'Nights at The Circus' by Angela Carter

Is Sophie Fevvers, toast of Europe's capitals, part swan...or all fake?

Courted by the Prince of Wales and painted by Toulouse-Lautrec, she is an aerialiste extraordinaire and star of Colonel Kearney's circus. She is also part woman, part swan. Jack Walser, an American journalist, is on a quest to discover the truth behind her identity. Dazzled by his love for her, and desperate for the scoop of a lifetime, Walser has no choice but to join the circus on its magical tour through turn-of-the-nineteenth-century London, St Petersburg and Siberia.



I was first introduced to Angela Carter in sixth form by an amazing English teacher who set us to read The Bloody Chamber (1979). I adored Carter's brash and garrulous style, her frequent reference to fairy tales, the use of ambiguity, and, of course, the gratuitous sex-and-death (hey, I was a teenager!). In fact, I loved The Bloody Chamber so much that I was a bit apprehensive about reading a full novel by Carter as opposed to a collection of short stories.

I needn't have worried. Nights at The Circus (winner of the 1984 James Tait Black Memorial prize for fiction and the 2012 Best of James Tait Black prize) is a riotous, rollicking adventure, blending magic with realism, myth with macabre, sensuality with Siberia, and order with chaos. Carter draws the reader into this tale of the "Cockney Venus" with the same brash allure that a ringmaster invites his audience into a circus. Roll up! Roll up!

Sophie Fevvers has wings. Or at least she says that she has. Straight from page one, the reader is invited to question whether Fevvers is what she claims to be, "hatched out of a bloody great egg while Bow Bells rang". Fevvers is raunchy and raucous; there seems to be no subtlety to her character at all, until you come to the matter of her wings, which remain hidden "under the soiled quilting of her baby-blue satin dressing-gown" for the entirety of her London interview with Californian reporter Jack Walser. Fevvers swears, gorges, flirts, and (possibly) lies outrageously throughout the night's proceedings. We are firmly in 19th century London, simultaneously glorious and filthy, as well as the world of the circus, where the bright colours can do nothing to hide the stink of animal manure and sawdust. Walser, supposedly the disbelieving voice of reason and facts (and perhaps representative of the reader of Carter's work), is revealed by the narrative voice to have "long ago, stowed away on a steamer bound from 'Frisco to Shanghai". So, these seeming polar opposites - fact and fiction - share a sense of adventure. Furthermore, "there remained something a little unfinished about" Walser. His journalistic scepticism leaves him without an interior imagination to retreat to. He is pliable, easy to shape; he could be anything, just like Fevvers who refuses to be categorised. She is neither female nor fowl; she is both. Thus, Carter introduces the theme of blurring boundaries. Nothing is what it seems. See all and believe nothing.

The adventure rollicks on, as we learn of Fevvers' unusual upbringing in a bordello inhabited by educated prostitutes, where she is displayed first as a living Cupid and then as a winged Victory. Thus, Carter addresses the theme of perception of women. In the brothel, Fevvers is only shown to men as an object, despite receiving a full-rounded education in women's rights as well as history, art, politics, geography, mathematics, music, theatre, etc. In the circus, Fevvers demands to be looked at; the audience love her. Yet, under the facade and bravura of exaggerated femininity, I believe Fevvers is hiding her true self in order to ensure her survival in a patriarchal world. Look, but don't touch - not only because the illusion will be spoiled, but also to evade imprisonment. As the proclaimed only one of her kind, Fevvers is in high demand. Because of her status as an unusual phenomenon, and because she is a woman, there are many who would exploit her. Carter shows this idea through repeated images of capture and cages in the novel, from Madame Schreck's house of horrors/brothel to Christian Rosencreutz's Gothic mansion dedicated purely to masculine power, and from which Fevvers narrowly escapes sacrifice through her cleverness, her sword, and her wings. You would have thought she'd learnt her lesson, but Fevvers has to evade capture again in St Petersburg from the sinister Grand Duke. When you're the only fully-feathered aerialiste in the world, you have to be money-oriented.

His house was the realm of minerals, of metals, of vitrification - of gold, marble and crystal; pale halls and endless mirrors and glittering chandeliers that clanged like wind-bells in the draught from the front door...and a sense of frigidity, of sterility, almost palpable, almost tangible in the hard, chill surfaces and empty spaces.

One cannot help feeling a cold shudder of apprehension at this description. This marble palace is no place for flesh-and-blood larger-than-life Fevvers. It is clear that the Grand Duke wishes to freeze her in this museum of "some remote and freezing elsewhere" as "a cold masterpiece". He explicitly makes clear what he wants to do to her: "You must know I am a great collector of all kinds of objets d'art and marvels. Of all things, I love best toys - marvellous and unnatural artefacts". If Fevvers stayed in this frozen curiosity collection, she should be diminished in importance and lose all sense of identity to become "only a bird in a gilded cage". Her escape is one firmly embedded in the world of magic realism, and was exceedingly puzzling to me, seeing as one minute she was examining a gallery of Faberge eggs and the next she had boarded the Trans-Siberian Express. This narrative technique of Carter's is clever because it quickly retrieves the reader, as well as Fevvers, from the dreamlike episode of the Grand Duke's mansion.

However, this story is not only about Fevvers and Walser, fascinating as they both are. We also meet Lizzie, the suffragist-protectress of Fevvers, who may or may not have occult powers. The Princess of Abyssinia, a mute-through-trauma lion tamer with Colonel Kearney's circus. Mignon, the maltreated musical prodigy who finds solace from being cheated and abused by men through falling in love with the Princess. Colonel Kearney, the profligate, profit-hunting circus owner, and his oracular pig Sybil. The Professor and his coterie of intelligent apes, who represent civilised animals in the chaotic and violent circus world. Countess P, who soothes her guilty conscience of murdering her husband through imprisoning other murderesses in a panopticon in the wastes of Siberia. Olga Alexandrovna, a prisoner of the Countess's panopticon who escapes and rescues an abandoned Walser. Each character has their own story explained in episodic structure, as though Carter is replicating the structure of a circus performance in the structure of her novel. Once we get to the end, we come away feeling happy, but also as though we have somehow missed the trick, with Fevvers' cackling, "To think I really fooled you!"

There are many themes of this novel which would be great fun to analyse: time, magic realism, postfeminism, postmodernism, appearance vs reality, class and wealth, order vs chaos, individualism, and feminism. Many of the women are abused, but find their own salvation and peace by the end of the book. Furthermore, the women step outside conventional gender roles to prove that they are just as capable of performing extraordinary feats as men are. Fevvers' wings could be a symbol of female liberation from a patriarchal society into a new century of progress and feminist freedom. Fevvers, Mignon, and Olga all flee oppression for empowering existence outside social norms. Samson the Strong Man learns the error of his toxic masculinity. Walser, after losing his way, is able to fashion his identity.

However, I don't want to spoil this book for you. I would much rather you curl up under a blanket with a hot cup of tea and lose yourself in this wonderful, playful, messy and multifaceted work. It is brilliant to read in December, with its lush descriptions and enchanting narrative. Go on, have a read.