Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Carter, Angela - Dee Goertz (essay date 2000)

Dee Goertz (essay date 2000)

SOURCE: Goertz, Dee. “To Pose or Not to Pose: The Interplay of Object and Subject in the Works of Angela Carter.” In British Women Writing Fiction, edited by Abby H. P. Werlock, pp. 213-25. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2000.

[In the following essay, Goertz addresses the dangers for women of being objects of desire rather than active sexual subjects in Carter's writings.]

Vampires and sleeping beauties, winged trapeze artists and puppets, werewolves and showgirls—the female characters of Angela Carter's exuberant fiction assume a variety of roles, some from the conventions of realistic fiction but most from fairy tale and fantasy. By using magical realism with a feminist edge, she makes up for the rarity of the female perspective in initiation myths and quests for self-discovery. She portrays young women (and, in some cases, mature women) threading their way through their own awakening sexual...

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