Angela Carter (1940-1992) positions herself as a writer in ‘the demythologising business’ (1983b:38). She defines myth in ‘a sort of conventional sense; also in the sense that Roland Barthes uses it in Mythologies’ (in Katsavos 1994:1). Barthes states that ‘the very principle of myth’ is that ‘it transforms history into nature’ (Barthes 1993:129). This process of naturalisation transforms culturally and historically determined fictions into received truths, which are accepted as natural, even sacred. This thesis explores Carter’s demythologising approach in her collection of fairy tales, The Bloody Chamber, and her novel, Nights at the Circus. The readings of these texts are informed by the ideas that Carter discusses in her feminist manifesto The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise in Cultural History, which she describes as ‘a late-twentieth-century interpretation of some of the problems [de Sade] raises about the culturally determined nature of women and of the relations between men and women that result from it’ (1979:1). In The Bloody Chamber and Nights at the Circus, Carter questions the culturally determined roles that patriarchal ideology has ‘palmed off’ on women as ‘the real thing’ (1983b:38), and she scrutinizes the relations between the sexes that have resulted from them. In The Sadeian Woman, the subject-object dichotomy of gendered identity is explored as a predatory hierarchy. The Bloody Chamber explores the same ideological ground, and ‘the distinctions drawn are not so much between males and females as between “tigers” and “lambs”, carnivores and herbivores, those who are preyed upon and those who do the preying’ (Atwood 1994:118). The most discomfiting point that Carter makes in The Bloody Chamber is that patriarchal ideology has traditionally viewed women as herbivores, or ‘meat’, that is, as passive objects of desire and inert objects of exchange. In Nights at the Circus, the subject-object dichotomy is presented in its spectator-spectacle guise. Fevvers, the female protagonist, is a winged aerialiste who articulates an autonomous identity for herself that exists outside of patriarchal prescription. She presents herself as feminine spectacle and, in so doing, becomes simultaneously a spectator, as she ‘turns her own gaze on herself, producing herself as its object’ (Robinson 1991:123). Mary Ann Doane refers to this strategy of self-representation as the masquerade. In ‘flaunting femininity’, Fevvers ‘holds it at a distance’, and in this way womanliness becomes ‘a mask which can be worn or removed’ (Doane 1991:25). Susanne Schmid points out that ‘every act of deconstruction entails a process of reconstructing something else’ (1996:155), and this suggests that Carter, in demythologising, also remythologises. Roland Barthes argues that ‘the best weapon against myth is perhaps to mythify it in its turn, and to produce an artificial myth’ (1993:135). In the characterisation of Fevvers, Carter creates an ‘artificial myth’ that does not present itself as either eternal or immutable. In masquerading as a feminine spectacle, Fevvers temporarily incarnates an archetypal femininity. But this is just a performance, for Fevvers is also an agent of self-representation, and so she is both a real woman and an artificial myth of femininity. / Dissertation (MA (English))--University of Pretoria, 2005. / English / unrestricted

Fairy tales are usually described as short narratives that end with happily-ever-afters, imposing patriarchal ideologies. The Grimm’s fairy tales serve as the foundation of many other stories which promote stereotypes like woman passiveness, submissive beauty, while men are put on a pedestal for being active and violent at the same time. Angela Carter’s collection The Bloody Chamber depicts patriarchal oppression in classic fairy tales by challenging what can be identified as patriarchal binary oppositions with a strategic subversion of gender roles. Through problematizing and critiquing the patriarchal fairy tales, Carter’s texts can be read through the lens of écriture féminine. Following Hélène Cixous’s notion of écriture féminine, outlined in “The Laugh of the Medusa”, this essay explores how Carter’s  “The Lady of the House of Love'' can be read as a narrative that has strong echoes of the kind of female writing Cixous advocates. Moreover, this essay argues that  “The Lady of the House of Love” contradicts the Western myth of femininity by resisting, exploring, even undermining the patriarchal representation of woman as “heroine”-the fairy tale princess who needs a man to save her -and “femme fatale.”

