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 49 Uncle Philip. The block is broken only with the symbolic burial of the swan at the very end of the novel. What is more, in the course of the novel Melanie tends to see herself only in terms of ready-made ideas of womanhood: it is not by chance that the story, which is told from her perspective, is full of intertextual references from the metaphysical poetry of John Donne, through the Romantics to contemporary romance. Finn actually accuses Melanie in one of the crucial scenes of "Talking like a woman's magazine" (MT 155). This does not hinder him though, in his turn, from also constructing himself in a ready-made story, which is even realised by Melanie: she knows that Finn, after having buried the swan, a symbolic representadon of Uncle Philip's power, wants to hear the words "He'll murder you" (MT 172) because that confirms his role as a rebel against power, on the one hand, and as a Christ-like sacrifice on the other hand. Since until the end of the novel — until the outbreak —the characters remain within the space of patriarchal discourse, only the first option seems to be available for them. Apparentiy, the possibility of subversion is not open for them, yet. Aunt Margaret starts to speak only when the fire breaks out and though her communication —her voice —is firm, her discourse I presented rather as a possibility beyond the limits of the novel than as an actually existing alternative. The very last sentence of the novel leaves Melanie and Finn in the garden —a place that is by that time absolutely overburdened with symbolic meanings and associations. In fact, intertextuality seems to be a device for defining them within the patriarchal discourse—just like in the emblematic case of the story of Leda and the Swan. The situation changes dramatically in Nights at the Circus: as Lorna Sage has pointed out, "Yeats in the Leda poem produces a grand rhetorical question: 'Did she put on his knowledge with his power ...?' Well, annoyingly enough, yes, in this version" (Sage 49). Fewers is characterised by an overflow of speech (Fokkema 170—171). What Carter does in The Magic Toyshop as an author, that is, "attempts to subvert traditional patriarchal themes and imagery in fairly subtle and covert ways" (Mills 134), is carried out in Nights at the Circus by a character, Fewers, as well as by "the" narrator "in fairly overt ways". Leda, who is a passive, mute victim suffering the rituals of inconclusive initiations and fails to come to terms with herself, to create an independent identity for herself in The Magic Toyshop, turns into Helen, starts to speak out and reinvent the paradigm in which she was engendered to launch a new
