Myth

- Magical realist texts’ ‘primary narrative investment are often in myths’ or collective practices.
- Carter’s understanding of the term ‘myth’ reaches beyond the traditional notion of myth found
elsewhere in magical realism: ‘I use other people’s books, European literature, as though it were that
kind of folklore’ – the folklore of the peasantry used in other traditions of magical realism – whereas
in her case, it is ‘a folklore of the intelligentsia’.
- Many of the myths that feature in her work, then, are of a specifically textual nature.
- In this regard, readers are most familiar with Carter’s use of fairy tales, which themselves would be
considered by Carter as myths, since they belong to a Western cultural tradition, or as she puts it,
‘the lumber room of the Western European imagination’.15
- Her writing discloses the relation of ‘everyday experience’ and a ‘system of imagery derived from
subterranean areas behind [that] everyday experience’.16
- Such interpretative or critical intentions are, for Janet Wolff, a quintessentially postmodernist trait, in
its ‘commitment . . . to engage critically with contemporary culture’.17 The exhortation to examine
cultural structures obviously carries particular resonance for women, for whom ‘investigating the
social fictions that regulate our lives’ becomes an important political activity.18
- It is important to realize that Carter’s feminism is not confined to the interests of women; she rejects
the idea that ‘fiction that demythologizes . . . is only of interest to women’, arguing that men live by
myths as much as women do.19
- We can see this in part by the fate of many of her male characters, including Walser, who undergoes
a kind of feminist conversion that enables him to achieve a non- patriarchal relationship at the
novel’s close.
- Central to Nights at the Circus, however, is the Greek myth of Leda and the swan, immortalized in
Homer’s The Iliad, and also referring here to the myth’s many subsequent literary manifestations (for
example, W. B. Yeats’s poem, ‘Leda and the Swan’). Objects remind Fevvers of this mythic
conception: for example, ‘a lovely little swan’, provided by the Grand Duke, is ‘a tribute, perhaps, to
her putative paternity’ (Pt. II, Ch. 11, p. 192). Carter’s treatment of this myth is typical of her work
in that she literalizes the symbols that represent that myth: ‘Carter offers us a rewrite of Homer that
redefines the future of humanity from a feminist ideology . . . such a rewrite only proves possible
with the help of magic realist means: the female protagonist, “Fevvers,” is a “bird,” not just
metaphorically but also literally.’20
- D’haen’s brief discussion of Carter’s novel points not only to the writer’s use of myth but also to her
trademark process of exposing the literal underbelly of metaphor. Her approach to myth works by a
process of defamiliarization, a strategy of ‘looking at the world as though it were strange’.21 Her
demythologizing can be directly related to her magical realism. As she herself said, ‘Another way of
magicking or making everything strange is to take metaphor literally’.22 This strategy exposes the
tension between the idealized representation or ‘preposterous depiction’ (Pt. I, Ch. 1, p. 7) and the
 often physical reality behind mythic images.
- In order to explore the composition of metaphor and materialism that she locates in the operation of
myth, Carter’s fiction engages in a process of exaggeration, parody and deflation. Several examples
of inflated names (‘Madonna of the Arena’, Pt. II, Ch. 5, p. 126) and gigantic descriptions of the
mythicized female character (her ‘half hundredweight of hair’, Pt. I, Ch. 5, p. 78) etc. This
exaggerated style also relates to magical realism, since, ‘excess is a hallmark of the mode’.
- In Fevvers’ case, she is depicted as a mythic symbol and a real person, for Carter believes that ‘there
is a materiality to symbols’.
- Aware of their dual identity, she is caught between the literal and the metaphorical: Fevvers ‘felt
herself turning, willy-nilly, from a woman into an idea’ (Pt. III, Ch. 10, p. 289). Carter explores
images of femininity through a revisionist practice, in which iconic figures from history, myth and
literature are ‘embodied’ and, thereby, demythicized. At the same time, Carter’s impulse to
exaggerate and embody means that her writing often works to question the ahistorical status of myth.
She challenges the claims made by myths to a ‘truth’ that is beyond the specifics of history and
culture.
- Mythologizing efforts are mocked through parody. Tempted by the Shaman’s regard for her, Lizzie
wonders whether she should take ‘a little holiday from rationality and play at being a minor deity’
(Pt. III, Envoi, p. 293).
- Parody such as this is accompanied by the device of deflation, where Carter accentuates the material,
the bodily, the vernacular and the grotesque (just as the text contrasts elevated language with
vulgarisms, as discussed in relation to metafiction).
