Feminism and Postmodern Aesthetics in Angela Carter's "Wolf-Alice", "The Company of Wolves", and "The Werewolf"


Abstract

This paper analyzes the connections between feminist politics and postmodern aesthetics as demonstrated in recent women's fiction. It intends to investigate the much debated problematic of postmodernist and feminist ideologies by examining certain key texts written by Angela Carter, who is a British novelist. Angela Carter's "Wolf-Alice," "The Company of Wolves," and "The Werewolf" are examples which transform revolutionary aesthetics strategies usually associated with post-modern fiction to strengthen its feminist political edge. The first section highlights the theoretical frameworks of postmodernism and feminism accordingly showing the different perspectives from which Carter's work would be analyzed. The second section is devoted to Angela Carter's three short stories.

Authors

Rabab Taha Al-Kassasbeh

DOI

Keywords

References

  1. Baudrillard, Jean. (1975). The Mirror of Production. St. Louis: Telos Press.
  2. Carter, Angela. (1972). The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr Hoffman. London: Hart-Davis.
  3. Carter, Angela. (1979). The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories. London: Penguin.
  4. Carter, Angela. (1979). The Sadeian Woman: An Exercise of Power in Cultural History. London: Virago.
  5. Carter, Angela. (1983). 'Notes from the front line'. In Micheline Wandor (ed.),On Gender and Writing, 69-77. London: Pandora
  6. Creed, Barbara. (1993). The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis. New York: Routledge.
  7. Crew, Hillary S. (2002). 'Spinning new tales from traditional texts: Donna Jo Napoli and the rewriting of fairy tales'. Children's Literature in Education, 33 (2): 77-90 de Lauretis, Teresa. (1987). Technologies of Gender. London: Macmillan.
  8. Debord, Guy. (1985). Society of the Spectacle. Detroit: Black and Red Press.
  9. Delamotte, Eugenia. (1990). Perils of the Night: A Feminist Study of Nineteenth Century Gothic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  10. Eisenstein, Hester. (1984). Contemporary Feminist Thought. London: Unwin.
  11. Ellis, Kate Ferguson. (1989). The Contested Castle: Gothic Novels and the Subversion of Domestic Ideology. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  12. Estes, Clarissa Pinkola. (1992). Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype. New York: Ballantine Books.
  13. Flax, Jane. (1987). 'Postmodernism and gender relations in feminist theory'. Signs, 12 (4): 621-43.
  14. Gilbert, Sandra and Susan Gubar. (2000). The Mad Woman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Imagination (Second edition). New Haven: Yale University Press.
  15. Hasse, Donald. (2004). 'Feminist fairy-tale scholarship'. In Donald Hasse (ed.), Fairy Tales and Feminism: New Approaches. 14-26. Detroite: Wayne State University Press.
  16. Humm, Mggie. (1995). Practicing Feminist Criticism: an Introduction. London: Prentice Hall.
  17. Irigaray, Luce. (1985). Speculum of the Other Woman. (trans.), Gillian C. Gill. New York: Cornell University Press.
  18. Jackson, Rosemary. (1981). Fantasy: Literature of Subversion. New York: Methuen.
  19. Jardine, Alice. (1985). Gynesis: Configurations of Woman and Modernity. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
  20. Joannou, Maroula. (2000). Contemporary Women's Writing From the Golden Notebook to the Color Purple. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  21. Kristeva, Julia. (1984). Revolution in Poetic language. Trans. Margaret Wallr. New York: Columbia University Press.
  22. Kroker, Arthur and David Cooke. (1988). The Postmodern Scene: Excremental Culture and Hyper Aesthetics. London: Macmillan.
  23. Lacan, Jacques. (2003). Ecrits: a selection. (trans.), Alan Sheridan. London: Routledge.
  24. Lurie, Alison. (1980). Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales. New York: Crowell.
  25. Lyotard, Jean-Francois. (1984). The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge. (trans.), G. Bennington and B. Massumi. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  26. Makinen, Merja. (2000). 'Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber and the Decolonization of Feminine Sexuality.' In Alison Easton (ed.), Angela Carter, 20-36. Macmillan: London.
  27. Moi, Toril. (1985). Sexual/Textual Politics: Feminist Literary Theory. London: Routledge.
  28. Owen, Craig. (1985). 'Feminism and postmodernism'. In Hal Foster (ed.), Postmodern Culture, 57-82. London and Sydney: Pluto Press.
  29. Parsons, Linda T. (2004). 'Ella evolving: Cinderella stories and the construction of gender-appropriate behavior'. Children's Literature in Education, 35 (2): 135-148.
  30. Phelps, Ethel Johnston. (1981). The Maid of the North: Feminist Folk Tales from Around the World New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.
  31. Rowe, Karen. (1986). 'Feminism and fairy tales'. In Jack Zipes (ed.), Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, 209-26. New York: Methuen.
  32. Sellers, Susan. (2001). 'Context of myth'. In Susan Sellers (ed.), Myth and Fairy Tale In Contemporary Women's Fiction, 1-10. New York: Palgrave.
  33. Stone, Kay. (1986). 'Feminist approaches to the interpretation of fairy tales'. In Ruth Bottigheimer (ed.), Fairy Tales and Society: Illusion, Allusion, and Paradigm, 220-34. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press.
  34. Suleiman, Susan. Rubin. (ed.). (1986). The Female Body in Western Culture. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
  35. Watkins, Susan. (2001). Twentieth-Century Women Novelists: Feminist Theory into Practice. New York: Palgrave.
  36. Zipes, Jack. (ed.). (1984). The Trials and Tribulations of Little Riding Hood: Versions of the Tale in Sociocultural Context. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
  37. Zipes, Jack. (ed.). (1986). Don't Bet on the Prince: Contemporary Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England. New York: Methuen.