Margins, Crossings and Monstrous Women in selected works of Bharati Mukherjee and Angela ...

235 Pages·2016·1.84 MB·English

University of Cape Town
Department of English Language and Literature
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Power and Transgression: Margins, Crossings and Monstrous Women in

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Selected Works of Bharati Mukherjee and Angela Carter
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CORINNE SHELLY ABEL
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Supervisor: Professor Meg Samuelson
A Thesis submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for a Degree in Doctor of Philosophy
August 2016
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The copyright of this thesis vests in the author. No
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quotation from it or information derived from it is to be

published without full acknowledgeement of the source.
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The thesis is to be used for private study or non-
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commercial research purposes only.

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Published by the Universit y of Cape Town (UCT) in terms
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of the non-exclusive license granted to UCT by the author.
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ABSTRACT

This study focuses on power and transgression in selected works of two disparate authors,
Bharati Mukherjee and Angela Carter. Despite their differences of origins, cultures and
styles, both writers articulate a vision of transgressive, unruly women, often situated at
society’s edges, who dare to challenge boundaries and who are capable of monstrous,
larger-than-life acts. Setting these two authors side by side illuminates how the margins can
unleash an energetic potency and reveals how transgression produces a liberatory effect
that both unsettles power and provides a necessary advantage for those who wish to
inhabit the space of power.
Three main areas of investigation are covered. The initial section addresses people at the
‘Margins’ in terms of Carter’s use of the carnivalesque and Mukherjee’s application of chaos
theory; unexpected confluences emerge which paradoxically speak to the symbolic force of
those cast to the side or consigned to the edges, suggesting that the margins themselves
can become places of power. The section on ‘Crossings’ looks at transgression both literally,
as a crossing over from one space to another, and metaphorically, as a violation of
normative codes of behaviour. For both authors, crossings of one kind or another, whether
metaphoric, literal, or textual, foreground a transgressive edge. An analysis of the texts
reveals how, in very different ways, Mukherjee and Carter articulate transgression as
contesting established authority and creating space for a divergent form of ascendancy. The
final section on ‘Monstrous Women’ deals with how women and foreigners are framed as
‘freaks’ or monsters in order to devalue their significance within hegemonic patriarchal
structures. Ironically, this framing can be recuperated so that it simultaneously subverts
power through parody, excess and violence, and creates a gap for accessing it.
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Borders, gaps and crossings underpin this entire study and drive the rationale for reading
these two authors together, revealing the spaces between them, and how they criss-cross,
meet, collide or fail to align. The journey of this thesis has travelled a counterpath: it has
demanded openness to the encounter with the unexpected, resulting in the discovery of
insights, and being surprised and enlightened by unsuspected alliances and evocative
mismatches.
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My deepest gratitude goes to the following people:
Meg Samuelson, my supervisor, for her detailed, meticulous and generous supervision over
many years, for her capacity to remember so much of what she had read, and for tolerating
the interminable interruptions to this process.
Bharati Mukherjee, for her gracious and warm willingness to grant me interviews on two
separate occasions and for taking the time to share her ideas and thoughts so openly and
freely.
Dorothy Driver, for her early, critical reading of a piece of my work and for insisting on
tighter arguments and finer structure; her feedback represented a tough but significant
watershed moment.
My son, Jarad Zimbler, a great teacher, who time and again helped me to cross over
seemingly intractable impasses by asking astute seminal questions at the critical moments.
My work colleagues at HCI Foundation for having to go it alone for long periods in the last
two years and for enabling me to take time off to complete my research.
My good friend, Anne Seba, for her sustained belief that I could complete this thesis and for
her warm friendship.
My mom, Esther Schwartz, for always being there for me, no matter what.
My partner, John Copelyn, who pushed me relentlessly to finish, and is now delighted at the
possibility of a life ‘without a thesis’.
And all our children, for their love, motivation, support, and encouragement, and for
keeping me on track through all the vicissitudes of this very lengthy study. They are the best
of my life.
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DECLARATION

