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“Goddesses” Tell their Tales: Reassessing
Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve
Sonia Kotiah,
Université de Maurice
Introduction The paper is an attempt to represent women as “goddesses” in Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (1977). A postmodernist novel, the genre of which oscillates from science fiction to dystopia and to magical realism, The Passion of New Eve documents ambiguous and multivalent female identities. Operating under the broader canopy of “goddesses,” these women reflect varied female spaces that can be described as complex identity metaphors. For the purposes of the discus- sion, the urban space as underlying operational structure and enhancing the deification of these women will be examined. In suggesting that “goddess” is not exclusively an indication of feminist spirituality, the paper chooses to engage with contemporary frameworks such as the use and meaning of the female body, the performative articulation of female identities, and its relationship to contemporary feminist narrative. Spanning the urban milieu of an apocalyptic and futuristic New York, Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve initially revolves around Evelyn, the male narrator. Evelyn also happens to be a devoted fan of screen legend, Tristessa. Fascinated by the sensual appeal of urban female bodies, Evelyn exploits women sexually and emotionally. In one such pursuit, he gets enamoured of Leilah, a glamorous black New York dancer. The disastrous consequences of this fling
- pregnancy, abortion and desertion–lead to Evelyn’s downfall. He tries to escape, but is instead caught by a group of feminists. Mother, the mysterious multi- breasted leader, rapes Evelyn before surgically transforming him into a perfect new woman. Evelyn is then renamed Eve. The now-female protagonist manages to escape from Mother, only to be caught by the chauvinistic Zero. As a woman, Eve is subjected to extreme, violent and humiliating sexual experiences inflicted by Zero. Eventually, Zero discovers and ransacks Tristessa’s secret abode, finds out that this legendary actress is actually a man in disguise and forces him and Eve to have sex in his presence. Tristessa and Eve somehow escape Zero’s clutches, although the former is accidentally shot and dies. Leilah, who manifests as Lilith,
312 Sonia Kotiah reveals that she is none other than Mother’s own daughter. The end of the novel depicts Eve, escaping on a boat and presumably pregnant. Deifying female identities through Carter’s “basic procedure of adding up heterogeneous structural and functional elements without pretending to synthesize them” (Vallorani, 1994: 367), The Passion of New Eve successfully produces figurative rituals through which these contemporary “goddesses” manifest themselves. Even though other writings by Carter, such as Fireworks ( 1974 ), The Bloody Chamber (1979) Nights at the Circus (1984) and Wise Children (1991) already translate the bodily and erotic insecurities of female storytellers into a general dilemma of storytelling, the dominant motif of “goddess” sets The Passion of New Eve apart. In formulating Carter’s female storytellers as “goddesses,” this paper argues that “God the father” provides sanction for patriarchal structures and the alienation of women, resulting in a process whereby women internalize their own oppression. The image of the “goddess” is, therefore, not only able to reflect postmodern plurality but also to convey a political commitment to oppose all forms of “kyriarchal” oppression (Schüssler Fiorenza, 1992). Female storytellers endo- wed with “semireligious discourses” (Perez-Gil, 2007: 216), “goddesses” in The Passion of New Eve therefore operate as means of contesting existing structures of power. Stylistically diverse, The Passion of New Eve recognizes the multifaceted aspects of “goddesses”. For example it echoes Elinor Gadon’s (1989) argument that the “goddess” is one of the most powerful transformative metaphors that we can adopt. In other words, Carter’s “goddess” is “a metaphor for the earth as a living organism; an archetype for feminine consciousness; a mentor for healers; the emblem of a new political movement; an inspiration for artists; and a model for resacralizing woman’s body and the mystery of human sexuality” (Gadon, 1989: xv). Emphasizing the importance of physical journey in achieving feminist spirituality, Klein (2009) discusses the performance of rituals in hidden caves as means to communicate with “goddess” entities. Lebessi (2009), on the other hand, considers the erotic symbolism encapsulated by the iconographic features of Greek goddesses. Similar resonances can be deciphered in The Passion of New Eve. Butler’s concept of “gender as performance” through which female roles in Carter’s fiction can be interpreted and which received prominent theoretical atten- tion in the 1990’s, can also be related to the concept of “goddess”. The artificial quality of “goddesses” in the novel challenges interpretations of narrative closure and thematic resolution through gender identity, gender performativity and masquerade. Gargano (2007), who considers theatricality and masquerade in Carter’s The Magic Toyshop , suggests an objective similar to that of Butler. Exploring gender and stereotyping in Carter’s The Passion of New Eve , Perez-Gil (2007) chooses to view the gendered self in psychological terms and explains the associations of gender and stereotyping. Since various critics agree that gendered space is an inevitable consequence in Carter’s novels, this paper proposes female “goddesses” as framework. If female iconographical depictions in the novel extend the range and vividness of the “goddess’s” corporeal presence, they also radically undermine all significant
