Postmodernism in Angela Carter's Short Fiction

415 Pages·2015·35.01 MB·English

Postmodernism in Angela Carter’s Short Fiction: A
Žižekian Approach

Ana María Losada Pérez
Tese de doutoramento dirixida por: Dra. Laura María Lojo
Rodríguez e Dr. Jorge Sacido Romero

Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá
Facultade de Filoloxía
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
2015
Postmodernism in Angela Carter’s Short Fiction: A
Žižekian Approach

……………………………………………………
Asdo: Ana María Losada Pérez
Tese de doutoramento dirixida por: Dra. Laura María Lojo
Rodríguez e Dr. Jorge Sacido Romero

Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa e Alemá
Facultade de Filoloxía
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela
2015
AUTORIZACIÓN DOS DIRECTORES DA TESE

Dona Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez, profesora titular do Departamento de Filoloxía
Inglesa e Alemá da Facultade de Filoloxía na Universidade de Santiago de Compostela,
e

Don Jorge Sacido Romero, profesor titular do Departamento de Filoloxía Inglesa e
Alemá da Facultade de Filoloxía na Universidade de Santiago de Compostela,

En calidade de directores da tese de doutoramento titulada:
“Postmodernism in Angela Carter’s Short Fiction: A Žižekian Approach”

Presentada por Dona Ana Mª Losada Pérez, alumna do programa de doutoramento
―Estudos Ingleses: Tendencias Actuais e Aplicacións‖

Auutorizan a presentación da tese indicada, considerando
que reúne os requisitos esixidos no artigo 34 do
Regulamento de Estudios de Doutoramento, e que como
Directores da mesma non incorre nas causas de
abstención establecidas na Lei 30/1002.

Asdo: Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez Asdo: Jorge Sacido Romero
In loving memory of my grandparents Carmen Navarro, Cristalina Zorelle,
Jesús Losada, and Jesús Pérez, and my great uncle Antonio Zorelle
Acknowledgements:
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Laura Mª Lojo Rodríguez and
Dr. Jorge Sacido Romero for their encouragement and expert guidance through the
stages of research and writing of this dissertation.

I would also like to thank Dr. Durrin Alpakin Martínez-Caro of Middle East
Technical University in Ankara, who very kindly sent me a copy of Angela Carter
and Her Work. The 15th METU British Novelist Conference Proceedings, one of the
works here cited.

My debt to Luis Magarinhos is immense. Luis‘s patience and love have sustained
me all the way through. He is my agape.

I am very grateful to my dear sisters, Cris and Pati Losada, who have given me their
love and have always encouraged me to pursue my aims. They both inspire me
daily.

To my parents, Ángela Pérez and Honorato Losada, also goes my profound
gratitude. They have been pillars of guidance and love since the day I was born; the
countless times they encouraged me to complete this dissertation will never be
forgotten.

I am also thankful to my aunt Amelia, my cousin Jesús, my godparents Ana and
Ángel, and to all my friends for their support and their faith in me.

This dissertation has been written in the frame of the research project ―‗Cuentos de
mujeres‘: La narrativa breve de escritoras británicas contemporáneas (1974-2013)‖
(Ref. FEM2013-41977-P) Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Gobierno de
España.
Abstract:
The aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the academic dispute over the
emancipatory potential of Angela Carter‘s fiction by examining the way in which her
short fiction re-imagines and either reproduces or subverts the ideology at work in
patriarchy. The relevance that the category ―postmodernism‖ has had for the critical
reception of Carter‘s work determines this dissertation‘s three-part structure. The first
part provides an overview of the standard theoretical perspectives that define
postmodernism as a frame of ideas and as a literary practice and that, as such, have had
a direct influence on the assessment of the political potential of Carter‘s fiction. Part II
focuses on Slavoj Žižek‘s non-standard account of postmodernism, an approach that
reasserts the subversive character of postmodernist cultural productions. Part III
analyses a corpus of seven short narratives from Carter‘s four collections and examines
the extent to which Žižek‘s unorthodox view of postmodernism sheds new light on the
emancipatory potential of their representation of social reality, sexual difference and the
human condition.

