Nights at the Circus

... Nights at the Circus Nights at the Circus (1984), Angela Carter's penultimate novel, epitomizes her wildly inventive, highly idiosyncratic mode of fiction, centered as it is on Fevvers, a Cockney artiste who claims to have grown wings. Most critics and reviewers have seen the main thrust of the novel to reside in the portrayal of Fevvers as a prototype of the New Woman whose wings help her to escape from the nets of a patriarchal nineteenth century culture into a twentieth century feminist haven of freedom. The novel ends with Fevvers astride her American lover, Walser (she now playing the missionary role), enjoying apparently two triumphs - sexual and psychological - in one: "'To think I really fooled you!' she marveled. 'It just goes to show there's nothing like confidence'" (295). Yet when Carter was asked by John Haffenden what Fevvers means by this, she replied, "It's actually a statement about the nature of fiction, about the nature

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