I, Corinne Abel, hereby declare that the work on which this thesis is based is my original
work (except where acknowledgements indicate otherwise) and that neither the whole
work nor any part of it has been, is being, or is to be submitted for another degree in this or
any other university.
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CONTENTS

ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................ ii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................... iv
DECLARATION ......................................................................................................................................... v
PREFACE .................................................................................................................................................. 1
1. INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 5
1.1 The Authors ............................................................................................................................. 6
1.2 Rationale of the Thesis ............................................................................................................ 8
1.3 Theoretical Background .............................................................................................................. 10
1.3.1 Power ................................................................................................................................... 10
1.3.2 Transgression ....................................................................................................................... 12
1.3.3 Thresholds, Danger and the Abject: the Monstrous Woman .............................................. 13
1.3.4 The Low-Other: Turning the Margin into an Edge ............................................................... 16
1.4 Power and Transgression in the Oeuvres of Carter and Mukherjee .......................................... 17
1.4.1 Power and Sovereignty ........................................................................................................ 17
1.4.2 Crossings and Breaking Boundaries ..................................................................................... 19
1.4.3 Violence, Sexuality and Resistance ...................................................................................... 20
1.5 Edgy Writers/ Writers at the Edge .............................................................................................. 22
1.6 Thesis Structure .......................................................................................................................... 28
2. MARGINS ........................................................................................................................................... 31
2.1 Introduction: Margins and Interstitial Spaces ............................................................................. 31
2.2 Carnival and Chaos: The Low Domains and the Grotesque ........................................................ 36
2.2.1 Fairs and Foreigners: Places and Figures on the Margins .................................................... 44
2.2.2 Carnival: High Culture, Low Class ......................................................................................... 68
2.2.3 Chaos Theory: Women at the Edge ..................................................................................... 72
2.2.4 Carnival and Chaos: A Conclusion ........................................................................................ 76
3. CROSSINGS ........................................................................................................................................ 80
3.1. Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 80
3.2 Crossings as Textual: Transcribing and Transforming ................................................................. 82
3.2.1 Fairy Tales and Myths .......................................................................................................... 85
3.2.2 Other Worlds/Other Lives .................................................................................................... 93
3.3 Errant Travellers ........................................................................................................................ 113
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4. MONSTROUS WOMEN .................................................................................................................... 130
4.1 Monstrosity and Power ............................................................................................................. 130
4.2 Stranger, Freak, Woman ........................................................................................................... 133
4.2.1 Signifying Otherness: an Introduction ............................................................................... 133
4.2.2 The Anxiety of Minor Differences: Stranger Fear/Foreign Danger .................................... 136
4.2.3 Freaks: Fears and Fantasies ............................................................................................... 141
4.2.4 Carter and Mukherjee: Out of Place .................................................................................. 145
4.2.5 Mukherjee’s Strangers ....................................................................................................... 148
4.2.6 Carter’s Strangers ............................................................................................................... 153
4.2.7 Mukherjee’s Freaks ............................................................................................................ 159
4.2.8 Freaks in Early Carter: Aspects of the Femme Fatale ........................................................ 162
4.2.9 Fevvers as Freak ................................................................................................................. 166
4.3 Avenging Females and Wanton Women................................................................................... 177
4.3.1 Female Violence and its Representation ........................................................................... 177
4.3.2 Transgressing Gendered Taboos ........................................................................................ 180
4.3.3 Mukherjee: The Avenging Female ..................................................................................... 181
4.3.4 Carter’s Wanton Women and Avenging Females .............................................................. 190
4.4 Monstrous Women/Female Power .......................................................................................... 197
5. CONCLUSION ................................................................................................................................... 199
WORKS CITED ...................................................................................................................................... 207
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PREFACE

