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 and losing virginity, that is, gaining maturity, and implies that it is impossible without the help of the mother or grandmother. Fewers, like Melanie at the wedding-dress night, has to go back to the house at the end of the first flight, and she has difficulties as well —in fact, her life is at stake —, but Lizzie helps her back and saves her. This is one of those motifs that is completely missing from The Magic Toyshop, implying that one of the reasons of Melanie's failure is the lack of a proper model and of the help of the (grand)mother-figure. What are the implications of the mythical story of Leda and the Swan concerning textuality, or, to ask the same question in a slightly different form, what are the possibilities for defining herself as a subject for a woman within a patriarchal discourse? Catherine Belsey in her essay "Constructing the Subject, Deconstructing the Text", offers two alternatives: [For women] the attempt to locate a single coherent subjectposition within these contradictory discourses, and in consequence to find a non-contradictory pattern of behaviour, can create intolerable pressures. One way of responding to this situation is to retreat from the contradictions and from discourse itself, to become "sick" [...] Another is to seek a resolution of the contradictions in the discourses of feminism. (Belsey 586) It could be argued that the first alternative is not an alternative at all, since it turns a woman into a symptom, a sign, into something mute that is unable to define itself, something that depends on being read by a discourse that is not hers. This is the position of Leda —the dumb muse —in the myth, while the swan is traditionally associated with male poetic creation. While The Magic Toyshop ends with a symbolic outbreak —flight — from the patriarchal discourse, it does not seem to offer any alternative: female characters might be swans in the sense that they can fly but they are definitely dumb swans —in the literal as well as in the figurative sense of the word —and use body language instead of symbolic articulation and instead of creating and/or appropriating a language for their own purposes. In this sense Finn and Francié appear in a basically feminine position, since they are powerless: Francié hardly ever speaks, and Finn's constant flow of speech is temporarily arrested after he is beaten up by