- A gradual revelation of Fevvers’ material reality takes place over the course of the novel. She is seen
by others, not as magnificent and powerful, but as a flawed vision: ‘Incompetence of the apparition!’
thinks the Shaman when he realizes that her wings are not functional (Pt. III, Ch. 8, p. 269).
- She herself admits the decline of her status: ‘Now she was a crippled wonder . . . The Cockney
Venus! she thought bitterly’ (Pt. III, Ch. 9, p. 273).
- In a sense, the physicality of her wings becomes more apparent once she requires splints (Pt. III, Ch.
5, p. 228). The essence of her mythical status, her wings, which are generally not described with any
precision or realistic detail (‘my you-know-whats’), soon ‘fluttered lopsidedly’ (Pt. III, Ch. 7, p. 251)
in a gesture of imperfection out of keeping with an idealized flying woman.
- Hints that her mythic status might be explained or reduced in this manner come early in the novel.
When Walser considers the effect of her voice, ‘Walser had become a prisoner of her voice, her
cavernous, sombre voice’, he reflects that ‘such a voice could almost have had its source, not within
her throat but in some ingenious mechanism or other behind the canvas screen’ (Pt. I, Ch. 2, p. 43).
Just as the Wizard of Oz ceases to be a monumental figure when the curtain reveals a man pulling
levers, so Walser, ever the sceptic, suspects that myth is constructed and is an effect more than a
human-scaled reality. As Fevvers’ material reality becomes foregrounded, the mythic names are
 discarded: ‘No Venus, or Helen, or Angel of the Apocalypse, not Izrael or Isfahel . . . only a poor
freak down on her luck, and an object of the most dubious kind of reality’ (Pt. III, Ch. 10, p. 290).
- Fevvers is not the only character associated with myth in the novel.
- Buffo starts to unravel both himself and the myth of the clown. In one of the references to W. B.
Yeats’s poetry (all of which act as a reminder of the poet’s version of Leda and the swan), Buffo’s
identity also seems constructed: ‘He is himself the centre that does not hold’ (Pt. II, Ch. 4, p. 117).
- The history of the great clown highlights the source of myth’s power: ‘This story is not precisely true
but has the poetic truth of myth’ (Pt. II, Ch. 4, p. 121).
- Metafictional concerns about the distinction between fact and fiction continue to be an issue in the
closing chapters: ‘The young American it was who kept the whole story of the old Fevvers in his
note- books; she longed for him to tell her she was true’ (Pt. III, Ch. 9, p. 273).
- Her mythic status is dependent on his textual snapshot of her and on her continued identification with
that version.
- Ironically, Fevvers herself seems to regret the loss of her status, a clear indication that Carter does
not take a simplistic view of mythic identity but instead acknowledges that the attention which
Fevvers elicits must ultimately be on her own terms and of her own making.
- As materialism replaces myth – ‘not the music of the spheres, but of blood, of flesh, of sinew, of the
heart’ (Pt. III, Ch. 9, p. 275) – Fevvers’ wings cease to be marvellous objects: no longer hidden, they
‘no longer seemed remarkable’ (Pt. III, Ch. 9, p. 277).
- Myth proves to be a sanitized, hermetic phenomenon in its hidden realities; its power relies on what
is secret and mysterious. Once Fevvers cannot maintain her appearance, her authentic self seems to
emerge: ‘She was so shabby that she looked like a fraud’ (Pt. III, Ch. 9, p. 277).
- The friction between myth and reality, which Carter so deftly handles, drives her novel Nights at the
Circus, and the unmasking of the fantastical in turn creates a world that is magically real. Through its
matrix of metafiction, magical realism and myth, Carter’s text undermines the reader’s sense of
assurance and challenges cultural preconceptions.
- The novel ends on a self-reflexive note, when Fevvers tells Walser: ‘ “To think I really fooled you!”
she marvelled. “It just goes to show there’s nothing like confidence” ’ (Pt. III, Envoi, p. 295).
- This final comment points to the distinctive tone in which the story is told (challenging the reader to
disbelieve) and suggests too that the novel, like the discourses of fiction, history, reality and myth
can operate as a kind of confidence trick, fooling the inattentive reader. Carter’s writ- ing reminds us
of the need to remain wary, to be sceptical like Walser, and so alert to the possible deception inherent
to familiar cultural discourses which often determine our understanding of the world.