Towards the end of the nineties – my own fin de siècle – I was studying for an Honours
degree in English at the University of South Africa, after a 20 year hiatus. The whole field of
literary studies had changed dramatically since the early seventies – now the requirements
involved not only close study of novels, but the ability to grapple with related fields of
philosophy and psychology. Ideas, theories and iconic names were coming at me fast and
furious: Lacan, the mirror image, Butler, gender construction, Lyotard, Baudrillard,
postmodernism, Saussure, Barthes, poststructuralism, Fanon, Said, postcolonialism – all
these literary ‘posts’ astounded and confused me! And South Africa too had entered its own
post phase with the ending of Apartheid. I was reading and living a new age.
One of the set texts for this Honours course was Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee. The novel
was a blast. It talked of India, freedom and strong women who could change their worlds. It
spoke of the capacity to transgress and violate boundaries, to refuse fixedness, to create
new identities. It ignited my liberatory nerve. The daring and the violence that the
eponymous heroine was capable of hooked my interest. The novel threw me a challenge,
and so began my travels with Mukherjee.
The same course of study introduced me to Angela Carter and two rather different texts:
The Magic Toyshop and The Passion of New Eve. The first gave me that similar thrill of
discovering a novel that throws down the gauntlet to received assumptions; the second,
while interesting, seemed rather more studied, more polemical, less exciting. But Carter had
piqued my interest: here was a writer of serious depth and intellect who was grappling with
political and intellectual issues and excavating controversial ground for engagement, and
who could still write up a narrative storm.
So how did I subsequently come to yoke together these two writers who are so different in
style, thematics, and cultural backgrounds into one thesis? Mukherjee is concerned with
exiles and immigrants, with worlds of the past – whether Bengal or New Salem – and how
they impact on and interact with present day realities. Her narrative style aims to reflect the
chaos and non-linearity of life, but it is realist in form. Carter, on the other hand, creates
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unreal worlds in her fiction, often fantastic or horrific, and her style can be overblown and
outrageous; at times, excessive and funny, or sarcastic and polemical. Mukherjee is Indian-
born, American-integrated; Carter was British (although from Irish stock), and their only
point of intersection seems to be their year of birth. Carter was a committed socialist from a
lower middle-class family; Mukherjee comes from an elite family and emphasises her upper-
class Bengali Brahmin origins, while simultaneously appearing to disavow – or at least,
complicate – the significance of her Indian heritage. Yet both writers, despite their
differences, have been fascinated with power, gridlocked identity and the conditions that
enable freedom and the debunking of restricting mores.
Academically, my previous work had been varied and non-literary, ranging from concerns
with ethnic identity and affiliation to the perceptions of power amongst workers in
organisations. This latter piece of research, completed for my M.A. degree in Psychology,
investigated what makes some groups appear more effective than others, and the
conditions necessary for the recognition and granting of power. If I had been familiar with
the work of Michel Foucault at the time of writing my dissertation in the early eighties,
perhaps my study would have been quite different. Nonetheless, while my investigation was
framed within the context of psychological and organisational theories, my conclusions
pointed to the slipperiness of power and how perceptions and attitudes interact with a
network of relations and variables to affect the balance of power significantly.
The individual’s ability to execute potency in a disempowered situation – either singly or in a
group – has remained a driving focus of my work, and the opening epigraph of my Masters’
dissertation still identifies a current, burning issue:
The lack of will is much more than merely an ethical problem: the modern individual
so often has the conviction that even if he did exert his “will” – or whatever illusion
passes for it – his actions wouldn’t do any good anyway. It is this inner experience of
impotence, this contradiction in will, which constitutes our critical problem. (Rollo
May, Love and Will 184)
In the sixties, we saw the exertion of will demonstrated in student protests across Europe
and America. In the eighties and nineties South Africa saw repeated mass actions to
dismantle Apartheid. In recent years, collective will has asserted itself in riots across the