314 Sonia Kotiah erotic dance of her body. In the city streets, she performs and emblematizes her sexuality as goddess-woman: Her recklessness, to saunter, singing so, so brilliantly decorated, up and down the desperate streets, appalled and enchanted me; it was infectious, I caught it. Under the dying moon, she lead me on an invisible string through back streets … her lascivious trotter that sometimes broke into a stumbling dance for a few seconds, the hot, animal perfume she excluded – all these were the palpable manifestations of seduction. (21) Leilah, who chooses to strip and exhibit her body, engages Evelyn in a seduc- tive dance within New York. Her intimate bonding with the city, which allows her transformation into “the profane essence of the death of cities” (18), enhances her intrinsic truth as subversive “goddess”. Her seductive nudity, indicative of noma- dic interaction with urban spaces, also complements her story as a “goddess”. Daughter of the city, Leilah surrenders her body in the name of consumerism and icon-building. By postulating the sensual Leilah as both urban flâneuse and sex- goddess, Carter’s postmodern narrative works to celebrate her corporeal presence. In the city, Leilah’s iconographical details are exposed in overt sexual terms such as “black, matte thigh,” (24) “two nipples like neon violets” (22). In this sense, she displays her sexual iconography to the male onlooker, Evelyn, who worships her as he would a goddess. Leilah’s body is a revealing exposition, a collection of parts, rather than a unified woman, an artificial “goddess” of the city. The novel’s unusual rendering of city women into nude deities clearly ema- nates from sacred myths, reclaiming the primacy of the “goddess”. Mother, “fully clothed in obscene nakedness” (59) and with the “menacing immobility of a Hindu statue” (58) is an archetypal association with ancient goddesses. Beloved espe- cially by the underprivileged, Mother enacts nudity as an image, a cultural “text” to be read, one whose power is based in infinite background layers of older tales that infuse the surface narrative with memory, colour and metamorphic power. Connected to disadvantaged women like Leilah, Mother also connects strongly with Kaali, the Hindu goddess of destruction and whose name means “black” in Sanskrit. In The Passion of New Eve , Mother’s nudity is both powerful and intimidating. Always naked, this “goddess” appears at strategic moments such as nemesis or forgiveness. She eventually morphs into a Medusa-like figure, “an old woman with hair like a nest of petrified snakes” (190) at the end of the novel. Independent of a male consort, Mother, head of the feminist desert-sanctuary- laboratory of Beulah, therefore takes control of the story. The cult of the goddess, fascination for the goddess and the general control of the body and the narrative by the goddess are motivated by corporeality. Language, in this context, is considered as an ambiguous instrument of fullness and autonomy, or damage and alienation. So, Mother’s imposing nudity, replete with iconographical details “bull-like pillar of her neck,” “false beard of crisp, black curls,” “two tiers of nipples” and “ponderous feet” (59) occupies close bearings with both the divine and the grotesque. Mother, who has “undergone a painful metamorphosis of the entire
“Goddesses” Tell their Tales: Reassessing Angela Carter’s… 315 body and become the abstraction of a natural principle” (49) also reinstates the notion of gender as performance (Butler, 1990). Often performed and exhibited as a threat, Mother’s nudity certainly suggests the psychological and political power of an assumed divinity. In this sense, Mother’s usurping of divine authority forces the male narrator to abdicate. Evelyn cannot subsist in a narrative pattern that finds its source in female “goddesses.” The conscious application of Mother’s vindictive actions against males reaffirms female desire and embodiment much more powerfully than even the enticing quality of Leilah, the urban flâneuse. As a female alternative to authority and control, Mother indeed suggests the unconscious return to patterns of domination sanctioned by the pervasive power of the patriarchal symbol–God. Her own abuse of power and her appropriation of Beulah as terrestrial alternative to a celestial abode, therefore, generate a renewed