Angela Carter – Heroes and Villains
“If the Barbarians are destroyed, who will we then be able to blame for the bad things?”
Angela Carter was born in 1940 and she joked with her mother who insisted that she had learnt for her pregnancy in the very day The Second World War was declared. Angela Carter won several literary awards, The Somerset Maugham Award being one of them. She is often described as a neo-Gothic author and a feminist. Before her death caused by cancer, Carter was working on a sequel of “Jane Eyre”, which draws an interesting literary kinship between her and Jean Rhys, alongside the one with Charlotte Bronte. The 20th century British writer can be described by the help of many adjectives, but despite the number they still will not be enough. Not only is she a prolific writer but also a journalist, author of several screenplays (some – adaptations of her short stories to the big screen). She studied English literature at University of Bristol. Her fluency in German and French, her journeys to Japan and other parts of the world enriched her fiction and helped with her experiments – both in form and content. Writers like Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie praised her and her work highly. The former describes her fiction as follows:
“She writes a prose that lends itself to magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality… dreams, myths, fairy tales, metamorphoses, the unruly unconscious, epic journey and a highly sensual celebration of sexuality in both its most joyous and darkest manifestations.”
And indeed the novel “Heroes and Villains” can be described as mixture of myth, fairy tales, subconscious desires described by a language that is both pellucid and sensual. But the book as well can be characterized as a dystopian romance, where the process of demythologizing is part of the various discourse practices. According to Katsavos the novel is dealing with myth making in the Barthesian sense of culturally constructed collective fictions or clichés. A lot of hidden and revealed quotations are knitted into the novel’s body. One of Carter’s most efficient techniques is the irony. In her generic experiment she engages with variety of utopias and dystopias, as well as romances and other canonical texts of patriarchy (Gulliver’s Travels, The Time Machine, Heart of Darkness, Wuthering Heights, etc.). However, central for “Heroes and Villains” is the allusion to the Biblical story of the Fall and the committing of the original sin.
Analysis
The major theme that is exploited in the text is the way that the story of the Fall is re-thought and re-told. It is once depicted as the context of Marianne’s urge to get to know the unknown – the maiden who is attracted to the enigmatic world outside the safety of the paternal home. Leaving the world of the Father (Eden and God, although the father-god is dead), “Eve at the end of the world” is forced to learn on her own what is good and what is evil. The distinction she is not truly capable of doing since the lack of the father causes her putting her trust into appearances. The difficulty to separate moral categories confuses Marianne and she tends to admire idols, what else is her confession to Jewel: “You’re so beautiful, I think you must be true” than an example of a compensatory mechanism to fill the loss of the Father/God. This can be read as halfway submission to the phallic status quo. But actually this is a state to Marianne’s maturity. She is slowly transforming throughout the book from childhood to womanhood. Marianne’s transformation can be used as a synecdoche for the Woman’s will for power (at the end of the novel, Marianne utters her desire to be the Tiger Lady and to rule with “rod of iron”).
However, another angle to look at her story is the fact that she was seduced by Jewel to the original sin. He was the one to introduce her to sex in an attempt to establish a form of dominance over her, to make her less frightening because of her being different. So we can witness a reversal of the roles.
In a representative passage Donally and Jewel – the two figures of patriarchy exercise the act of naming (interesting Biblical allusion since god gives the exclusive prerogative of man to give names to the living creatures and thus legitimize their existence). They try to invent the women, to make her and therefore to rule upon her. More curious is that they do it using established images of womanity to apply to her. First, they call her Eve. The mother of humanity. The first sinner. She must bore into the world Jewel’s child in order to secure his regal status. Meanwhile, she is ever going to be the outsider possessing the power of knowledge, but submitted to the tribe’s leader.
Then she is called Lilith. According to the apocryphal texts, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, who refused to be under him. Because of her disobedience god punished her to bore demons in the morning and to eat her own children in the evening. But Marianne is called “little Lilith” which is a sign of ironizing the myth, diminishing its functions and meaning.
Equally as much takes for the assumed father-son roles to be constructed and deconstructed through the demythologizing irony applied to the text. Donally and Jewel are the figures of patriarchy but their relationship is based on mistrust and constant fight for leadership. The professor killed Jewel’s father and used Jewel as a canvas to re-create the apotheosis of the post-apocalyptic art tattooing on his back the scene of the Fall. Altogether with the kill of the Father (and Jewel’ rhetorical question of whether Donally consumed him in order to take his place, which can be read as Freudian features) he constantly tries to eliminate Jewel.
The Father-son heredity is however broken by Jewel’s will to sire a daughter. The girl is going to take after the father and would get his heart as recognition, as birth right. The foundations of patriarchy are crushed – the new leader is the woman.
What is visible when one focuses on the formal aspect of the text is that the author creates a constant mix of registers. At first glance it seems as if the characters’ lines follow the flow of everyday speech, but actually their words are rich of rhetorical questions, formal statements and vows, even mini-lectures. It appears that the small-talk is in fact smart-talk, aphoristically shaped and ironically accompanied by urinating process. Jewel assumes half-preachy, half-demanding tone of the leader he is supposed to be. Donally talks like the intellectual he is. And Marianne’s speech varies from naïve affection to formal self-defensive and self- explanatory plead.
What is curious is the lack of other punctuation marks than the full stop and the question mark. This could be interpreted as a sign of emotional balance and it might be referred to the intellectual tone of the conversation. Actually most of the lines are constructed as aphoristic, sometimes laconic statements.