Resumo:
O obxectivo desta tese é contribuír á disputa sobre o potencial emancipador da obra de
ficción de Angela Carter examinando como a súa narrativa curta representa e ou ben
reproduce ou ben subverte a ideoloxía patriarcal. A relevancia da categoría
―posmodernismo‖ na recepción crítica da obra de Carter determina a estrutura tripartita
desta tese. A primeira parte proporciona unha panorámica das perspectivas teóricas
estándar que definen o posmodernismo como un marco de ideas e como unha práctica
literaria e que, como tales, teñen tido unha influencia directa na avaliación do potencial
político da obra carteriana. A segunda parte céntrase na concepción non estándar do
posmodernismo proposta por Slavoj Žižek, unha aproximación que defende o carácter
subversivo das producións culturais posmodernistas. A terceira parte deste estudo
analiza un corpus de sete relatos curtos das catro coleccións de Carter e explora en que
medida a visión žižekiana non ortodoxa do posmodernismo permite clarificar o
potencial emancipador das súas representacións da realidade social, da diferencia sexual
e da condición humana.

Resumen:
El objetivo de esta tesis es contribuir a la disputa sobre el potencial emancipador de la
obra de ficción de Angela Carter examinando como su narrativa breve representa y o
bien reproduce o bien subvierte la ideología patriarcal. La relevancia de la categoría
―posmodernismo‖ en la recepción crítica de la obra de Carter determina la estructura
tripartita de esta tesis. La primera parte proporciona una panorámica de las perspectivas
teóricas estándar que definen el posmodernismo como un marco de ideas y como una
práctica literaria y que, como tales, han tenido una influencia directa en la evaluación
del potencial político de la obra carteriana. La segunda parte se centra en la concepción
no estándar del posmodernismo propuesta por Slavoj Žižek, una aproximación que
defiende el carácter subversivo de las producciones culturales posmodernistas. La
tercera parte de este estudio analiza un corpus de siete relatos breves de las cuatro
colecciones de Carter y explora en qué medida la visión žižekiana no ortodoxa del
posmodernismo permite clarificar el potencial emancipador de sus representaciones de
la realidad social, de la diferencia sexual y de la condición humana.
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................... i
PART I: POSTMODERNISM AND ANGELA CARTER’S FICTION ................... 1
Chapter 1- Postmodernism as a Period Term and as a Literary Practice: An Overview
...................................................................................................................................... 2
1.1. Postmodernism as Period Term.......................................................................... 3
1.2. Postmodernism as Literary Practice ................................................................. 30
Chapter 2- The Critical Reception of Angela Carter‘s work as Postmodernist Fiction
.................................................................................................................................... 53
2.1. ―Woman as a Figure of Speech?‖: The Critical Reception of Angela Carter‘s
(Inter)Textual practice. ............................................................................................ 66
2.2. ―Woman as Spectacle?‖: The Critical Reception of Theatricality and the
Carnivalesque in Carter‘s Fiction. ........................................................................... 91
2.3. Aidan Day‘s The Rational Glass (1998): Angela Carter as an Anti-
Postmodernist writer ............................................................................................. 113
PART II SLAVOJ ŽIŽEK’S NON-STANDARD VIEW OF
POSTMODERNISM .................................................................................................. 125
Chapter 3- ―The Sublime and Obscene Object of Postmodernity‖: Žižek‘s
Redefinition of the Modernism-Postmodernism Debate .......................................... 130
Chapter 4- ―The Impossible is Real‖: Žižek‘s Non-Standard Approach to Lacanian
theory ........................................................................................................................ 146
Chapter 5- ―Risking the Impossible‖: Žižek‘s Reformulation of Ideology and its
Critique ..................................................................................................................... 165
Chapter 6- ―There is a non-relationship‖: Žižek‘s Lacan-based Conception of Sexual
Difference ................................................................................................................. 179
PART III: TEXTUAL ANALYSIS ........................................................................... 194
Chapter 7- Going Through the Fantasy of the Romantic Self: ―Reflections‖ .......... 201
Chapter 8- Going Through the Fantasy of the Law or ―Name of the Father‖: ―The
Executioner‘s Beautiful Daughter‖ ........................................................................... 229
Chapter 9- Going Through the Fantasy of Genesis: ―Penetrating to the Heart of the
Forest‖ ....................................................................................................................... 248
Chapter 10- Going Through the Fantasy of Fairy Tale Marriage: ―The Bloody
Chamber‖ .................................................................................................................. 274
Chapter 11- Going Through the Fantasy of the Subject of the Enlightenment: ―Wolf-
Alice‖ ........................................................................................................................ 311
Chapter 12- Going Through the Fantasy of the ―Angel in the house‖: ―The Fall River
Axe Murders‖ and ―Lizzie‘s Tiger‖ .......................................................................... 332
CONCLUSIONS ......................................................................................................... 359
Works Cited ................................................................................................................ 371
INTRODUCTION