interest in the power of female divine symbol: Beulah is a profane place. It is a crucible. It is the home of the woman who calls herself the Great Parricide, also glories in the title of Grand Emasculator; ecstasy their only anaesthetic, the priests of Cybele sheared off their parts to exalt her, ran bleeding, psalmodising, crazed through the streets. This woman has many names but her daughters call her Mother. Mother has made herself into an incarnated deity. (49) Through the presentation of this formidable black, naked, multi-breasted “goddess,” female physicality is developed as a new naming of experience and spirituality. The rape of the male narrator, before being erased from narrative control altogether, is highly indicative of the pressures exercised by an alternative system of control, that is, the corporeal, primitive, grotesque Mother-Goddess: Her Virginia-smoked ham of a fist grasped my shrinking sex; when it went all the way in, Mother howled and so did I. So I was unceremoniously raped; and it was the last time I performed the sexual act as a man, whatever that means, though I took very little pleasure from it. (64-65) The subversive rapist “goddess” determines the limits of storytelling control and reinstates the value of gender difference within the postmodern narrative. Braidotti, for instance, associates the grotesque with femaleness and identifies the female monstrous with an anomaly, a deviation from the human norm (1994:78). While the place of women as a sign of abnormality and therefore of inferiority has remained a constant in Western scientific discourse and has even produced a literary genre which celebrates a horror of the female body, the subversive icon of Mother-Goddess as “Other” in The Passion of New Eve reclaims female sacrality and the re-telling of female stories. Tristessa, though no more than a man in disguise, successfully achieves cult status in The Passion of New Eve. Most significantly, unlike Mother, Tristessa’s “goddess” status is unaided by nudity or surgery. Tristessa’s corporeal identity is one where not even the female symbol of authority, Mother, can exercise control;
“Goddesses” Tell their Tales: Reassessing Angela Carter’s… 317 male genitals are rejected by the female Eve who, in a significant farewell gesture, sends them “skimming over the waves” (187). Thus, The Passion of New Eve is filled with sacred “female” fluids – milk, blood, and water – which finally are indistinguishable as they course through Mother, the central “goddess” of the novel. The beginning of the novel deliberately ritualizes body fluids into “metaphors of subversion” (de Villiers, 2005: 180). Evelyn’s “little tribute of spermatozoa” (5) already attests to his sexualized worship of screen icon Tristessa. Zero’s superiority complex, enhanced by “the sacred fluid imparted by [his] member” (92), translates into pornographic rituals with his wives. But the oppressiveness of male fluids is quickly replaced by regenerative female ones, announcing a predominant awareness of the dynamism of female divinities and enhancing the autonomy of most of the said “goddesses” in the text. Graphic blood descriptions surrounding Leilah’s botched abortion, for example, “massive haemorrhage,” “awash with blood” (35) indicate a female principle that has been reviled and rejected but also openly expressed. The emphasis on the “bright, brown blood” (80), as Eve experiences menstruation for the first time, is equally noteworthy. Her attitude mingles wonder and disbelief at this very female “emblem of [her] function” (80). So a new, artificial “goddess” like Eve indicates subversive regene- rative processes. Mother, “tender, however condescending” (65), fulfils a universal maternal function by significantly nursing the newly “born” Eve at her breast: It seemed the breasts I suckled could never be exhausted but would always flow with milk to nourish me and my relation to the zone of mother had not changed. (75) The entire network of “goddesses” in The Passion of New Eve is in fact based upon natural signs, on symbols of creative, fertile femininity. The actively functioning bodies of Carter’s female figures reintegrate a natural correspondence between femaleness and the divine, and concomitantly, the insufficiency of solely masculine and patriarchal signs of the sacred. The ongoing “deification” of these women heralds a return of female sacred powers. Within Elinor Gadon’s argument that the world is now in a time of “epochal changes like those at the time of the coming of the Buddha and the birth of Jesus when human realities are being reshaped by a vision of far-reaching consequences” (1989, 376) lies a recognition of universal female Powers. In the novel, for instance, when Mother informs Evelyn, “I can give life, I can accomplish miracles” (63), her sacred powers are understood as goddess-like. Evelyn’s transformation into Eve by “the Castatrix of the Phallocentric Universe” (67) retains significance as it includes the dissolution of hierarchical opposition between man and woman. What is distinctive about Carter’s exploration of “goddess” rituals is her connection between divine “control” and a critique of Western rationalism’s claims for the unified, separate and self-authenticating self. Mythical stories inform us that true selfhood, which is the prize of all heroic quests, can only be attained by conquering and exterminating the other, thereby denying any sense of plurality. Evelyn’s quest is after all sexual as he plunders, destroys female bodies and tries to
