and dominant. But it seems that if there is a trait that women benefit from, it is the quality of being cunning. Being able to use every little opportunity and crevice in the system for one‟s own good seems priceless. Melanie‟s Aunt Margaret marries in order to be able to keep her incestuous lover; Beauty of “The Tiger‟s Bride explores the very limited options she has and gains a whole new world for herself. It is important that the girls find their own space and learn how to fend for

- 82 -

themselves, for – as can be seen on the Count‟s daughter of “The Snow Child” – women who only fulfill men‟s wishes do not live for long. Both institutions to which a young woman usually aspires – marriage and motherhood – have been shown to lose its veneer of guaranteed happiness. With no given roles to automatically aspire to, the heroines need to figure out on their own what they want from their lives. Interestingly, Carter shows that there always is at least a little opportunity to change the situation according to the girl‟s wish. In Nights at the Circus, Carter makes even the emblematically passive heroine – the Sleeping Beauty - an active agent. Carter suggests that her long sleep is her voluntary decision that she made when she found out what the patriarchal world has in store for her. It must be pointed out that there is no final, completed state of being adult that the heroines reach. Although they themselves feel that they are changing and growing up, it is also evident that their journey will go on, that they will continue to develop, learn and find strategies to survive in the patriarchal world. Young girls in process turn into adult women in process. This seems potentially disruptive: it is not only in their youth when they can open their husbands‟ forbidden chambers, voluntarily turn in to a beast or strip (for) the werewolf, it can happen in their adulthood, too. For these deeds are not acts of silly girlies, but of autonomous and self-confident young women. To conclude this thesis, in her portrayal of female adolescence of selected fairytale figures, Carter breaks many silences and uncovers stiff patterns fed on patriarchal ideology. It should be said that Angela Carter‟s tales are no bedtime stories for children. Her young heroines engage in behaviour that should be perhaps kept secret from them. However, the message that Carter demonstrates in her young female characters may be useful even for little girls: although it may seem dangerous to try to find one‟s own way, it is actually much more perilous to give up on it.

- 83 -

Works Cited Bacchilega, Cristina. “Fairy Tale.” The Cambridge Guide to Women's Writing in English. Ed. Lorna Sage, Germaine Greer and Elaine Showalter. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999. 231-33. Print. ---. Postmodern Fairy Tales: Gender and Narrative Strategies. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania, 1997. Print. Benson, Stephen. “Angela Carter and the Literary Märchen: A Review Essay.” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 30-58. Print. Bruhl, Elise and Michael Gamer. “Teaching Improprieties: The Bloody Chamber and the Reverent Classroom.” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 145-57. Print. Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus. London: PanBooks, 1985. Print. ---. The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. London: Victor Gollanz, 1989. Print. ---. The Magic Toyshop. London: Virago P, 1981. Print. ---. Interview by Anna Katsavos. Dalkey Archive Press. Dalkey Archive P, n.d. Web. 2 Feb. 2012 Crowder, Diane Griffin. “Amazons and Mothers? Monique Wittig, Helene Cixous and Theories of Women‟s Writing.” Contemporary Literature 24.2 (1983): 117-44. JSTOR. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. Crunelle-Vanrigh, Anny. “The Logic of the Same and Différance: „The Courtship of Mr Lyon.‟” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 128-144. Print. Franková, Milada. “Angela Carterová.” Britské spisovatelky na přelomu tisíciletí. Brno: Masarykova Univerzita v Brně, 2003. 47-61. Print.

- 84 -

Gallop, Jane. “Reading the Mother Tongue: Psychoanalytic Feminist Criticism.” Critical Inquiry 13.2 (1987): 314-29. JSTOR. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. Gilbert, Sandra M. “Life‟s Empty Pack: Notes toward a Literary Daughteronomy.” Critical Inquiry 11.3 (1985): 355-84. JSTOR. Web. 4 Apr. 2012. Gilbert, Sandra M. and Susan Gubar. “Sexual Linguistics: Gender, Language, Sexuality.” New Literary History 16.3 (1985): 515-43. JSTOR. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. Haase, Donald. “Feminist Fairy-Tale Scholarship.” Fairy Tales and Feminism. Ed. Donald Haase. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2004. 1-36. Print. Jones, Ann Rosalind. “Writing the Body: Toward an Understanding of „L‟Ecriture Feminine.‟” Feminist Studies 7.2 (1981): 247-63. JSTOR. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. Makinen, Merja. “Angela Carter‟s „The Bloody Chamber‟ and the Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality.” Feminist Review 42 (1992): 2-15. JSTOR. Web. 19 May 2011. Manley, Kathleen E.B. “The Woman in Process in Angela Carter‟s „The Bloody Chamber.‟” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 83-93. Print. Michael, Magali Cornier and Angela Carter. “Angela Carter‟s „Nights at the Circus:‟ An Engaged Feminism via Subversive Postmodern Strategies.” Contemporary Literature 35.3 (1994): 492-521. JSTOR. Web. 2 Feb. 2012. Mikkola, Mari. “Feminist Perspectives on Sex and Gender.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Stanford U, n.d. Web. 28 Mar. 2012. Peach, Linden. Angela Carter. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan P, 1998. Print.

