Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter (1984)

Nights at the Circus begins in the London dressing room of Sophie Fevvers, an English circus star. Her maid,
Lizzie, slaps cold cream on Sophie’s face while Sophie answers questions from an American reporter. Jack
Walser, from California, is skeptical of Sophie’s story, to say the least. He doubts that the wings on Sophie’s
back are real. Sophie claims that she was not born; instead, she was hatched. She insists that she is partly
bird. Walser takes down notes of the fabulous story told by Sophie and backed up by Lizzie. They tell of
Sophie’s childhood, spent in a whorehouse, and of how she learned to fly.
To resolve his doubts and to get a better story, Walser joins the circus. He is hired as a clown by Colonel
Kearney, the owner of the circus. The colonel, originally from Kentucky, has a pig named Sybil and drinks
mint juleps in the middle of the morning. He plans a circus tour that will go from London to St. Petersburg,
Russia, then to Siberia, Japan, and finally the United States for the start of the twentieth century. Walser tags
along on the tour and endures some harsh abuse. He survives a tiger assault and a train wreck as he tries to
get his story. He also takes in a destitute singer, the Ape-Man’s former wife.
Fevvers, meanwhile, hurts her wings when the train they take through Russia derails and wrecks. She and
Lizzie are carried off by the bandits who caused the violent wreck.

SUMMARY:
Part I:
This section is told through an interview conducted by Jack Walser, an American journalist, of a winged
"aerialiste" named "Fevvers" in London, 1899. Fevvers, accompanied by her foster-mother, an old woman
named Lizzie, generally get the better of the young American's predictably constructed questions. Fevvers
has complete control of her narrative. She was hatched from an egg, found abandoned by Lizzie, and taken
to Ma Nelson's brothel, a tight-knit community of sisterhood. Through Fevver's point of view, Carter's
depiction of prostitution at Ma Nelson's signals that there is nothing shameful as long as relationships
remain reciprocal and the freedom of choice is held up on both sides of the transaction. At Ma Nelson's
brothel, Fevvers grew her wings, and slowly learned how to fly. As a young girl, her job would be to pose as
Cupid at the brothel, and later, as "Winged Victory," carrying with her a sword. Ma Nelson's death in a
terrible accident (she was run over by a carriage) led to the dispersal of the sisterhood. Fevvers tells how
the former prostitutes do well, finding opportunities either in business or marrying, totally capable, having
been fortified by their time at Ma Nelson's, to find their own way about the world. Fevvers, still an
adolescent, goes with Lizzie to live with Lizzie's sister and brother-in-law, who have an ice-cream shop.
When the family comes upon hard times, however, Fevvers decides to take up an offer of employment at
Madame Schreck's establishment, a macabre place where men satisfy warped desires of their souls. This is
a very different place from Ma Nelson's brothel, where men satisfy bodily desires. Madame Schreck's place
is a kind of freak museum: its major characters include a Sleeping Beauty, the dwarfish Wiltsire Wonder,
the transsexual Albert/Albertina, and Fanny with eyes on her nipples. There is also a black slave named
Touissant who doesn't have a mouth but can write. Fevvers joins this crew, and learns all of their sad stories
and how they each ended up at Madame Schreck's. One day, Fevvers tries to revolt against the enslavement
of Madame Shreck, only to be carried away by a disturbed Rosicrucian man whom Madame has sold her
for a high price. This man believes that if he should kill Fevvers in a sacrifice, he will be able to cure his
own impotency. Luckily Fevvers escapes him because she has Ma Nelson's sword with her and she gets
back to Lizzie and her family. She hears that the rest of the individuals back at Madame Schreck's have also
effected their own escapes. Soon, an opportunity to join the circus arises, and Lizzie and Fevvers depart
together. This is the end of the interview; exhausted and enchanted, Walser gets the idea that he will join
the circus so that he might continue to get his scoop. (primicia)
Part II:
Narrated by a third-person omniscient narrator, this section follows the circus to St. Petersburg.
The circus is headed by Colonel Kearney (accompanied always by his clairvoyant pig, Sibyl). Walser has
joined as a clown. The circus camp is a lively, carnivalesque place. Its primary characters include apes that
can learn in a classroom setting from a professor ape, an orphan girl named Mignon and a brutish Strong
Man with whom she frequently has sex with, Buffo the clown (the leader of the clown troupe, who
proselytizes about the privilege of how clowns "make [them]selves" and how clowns are even like Christ
because they "subject [them]selves to laughter by choice), the Princess of Abyssinia and her tigers, and a
host of elephants. Walser witnesses Mignon being brutally beat up by the Strong Man after he sees Walser
attempting to save her from an escaped tiger. Mignon's story is given as a side narrative: it is a story of
orphanhood, living on the streets, being taken up by the abusive charlatan Herr M. who had her impersonate
dead daughters to fool grieving parents, and finally being passed on to the circus as the Strong Man's object
of violence and sexual abuse. After being badly beaten up by the Strong Man this time around, Fevvers and
Lizzie take her up, cleaning her up and, since she sings (without knowing what she sings, but nevertheless
has a lovely voice), encourages the Princess to incorporate her into the act with herself and the tigers. The
princess will play the piano, Mignon will sing and dance with the tigers. The women keep the Strong Man
away from her. Walser is falling in love, meanwhile, with Fevvers. One night, Walser gets pulled into
Mignon and the tiger's singing and dancing act, and afterwards, the Strong Man beats him to a pulp. On
another night, Buffo goes crazy and nearly kills Walser. That same night, a tigress is shot to death because it
was about to attack Mignon. Colonel Kearney's circus seems to be falling apart. Fevvers is still the most
popular act, and she nevertheless pulls off success. Afterwards, the Grand Duke is so impressed with her
that he invites her over. Fevvers, lured by his riches, decides to go and leave Lizzie behind. There, the Grand
Duke very nearly succeeds in "diminishing" her into an egg and making her his toy (the narrative's use of the
word "diminishing" highlights the relationship between his attempt to literally make her smaller and his
demeaning her by seeing her as an object for his own use and pleasure). Luckily, she makes an escape,
though barely: the Grand Duke manages to break her sword.
(diminish = disminuir, reducir / demeaning = humillante)

