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

4.0 ANGELIKA REICHMANN mother's wedding-dress, for putting it on, and by that trying to take her mother's place. An apparent contradiction between the need to break out from the house as a symbolic representation of a patriarchal discourse and the traditional association of houses with female space and mothers can be resolved by taking into consideration the mother's role in maintaining dominant discourses. As Rosalind Coward claims in her book Our Treacherous Heart: Feminism is almost invariably seen as a struggle

—or head-on collision

—with men. But the truth is that the deep struggle of feminism was with the previous generation of women. Feminism could be called the daughters' revolt, so central has been the issue of women defining themselves against the previous generation and distancing themselves from their mothers, (quoted in Sage 7) The situation at the end of the novel seems to be absolutely unambiguous in this respect, though: Uncle Philip's house, which is obviously a representation of a male dominated universe, burns down by that facilitating something like a "real" initiation at this time. The house itself clearly resembles the mysterious castles of Gothic stories and fairy-tales, while Melanie and Finn act out the role of the Princess and the Prince or Knight, respectively. It could be argued that while flying a patriarchal universe, Melanie only acts out another prefabricated story of the same discourse by asking Finn to save her. As Mills points out, this ending still may not be a "real" initiation into adulthood and womanhood for her: "it is into the keeping of another male that [her] escape from the older patriarch leads" (178). The story ends here, it is not known what their future will be like, it is only implied that it might be very similar to Melanie's quite sad expectations. In Nights at the Circus there are several escapes from different houses that resemble in some way Uncle Philip's house: Ma Nelson's brothel burns down in the same way as his house, Madame Schreck's house is definitely like a medieval castle with a dungeon, and the Siberian "modern" prison is not much better, either. All these houses seem to be out of their time, in the same way as time seems to have stopped in Uncle Philip's house. Ma Nelson's house "was built by the Age of Reason" (NC 26), but it "seem[s] almost too modern for its own good" (NC 26) and in it "all still stimulates] the dark night of pleasure" in the