Angela Carter & Representations of Reality
Opener:
In the stories we've read so far in Fireworks, there seems to be a pretty clear
division between tales that depart from representations of consensus "reality"
and those that don't. This might be a fairly boring way to group, say,
"Executioner's Lovely Daughter," "Loves of Lady Purple," and "Penetrating to
the Heart of the Forest" on the one side of this continuum, and "A Souvenir of
Japan," "The Smile of Winter," and "Flesh and the Mirror" at the other end.
Thinking through these stories afresh, offer your insights into why they might
be designed in this way, working from specific spots, images, details in the
stories themselves. Why shift these representational registers??
Jason Tice:
Do we not all dream in the midst of reality?
Joyce Smaragdis:
Well,
I have got to tell you that had Carter not weaved in her _fictional_ and _real_
stories (I know that these terms are problematic, but I am going to use them
anyway), I am quite sure that I would have a lot more difficulty getting
through them. After reading the first story, in which Carter writes about
experiences with which I can identify (or least imagine as being _real_), I
sort of relaxed in my critical posturing a bit. I know that this is silly, but
the truth of the matter is that this move was somewhat disarming for me. Let
me post this...I have some more thoughts but I wait to post them.
Stacey Dittmar:
"The Smile of Winter" is characteristically different from some of Carter's
other stories - less fairy tale - but the same general ideas run throughout.
She uses the idea of space and time within an unfamiliar culture or environment
- like Emile and Madeline - in order to show the constantly moving, never
really centered on one ideal, point of view. I think this has a lot to do with
our perceptions of gender - it made me think how Emile and Madeline have lived
sheltered lives and only see their true (sexed) selves when they are opened to
the world - in other words, when they are exposed to reality.
Anna:
But Stacey, how do these gendered lives fit into the various representations of
the real?
Joyce Smaragdis:
Jason,
I dream in the midst of my reality, but my (day)dreams are more "lifelike" than
Carter's. I suppose that the dreams that I dream at night are more like those
that Carter includes in her stories. So what do you make of this?
Marc C. Hutcheson:
I am assuming that "A Souvenir of Japan" falls under the category of those
stories that do not depart from representations of reality, but it does depart
from what we consider ordinary. I couldn' quite place my finger on it, but
something was missing in the story. I think it had something to do with the
distance between the two characters. "He" obviously does not feel comfortable
around "her" Why? Is there a separation in culture here? Emphasis is also
placed on boredom and appearances in the story. The description of the heart
of the city places emphasis on "seeming". Everyone does what they are supposed
to do and there is a concentration on appearances rather than feelings. He
does not show any emotion towards her. He just accepts the fact that she is
present. She is out of place in the story because she would rather be an
object of man's passion than be nothing at all.
Anna:
Seems to me like the stories that represent fantastic events also focus on
various taboos or cultural shiboleths: incest, murder, torture, mutilation;
what's weird is that I know all these things actually happen in the 'real'
world. . .
Jason Booth:
Here's a stab. The patterns established in "fantastic" tales are reflected in
what we might call "reality". And, "reality" then reflects within fantastic
patterns. I want to draw a connection between what happens to Emile and
Madeline in the forest and the what happens to the "narrator" in "Flesh and the
Mirror" but I need more time.
Lauren Moore:
I don't feel they are so representational of reality vs. not-reality. None of
her reality is my reality, or maybe some is. People's different realities are
just as absurd somtimes as not-reality. I don't feel Carter is purely only
trying to demonstrate this, it's a bit simple, but maybe question how it's
reality. Tales that have the traditional, the themes, the symbols, etc, etc,
are reality for some that would like to try and find meanings of life in a
particular wave or some universal symbol. The only difference between this and
meaning in a kiwi is that the first is cliche. Rambling and dont know where.
Joyce: My daydreams are much like my night dreams. But I also acknowledge
dreams as incredibly important and so have a real close connection to them.
And technically, night dreams are in the midst of "reality" also.
Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Some of these stories are laced with things that we do not think can be true
(i.e. strange plants...). These things that we do not think can be true are
also placed in setting in which we are entirely foreign (more foreign than
Japan is to us, I would put forth). This makes me feel as if I am alone in a
strange place. At least when I read the "realistic" stories, I feel as though
I am in Japan with the speaker, and am safe from isolation, since she is in the
midst of isolation.
Anna:
i see what you mean, marc--it's as though even the stories that look like
they're 'realistic' want to emphasize their unreality in some way or
another...
Anna:
Amanda: hmmm. why are we safe from isolation when the character is in it?
Stacey Dittmar:
The fact is, they are real. They have real gender, but have never been
previously made aware of it. They start to assume present day stereotypes;
Madeline, like a woman (I know I'm making generalizations), gets her way.
Emile notices for the first time the differences (I feel this term is key)
between his masculinity and her femininity.
Jason Booth:
Stacy-But Emile and Madeline, when they enter the "world", it is a fantastic,
(un)real one. Are you suggesting that "reality", or their sheltered life, was,
in fact, concealing more tangible processes?
Jason Tice:
Joyce: I think you got my point, sleep and dreams are a break from reality in
which your subconscious can freely create without worring about "being caught".
Carter is able to tackle issues like inscest and blood-sucking when she
distances herself from the story. The fantasy stories are written in the 3rd
person and the others are written in 1st person.
Jenn Lindberg:
I am having a real trouble trying to formulate an answer for this question.
From the first, I got the sense that Carter was writing some (Like Soveniors)
from a personal experience. I had a hard time thinking of it as fantasical in
any way, except with the links to Japanese Mythology I saw occuring within the
text. However, all seemed to have a Brother's Grim type of fairy taleness about
it. Any yet, there is a kind of depersonification occuring within her stories.
