Az Eszterházy Károly Tanárképző Főiskola Tudományos Közleményei. 2002. Vol. 3. Eger Journal of English Studies.(Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 29)
Angelika Reichmann: Ledas and Swans in Angela Carter's The Magic Toyshop and Nights at the Circus
LED AS AND SWANS 43 practically both events take place at midnight, when time seems to stop, both events are compared to the Fall, to the original sin or the fall of Lucifer (NC 30), the girls are almost of the same age and both end up desperate and bleeding. While Melanie is tortured by a sense of guilt, since the tearing up of her mother's wedding-dress that night seems to be the cause of her parents' death in some magical way, Fewers is helped by Liz to go on and study enough to give a new try —she has a mother- (or rather grandmother-) figure with her, whom Melanie misses all her life. It is Liz who launches Fewers on the first flight, helping her to gain independence, but still saves her when she starts to fall. Though Fewers is too frightened to start this flight, and almost dies at the end of it, this event is practically the nearest thing to a pleasurable sexual intercourse described in the novel: "the wind ... clasped [her] to his bosom once more so [she] found [she] could progress in tandem with him just as [she] pleased, and so cut a corridor through the invisible liquidity of the air" (NC 35). It is only implied that when "At the end of Nights at the Circus a 'swan' [Fewers] will gently —though passionately — make love to the male protagonist" (D'Haen 199), something similar happens. In these scenes Fewers really plays rather the role of the swan, though without the element of violence, and retaining her femininity —in fact, approaching androgyny. The Magic Toyshop practically does not contain any scenes like that. While "[it] can be read as a fable of the absence of what can be written of female desire, [as a story in which] woman's desire is yet unnameable" (Mills 177-178), in Nights at the Circus this desire gets articulated. Concerning the other rape attempts, Fewers does not seem to be in any need of a Knight to help her escape. The scene in the Gothic mansion of "Mr Rosencreutz" (NC 74) can be clearly compared with the Grand Duke's attempt to rape her in Petersburg and with the theatrical performance of the story of Leda and the Swan in The Magic Toyshop. As opposed to Melanie's passing out on this occasion, Fewers fights for herself, although not always with the same success. To defend herself from Mr Rosencreutz' blade that he wants to use during the ritual, she has a sword of her own, which she is quick to show, even if she does not use it. The sword can be interpreted as a phallic symbol, in the same way as the Mr Rosencreutz' blade and also as a clear reference to castrationit is not by chance that he is so much surprised by it and that earlier in the brothel when "[the young men's] eyes would fall on the sword [she]
