Nights at the Circus, Angela Carter’s second to last novel, is a fanciful tale of a winged English woman, an American journalist and the exceedingly bizarre circus that draws them together. Sophie Fevvers, the “Cockney Venus,” is a famous aerialiste, or trapeze artist, whose claim to fame are the giant wings that keep her aloft during her act. She claims to have been hatched from an egg, and that the wings emerged as she grew up. At the novel’s open, American Jack Walser, a reporter determined to get to the truth of the matter, has been granted a private interview with Fevvers.
Walser gets far more than he bargained for, though, as Fevvers, aided by her companion/caretaker Lizzie, takes control of the interview and tells Walser a extraordinary tale of her youth, including a stint at a brothel (though she claims to be a virgin yet) made of up of women all nearly as bizarre as she. By the time the extended interview has wrapped up, Fevvers has Walser under her spell, and even more determined to know the truth of her wings. (Carter’s clever story within a story is very reminiscent of Dora’s family memoir in Wise Children.)
Thus, in part two of the novel, Walser has joined the circus that Fevvers works for, donning a clown’s makeup and clothing with the intent of writing an article about the circus and Fevvers, unbeknownst to the latter. Of course, Lizzie and Fevvers discover him before very long, but this doesn’t deter Walser from either his new career as a clown or his interest in Fevvers. This section details the circus’ stay in St. Petersburg, Russia, introducing readers to the show’s colorful denizens. For example, there’s the group of chimpanzees, who are intelligent enough to bargain their way out of the circus, much to the dismay of its eccentric American owner (eccentric in that he allows a pig with supposed powers of prognostication to make all his business decisions — including hiring Walser). Then there’s the timid, abused Mignon, companion to the Ape-Man, indifferent lover to the Strong Man, who, once freed from the former by Walser (albeit inadvertently), takes up with the Princess of Abyssinia, becoming part of her dancing tiger routine. And there are the clowns themselves, with their makeup, clothing and odd ritualistic routines.
Part three takes place in Siberia, which the circus is crossing en route to Japan. The train carrying the circus crashes, separating Walser from everyone else. Although Fevvers becomes distressed at leaving him behind, she, Lizzie and the other survivors brave a nearby forest, quickly finding themselves prisoners o
f a group of bandits. The bandits, oddly enough, recognize Fevvers and implore her to get the Queen of England to plead their case with officials. Alas, rumors of Fevvers’ involvement with the Queen’s son are overblown, and the bandits are distraught when they realize she’s no help. The clowns nobly sacrifice themselves so that the other refugees can escape. The rag tag collection of circus folk next come to a mysterious cabin, where they find an old maestro, who’s lured back to sanity by the beautiful singing and piano playing of Mignon and the Princess.
Meanwhile . . . Walser has been taken in by a shaman, who thinks he’s found his successor in the now amnesiac American. The shaman takes Walser back to his tribe and begins to train him, driving the young man to the limits of his sanity with hallucinogens. Also introduced in this section is an odd prison for women, the Panopticon, run by a Russian countess guilty of killing her husband. Her methods of trying to force penitence from women prisoners guilty of the same crime fail, leading to a jailbreak, wherein the female guards and prisoners escape into the same wilds as Fevvers and Walser, crossing paths with the latter shortly before the shaman takes him in.
The book closes with the refugees stumbling across Walser, who doesn’t outright recognize Fevvers, but is haunted by images of her, and eventually tracking him back to the village, where he does come to his senses. Fevvers, who had become a shell of her former self, with her roots growing out, one wing broken and her feathers molting, grasps her former glory quite firmly once she’s found Walser and admits to loving him. And so the book closes with the newly married pair in bed together — an amusing scene whereby readers discover maybe Fevvers wasn’t quite so forthcoming about being the “only fully-feathered intacta in the world.”
The language in Nights at the Circus is very lush and beautiful, though Carter may, on occasion, send even seasoned readers scrambling for a dictionary. Time is fluid in the novel, flowing at an irregular pace. When Walser first interviews Fevvers, Big Ben strikes midnight three times, providing Fevvers ample time to tell her story. It would seem that Lizzie can control time’s flow via a clock in her possession. Later, after the clock has been broken, it’s clear that Walser’s time with a Siberian shaman outstrips Fevver’s time in the woods, as noted by his beard’s growth. So too does Carter play with perspective, as demonstrated in a scene where Fevver’s escapes the clutches of an over-zealous would-be suitor by leaping onto a tiny toy train which magically becomes the circus’ train.
Carter also plays with the personal identity of her characters. Fevvers is known by more monikers and nicknames than be easily kept up with, and it’s never absolutely certain if she’s really a winged woman or a fake (nor, perhaps, does it matter, since the public persona of Fevvers is what her audience believes in, anyhow). Walser not only disguises himself as a clown to follow Fevvers, but undergoes a spiritual awakening at the hands of the shaman.
Nights at the Circus is brash, joyful and full of larger than life characters, which makes for a wonderful fantasy to indulge in.
Stoddart’s book is a brief critical overview of Nights at the Circus, which begins with putting Carter herself into context as a British female writer during the latter half of the 20th century and then dives into the critical history of the novel and four related essays. The Guide closes out with a thorough list of resources and a brief index.
The opening section of the book, “Texts and Contexts” briefly describes Carter’s life and career, touching on her academic background, her love of travel and the recognition her body of work, and Nights at the Circus in particular, received. Then follows an interesting compare and contrast between Carter and Margaret Thatcher — and the 1980s (when the novel was written) and the 1890s (when the novel takes place). Stoddart wraps up this overview with a look at the 1960s (she mentions Carter’s writing as a response to the decade) and the literary influences apparent in the novel. She then closes out the section with a brief discussion of some of the key elements of the novel.
Part two, “Critical History,” examines some of the (occasionally conflicting) lenses through which analysts have viewed Nights at the Circus,” including feminism, politics, postmodernism and literary genre. The essays that follow in part three expand on these themes, taking a more in-depth look at Nights at the Circus in terms of how it treats identity, as a postmodernist work, as an example of myth and magical realism, and, in Stoddardt’s own final essay, as an example of the carnivalesque.
Even for those not conversant with literary criticism and its vocabulary, the Guide is an accessible and comprehensible read. It reveals some of the layers and nuances not readily apparent to the casual reader, particularly the political underpinnings. For example, most readers would be hard-pressed to realize the delicate Mignon is meant to represent Europe at the turn of the 20th century. Yet a quote from Carter indicates this is so.
(Chatto & Windus, 1994)
(Routledge, 2007)
