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The Body of The City: Angela Carter's "The Passion of The New Eve"
The Body of The City: Angela Carter's "The Passion of The New Eve"
The Body of The City: Angela Carter's "The Passion of The New Eve"
The Body of the City: Angela Carter's "The Passion of the New Eve"
Author(s): Nicoletta Vallorani
Source: Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Nov., 1994), pp. 365-379
Published by: SF-TH Inc
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Nicoletta Vallorani
The Body of the City:
Angela Carter's The Passion of the New Eve
"thatshadowylandbetweenthe thinkableandthe thingthoughtof'-Angela
Carter,TheInfernalDesireMachinesof Dr. Hoffinann.
1. Building the body of the city. The followingis an essay on the repre-
sentationof utopiancities in feministsciencefiction,particularly
the way it is
exploited,interpreted,reversed,and reflectedin AngelaCarter'sPNE. The
maincharacterof the story, a young EnglishmancalledEvelyn,reportshis
journeythrougha darkanddecayedNew York,his escapeto the desert,his
arrivalin a femalecommunity-wherehe is to be transformed into the New
Eve-and his experiencesas a womanin Zero'stown. Threedifferenturban
spaces are describedas complexmetaphorsof the interiorspace. For the
purposesof this discussion,we will considerboth the urbanreality that
providestheunderlyingstructure of anyutopiancity andthe fictionalshapeof
utopiathat,being fictional,is bracketedoff fromthe worldit represents. 1
As an operationalstrategy,let us simplifyandbeginwith the assumption
thatthepassagefromrealityto the imagination impliesa transcodingprocess:
i.e., the symbolsof whatcanbe empiricallyperceivedareto be translated into
the complexweb of metaphorsthatdefine the literaryimagination.Under-
standably,the messagebecomesambiguous,becauseambiguityis inherentin
the polysemy of signs. Cognition,therefore,becomesa complexprocess
becauseit flows throughfabulationandconsequentlyis filteredthroughthe
perceptionof realityas a labyrinth,a tangibleenigmaof imaginativebricks
andmortarwhichleadstowardsseveralconflictingsolutions.
In the processof giving a definite-but neverconclusive-shapeto our
vision of utopiancities, we may posit an analogyand a sort of contiguity
betweenthe physicalbodyof a personandthe urbanbodyof a city. Thuswe
may readthe signs in the urbanspaceas we readwrinkleson the skin.2
Thefictionalcity, in otherwords,is createdthrougha processof doubling,
withthe literarypurposeof articulating the psychologicalandphysicalbodies
of the peopleliving withinits boundaries.An urbandimensionconceivedin
this way augmentsthe semanticload of the individualbody andorganizesit
into a new pattern.The signifyingsystemis amplifiedandgainsimaginative
andanalogicveracity.An evenfurtheranddeeperarticulation, however,may
obtainwhenthe fieldof referenceis no longerandnotonlyutopiaas such,but
sexedutopia,thatis, utopiaas a genrewhichis given a definitegender.This
genderis, in our case, female.
3. New York. Basically, Evelyn is a traveller. In the first pages of the novel,
he moves from London to New York. His personal experience as a man,
therefore, is deeply marked by the awareness of the body of a European
metropolis that, as a literary topos, has always been considered male.8
When moving overseas, however, Evelyn finds an urbanlandscapewhich
he perceives as unfamiliar and about which he says: "Nothing in my experi-
ence had preparedme for the city" (24). In terms of gender, New York is
objectstranslating andcompression
theaccumulation of personalandcollective
history.
The deconstructivemodel identifyingthe disjecta membraof the city
requiresthat there be a code capableof writing an unwritabletext. The
descriptionof thepostmodernmetropolisis giventhroughsyntagmatic opposi-
tionswhichtriggerconflictingsemanticreferences:"Instead of hardedgesand
cleancolours,a lurid,Gothicdarknessthatclosedovermy headentirelyand
becamemy world"(PNE 10).
Manhattanresemblesa medievalcity, a place of disorderand darkness
whichEvelynalternatelyloves andhates,as is oftenthe casewiththingsthat
arenot understoodbut whosefascinationis undeniable.
Only later will Evelyn realize the impossibilityof fully acceptingthe
"dying city" (37) and consequently leave it.
Whilelookingfor freedom,he finallygets to the city of Beulah.
not mean to-create an ideal city. Rather, she selects and then adds up some
recurringmodels in order to produce in the readerthe sort of defamiliarizing
effect frequently leading to cognition. In other words, Cartershows a precise
awarenessof the city as an artistictopos, an "adaptedstereotype"(Gombrich,
68) giving fictional reality and plausibility to the intentionof reversingand/or
confirming a traditionalparadigm.