318 Sonia Kotiah annihilate female territory altogether. Under the narrative of this “goddess,” however, Evelyn’s role as conquerer is reversed and his maleness exterminated: She cut off all my genital appendages with a single blow, caught them in her other hand and tossed them to Sophia, who slipped them into the pocket of her shorts. So she excised everything that I had been and left me, instead, with a wound that would, in future, bleed once a month, at the bidding of the moon. (70-1) The “goddess’s” manipulation of body and narrative control provides a poli- tical figuration that challenges androcentric and kyriarchal assumptions about what is normative and what is not. As inheritors of a history of suppression, margina- lization and demonization, the “goddesses” in The Passion of New Eve equip the narrative with possibilities for new ways of understanding and responding to difference, while reflecting the spiralling energy of the postmodern narrative as process. All the female figures find themselves in a world where storytelling is considered as an ambiguous instrument of fullness and autonomy but also damage and alienation. Provoking desire, mystery and worship in different ways, these “goddesses” therefore formulate a narrative “ritual” that creates a framework of meaning to define a new ethos. According to Griffin (1995), this ethos is firmly rooted in the female body. For the “goddesses” in this novel, the body becomes a site of personal vendetta and works to revision power, authority and social rela- tions. Examining the combined impulses of reading and writing in Angela Carter’s treatment of the Marquis de Sade’s pornographic mythology, Henstra (1999) helps locate Carter’s unusually violent representation of the female self and emphasizes how the story of these “goddesses” is essentially fraught with violence, rape and pornography. In this sense, Carter’s The Passion of New Eve identifies with considerable interest in the notion of the goddess-like female, since it is the locus of immediate sexual interaction between man and woman, story and desire. Engaging with a corporeal definition of power which these “goddesses” believe to be free from the dynamics of domination, this type of female power is not about having power over, but rather it is the power to do and the power to be. Since interaction with the other frequently occurs at the level of the body, one might consider the gaze as a subset of this. The considerable degree of sado-masochistic interplay, which characterizes The Passion of New Eve , also displays the female body as the site of interaction. Propelled by “savage desire” (24), for example, Evelyn is immediately mesmerized by Leilah’s body and his own rapist instincts are awakened by such an intensive display of female flesh: I was nothing but cock and I dropped down upon her like, I suppose, a bird of prey… My full-fleshed and voracious beak tore open the poisoned wound of love between her thighs. (92)
320 Sonia Kotiah The urban abode of the “goddesses” in The Passion of New Eve imbues itself with female characteristics. Interestingly, Leilah, “the city’s gift” (25), encapsu- lates a story of fragmentation, desire, violation and abandon in that same urban space. Leilah’s city emerges as an expression of structural equation, in which the socio-historical position of women connected to the urban environment is considered. Through her subversive job as nude model and topless dancer, Leilah guards the individuality she is accorded by her isolated urban existence and resists any hint of classification. Since the feminized cityscape eludes Evelyn all the time, his ultimate decision is to “[abandon] Leilah to the dying city” (37). Carter’s narrative therefore recognizes both the corporeal exhibition that the city can offer as well as the corporeal isolation that it demands. The latter is the basis for the former. The ultimate abode of the “goddesses,” the city both controls and protects woman. It has the power to reintegrate Leilah while rejecting the misogynistic Evelyn, for example. Evelyn’s comment, “the city had given Leilah to me and then taken her away” (36), is indicative of the city’s subversive function. The consistent return to urban space conveys a readiness to express woman’s experience in her own voice. In The Passion of New Eve , urban space is problematized because it is initially mediated by Evelyn, the male figure. However, a surgical solution is provided when the male narrator is now transformed into the physically perfect “New” Eve in the metropolis of “New” York. The image of diversity and the multiple faces of female divinity are, therefore, continuously