Freaks and angles: winged pleasures in Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel García Márquez Autor(es): Biscaia, Maria Sofia Pimentel Publicado por: Universidade Católica Portuguesa, Departamento de Letras URL URI:http://hdl.handle.net/10316.2/23541 persistente: Accessed : 22-Jan-2023 01:02:04 A navegação consulta e descarregamento dos títulos inseridos nas Bibliotecas Digitais UC Digitalis, UC Pombalina e UC Impactum, pressupõem a aceitação plena e sem reservas dos Termos e Condições de Uso destas Bibliotecas Digitais, disponíveis em https://digitalis.uc.pt/pt-pt/termos. Conforme exposto nos referidos Termos e Condições de Uso, o descarregamento de títulos de acesso restrito requer uma licença válida de autorização devendo o utilizador aceder ao(s) documento(s) a partir de um endereço de IP da instituição detentora da supramencionada licença. 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LE ltAS V I SEU 2 O O 8 MÁ THESIS 17 2008 223-249 FREAKS AND ANGELS: WINGED PLEASURES lN ANGELA CARTER, SALMAN RUSHDIE AND GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ Maria Sofia Pimentel Biscaia (Universidade de Aveiro, Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia) RESUMO Fazendo uso de uma abordagem combinatória do grotesco bakhtiniano, do abjecto e do freak, pretende-se neste artigo sobrevoar os mundos ficcionais de Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie e Gabriel Garcia Márquez. Centrando-me especialmente em personagens aladas, discutirei construções e desconstruções de género, raça e, sobretudo, de humanidade. Presente em obras de teor pós colonial, feminista e mágico-realista, a criatura alada foi veículo metafórico para Breughel e até Nabokov, evidenciando assim o seu potencial semiótico em qualquer modo artístico empenhado em discutir as fronteiras do seu corpo/político. ABSTRACT Combining the Bakhtinian grotesque with abject theorisation and freakery, in this paper I aim to hover the fictional universes of Angela Carter, Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Garcia Márquez. My attention goes primarily to winged characters in order to discuss de/constructions of gender, race and, most importantly, of humanness. Though the winged creature makes its appearance in these texts of postcolonial, feminist and magicai realist flavours, it had already been a metaphorical vehicle to Bmeghel and even Nabokov thus proving its semiotic potential in any artistic mo de concerned with interrogating the frontiers of the body/politics. The scene takes place on an isolated tropical island. Around the dead body of an old man, individuaIs gather crying and moaning. Once their faces are revealed, one realises they· are not fully human, their humanly felt sorrow notwithstanding. The tears shed are for the scientist Dr Moreau, their god and creator. Having been left behind all alone, their most dreadful fear is whether there will be Law without "Father"l. The scene is highly ambivalent: Law refers to observing 1 After the doctor's savage killing, his grotesque creatures (the word "grotesque/ness" is used in the book to refer to them fifteen times) are uncertain about their future. Since with Moreau's death the House ofPain is useless, they do not know which mies to follow if they are to follow any: 223 MARIA SOFIA PIMENTEL BISCAIA mIes and to the patriarchal order according to a Lacanian logic, an order headed by the authoritative figure of the "Father". With the doctor's death, symbolíc signification collapses and the obvious abjection of the anthropomorphised animaIs, so far masterfully disguised, is openly exhibited in shame: "each theorizes a human body both chaotíc and entropic, both hybridized and prone to reversion", denoting "indifferentiation and abomination rather than integrity and perfection" (Hurley, 1996: 103). The series of random killings that follow just go to prove that, in spite of"Father's" mIes being harsh and painful, they are, nevertheless, necessary for group functionality. H. G. Wells's answer, as that of Julía Kristeva in her theory of abjection, is that there cannot possibly be Law wíthout the "Father". Angela Carter points in a very different direction. The British author does not move the focus to the mother either, because Angela Carter, as defined by Nicole Ward-Jouve in "Mother is a Figure of Speech ... ", "was that thing she said Sade faíled to be: a moral pomographer. She refused to promote any vested power, patriarchal or other" (Ward-Jouve, 1994: 148). This does not mean, however, that Carter dismisses femininity; quite the opposíte, for in fact she elevates it to dimensions above dichotomies. Succinctly, Jouve puts ít as: Not the way of the father -beyond both father and mother. Subverting both, combining both, demoting both. Ali that's !eft is the act. The performance: conjuring or doing. Ali about freedom. A form offeminist existentialism. (Ward-Jouve, 1994: 158) So, if "mother" in The Passion ofN ew Eve succumbs to madness, Eve, the "daughter", finishes in the tone and attitude of glittering triumph. ln Nights at the Circus, the realmsuggested beyond the male conceptualised Symbolíc and abjectified Semiotic, a sort of feminine Symbolic, is that oflesbian orientation. Other altematives are posed by the mother figures Ma Nelson and Lizzie and further by the praise of the masculine bird-woman Fevvers. Ricarda Schmidt argues in "The Joumey ofthe Subject inAngela Carter's Fiction" thatNights presents "Is there a Law now? asked the Monkey Man. 