MYTH, ORIGINS AND THE DAUGHTER'S DESIRE IN THE FICTION OF ANGELA CARTER Hope

221 Pages·2008·1.01 MB·English

JOURNEY TOWARDS THE (M)OTHER : MYTH, ORIGINS AND
THE DAUGHTER’S DESIRE IN THE FICTION OF ANGELA
CARTER
Hope Jennings
A Thesis Submitted for the Degree of PhD
at the
University of St. Andrews
2008
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Journey Towards the (M)other:
myth, origins and the daughter’s desires
in the fiction of Angela Carter
Hope Jennings
Ph.D. Thesis
September 2006
Jennings i
Abstract
This study examines Angela Carter’s demythologising of origin myths and will
investigate the extent to which her fictions offer viable alternatives that allow for
productive representationsof women andgender relations outside patriarchal paradigms.
In the first half of the thesis (Chapters 1-3), I will primarily focus on how several of
Carter’s earlier texts deconstruct existing mythical spaces, particularly the biblical
creationstoryinGenesis.TheGenesismythiscentralto socio-historicalconstructionsof
gendered identities, and in itself, central to Carter’s imagination. She repeatedly returns
to this myth in her challenging of the ways in which patriarchal narratives construct
violent relations between self and other, specifically where ‘woman’ is situated as the
repressed other of male desires and fears. Alongside her demythologising of Genesis,
Carter deconstructs Freudian myths of sexual maturation, exposing where these also set
uparelationshipofantagonismorenmitybetweenthesexes.AlthoughChapterOnewill
explorehowCarterattemptstorevisetheseoriginmythsfromapositivestance,Twoand
Three will focus on the inherent difficulties faced by the female subject in her struggle
against patriarchal myths and their violent oppression of female autonomy. The second
half of the thesis (Chapters 4-6) will shift to an investigation of how Carter’s later texts
set up both possibilities and challenges for women when attempting to construct their
own narratives of origin. Through her problematising of matriarchal myths and feminist
fantasies of self-creation, Carter emphasises the need for confronting limitations rather
than celebrating transgressions as entirely liberating. The thesis will conclude, however,
with an examination of where Carter’s own attempts at remythologising opens up an
alternative space, or ‘elsewhere’, of feminine desires that allows for a refiguring of the
femalesubjectaswellasmorereciprocalrelationsbetweenthesexes.
Jennings ii
Declarations
I, Hope Jennings, hereby certify that this thesis, which is approximately 80,000
words in length, has been written by me, that it is the record of work carried out by me
andthatithasnotbeensubmittedinanypreviousapplicationforahigherdegree.
Date SignatureofCandidate
I was admitted as a research student in September, 2002 and as a candidate for
the degree of Ph.D.inJuly, 2003; the higher studyfor which this is a record was carried
outintheUniversityofSt.Andrewsbetween2002and2006.
Date SignatureofCandidate
I hereby certify that the candidate has fulfilled the conditions of the Resolution
andRegulationsappropriateforthedegreeofPh.D.intheUniversityofSt.Andrewsand
thatthecandidateisqualifiedtosubmitthisthesisinapplicationforthatdegree.
Date SignatureofSupervisor
In submitting this thesis to the University of St. Andrews I understand that I am giving
permission for it to be made available for use in accordance with the regulations of the
University Library for the time being in force, subject to any copyright vested in the
work not being affected thereby. I also understand that the title and abstract will be
published, and that a copy of the work may be made and supplied to any bona fide
libraryorresearchworker.