Part III:
While on a train going through Siberia, there is a big explosion. Fevvers frantically searches for Walser but
cannot find him. All of the other circus characters, minus the tigers and elephants, seem to have survived the
explosion. Nearby the site of the explosion is a penitentiary started by one Countess P., who had murdered
her husband. The aim of her panopticon-shaped penitentiary was to gather together all female murderesses
and to try to make them penitent and reformed--her logic was that somehow that would transfer to her own
reformation. Despite the extensive disciplinary system which she puts in place, one inmate, Olga
Alexandrovna, finds a way to initiate contact with another inmate (prisoner) via a squeeze of the hand.
Eventually, secret exchanges of glances and messages written in blood and excrement lead to a large scale
revolution and the prisoners escape. They pass by the train wreck (restos) and see Walser amidst the rubble,
(en medio de los escombros) still alive. They decide to continue on their way, intending to form an all-
female Utopian community. Fevvers and the others soon find out that the terrorists who blew up their train
were a group of peasant men (campesinos) who had heard a rumour circulated by the Colonel that Fevvers
was marrying the Prince of Wales. The peasants thought that she might help them curry favour with the
English royal family (ganarse el favor de la realeza), who might then help them curry favor with the Tsar.
(Zar, Ruler of Russia) The Colonel's rumour was just a publicity stunt (truco publicitario), unfortunately; by
now, the Colonel was already thinking about how to turn the train incident into good publicity for
the circus. One of the peasant convicts decides to tell the party that the rest of his men will probably go on a
shooting spree so the circus members decide to send in the clowns to entertain the men and to try to make
them desist from violence. During a storm which hits as the clowns are performing, the circus members
make their escape. They find an old music maestro in an abandoned conservatory who joins their party.
Walser, meanwhile, has been caught up by a Shaman-led tribe and has lost his memory of who he is. The
Shaman makes him drink his urine, and Walser has hallucinations. Though Walser remembers snippets of
his past life--a song fragment, an epithet, for example--he is unable to piece together the whole. The tribe's
mode of living is described as a kind of living in the present with no sense of history, and one of its central
practice is the sacrifice of a bear. Walser becomes fully integrated into the tribe, and the Shaman even
begins to think of him as a potential successor. Fevvers decides to go after Walser (Lizzie goes with her, but
the Princess, Mignon, and the old maestro stay behind to form a musical group together) arriving on the
scene of a sacrifice, however, interrupting the ritual and making quite an impression by spreading her wings
(except one of them is broken, so she only spreads one of them). In the end, Fevvers and Walser consummate
their love, with Fevvers on top smothering Walser below. Walser doesn't really recover his old self the
American journalist, but this is a good thing: he now asks actually important questions of Fevvers like "What
is your name? Have you a soul? Can you love?" There consummation then, is the true "interview."
The novel ends with Fevvers's unrestrained laughter seeping out and infecting all the inhabitants across
Siberia. (contagiándoles la risa que desata poco a poco)