'Is it still to be this and that? Is he dead indeed?' 'Is there a Law?' repeated the man in white. 'Is there a Law, thou Other with the Whip?" (Wells, [1896]1996: 101) 224 FREAKS AND ANGELS: WINGED PLEASURES lN ANGELA CARTER, SALMAN RUSHDIE AND GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ the full-grown daughter ofEve in Passion (Schmidt, 1989: 67). Sophie Fevvers embodies in her gigantism and vulgar manner the wisdom and potential of the archaeopteryx, similarly a creature of air and earth. Her grotesqueness is celebrated in all its excessiveness, particularly its being outside the Oedipal triangle, out ofreach ofthe paternal Law, for not only has she multiple harlot mothers but also remains untouched by a father figure or system: Fevvers always maintains that she has been hatched from an egg. Though (or maybe because) she is feathered, she is not fathered. From the assumption that although direct1y linked to parenthood, particularly motherhood, grotesqueness can evolve in ways beyond those constraints towards more liberating alternatives, this paper will focus on the way/s the sons and daughters trace (or not) their own paths. 1 will concentrate on the fundamental element of ambiguity in matters of the Self when conventional concepts of humanity are shaken by the integration of animal features, particularly that of birds. As a theoretical framework, 1 will be supported by the carnivalesque-grotesque of Mikhail Bakhtin and 1 will be combining it with notions of the bodily and cultural freak and abjection. Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of the camivalesque-grotesque is, in reality, a social theory aimed at making sense of the Middle Ages, the Renaissance and, inherent1y, his own home country, Russia, during the trouble times of early twentieth century. Though ephemeral, carnival, through popular festive forms and images, exercised what might be called a therapeutic social function. ln the medieval period and Renaissance, the people - the folk in opposition to an aristocratic or ecclesiastical elite - conglomerated in the marketplace where comic shows celebrated the culture of folk humour. These public events represented, or rather constructed, a world unchained from feudal stratification and constraints. Public laughter thus exorcised the accumulated disappointment with worldly affairs and, by creating an alternative classless society, real at least for a certain period of time, nevertheless contributed to perpetuating the existing one through temporary relief. Seasonal liberties sanctioned inner social renewal and avoided the anarchy resultant from such manifestations outside the permitted seasons. Usually associated with the agricultural cycles, camival is the ritualistic representation of nature: after winter (death) always follows spring (rebirth) and only through the former can the 225 MARIA SOFIA PIMENTEL BISCAIA latter occur. Carnivalistic festivities allowed criticism but the upside down alternative, suspending hierarchies and preventing innovation, proved to be no more than a utopian ephemeral solution so that the ultimate consequence was the legitimisation of authority. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance maintained part of the spirit of the Roman Saturnalias, festivities that both glorified and debased, for instance, a victorious warrior or a deceased person even during the funeral ritual. Other numerous carnival festivities were popularised, particularly those which parodied the Church's rituaIs (in adding a sensuous or humorous character): the feast of fools, the feast of the ass, Easter laughter, Christmas laughter, parish commemorations (accompanied by fairs and open-air comic spectacles) and agricultural feasts. Literature also included religious debasement (parodia sacra) which included parody of liturgies prayers, litanies, and sermons among others. The festivities were invariably animated by live performances of trained animaIs, jugglers and clowns as well as public spectacles of various freaks and monsters. On abolishing class divisions the Low and High established relations in terms inadmissible outside carnival, i.e., based not on power and submission but on equality. Thus the religious meets the impious, the scholar the illiterate, the king the fool. A whole new concept of relativity springs into being through mésalliance (the combination of things previously set apart, detached from each other) and ambivalence, for the contact between opposed forces does not restrict itself to mere acquaintance but extends to the actual interchangeability of individual and social roles. The conditions are thus in place to give birth to a real monde à l'envers, a world where the inverted system stands alongside the official one. The language of the marketplace, with its disregard for formalities, added the necessary uninhibiting familiarity to the speech and gestures of carnival language. The concepts of