The formal aspects contribute to the full comprehension of the text and demonstrate Angela Carter’s narrative gift.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ralica_Luckanova
Angela Carter was born in 1940 and she joked with her mother who insisted that she had learnt for her pregnancy in the very day The Second World War was declared. Angela Carter won several literary awards, The Somerset Maugham Award being one of them. She is often described as a neo-Gothic author and a feminist. Before her death caused by cancer, Carter was working on a sequel of “Jane Eyre”, which draws an interesting literary kinship between her and Jean Rhys, alongside the one with Charlotte Bronte. The 20th century British writer can be described by the help of many adjectives, but despite the number they still will not be enough. Not only is she a prolific writer but also a journalist, author of several screenplays (some – adaptations of her short stories to the big screen). She studied English literature at University of Bristol. Her fluency in German and French, her journeys to Japan and other parts of the world enriched her fiction and helped with her experiments – both in form and content. Writers like Ian McEwan and Salman Rushdie praised her and her work highly. The former describes her fiction as follows:
“She writes a prose that lends itself to magnificent set pieces of fastidious sensuality… dreams, myths, fairy tales, metamorphoses, the unruly unconscious, epic journey and a highly sensual celebration of sexuality in both its most joyous and darkest manifestations.”
And indeed the novel “Heroes and Villains” can be described as mixture of myth, fairy tales, subconscious desires described by a language that is both pellucid and sensual. But the book as well can be characterized as a dystopian romance, where the process of demythologizing is part of the various discourse practices. According to Katsavos the novel is dealing with myth making in the Barthesian sense of culturally constructed collective fictions or clichés. A lot of hidden and revealed quotations are knitted into the novel’s body. One of Carter’s most efficient techniques is the irony. In her generic experiment she engages with variety of utopias and dystopias, as well as romances and other canonical texts of patriarchy (Gulliver’s Travels, The Time Machine, Heart of Darkness, Wuthering Heights, etc.). However, central for “Heroes and Villains” is the allusion to the Biblical story of the Fall and the committing of the original sin.
Analysis
The major theme that is exploited in the text is the way that the story of the Fall is re-thought and re-told. It is once depicted as the context of Marianne’s urge to get to know the unknown – the maiden who is attracted to the enigmatic world outside the safety of the paternal home. Leaving the world of the Father (Eden and God, although the father-god is dead), “Eve at the end of the world” is forced to learn on her own what is good and what is evil. The distinction she is not truly capable of doing since the lack of the father causes her putting her trust into appearances. The difficulty to separate moral categories confuses Marianne and she tends to admire idols, what else is her confession to Jewel: “You’re so beautiful, I think you must be true” than an example of a compensatory mechanism to fill the loss of the Father/God. This can be read as halfway submission to the phallic status quo. But actually this is a state to Marianne’s maturity. She is slowly transforming throughout the book from childhood to womanhood. Marianne’s transformation can be used as a synecdoche for the Woman’s will for power (at the end of the novel, Marianne utters her desire to be the Tiger Lady and to rule with “rod of iron”).
However, another angle to look at her story is the fact that she was seduced by Jewel to the original sin. He was the one to introduce her to sex in an attempt to establish a form of dominance over her, to make her less frightening because of her being different. So we can witness a reversal of the roles.
In a representative passage Donally and Jewel – the two figures of patriarchy exercise the act of naming (interesting Biblical allusion since god gives the exclusive prerogative of man to give names to the living creatures and thus legitimize their existence). They try to invent the women, to make her and therefore to rule upon her. More curious is that they do it using established images of womanity to apply to her. First, they call her Eve. The mother of humanity. The first sinner. She must bore into the world Jewel’s child in order to secure his regal status. Meanwhile, she is ever going to be the outsider possessing the power of knowledge, but submitted to the tribe’s leader.
Then she is called Lilith. According to the apocryphal texts, Lilith was Adam’s first wife, who refused to be under him. Because of her disobedience god punished her to bore demons in the morning and to eat her own children in the evening. But Marianne is called “little Lilith” which is a sign of ironizing the myth, diminishing its functions and meaning.
Equally as much takes for the assumed father-son roles to be constructed and deconstructed through the demythologizing irony applied to the text. Donally and Jewel are the figures of patriarchy but their relationship is based on mistrust and constant fight for leadership. The professor killed Jewel’s father and used Jewel as a canvas to re-create the apotheosis of the post-apocalyptic art tattooing on his back the scene of the Fall. Altogether with the kill of the Father (and Jewel’ rhetorical question of whether Donally consumed him in order to take his place, which can be read as Freudian features) he constantly tries to eliminate Jewel.
The Father-son heredity is however broken by Jewel’s will to sire a daughter. The girl is going to take after the father and would get his heart as recognition, as birth right. The foundations of patriarchy are crushed – the new leader is the woman.
What is visible when one focuses on the formal aspect of the text is that the author creates a constant mix of registers. At first glance it seems as if the characters’ lines follow the flow of everyday speech, but actually their words are rich of rhetorical questions, formal statements and vows, even mini-lectures. It appears that the small-talk is in fact smart-talk, aphoristically shaped and ironically accompanied by urinating process. Jewel assumes half-preachy, half-demanding tone of the leader he is supposed to be. Donally talks like the intellectual he is. And Marianne’s speech varies from naïve affection to formal self-defensive and self- explanatory plead.
What is curious is the lack of other punctuation marks than the full stop and the question mark. This could be interpreted as a sign of emotional balance and it might be referred to the intellectual tone of the conversation. Actually most of the lines are constructed as aphoristic, sometimes laconic statements.
The formal aspects contribute to the full comprehension of the text and demonstrate Angela Carter’s narrative gift.
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Ralica_Luckanova
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