Angela Carter's The Passion Of New Eve And Don Quixote: Gender Analysis

In this dissertation, ideological systems considered to limit the creation of Western female identity were explored through feminist discourse: Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve (1977) and Kathy Acker’s Don Quixote (1986). The former discussed the extent to which gendered identities are founded on biological difference and binary structures, looking at how these dichotomies work to confine female identity to a concept of fixed ideals. With reference to the work of Butler, Carter undermines essentialist views which limit identity, demonstrating through multifaceted and changeable characters that identity is constructed as opposed to determined. By engaging in multiple discourses, Carter’s characters reject conforming to regulatory norms, and are consequently revealed to be living out simulacrums, as Butler suggests all people do. The motif of the mirror was explored with reference to the work of Lacan and Mulvey, looking at how the novel presents female identity as contingent upon male desires due to society’s preoccupation with the phallus. Female identity is therefore constructed to appease masculine appetites, with the mirror revealing the discord between unified appearance and incoherent inner identity. The lack of female representation was discussed with reference to speech and narrative structure, with patriarchal systems of communication shown to exclude women from representation. Carter uses the dual perspective of Eve(lyn)’s narration to destabilize gender identity, revealing it as cleft and uncertain. Lee suggests that the incongruity of the narration also works to mount a critique of the role of the gaze, with the fact that Eve(lyn) narrates in retrospect hindering the reader’s ability to know whether the narrator ...

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...ining a non-patriarchal future. In amalgamation with language, female sexuality is shown to be multiple and non-linear, impossible to articulate through existing language, leading once again to the conclusion that the only answer is nomadology. Don Quixote finally moves beyond culture and gender, realizing that when she stops trying to communicate reasonably, she feels at ease, comfortable in her refusal to communicate in the way culture and society says she should. Walsh contends this transgression as unrealistic, engendering the argument that if such unorthodox behaviour is unrealistic, it is society, not the individual that needs to change.

Further discussion may wish to explore the effects of ideological systems on male identity, as despite being labelled enforces of such structures in this dissertation, it is apparent that they too, do not exist unscathed.