ambivalence and mésalliance necessarily define themselves against the classic notions of proportion and harmony. ln the postulation of the grotesque body the carnivalistic substratum produces the image of a being exaggerated and dismembered, boastingly displaying the retums of the internal processes, particularly those causing shame and revulsion juxtaposed with "acceptable" rituaIs (funeraIs, banquets) in order to create the effect of burial and 226 FREAKS AND ANGELS: WINGED PLEASURES lN ANGELA CARTER, SALMAN RUSHDIE AND GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ revival. The word "grotesque" itself evolves from "grotto", meaning cave. Furthermore, since the grotesque is c10sely connected to generation, then it is necessarily linked to femininity. However, at its core, grotesque realism - the concept bome from folk culture and sustained by the material bodily principIe of food, drink, defecation and sex - is defined as genderless. ln practice, however, the feminine and the grotesque walk side by side since the former has been commonly labelled as not only superficial and marginal but also bizarre and freakish2 (hopefully, such erroneous preconception will be demystified throughout this work through the demonstration that such elements are just as present in the masculine universe). As presented by Bakhtin, the material aspect of the body establishes a c10se connection with the universe, so that it is not enc10sed in its physical boundaries but liberates its communicative energy through bodily orifices. This body is not private, individualised or biological but rather collective or cosmic. ln this perspective Low and High acquire a reformulated meaning - Low stands for earth and High for heaven - and, this being so, debasement and degradation cease to be negative processes: Earth is an element that devours, swallows up (the grave, the womb) and at the sarne time an element of birth, of renascence (the maternal breasts). [ ... ] Degradation here means coming down to earth, the contact with earth as an element that swallows up and gives birth at the sarne time. To degrade is to bury, to sow, and to kill simultaneously, in order to bring forth something more and better. To degrade also means to concern oneselfwith the lower stratum of the body, the life of the belly and the reproductive organs; it therefore relates to acts of defecation and copulation, conception, pregnancy and birth. Degradation digs a bodily grave for a new birth; it has not only a destructive, negative aspect, but also a regenerating one. (Bakhtin, 1984: 21) Functioning as the means by which grotesque material interacts with the earth, degradation does not simply bring down immanent ideaIs but expands their spheres. Degrading becomes a synonym of 2 Consider Joanne M. Gass's comment in the article 'Panopticism in Nights at the Circus': "[it] is a novel about the way in which these dominant, frequent1y male centered discourses of power marginalize those whom society defines as freaks (madmen, clowns, the physically and mentally deformed, and, in particular, women) so that they may be contained and controlled because they are all possible sources of the chaotic disruption of established power." Italics added (Gass, 1994: 71). 227 MARIA SOFIA PIMENTEL BISCAIA materialising, thus, of conceiving, decaying and expiring. From this quotation it is also made c1ear that transmutation is the typical grotesque image. Ambivalent, metamorphosed, in-between creatures are necessarily beings of grotesque signification whichlwho Bakhtin posits present newness to the world and interrogate humanness itself. According to Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais was extremely influenced by "lndian Wonders", a colIection oftales that dated back to the fifth century before Christ and that in the Middle Ages incorporated traveI stories. The wonders (a term which has been used in the past in relation to freaks) were generalIy human figures, extraordinary in their "wild anatomical fantasy" (Bakhtin, 1984: 345) revealed in the human and animal physical traits (see Rabelais and his World, 344-347). Apropos of the philosopher Pico delIa Mirandola, Bakhtin picks up the topic of animal humanness. The Renaissance thinker believed in human superiority over alI other forms of existence because they, contrary to animaIs for instance, are always becoming: "man receives at his birth the seeds of every form of life. He may choose the seed that will develop and bear fruit. He grows it and forms it in himself. Man can become a plant or an animal, but he can also become an angel and a son of God" (Bakhtin, 1984: 364). Bakhtin's comments on Mirandola c1early show the c10seness of the postulations of the two scholars: Sueh eoneepts as beeoming, the existenee of many seeds and of many possibilities, the freedom of ehoiee, Ieads man toward the horizontal line of time and of historie beeoming. Let us stress that the body of man reunites in itseIf all the eIements and kingdoms of nature, both the pIants and the animaIs. Man, properly speaking, is not something eompIeted and finished, but open, uneompIeted. (Bakhtin, 1984: 364) KelIy Hurley, referring to Dr Moreau's constructed abhumans (for in this case I believe we can talk about humanised animal cyborgs), argues that, through them, "[t]he human body, [ ... ] reveals its morphic compatibility with, and thus lack of distinction from, the whole world of animal life, inc1uding those species occupying different lines of descent" (Hurley, 1996: 103). The image and symbol of the bird launches the debate and I begin with Fevvers, the wonder woman who materialises "feminist existentialism" . 