- 85 -

Renfroe, Cheryl. “Initiation and Disobedience: Liminal Experience in Angela Carter‟s „The Bloody Chamber.‟” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 94-106. Print. Roemer, Danielle M. “The Contextualization of the Marquis in Angela Carter‟s „The Bloody Chamber.‟” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 107-27. Print. Roemer, Danielle M. and Cristina Bacchilega. “Introduction.” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 7-25. Print. Sage, Lorna. “Angela Carter: The Fairy Tale.” Angela Carter and the Fairy Tale. Ed. Danielle M. Roemer and Cristina Bacchilega. Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2001. 65-81. Print. Sellers, Susan. Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary Women’s Fiction. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave, 2001. Print.

- 86 -

Resume This master thesis deals with the portrayal of female adolescence in fairy-tale figures of selected works by the British postmodern writer Angela Carter. The analyzed texts are the collection of short stories The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories (1979) and two novels, The Magic Toyshop (1967) and Nights at the Circus (1984). Angela Carter rewrites and is inspired by the fairy tale, which she does not see as bedtime stories for children but as a carrier of adult experience and a powerful ideological tool. As well as in all her work, in the texts analyzed here Carter seeks to reveal and deconstruct myths and commonly accepted constructs that limit people‟s freedom. The analysis here starts with physical aspects of puberty and adolescence, such as first menstruation and budding sexuality. Carter‟s female fairy-tale figures are generally not innocent, pure virgins, but sexual beings aware of their bodies and the energy that comes from them. Next it is discussed how influenced the young characters are by the examples of their mothers and of the women‟s relationships they can observe. It turns out that the lives and relationships of women are choked by the patriarchal setting in which they inevitably exist. Carter approaches also the mother role as a construct which – under the appearance of its uniqueness – serves to limit women‟s freedom. The relations of the young heroines to their fathers are even more complicated. It is shown that fathers see their daughters as the embodiment of all their desires and tend to treat them accordingly, also under the influence of the assumption that their daughters belong to them. However, Carter‟s heroines are generally autonomous beings able to stand up to various pressures and attempts to limit their freedom. They manage to create real partnerships based on equality and affection. They are also sexual subjects, knowledgeable and initiative, in which they radically differ from their counterparts of classical fairy tales. The last discussed topic of this thesis is the way the characters view themselves. It turns out that they reflect the process they are going through and decide on their future as well as on how they tell their stories. Carter uncovers the assumed purity of virginity, the sacredness of marriage and the uniqueness of motherhood as images that are not based on reality and that hinder the young heroines on their way to adulthood. The power and strength that is taken away from these constructs is given to the heroines themselves, who are active, independently thinking beings, who learn from their mistakes and enjoy the pleasures life and youth offer.

- 87 -

Resumé Tato magisterská diplomová práce se zabývá pojetím dospívání pohádkových hrdinek ve vybrané próze britské postmoderní spisovatelky Angely Carterové. Zkoumanými texty jsou její sbírka povídek Krvavá komnata a jiné povídky (1979) a romány Magické hračkářství (1967) a Noci v cirkuse (1984). Pohádky, kterými se Carterová ve svém díle inspiruje, nevidí jako příběhy pro děti, ale jako nositele zkušeností dospělých lidí a také jako mocný ideologický nástroj. Stejně jako v celém svém díle, i v textech analyzovaných v této diplomové práci se Carterová snaží odhalit a nahlodat mýty a vžité konstrukty, které omezují lidskou svobodu. Analýza v této práci začíná u fyzických projevů dospívání jako je první menstruace a rozvíjející se ženská sexualita. Ukazuje se, že pohádkové hrdinky Carterové většinou nejsou nevinné, nedotčené panny, ale stvoření vědoma si svých těl a své energie a sexuality. Dále je předložena otázka, jak jsou hrdinky ovlivněné příklady svých matek a vztahů mezi dospělými ženami. Zde vychází najevo, do jaké míry jsou životy i vztahy žen svazované patriarchálním prostředím, ve kterém se nutně nacházejí. Carterová pojímá i roli matky jako smyšlenku, která, pod pozlátkem jedinečnosti, slouží k omezování ženské svobody. Vztahy hrdinek s jejich otci jsou ještě problematičtější. Ukazuje se, že otcové vidí své dcery jako ztělesnění všech svých tužeb a mají tendence s nimi podle toho zacházet; také pod vlivem domněnky, že jim jejich dcery patří. Nicméně pohádkové hrdinky Angely Carterové jsou povětšinou autonomní subjekty schopné se postavit všemožným nátlakům a pokusům o omezení jejich svobody. Dokáží vytvářet opravdu partnerské vztahy a jsou rovnocennými partnery i v sexualitě – oproti hrdinkám klasických pohádek jsou nejen sexuálně uvědomělé, ale také iniciativní. Posledním diskutovaným tématem v této práci je pohled hrdinek na sebe samotné; kdy se dospívající dívky a mladé ženy vyjevují jako bytosti reflektující svou zkušenost a rozhodující o svém směřování i o způsobu, jakým vypráví svůj příběh. Carterová ukazuje domnělou nevinnost panenství, posvátnost manželství a jedinečnost mateřství jako představy, které nevycházejí z reality a které mladým na cestě k dospělosti spíše ubližují. Moc a sílu, které Carterová odebírá těmto představám, dává svým hrdinkám, které jsou aktivní, samostatně smýšlející bytosti, které se učí ze svých chyb a užívají potěšení, které jim život a mládí nabízí.

- 88 -