defined against the urban crowd and widely celebrated. Governed by carnivalesque logic (Bakhtin, 1968: 4-5), Gothic or festive representations (Mc Guirk, 1999: 473), Carter’s “goddesses” are always on the move or nomadic. Hostile to any finalizing interpretation or unifying metanar- rative, the subsistence of these “goddesses” requires the mystery unfolded by urban labyrinthine space. Beulah, Mother’s private abode in the desert, represents the “end of the maze” (49) which connects geographically to Leilah’s metropolis. The final part of the novel, following Tristessa’s death, witnesses Eve’s return to apocalyptic urban spaces and her reconciliation with Leilah, renamed Lilith. The latter informs Eve of a “terrible devastation” and that “the cities of California are burning like the cities of the plain” (176). The relationship between the urban and narrative spaces provokes the emergence of a radical discourse of the female body. Since these “goddesses,” as subject positions, remain mysterious, the narrative is unable to produce a monolithic system of difference which can assign an unchallengeable status of “Other,” “object” or “victim” to them. Thus, the multi- genre narrative of The Passion of New Eve self-consciously occupies this indeter- minate and chaotic urban space, making it possible for unfettered female storytellers to transform into “goddesses”. The urban story of these female figures enhances the existence of symbolical abodes within an atmosphere of overall isolation and fragmentation. Clearly, each of these “goddess” examples offers a celebrative vision of power and will, as well as the story behind the bodies and bondings of these women. Rather than presenting role models for women that are defined and limited by their relationship
“Goddesses” Tell their Tales: Reassessing Angela Carter’s… 321 to divine and secular male authority, each female storyteller seeks to legitimate power and authority from positions on the margins of city life. But instead of being based on dominance and hierarchy, the model of power and authority of these storytelling goddesses is rooted in strength and corporeal self-knowledge. In the apocalyptic city, each “goddess” not only liberates female sexuality, but also cele- brates the female erotic. Taken collectively as images which populate Carter’s urban space, these “goddesses” therefore offer subversive storytelling possibilities. The labyrinthine quality of urban space in The Passion of New Eve comple- ments the postmodernist and poststructuralist awareness of the fragmentation and flexibility of female identities. In this vein, the “goddesses” are clearly displayed as sources of ambiguity that provide for alternative discourses of sexuality and narrative practices. Carter’s city represents pleasure and danger, a site of moral conflict; it is fragmented, yet interconnected, monolithic yet heterogeneous. For the constantly morphing or disappearing “goddesses,” the “darkness and confusion […] of the city” (37), the “dementia which had seized the city” (40) nevertheless become a source of creative appropriation. The urban “goddesses” in question exemplify, albeit in different registers, the complexity with which postmodernist fiction that deploys such self-reflexive strategies, is able to handle the sexually charged issue of female deification. As characteristic literary aesthetics which govern the narrative of The Passion of New Eve , the “goddess” figures undermine the idealization of femininity as inherently benevolent while also challenging the idealization of their own “sacred” selves. In the process, they manoeuvre the text through alternative textual manipulations, the result being their own tales seeping through and completely sidelining Evelyn’s or even Zero’s for that matter. Conclusion The Passion of New Eve offers opportunities for integrating the “goddess” ethos into a postmodernist narrative network at the expense of myths of male heroes. It proposes instead a determined disruption of conventional intellectual and religious norms and suggests a reflection on the challenge for women’s literature. In equating these female figures to “goddesses,” and rejecting an essentialist approach to gender in favour of a constructionist one, the notion of the corporeal female in The Passion of New Eve problematizes the concept of the supposedly autonomous woman. It also exposes the sexual vulnerability of women. Urban fantasy remains the terrain through which the corporeal female is projected, a recurring model in Carter’s feminist storytelling that motivates the articulation of desire by the woman and the refusal of being trapped as object of masculine desire, as the “Other” of the male gaze. This analysis of woman as “goddess” helps open up a new space for a feminine subject of storytelling. It provides a framework of meaning for these women who are alienated from patriarchal traditions. In creating mythical images that are rooted in material manifestations such as powerful female bodies, these storytellers seek to shape a new cultural ethos. Presenting their bodies and stories
