Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism | Carter, Angela - Peter G. Christensen (essay date 1998)

Peter G. Christensen (essay date 1998)

SOURCE: Christensen, Peter G. “Farewell to the Femme Fatale: Angela Carter's Rewriting of Frank Wedekind's Lulu Plays.” Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies 12, no. 1 (1998): 319-36.

[In the following essay, Christensen examines Carter's “demythologizing” of the Lulu character in her revisions of the Lulu plays.]

In her book The Sexual Circus: Wedekind's Theatre of Subversion (32-35, 60-65), Elizabeth Boa notes the importance of fairy-tale motifs in Wedekind's major plays, Spring Awakening (Frühlingserwachen, 1891), and the Lulu plays, Earth Spirit (Erdgeist, 1895) and Pandora's Box (Die Büchse der Pandora, 1904). She writes that “in fairy tales—Rumpelstilzchen is the best known example—naming gives power over demons” (60). The eponymous heroine of the Lulu plays is the “demonic” character whom men try to...

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