CRITICAL APPROACH/ANALYSIS:
Female sexuality and desire: At the heart of Carter's novel is a strong, female character who is importantly
erotically charged, unafraid of expressing her own desire (sexual or otherwise), yet not at all conventionally
"feminine" about this eroticism and desire. Fevvers's eroticism is an overpowering one which makes Walser
feel "vertigo"; their final consummation underscores her dominant position. She is big in stature, and
comfortable as such. Her sexuality is also a much more expansive one than one which focuses on romantic
attachment. I would describe it as closer to a maternal sexuality, which asserts its overwhelming power to
comfort, to nurture, and to love all creatures, male or female.
Gender performativity: The notion of gender performativity is strongly suggested in Carter's text (even if
before Butler's formalization of this concept in Gender Trouble, 1990). The circus more generally suggests
the importance of masks and therefore the constructedness and performance of identity. For the female
characters in the novel, gender performance is an important means through which they may expand and/or
question traditional constructions of femininity. Standing as "Winged Victory" in the brothel, Fevvers
suggests the association of stalwart strength with the female body. Her trapeze routine proclaims a freedom
of movement and being which ignores and is completely unfazed and unaffected by the gaze of the audience,
whether male or female. The expansive, maternal actions of Fevvers, Lizzie, or Ma Nelson are also all gender
performances which suggest that to be female is actually something which might contain male sexuality: it
isn't a maternity that is confined to the small space of the domestic sphere, it actually can bring about the re-
making of the world. Perhaps one of the best examples of this is Fevvers, Lizzie, and the Princess working
together to make Mignon's soul/self and in doing so, also remaking the Strong Man's soul, who as a result of
Mignon's transformation, himself becomes more compassionate and expansively loving.
Postmodernism: Like Rushdie's The Satanic Verses, Nights at the Circus ascribes to the fluidity and
instability a levity and playfulness (which also often verges on the gothic; "carvinalesque" might encompass
both levity and gothicism). The process of Walser's "deconstruction" from the young American male
journalist out for a bold adventure, to Walser the clown hiding behind a mask which becomes more and more
real as time goes by, and finally his amnesia in joining the Shaman's tribe is fairly humorous. The ease with
which Fevvers whittles down his "masculine" journalistic confidence in the categories of fact versus fiction,
and cows any notion he might have of virility as stronger than the female not only deconstructs him, but
belittles and diminishes him in such a way that makes his initial confidence seem comedic and absurd. In the
end, however, Fevvers gives him back a measure of control (since now he is a postmodern subject capable of
taking charge of constructing his own identities, having realized identity to be fluid): "We told you no other
lies nor in any way strayed from the honest truth. Believe it or not, all that I told you as real happenings were
so, in fact; and as to questions of whether I am fact or fiction, you must answer that for yourself!"
Female socialism: There is a strong thread of female socialism in Carter's text, which jives historically with
the late nineteenth century/early twentieth-century associations of the New Woman with leftist socialist
reform. Ma Nelson's brothel, the female prisoner's going off to form their own utopia and less obviously, the
community to springs up around Mignon, are each examples of all-female societies which are based on love,
cooperation, and shared visions of effecting social progress through shared and mutual burdens.

THEMES

This is a complex, multifaceted story, told with humor, hyperbole, and biting irony. Thinking critically about
the assumptions on which our lives are based, taking real and figurative journeys of self-discovery,
questioning patriarchal values and notions of commodification, and determining who defines identity are just
a few of its themes.

Nights at the Circus is divided into three geographically delineated parts: London, Petersburg, and Siberia,
through which the main characters travel together and individually. The narrative progression away from the
familiar (Britain) toward increasingly exotic locales also moves the reader ever deeper into the world of
magic. Throughout this journey, the novel mercilessly teases its readership, undermining our expectations
while challenging and subverting any number of conventions, by parodying the genres of Romance, Myth,
and so on.

The magical realist dimension is often at least partially Utopian, an unreal fantasy whereby a subversive
political message can be conveyed. Nonetheless, it here steadfastly refuses to offer readers an uncomplicated,
escapist fictional reality. To the "army of lovers" in the final third of the book who escape from prison, "the
white world around them looked newly made, a blank sheet of fresh paper on which they could inscribe
whatever future they wished." This absurdly romantic ideal is mocked, however. They may set out to found a
perfect female-only community, but are obliged to request semen from a passing male in order to impregnate
themselves and "ensure the survival of this little republic of free women." (Lizzie's characteristically caustic
response is "What'll they do with the boy babies? Feed 'em to the polar bears? To the female polar bears?")
What Angela Carter is writing may be more accurately characterized as an anti-romance that underscores the
falsity of Utopian dreams. Her female characters are given the opportunity to step outside the romantic
models on which much of reality and realist fiction is based.