Feminine Mysticism In Angela Carter’s Novels

As one of the first English female writers to engage openly with feminist criticism and deconstruction of female mythology,Angela Carter(1940-1992),an eminent novelist,was well conscious of herself belonging to female literary tradition,but she strongly refused to accept any sentimentalized feminine writing and to share in all female myths of victimization.Instead,by means of feminine mysticism,Carter demythologizes constraining myths of gender and patriarchy with the aims to laying bare the constructedness of gender roles and the oppressive power structures that operate underneath the surface of patriarchy.Academically,previous studies into Carter’s novels home and abroad are mainly focused on feminism,magical realism,postmodernism and fairy tale rewriting while research from the perspective of feminine mysticism is rarely mentioned.This thesis selects three of Carter’s late novels The Passion of New Eve(1977),Nights at the Circus(1984)and Wise Children(1991)as research texts to explore Carter’s feminine mysticism.This thesis explores Angela Carter’s feminine mysticism in her novels in three chapters.Chapter one probes into the ideological sources of Angela Carter’s feminine mysticism,mainly from three aspects,which are religious consciousness of feminine mysticism,liberating thought of feminist movements and cultural concept of female mythology.Chapter two analyzes the concentrated embodiments of Carter’s feminine mysticism in her novels: mystical transgender,mystical female body and mystical female love.Mystical transgender highlights the generation of new understandings of sexuality and gender,all of which elude and subvert binary models of gender;mystical female body lets itself articulate the profusion of meanings that run through it in every distinct direction,thus making the traditional single-grooved mother tongue reverberate with a variety of languages;mystical female love is not the passionate love for lovers but tender,eternal and indispensable emotion which gives people warmth,tranquility and peace.Chapter three analyzes and concludes the literary ultimate of Carter’s feminine mysticism,which refers to becoming-woman,transcending female mythology and remythologizing feminine writing.Becoming-woman is to create an escape route between the traditional category of man and woman,so that people can escape from the dominant patriarchal power structure of men and escape the dominant values based on men;Transcending female mythology makes it clear that female cannot be constrained or defined as any signifier.Instead,Carter revises and rewrites such female myths so that women are capable of seizing their sexuality and agency,thus breaking the shackles of female mythological archetypes and having their last laugh;Remythologizing feminine writing is the subversion and reconstruction of female literary tradition.Carter’s feminine mysticism writing highlights the elusiveness,indefinability,incommensurability and inconstancy of female language.Through combined examination of Carter’s three novels,this thesis concludes: the ideological sources of feminine mysticism provide relevant religious consciousness,feminine thought and cultural concept for Carter’s feminine mysticism.Feminine mysticism is intensively embodied in Carter’s novels as mystical transgender,mystical female body and mystical female love.The ideological sources of feminine mysticism and the concentrated embodiments of feminine mysticism in Carter’s novels provide a route for the literary ultimate for Carter’s feminine mysticism,which manifest as becoming-woman,transcending female mythology,and remythologizing feminine writing.In conclusion,feminine mysticism in Angela Carter’s novels has subverted phallus centrism and created a new mythology of female literature.