Accordingly, in Carter'snovel highly heterogeneousinfluencesinterweave
in the paradigm of the female community and they result in a contradictory
and sometimes paradoxical model of the city of women. In PNE, even the
name of the gynocratic community defines a specific satiric intention. As a
literary topos, Beulah appears for the first time in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's
Progress and is defined as a place "uponthe borderof Heaven"throughwhich
"pilgrimspass on to eternallife" (155). The "daughtersof Beulah"in William
Blake's works are the Muses inspiringthe poet (420). Both Bunyanand Blake,
moreover, seem to suggest that Beulah is the ideal place for the perfect
patriarchalmarriage.
In my view, Carter revises the traditionalstereotype, adaptingit for her
own purposes. When giving her gynocraticcommunitya nameborrowedfrom
a patriarchaltradition, the authorof PNE relocates meanings; in doing so she
establishes a semantic contradictionand multiplies the symbolic associations.
Again, what we have here is a reversed stereotype triggering a cognitive
process.
The whole topographyof the landscapewhich Carterdescribes apparently
supportsthis critical view. First of all, Beulahcan only be reachedby crossing
the desert, the traditional metaphorfor wilderness and sterility, with all the
associated symbolism.12
Analysis of the shape of the feminist community and recognitionof its
main structurereveal that its basic architectureis defined in genderedterms.
Beulah is a rigidly homosexual and separatist female community, and
consequently built on analogy to a womb.13 "Beulah," says Evelyn, "lies in
the interior, in the inwardpartof the earth"(47). Both from the psychological
and the physical point of view, Beulah is the ideal place for Evelyn's re-birth.
"It will become," says the protagonist, "the place where I was born" (47). It
becomes the belly of the whale where the rite of death and re-birth will be
performed.
Chromatically,Beulah displays the colors of a woman's womb. The sym-
bolism of darkness is only superficially similar to the absence of light we
identified in the urban landscape of the metropolis. Semantically, the "lurid
darkness"of New York is diametricallyopposed to the damp absenceof light
in the female womb, a symbol exemplifying the rejectionof the male rational
and monological ethics (cf Deleuze, 12 ff). In other words, New York still
maps out an urban project, however decrepit, while Beulah is primarily the
architecturalfigure of a womb.
Beulah's typical atmosphereis not pure darkness, but rathershadow, the
kind of twilight which allows shapes to be seen in outlines, as in dreams.
Evelyn's frequentreferenceto the idea of a nightmarewhen describingBeulah
The ideal site for this new change appearsto be Zero's town. Both physi-
cally and psychologically, the place is built to reproducethe symbolic meaning
of a patriarchalautocraticcommunity. All the features of the landscape are
borrowed from De Sade's novels and exacerbatedwith the obvious aim of
producing a strong grotesque effect. The final result has an unprecedented
potential for rupture:while maintainingsome of the features of a model that
Clark defines as "a patriarchaltype not infrequentin history" (148), Carter
appropriatesthe paradigm and deconstructsit for feminist use. The minimal
units are reassembledthrougha clearly ironic stylistic procedure.The assumed
rigidity of the patriarchalmodel is purposefullyhighlightedin orderto provide
a highly concentratedversion of a woman's life in a harem.
By the same token, Zero, the father and owner of all the women living in
the town, assembles all the negative features of patriarchalpower. Poet and
magician, master of words and dissipation, he is the uxoricidal tyrantforever
performingthe role of a wicked fool celebratingany form of perversion. His
wives seem affected by what JoannaRuss defines as "idiocy," that is "what
happensto those who have been told that it is their godgiven mission to mend
socks, clean toilets and work in the fields; and nobody will let you make the
real decision anyway" (255).
Decisions, actually, are up to Zero. His behavior is entirely defined by a
precise theocratic will, determinednot by rational design but by the wish to
preserve a dogmatic attitude, made clear by the tendency to reproducethe
masculine perception of linearity and univocality.
Significantly, Zero is a figure of totalitariansexuality, opposite but similar
to Mother. And just like Mother, he projects onto the urban landscape the
dominant features of his Weltanschauung. Beulah is built on analogy to a
womb and is, literally and figuratively, Mother's body. It shows the dis-
quieting darkness and the incomprehensiblebut irresistible fascination of a
female pregnantbody. Similarly, the town in the desert is plunged in dazzling
sunlight. The topological patternunderlyingthis choice is evident:the unfading
brightness of the desert does not allow for any shadow in the same way as the
rigidity of male rationality does not allow for any doubt. Once more, this
makes a case for Deleuze's theory that dazzling light is a metaphorfor what
is obvious, self-evident, monologic, and linear: in short, what is male (cf
Deleuze 14ff).
The landscape is therefore used with the precise purpose of exposing the
contradictorynatureof male ethics. Dogmatismis the structuringprincipleand
the still center of both the physical and the psychological scene. Urban and
imaginative space show their mutual solidarity and prove to be deeply
interwoven, producing a topographical pattern where no object occupies a
neutral position: the semantic area covered by each element of the landscape
tends to be modified according to the natureof the light that strikes it. The
unrelenting sunlight typical of the desert should consequently shine upon the
realm of absolute, unbending rationality.