Of all the figures in the canon of late twentieth-century British writers, Angela
Carter stands as one of the most imaginative, thought-provoking and critical voices.
The variety and scope of her writing is breathtaking: from 1966 until her death in
1992, she published three collections of short stories, nine novels, four collections
of children‘s stories, a work in verse, four radio plays, two film scripts, a book-
length essay, two collections of critical essays, two scripts for television
documentaries and a large amount of journalism. She also translated Charles
Perrault‘s contes and edited two collections of fairy tales for Virago. A fourth
collection of short fiction was posthumously published in 1993.
As a writer, Carter was not only prolific; she was also highly idiosyncratic.
Words like ―versatile‖, ―supple‖ and ―eclectic‖ are now part of the Carterian critical
idiom. ―Hyperbolic‖, ―excessive‖ and ―extreme‖ are also terms used by
commentators to describe her poetics. In an interview published in 1985, John
Haffenden admitted to Carter that he believed she did ―embrace opportunities for
overwriting‖. ―Embrace them?‖ Carter replied, ―I would say I half suffocate them
with the enthusiasm with which I wrap my arms and legs around them‖ (Haffenden
1985: 91). Carter‘s style is exuberant indeed, vivid and sumptuous in detail. When
reading her fiction one is bombarded with imagery that acutely stimulates the
senses, producing both pleasure —in its depiction of embellished figures coupled
with words evoking scents and melodious sounds in a sometimes lyrical, sometimes
opulent way— and utter revulsion and horror —with the representation of bizarre,
violent and nauseating scenes paired with terms that convey strident noise and
unbearable stench.
i
Carter‘s oeuvre also proves to go to extremes in its use of allusion, which
includes references to texts that played a pivotal role in the configuration of
Western culture such as the Bible, Greco-Roman mythology, Medieval romances
and folktales, Shakespeare‘s plays, eighteenth-century British novels, Perrault‘s and
the Grimm‘s fairy tales, de Sade‘s work, British Romantic poetry, Edgar Allan
Poe‘s tales, Charles Baudelaire‘s poems, Lewis Carroll‘s novels, British science-
fiction novels from the 1960s, mainstream Hollywood films, the theories of Walter
Benjamin, Mikhail Bakhtin, Theodor Adorno, Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes and
Michel Foucault, and even cookery books, among many other sources. ―What
wasn‘t an influence? Carter took all in‖ wrote Ali Smith in her enthusiastic
introduction to the new edition of Flesh and the Mirror: Essays on the Art of
Angela Carter, a turning-point in Carterian criticism originally published in 1994
(Smith 2007: 4). Carter‘s intertextual practice unsettles generic boundaries and
challenges the long-held distinction between ―high‖ and ―popular‖ culture, an
intention she underscored in the interview with Haffenden:
I think I must have started very early on to regard the whole of Western European
culture as a kind of folklore. I had a perfectly regular education, and indeed I‘m a
rather bookish person, but I do tend to regard all aspects of culture as coming on
the same level. (Haffenden 1985: 84)

Along with her hyperbolic diction and her extensive use of allusion, a
feature stands as characteristic of Carter‘s poetics: the predominance of the fantastic
over the realist as the stuff of her fiction. Both her tales and her novels are located
in settings including remote upland villages whose inhabitants ―have cold weather,
they have cold hearts‖, as the narrator of Carter‘s well-known tale ―The Werewolf‖
informs us (Carter 1995 [1979]: 210); the fairground, a world in which individuals
and puppets perform different roles with the help of strings, make-up and costumes;
fairy tale-like woods in which wolves howl around and metamorphoses take place;
ii