Date SignatureofCandidate
Jennings iii
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank The Sperry Fund for awarding me a Beinecke Scholarship,
which extensively contributed towards funding my postgraduate studies; and the
Alumni AssociationofHunter College,Inc.for providingme witha DavidandSadie
Klau Foundation Fellowship for postgraduate research. Thanks are in due order to
Dr. AlanHausman for thetime andenergyhe hasinvested in myacademic career,as
well as his continuing encouragement and assistance, especially with all matters
regarding Freud. I am very grateful to Dr. Gill Plain, whose feedback on early drafts
was invaluable, and for consistently being available to offer advice and further
opportunities (bothacademic andfinancial). Mydeepest gratitude to Professor Susan
Sellers, for her patience, insight, generosity, and confidence in the outcome of this
thesis. She has allowed me the freedom to explore some of the most insane and
impractical ideas, and her steady encouragement has helped guide me through both
the personal and creative chaos of the past four years. I am also very appreciative of
the administrative staff in the School of English, without whose practical assistance
no research student could survive! Thanks as well to Student Support Services for
helping me out of all those unexpected financial binds. Much thanks to my oldest,
enduring family of friends back in the States: Midge and Chris McClosky, Christine
and Geof Bowie, Laura Limonic, and Jimmy Crane (especially for taking in and
loving Leo/Leah the transsexual cat). A heap of thanks and love to Elizabeth Bowie,
for sharing survival tricks of whiskeyand wine, all in a haze of photography, stories,
and Cinderella fantasies. I am so grateful for having met some new enduring friends
while at St. Andrews, too many to mention, but a special shout out to Karen
Hayward, Jen Hess-Mouat, Sarah Taylor, and Rachel Marsh, to whom I am most
indebted for innumerable reasons. Without you girls I would have been entirely
helpless, especially after the infamous incident of the broken ankle! Thanks to Wil
Moss for the new home, where most importantly I was able to find the space and
quiet to finish writing this thesis. Last but not at all least, thanks to my much loved
and much missed younger brothers, Joel, Jeremy and Seth; and to Stuart Cripps and
Carolyn Jennings, for being married, respectively, to my mom and dad and thus
becoming co-parents to me, with all the dedication and frustration that relationship
implies. I am eternally grateful to my father, Randall, and my mother, Deborah, for
their eternally unconditional gift of love, faith, and emotional, psychological, and
financial support.Thisissuitablyenoughdedicatedtobothof you,because youhave
been the most peculiar and complex unit to have shaped mylife, giving me far more
thanIcouldeverreturn.
Jennings iv
List of Contents
Introduction: JourneyTowards the(M)other…………………....1-22
Part One: Escaping Eden
ChapterI: TheWord, theFlesh,and theFall…………………...24-46
ChapterII: AMonstrous God…………………………………....47-73
ChapterIII:Eveatthe End of theWorld……………………….74-103
Part Two: Elsewhere
ChapterIV:Return totheWomb………………………………105-136
ChapterV:TheNew Woman…………………………………...137-171
ChapterVI: FamilyRomances…………………………………172-201
Conclusion: FurtherDepartures…………………………….....202-210
Bibliography……………………………………………………...211-214
Jennings v
Abbreviations
All references tothefollowingprimarytexts by AngelaCarter
willbecited parentheticallyas follows:
HF: ‘PenetratingtotheHeartof theForest’
HV: Heroes and Villains
ML: ‘TheMotherLode’
MT: TheMagicToyshop
NC: Nights at theCircus
NE: ThePassion ofNew Eve
PW: ‘Peterand theWolf’
SW: TheSadeian Woman
WC: WiseChildren
Introduction:
JOURNEY TOWARDS THE (M)OTHER
For the yearning to believe in a point of origin, ina universe witha beginning,
middle,andend,whichfunctionsinaccordancewithclearrulesandpredictable
outcomes is as strong as the impossibility of its discovery…[.]We refuse to
despair, desperately hoping instead that there is a secret origin, a secret design
that willbe revealed to uson arrival, althoughthe journey maybe arduousand
thewaitinglong.
~MariaAristodemou1
As the above epigraph indicates, the notion of an origin holds a prevalent place in the
human imagination, functioning as a narrative vehicle for conceptualising where we
come from, often with the aim of understanding the present, and by extension, possible
futures. However, the search for origins will always remain a tentative proposition, at
best. Just as we are incapable of recalling our own processes of gestation and birth, we
are also without the socio-historical means for remembering with certainty the birth of
civilisation. Because there is no absolute form of knowledge surrounding what we
consider to be the ‘prehistory’ of human cultures and languages, then origin narratives
take on the cultural currency of myths. Origin myths are primarily intended to fill a gap
or absence in our desire for self-knowledge, and like any myth, they reflect upon lived
conditions or realities, and are thus inevitably invested with ideological interests. If we
acceptthepremise thatthere is no‘true’origintobediscoveredinthe distant past,butis
ratheranotionthatcoexistswiththeconcernsofourimmediatepresent,thenconfronting
how we construct our origins becomes a necessary task. In other words, by approaching
origin narratives as products of current discourses and power structures we might begin
to challenge the ways in which they significantly contribute to the construction of
identities,whethertheybepsychological,culturalorgeopolitical.
1 Maria Aristodemou, Law and Literature: Journeys from Her to Eternity (Oxford: Oxford
UniversityPress,2000),pp.235,240.
