Universidad Nacional de San Martn

Literature and Reality in Nights at the

Circus by Angela Carter and Red
Dust Road: An Autobiographical
Journey by Jackie Kay

Carrera: Licenciatura en Lengua Inglesa

Materia: Literatura Inglesa III
Docentes: Dra. Gabriela Leighton JTP Lic. Patricia Moglia
Alumna: Virginia Vallina

Literature and Reality in Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter and Red Dust Road: An
Autobiographical Journey by Jackie Kay
Introduction
Both real and imagined worlds come to us through their accounts of
them, that is through their traces, their textsi

According to Hutcheons idea, history and literature are both created narratives
constructed by someone, which become known through the text. Therefore, it can be
thought that literature and what people commonly consider real are, in fact, constructed
by the same means but with different purposes. While Literature does not necessarily
aspire to truth, history and reality are meant to make people believe what is claimed as
fact. However, any narrative requires the suspension of disbelief as to make it enjoyable
for the reader or listener, even a work of fantasy or science fiction requires certain levels
of plausibility within the zone or zonesii created by the author. So reality and
literature are intermingled terms, related to the construction and deconstruction of
narratives and will be manipulated by the author of a literary postmodern text due to the
revisionist tendency of breaking the boundaries of real and fictional world. According to
Mc Hale, history and fiction exchange places, history becoming fictional and fiction
becoming trueiii and in this exchange the personal history of a subject becomes even
more difficult to grasp due to this lost of the real world and the influence of the author
or narrators subjective view.
The aim of this paper is to study how reality and literariness are developed
according to the postmodern revisionist view in two examples of postmodern literature:
Angela Carters Nights at the Circus and Jackie Kays Red Dust Road: An
Autobiographical Journey. Both examples are situated in historically specific contexts
and present biography as its main genre, which makes reality an even more slippery
term. In consequence, reality becomes a central issue in the development of the plots,
but the texts are literary and present many examples of literariness and references to
other works of literature and these literary elements serve the purpose of manipulating
the readers perception of reality.
Nights at the Circus

The novel Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter presents clear location and time
references: the plot begins by the end of the nineteenth century and finishes on New
Years Eve of the twentieth century. The first part of the novel is in London, the second
part in Saint Petersburg and the third part happens in Siberia, but this last location is less
exact because the characters wander around deserted areas of Siberia unknown both for
the reader and the characters themselves. This lack of specificity in the geographical
location during the last section becomes a literary tool to emphasize the narrative
movement of the novel towards the realm of fantasy and the complete subversion of the
roles of power which would have been expected given its historical context. The
subversion of power roles develops progressively during the different sections of the
noveliv. At first, in London, Walser is a man of reason trying to logically understand if
Fevvers is a Hoax or not and Fevvers seem to be in disadvantage as she is the circus
freak. However, the narrative of Fevverss life is controlled by herself and her mother
and Walser is diminished to a more passive role, which can be associated to the typical
convention of the role of women at that time. The role of power of the journalist gets
lost further on when in section two, he joins the circus in the lowest condition there
could be, that of a clown. By section three, Walser has completely lost his old dominant
male self and has given way to his more spiritual side. The extreme examples of the
subversion of power and the dominant reality in this last section are the utopia created
by the female prisoners and Fevverss confession on the fact that she was not intacta and
her subsequent carnival laughter.v
Other manipulations of the historical context in Nights at the Circus are associated
to the use of other postmodern techniques such as apocryphal history vi and creative
anachronism.vii No official record of a circus star named Fevvers exits and the Tsar and
the Prince of Wales are not commonly believed to have known freak circus like Fevvers
so this revises, indeed transforms, the conventions and norms of historical fiction
itselfviii, making this narrative an example of apocryphal history. Regarding the creative
anachronism, Carter superimposes ideology of the second half of the twentieth century
into characters that belong to the nineteenth century. This is noticeable in the feministic
views and concerns of Fevvers and his mother which are more related to the second
wave of feminism which focused on the unofficial inequalitiesix than to the first wave
which was more concerned on the law. While the characters should be influenced by the

first wave due to their historical context, they seem to be more concerned on the issues
of the second wave.
Carter also accomplishes the destabilization of the notions of reality in Fevvers
biography by making an intertextual reference to Helen of Troys myth:
Lor love you, sir! Fevvers sang out in a voice that clanged like
dustbin lids. As to myplace of birth, why, I first saw light of day right
here in smoky old London, didnt I! not billed the Cockney Venus,
for nothing, sir, though they could just as well ave called me Helen
of the High Wire, due to the unusual circumstances in which I come
ashore for I never docked via what you might call the normal
channels, sir, oh, dear me, no;but, just like Helen of Troy was hatched
(...)x

By claiming that Fevvers was not born but hatched like Helen of Troy, she equals
herself to the level of a myth rather than a real woman. This intertextual reference
becomes another tool to undermine the notions of reality because she does not explain
her condition as genetic anomaly or a disease as it was the case of other characters (e.g.
the sleeping beauty) with physical anomalies that Fevvers mentions in the narrative.
The stories of the different characters, which are outcasts or oppressed women, interrupt
the plot regularly.
The narrative is fragmented by various embedded stories, told by and
about women that further destabilize conventional notions of reality,
truth and authorship xi

Therefore according to Michael, these intrusions of other stories and other authorial
voices serve the purpose of redefining previous (modern) conception of authorship and
emphasizing the subjective quality of narrative and reality. In fact, it is not even clear
how Walser or Fevvers find out about some of these stories in such detail. For example,
Mignon does not speak English and Fevvers barely speaks German, however Walser
retells her story in detail.
To sum up, different literary elements blurred the boundaries between reality and fiction
in Nights at the circus and redefines narrative and authorial voices as something in
constant movement.