Despite his own conservative values, D.H. Lawrence writes sexually liberated female characters. The most subversive female characters in Lawrence’s oeuvre are the Brangwens of The Rainbow. The Brangwens are prototypical models of a form of femininity that connects women to Nature while distancing them from society; his women are cast as monsters, but are strengthened from their link with Nature. They represent what I am calling the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman has proven influential for contemporary British authors. I examine the Lawrentian-Woman’s adoption by later writers and her evolution from modernist frame to postmodern appropriation. First, I look at the Brangwens. They establish the tropes of the Lawrentian-Woman and provide the base from which to compare the model’s subsequent mutations. Next, I examine modern British writers and their appropriation of the Lawrentian-Woman. The Lawrentian-Woman’s attributes remain intact, but are deconstructed in ways that explore women’s continued liminality in patriarchal society.

當代童話故事《魔幻玩具舖》再現個體於成長過程中父權與社會機制所壓抑與消音，尤其強調於成長過程中的伊底帕斯情節期。當代童話作者呈現幻滅與殘缺的社會寫實，以提供讀者真實世界的不全以及社會的異化，藉此使讀者不安；透過詭異(the uncanny)的閱讀經驗，讀者認知於自己潛意識中的壓抑，以及社會機制的缺陷。在童話的結構中最重要的為奇幻之要素，奇幻重視顯露社會中的異化與顛覆理性的成規，其建築在現實即為取得讀者之信任，然而推展至非真的境地以混淆讀者對於現實的概念；透過傾覆讀者的認知，奇幻創造出在現實規則中的間隙(breach)以及破壞權威的法則；奇幻以及童話故事的努力皆於尋求到一個更美好的家庭遠景。 第一章介紹童話的文類架構以及與奇幻的緊密關聯。第二章著重於童話理論以及其架構呈現的欲望與空缺(lack)，讀者因認知到自我的伊底帕斯經驗與社會的異化而感到不安；奇幻要素則質問社會規則以及傾覆讀者對於社會秩序的概念。第三章為《魔幻玩具舖》的童話理論分析，以詭異的效果干擾讀者。第四章表明奇幻在《魔幻玩具舖》中的顛覆力量，模糊真與非真的界線以及在社會法規中創造出間隙開啟了被壓抑與壓迫發聲的可能性。最後一章以童話與奇幻要素顛覆父權社會機制作為總結。 / The modern fairy tale, The Magic Toyshop, copes with the issue of what is repressed and muffled under the social and patriarchal restraints through the growing process of a person, especially the oedipal stage. The modern fairy tale writer presents a disillusioned picture of reality, so as to provide the reader with the real conditions of deficiency and alienation in society and unsettle the reader. Through the reading process of the uncanny, the reader recognizes what has been repressed in his unconsciousness, and thus realizes the imperfectness of the society. In the structure of the fairy tale, the most important element is the fantastic which endeavors to reveal the reality of alienation and to subvert the rules of rationality. The fantastic is built on the real in order to gain the belief of the reader; however, it then develops to the realm of the unreal in order to blur the boundary between the real and the unreal. By upsetting the reader’s conception, the fantastic creates a breach in everyday reality and undermines authoritarian rules. The ultimate efforts of the fairy tale and the fantastic are made for the quest for a real homecoming. The first chapter introduces the genre of the fairy tale and its high relevance to the fantastic. The second chapter focuses on the theory of the fairy tale and its significance in revealing what is underneath the structure, desire and lack. The reader is unsettled by recognizing his / her own oedipal experience and the alienated reality. The element of the fantastic questions the everyday rules of the social order and disturbs the reader’s perception. The third chapter is the textual analysis of the fairy tale structure and its uncanny effect on the reader as reflected in Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. The fourth chapter is the analysis of the subversive function of the fantastic in Carter’s novel. The boundary-blurring and breach-making process opens a possibility for what is repressed and oppressed. The final chapter concludes that the fairy tale and the element of the fantastic subvert the authoritative society of patriarchy.

Zugl.: Augsburg, Univ., Diss.

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