He in Sovenier, the Doll is LP, and even the Daughter in TELD. Gah..I think
I'll try and catch up with the other postings now..
Anna:
But Jason, how much 'distancing' is really happening here? does it really seem
likely that Carter couldn't have written about incest and blood in the first
person?
Lauren Moore:
Carter would be too scared to write and therefore somehow admitting the
imagination, the gore in 1st person.
Jason Tice:
Anna: Yes, these things happen in the real world. However, people don't
generally want to be associated with them. I think thats why she chose her
point of view as she did, and why the 3rd person stories seem so seem surreal
or fantastic.
Amanda Kathleen Pedersen:
Anna, I was hoping no one would ask that. I am compelled to shrug my
shoulders and say, "it's just a feeling." I guess it's sort of like visiting a
strange city with someone else who also has never been there. You feed off of
each others' isolation and uneasiness. In the case of these stories, the
speaker cannot feed off of my feelings of isloation, but I feel less isolated
taking he trip with her. I identify with her more than I do with the
characters in the other "unrealistic" tales. Perhaps these unrealistic tales
serve to demonstrate to the reader the isolation she feels in Japan. She makes
us take the trip through the other tales alone.
Stacey Dittmar:
I guess I'm unsure of what is be considered unrealistic here .... I mean, sure
a lot of Carter's plots are outlandish, but her focus is on the real (isn't
it?) They are a commentary on society at large, our society.
Marc C. Hutcheson:
I know this is off the subject, but I would like to know what everyone
thinks of the nature of evil in TEBD. The vilage is described as evil, but yet
the only apparent crime is incest, fro which execution is the punishment? So
does evil consist of something other than crime? Here the executioner has all
the power becuase he is the one who kills. The life of the village is in his
hands.
Anna:
Lauren: nah, look at some of her other work, where she does just that (write of
all these nasties in the first person)--one thing Carter wasn't, before her
death, was scared to write about the bizarre or strange. But it's interesting
to think about this move in this collection, isn't it? We _feel_ like the
first person stuff is, like Jenn said earlier, autobiographical...even tho it
doesn't need to be...
Jason Booth:
A thought. The use of the third person and first person in the text makes the
following distinction, the third person observes the action of the text and the
first person is within it. As readers, in being subjected by the text, we find
that we are simultaeneously "observing" and being "in" the text.
Jenn Lindberg:
Amanda : Curious. I find myself more at home with these stories than some of
the other works we have read, but then, Japan is one of my many hobbies. I
believe I understand her feeling of isolation among such beautiful people, and
find myself strangely compelled to read the more fantastical stories that much
closer.
Drew Zwicke:
TEBD is tailored to convey a brutal, dismal, close-minded society that lives in
fear of violating taboo subjects/practices. The executioner who always wears
his mask hides from peoples eyes and commands a position of power at the same
time. He kills his son for the desire of his singularly beautiful daughter.
Tremendous importance is placed on a woman's appearance; specifically, an
appearance differing from the norm in a closed milieu.
A reflection of this occurs in "Flesh and the Mirror". The style
changes to one which is not so brutally frank, but more introspective. Here,
the woman gains an insight which allows her to break free from the comfort of
patterned, structured lifestyle to move toward greater individuality, I think.
So, one reason to change style is to build an idea through shock value and
elaborate or enhance it by contrasting the fantastic milieu with one in which
contemporary society can relate to. I admit that "The Smile of Winter" seemed
to deviate drastically from other themes, and I'm not sure why.
Anna:
Stacey: unrealistic or non-realistic--we don't normally run into puppets
turning into living beings or toothy lotus flowers. You're right that
unrealistic is a bit misleading--how's about fantastic?
Jason Tice:
Perception is one important key when pondering the Heart of the... The p[lants
were strange to us because they were described by someone who had never seen
them before. If someone from 2245 A.D. found a toilet plunger, they might
percieve it as some sort of scepter.
Stacey Dittmar:
Jason - I guess I see what you mean. To them, the forest is a new world, where
their own perception of reality is distorted, but I can't help but feel that
perhaps their father was sheltering them from a reality that was there all
along. They had to go out and find it on their own, without his help. (Maybe
the point of view is throwing me off!)
Joyce Smaragdis:
More thoughts:
The subconscious plays a very important in role many of the texts that we have
read so far. I start to think about what postmodern fiction *the very little I
know of it* would be like without some of Freud's insights. What are some of
the limits of the Freudian approach though?
I don't know what I am getting at really. I guess I have to first decide what
I make of the distinction between the real and no so real stories that we have
read so far (in Carter). I think that the boundaries between the two are often
artificial--for example, as I watched the news last night, I was particularly
bothered by a piece about the mass murder of hundreds of Muslims--the camera
focused on numerous sculls and carcasses: that reality is not my reality, but
nonetheless it is _real_. I can see how the boundaries fall apart.
So, after spending a semester in this class, should I be ready to acknowledge
that distinctions between the _real_ and the _fictional_ are false. If so, why
are these distinctions made? What power relations are at stake?
Lauren Moore:
Correction, "scared" isn't right, or maybe it is. I thought the suggestion was
that she wouldn't be able to write in first person, and I was giving an example
why. But my immediate response maybe suggests that most would be scared to use
1st, because of the perceptions of readers, and their associating, blah, blah.
But also, her 1st person stories seem to be of the same kind of narrator, in
different moods, blah, blah, naybe later in a spec.