Red Dust Road: An autobiographical Journey

Jackie Kay begins her autobiography by quoting Hlne Cixous and establishing
that all narrative tells one story in place of another.xii In consequence, her quote invites
the reader to doubt the reliability of her story and wondering what story is in fact being
told. Also it may be wondered which elements of the narrative are subtly telling some
other disguised story. This could be so because even though a great part of the novel
focuses on her meeting with her birth parents and the relevance of that event in her
identity, she also delves into the important events of her childhood and how these had
formed her identity as a writer. Not to mention the idea that the embedded stories of
some members of her family are narrated.
Regarding the structure of the narrative, the different events of her life are not told
chronologically, which would be commonly considered the most realistic way to write
a biography. This autobiography is divided by many titles that make reference either to a
place, a year or simply an idea. Therefore, the narratives context is ambiguous at times
and some sections refer to her ideas, like a stream of consciousness technique, rather
than facts about her life. This lack of emphasis on the contextual references may imply
that Kay did not want to focus her narrative on the facts of her life or the reality or her
existence, but her own subjectivity and her view regarding her search of identity. The
title is a metaphor referring to her spiritual search and establishes that the narrative will
be tainted by literary features that may refer to the world of her own fantasies and
conception of her part instead of her reality.
In Fantasy Africaxiii, Kay reflects upon her fantasies and preconceptions about
Africa and her foster mothers narratives. Although she says that my brothers story of
adoption and mine were the two first big real stories I heardxiv, the word real cannot
be taken in a conventional way as she establishes that her mums imagination is
vividxv, so her stories of adoption are quite unreliable because their purpose is not to be
realistic but to make Jackie and her brother feel better about themselves and the fact that
they are adopted. By real, Kay refers to the meaningfulness of the story in her life and
not the events and truthfulness of the story in itself. This conclusion could be extended
to Kays own narrative, in which reality loses importance when compared to the beauty
of language and imagination and the value of understanding life in terms of ones own

ideas, using narrative as a way of completing a jigsawxvi and not trying to grasp reality
in itself yet challenge it.
Conclusion
In conclusion, Carter and Kay have indirectly admitted that language and
especially literary elements are used to create a narrative but not to explain or even
understand reality as something objective and out there. Reality is constantly
constructed and deconstructed through language within the subject. These two examples
of postmodern writing challenge the concept of reality and the reliability of the authors
and narrators. Both authors use metaphor, anachronism and other literary elements to
manipulate the material world and foreground the internal landscape of the characters
and narrators. Carter manipulates historical moments and intertextual references in
order to foreground the subversion of power roles and feminist ideals. While Kay,
deconstruct the reality of her adoption and her biological parents by tainting her
narrative of stream of consciousness and metaphors in order to complete the puzzle that
is her identity. Also the embedded stories on both books create a conflict in the
conventional notions of truth and reality as the reader loses track of the authorial voices
and these multiply. Therefore, Literature exceeds the realm of reality by reconstructing
it in various ways.

Hutcheon, L. Postmodern paratextuality ad history. Toronto: Editions Trintexte trinity college,

1986.
ii

Mc Hale, B. Postmodern fiction. London: Routledge, 2001.

iii

Ibid.

iv

For this idea, I follow Michel M. Angela Carters Nights at the Circus: An Engaged Feminism
via Subversive Postmodern Strategies. University Wiscosin Press. Http:// www.
Jstor.org/stable/1208693 Accessed 6/8/12
v

Here I quote Phd. Gabriela Leighton, who said this during a class.

vi

Mc Hale, B. Postmodern fiction. Op. cit.

vii

Ibid.

viii

Ibid.

ix

Dubois, Ellen. Feminism: Old Wave and New Wave.

http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/wave.html accesed 27/11/12
x

Carter, Angela Nights at the Circus (1984). Vintage Books London 2006

xi

Michel M. Angela Carters Nights at the Circus: An Engaged Feminism via Subversive
Postmodern Strategies. Op.Cit.
xii

Kay J. Red Dust Road An Autobiographical Journey. Atlas & Co. New York. 2010

xiii

Ibid.

xiv

Ibid

xv

Ibid.

Ibid.

Bibliography:

Carter, Angela Nights at the Circus (1984). Vintage Books London 2006.

Hutcheon, L. Postmodern paratextuality ad history. Toronto: Editions Trintexte trinity

college, 1986.

J. Red Dust Road An Autobiographical Journey. Atlas & Co. New York. 2010

Mc Hale, B. Postmodern fiction. London: Routledge, 2001.

Dubois, Ellen. Feminism: Old Wave and New Wave.

http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/CWLUArchive/wave.html

Michel M. Angela Carters Nights at the Circus: An Engaged Feminism via Subversive
Postmodern Strategies. University Wiscosin Press. Http:// www. Jstor.org/stable/1208693
Accessed 6/8/12

xvi