228 FREAKS AND ANGELS: WINGED PLEASURES lN ANGELA CARTER, SALMAN RUSHDIE AND GABRIEL GARCÍA MÁRQUEZ Feathered out for some special fate: aliform grotesqueness in the service of human existentialism Queen of ambiguities, goddess of in-between states, being on the borderline of species, manifestation of Arioriph, Venus, Achamatoth, Sophia. Nights at the Circus, 81 Angela Carter's 1984 novel sets off in a London dressing room where l'Ange Anglaise removes her make-up whilst drinking champagne. She sits before a mirror and rejoices over her ambiguous nature: "[one] lash off, one lash on, Fevvers leaned back a little to scan the asymmetric splendour reflected in her mirror" (Carter, 1984: 8). The theme of observation is introduced and soon the reader learns that Fevvers is not the only one "scanning" her body. The winged giantess is also watched by Jack Walser whom she avoids addressing directly. Through the mirror, she puts the focus on the image as a determining element in her definition. As much as her own gaze, Walser and the audience's observation contribute to the aerialist's self-assertion. Walser has travelled from America and now interviews Fevvers to inc1ude her testimony in his series "Great Humbugs of the World". The slogan promoted by the trapeze acrobat, "Is she fact or is she fiction", controls the reporter's view ofher (Carter, 1984: 7)3; his interest is not in her acrobatic ability but rather in her labelling within the parameters of reality, i.e., her objectification as freak or fraudo As often happens with women, Fevvers cannot escape categorisation nor being the repository of men's sexual urges and in this context her virginity becomes an issue of primary importance. To Joanne M. Gass, it is a part of a systematic dehumanisation by patriarchal culture: She is defined by her body, by her outward appearance, just as the freaks and clowns are. As a freak, she has economic value; as a commodity, she is bought and sold by those who collect unique and exotic objects; she has no intrinsic value as a human being. (Gass, 1994: 73) And the essayist continues to quote Lizzie, a prostitute: 3 To this resolution offact and fiction, Carter denominates "magic realism". The author writes ofthe bear-worshippers who take Walser in: "there existed no difference between fact and fiction; instead a sort ofmagic realism" (Carter, 1984: 260). 229 MARIA SOFIA PIMENTEL BISCAIA the bak:er can't mak:e a loaf out of your privates, duckie, and that's all you'd have to offer him in exchange for a crust if nature hadn't made you the kind of spectac1e people pay good money to see. All you can do to earn your living is to mak:e a show ofyourself. You're doomed to that. You must give pleasure to the eye, or else you're good for nothing. For you, it's always a symbol exchange in the marketplace; you couldn 't say you were engaged in productive labour, now, could you, girl? (Carter, 1984: 185) Lizzie seems to be aware of the situation theorised in Mary Russo's discourse ofwoman making a spectac1e out ofherself. Due to the liminal socio-location of the female body and psyche, women dwelI at the centre of the marketplace at alI times, creating the figure of"the female transgressor as public spectac1e" (Russo, 1986: 217). ln Russo's view, the grotesque can be perilous to the construction of positive femininity. ln accordance with the above passage, Linda Ruth Williams argues that Fevvers decides to put "herself on show in order to mask her monstrosity" (Williams, 1995: 94): ln order to be one's commodity but her own, the winged woman must not opt to conceal her deformity. Rather she must mak:e a show of it, demonstrating it as an undecidable thing, mak:ing a spectac1e of herself as neither monster nor trickster but as something which mightjust be either. (Williams, 1995: 95) Fevvers situation, though, is somehow different from that of other women since she is doubly confmed to the centre of the marketplace due to her gender, on the one hand, and to her unnatural feathered members on the other. But the fact is that she stands for alI women, as Eve's daughter, as the child of a new age about to begin (the twentieth century), and because her fight is symbolicalIy every woman's; hence, being "feathered out for some special fate" is translated into a gendered and historical issue (Carter, 1984: 39). Her determination arises from the belief that if she has wings then she must fly (Carter, 1984: 27). Though she wishes alI the women of the New Age to possess wings like her (Carter, 1984: 285), Lizzie, as she often does, brings her to reality. Fevvers cannot let herselfbe caught in the illusion ofutopian dreams. For that reason, Sarah Gamble is persuasive when she dismisses Hélene Cixous 's formulations in "The Laugh of the Medusa": 230