Which is obviously not the case in Zero's town. While appropriatingthe
stereotype, Carter succeeds in subverting it. In depicting the patriarchal
NOTES
1. For the concept of a "bracketedoff world," see Iser 236-246.
2. To a certain extent this concept is implied in the utopiancity as a literarytopos,
which determines an analogy between the urban architectureand the shape of the
human soul. The ideal city is a mainly psychological model representingthe perfect
organization of an idea. Therefore, a so-conceived urban space becomes literally a
"disembodied city," a place which is real though not tangible, just like Calvino's
Invisible Cities.
3. See Italo Calvino, Le Citti Invisibili, Torino, 1985.
4. For the concept of fictionalizing act or process, see Iser 236.
5. The contiguity between postmodernismand women's science fiction is by no
means limited to Carter's novels. As Robin Roberts says, "Feministscience fiction of
the 1980s can be discussed most usefully in terms of post-structuralismand post-
modernism. Post-structuralistfeminist SF problematizes language acquisitionand the
gendered hierarchical structures embedded in language" ("Post-Modernism and
Feminist Science Fiction," SFS, 17:138, #51, July 1990).
6. The most obvious reference is Virginia Woolf s Orlando.
7. See M. Bakhtin. Dostojevskij: Poetica e Stilistica (Torino, 1968), 122-132.
8. "If a city may be said to have a sex," writes Jane Marcus, "London was, and
is, unmistakablymale" (Marcus, 139).
WORKS CITED
Blake, William. "Milton." The Complete Writingsof WilliamBlake. Ed. G. Keynes.
London and New York, 1952.
Bunyan, John. Pilgrim's Progress. Oxford, 1960.
Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus. London, 1984.
-. ThePassionof NewEve. London,1982.
Clark, Robert. "AngelaCarter'sDesire Machine." Women'sStudies, 14:147-61, 1987.
Deleuze, Gilles. La logica del senso. Milano, 1979.
Del Sapio, Maria. Alice nella citta. Pescara, 1988.
Gombrich,Ernst.ArtandIllusion.A Studyin thePsychologyof PictorialExpression.
Princeton, NJ, 1961.
Hassan, Ihab. "City of Mind, Urban Words: the Dematerializationof Metropolis in
ContemporaryAmerican Fiction." Jaye, 93-112.
Iser, W. Prospecting:FromReaderResponseto LiteraryAnthropology.
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1989.
Jaye, Michael, and Ann Chalmers Watt, eds. Literatureand the Urban Experience:
Essays on the City and Literature. New Brunswick, NJ, 1981.
McLuhan, Marshall. UnderstandingMedia. New York, 1965.
Marcus, Jane. "A Wilderness of One's Own: Feminist Fantasy Novels in the
Twenties." Squier, 134-60.
Martin, Wendy. "A View of the City Upon a Hill: The PropheticVision of A. Rich."
Squier, 249-265.
Moers, Ellen. Literary Women. London, 1978.
Oates, Joyce Carol. "ImaginaryCities: America," Jaye, 11-34.
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179-205.
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Pike, Burton. The Image of the City in Modern Literature. Princeton, NJ, 1981.
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ABSTRACT
Since the 1970s, science fiction has provided a discursive space which has enabled
women writers both to criticize currentsocial practices and to speculate on alternative
social arrangements.Angela Carter'sPassion of New Eve represents, in relationto this
particular perspective, an original and innovative reconfigurationof characteristic
female and/or feminist motifs, such as the representationof urbantechnological space,
the idea of a gynocratic community, and the sociological implicationsof male power
in society. In this view, Carter'snovel not only conveys a comprehensiveand complex
view of reality, but also makes for a definite and original literaryexperience exploiting
all possible narrative devices to their fullest.
Three different types of communities are described, each of them embedding a
specific side of the female stereotype. The first of these highly symbolic places is New
York, the post-modern metropolis, the ideal backgroundfor an image of the woman
as a prostitute,an empty body offering infimitesexual pleasures. The second is Beulah,
which offers a completely differentperspective:being a feminist separatistcommunity,
it is planned and described as a metaphorof totalitarianfemale power. Finally, Zero's
town again reverses perspectives, offering a nightmarishimage of women as house-
wives/slaves.
Through a close analysis of the structuraland stylistic devices operatingin each part
of the novel, it is possible to map out the psychological journey of the protagonist
towards his/her identification.The phases of this journey are markedby threephysical
metamorphoses implying individual as well as gender problems. The changes in the
body of Evelvn/Eve are duplicated through the description of highly hybrid spaces,
mostly defined by unresolvable dichotomies. The outerjourney reflects metaphorically
the inner quest of a human being looking for his/her own true gender. (NV)