Angela Carter’s Nights at The Circus: A Feminist Spatial Journey to Emancipation and Gender Justice

Abstract

Mobility can be considered as a natural characteristic of human beings, regardless of gender, sex or geographical roots. Within the feminist postmodern context, mobility ushers women in a new world based on gender equality and tolerance. Angela Carter’s Nights at The Circus displays a female character who achieves her New Woman status while traveling from one country to another, as a circus aerialist. Fevvers’ train journey from London to Siberia, together with her lover, empowers her female being. Space proves to be a substantial prerequisite for the achievement of the human subjectivity whether the female or the masculine one. Carter’s heroine succeeds to overcome the patriarchal misogynist attitude that surrounds her professional career and ends by achieving her female subjectivity. Besides, she triumphs to metamorphose Walser from the traditional male figure who looks to debunk Fevvers ‘claimed bird origin, into the new postmodern man who believes in gender equality and surrenders to Fevvers’love. All along their journey, Fevvers, Walser and other female characters, undergo a deep transformation at the level of their personal growth and subjectivities. They overcome their culturally internalized believes, to be prepared for a life based on equal principles and free from the imposed patriarchal cultural constraints.