JourneyTowardsthe(M)other 2
This study will examine how Angela Carter’s texts are engaged in an ongoing
explorationof the (female)subject’s relationtoorigins through the intersections of myth
and history as discourses constructing gendered identities. Carter specifically challenges
how origin myths are employed as a means of reinforcing those boundaries that
distinguish ‘man’ from his ‘others’. Thus, for Carter, as well as various feminists, the
questionoforiginsbecomesnecessarilycentredarounddismantlingthemasternarratives
that have been used to reinforce patriarchal representations of women. As I will be
exploringthroughout this thesis, Ibelieve the development of Carter’s approachtowards
origin narratives follows a two-fold journey: “one involving both patriarchal myth-
smashing and woman-identified myth-making.”2 According to this process, I will be
examining the tension between Carter’s own claim, “I’m in the demythologising
business”,3 and the ways in which her texts simultaneously work towards “a new
investment in myth” rather than an eradication of myth itself.4 Even if she distrusts and
challengesthewaysinwhichmythsareusedtopolicesocio-culturalboundariesbetween
self and other, she never loses sight of the fact that origins themselves are necessary to
the human imagination in situating one’s place in the world; that they cannot be
dispensed with, but rather must be investigated and renegotiated. Before I set out the
parameters of my own investigation, in order to contextualise Carter’s positioning in
relation to women’s rewriting of myth I will first discuss some of the general feminist
debatessurroundingthequestionoforigins.
According to Hélène Cixous: “The origin is a masculine myth…[.]The quest for
origins, illustrated by Oedipus, doesn’t haunt a feminine unconscious.”5 Cixous’
statement is in itself somewhat debatable, as it might be argued that there is no apparent
reasonwhywomen,incontrasttomen,shouldbeanylessconcernedwithseekingoutor
2 Jane Caputi, ‘On Psychic Activism: Feminist Mythmaking’, in Carolyne Larrington (ed.), The
Woman’sCompaniontoMythology(London:Pandora,1992),p.427.
3 Angela Carter, ‘Notes from the Front Line’, in Shaking A Leg: Collected Journalism and
Writings(London:Chatto&Windus,1997),p.38.
4 For this and the following sentence see Susan Sellers, Myth and Fairy Tale in Contemporary
Women’sFiction(Basingstoke:Palgrave,2001),p.114.
5HélèneCixous,‘CastrationorDecapitation?’,trans.AnnetteKuhn,Signs7(1981),p.53.
JourneyTowardsthe(M)other 3
devisingoriginnarratives that reflect ontheir ownexperiences or desires.Infact,a great
deal of feminist theories and texts embark on this very ‘quest’. However, women’s
desires for origins often arise in direct reaction to a socio-cultural system that has
historically denied them access to contributing towards those narratives constructing
genderedidentities.The originmyths that have beenhandeddowntousprimarilyreflect
masculine desires, which support and help keep in place the patriarchal order in its
repressionofthe‘feminine’(Freud’sOedipusbeingaprimeexampleofthis).6 AsMaria
Aristodemou observes, reiterating Cixous’ own positioning, the “dream of returning to a
point of origin” is more than anything “the dream of man rather than of woman and the
journey leads either back to oneself or to death.”7 In other words, a masculine desire for
the origin is often focused on recovering or returning to some coherent unified self, to
uncover a secret design or mysterythat would offer an incontrovertible truth of the male
subject’sidentitythatisnotdependantonanyrelationtothe(m)other.8
As we see with Oedipus, in his inexorable progression back to the origin in his
quest for self-knowledge, when that truth is revealed to him it is one that is founded on
death,asheisresponsibleforthedeathsofboththefather andmother.Initsexposureof
‘man’s’ownmurderousimpulses, themythrevealsthewaysinwhichapatriarchalorder
constructs violent relations between self and other through masculine desires for the
assertion of absolute autonomyin a world that is byits verynature chaotic,unstable and
pluralistic. Furthermore, asAristodemou points out,the “frustrationat the unattainability
of these goals arises from man’s desire for and inability to understand and thereby
possess woman”.9 In other words, because ‘man’ is incapable of pinning down some
6 My use of the terms masculine and feminine is with the recognition that these are socially
constructed gendered positions; that they are not inherently located in biological sex. In those
places where I refer to either term preceded by a direct article, they will be cited with inverted
commastoindicatethatthese areculturallyunstablemarkersratherthanfixedidentificationsthat
arewhollyrepresentativeof‘man’or‘woman’.
7Aristodemou,p.250;throughoutthisthesis,allitalicswithinquotationsaretheauthors’original
emphases,unlessotherwiseindicatedasmyown.
8 In those instances when I employ the term (m)other, this is to indicate where the maternal-
feminineisalsorepresentativeoftherepressedotherinapatriarchalorder.
9Aristodemou,p.252.