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 45 even occur to Leda as a possibility: the innumerable artistic adaptations of the myth often show her as less than half-reluctant. So from this respect neither Melanie nor Fewers follow the pattern of the myth —in a sense, both of them are rather swans than Ledas. On the other hand, as Sarah Gamble has also pointed out, one cannot not notice the obvious parallel between the text of Nights at the Circus and Héléne Cixous' "The Laugh of the Medusa". She says the following about the nature of feminist texts: Flying is woman's gesture —flying in language and making it fly. We have learned the art of flying and its numerous techniques; for centuries we've been able to possess anything only by flying; we've lived in flight, stealing away, finding, when desired, narrow passageways, hidden crossovers. [...] A feminist text cannot fail to be more than subversive. It's volcanic; as it is written it brings about an upheaval of the old property crust, carrier of masculine investments; there's no other way. There's no room for her if she's not a he. If she's a her/she, it's in order to smash everything, to shatter the framework of institutions, to blow up the law, to break up the "truth" with laughter. (Cixous 258) Just like Cixous, Carter plays with the two possible meanings of flight, especially in Fewers' case. It is in this light that I will examine the symbolic flights from houses in both novels. "Carter said that she had often been asked why there were so few mothers in her books, and had realised that in her imaginative topography houses stood for mothers ... [while] it is Grandma who presides over the space of [her] matriarchal house of fiction" (Sage 6). Getting out of the house —or rather being pushed out of it —then should mean for a woman being excluded from a protective space and should be a kind of initiation which leads to maturity by identification with the closest role model, that is, with the mother (Cronan Rose 225). In The Magic Toyshop Melanie unintentionally locks herself out of the house at the wedding-dress night, but having realised that she is not mature enough to act out the role she has chosen, climbs back into the house in a frenzied state, like a child. However, both nature and the house itself seem to have conspired against her to make it as difficult as possible —as if the house, which is clearly associated with her mother, wanted to take revenge on her for her blasphemous treatment of her
