4. Contributions of the Mingling of Magic Realism and Feminism to the Novel’s Themes.8

4.1 Deconstruction of the Other and Male-dominated World 9

4.2 Life as Carnival..9

4.3 Divisions..10

5. Conclusion 11

Works Cited 13

 1. Introduction

1.1 Carter and Wise Children

Angela carter (1940-1992) is widely acknowledged as an original and daring writer. She wrote in the hybrid magic realism, Gothic, feminism and multiple styles. Wise Children (1991), the last novel written by Angela Carter, is a rollicking text that tells a lively story with satirical wit and wry, bawdy observation. Even without analysis, it stands on its own as an engaging story, with a few stretched coincidences and a mischievously humorous narrator. “Wise Children is certainly her most ebullient, cheerfully orgiastic and comic novel” (Boehm, 1994:31). 

It opens on Shakespeare’s birthday, on a gusty spring morning in the late 20th century and it is the story of twins Dora and Nora Chance. They are the illegitimate daughters of a very famous noble English Shakespearean actor, Melchior Hazard, and a Hazard is nothing but a posh bit of Chance, as Carter suggests. The Legendary Chance Girls, as Dora and Nora become, are brought up on the wrong side of the family and in the wrong kind of entertainment, adopted by a kind old woman in a run-down old boarding house - number 49, Bard Road - on the wrong side of London. Wise Children is a book about the ingenuity of invention when it comes to both identity and art. It traces what happens to both sides of the family, and on the other what made a century’s worth of English entertainment.源'自^吹冰],论`文'网]www.chuibin.com

The novel plays on Carter’s admiration of Shakespeare, incorporating a large amount of magical realism and elements of the carnivalesque that probes and twists our expectations of reality and society. “The novel is about the way in which English imperialism and patriarchy appropriated Shakespeare” (Sanders 2001: 195).

1.2 Literature Review

With the general growth of the critic’s focus on a feminist interpretation of Carter’s novels, it is hardly surprising that the relationship between men and women has attracted considerable attention in recent years. While some research has focused only on one of Carter’s features, other work has sought to show how to apply carnivalized features in Wise Children. Accordingly, the research on Wise Children should focus on the mingling of magical realism and feminism that focus on difference between other studies.

The studies about Angela Carter abroad have related to nearly all of her works from the field of Feminism, Magic Realism, Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Gothic. The overseas research on Carter and her works goes many years ahead of China, which are much more theoretical. Many overseas critics observe the feministic importance implied in Carter’s works and their analyses go different direction. However, studies abroad on Wise Children are quite limited compared with Carter’s other novels. Few studies focus on this novel only. 

In Modern Gothic: a reader, Victor Sage and Allan Lloyd Smith analyze Carter’s application of modern Gothic in her works. In addition, Michael Morrison examines elements of the fantastic of Wise Children in Trajectories of the Fantastic. Steven Connor discovers that the question of the legitimacy of cultural forms is central to Wise Children. Kate Webb specifically explores the relation of family, hierarchy and culture at great length. David Punter focuses on “to depict ‘magical’ boundary-breaking events as part of the texture of every experience” (Zhuo Huizhen, 2004: 142). In comparison, the domestic studies about Carter lag behind the international trend and have a limitation of perspectives. On the one hand, the attention and interest on Carter starts rather late, and the early studies are restricted to a narrow scope of her short stories and fairy tales.