Tese de doutoramento, Estudos de Literatura e de Cultura (Estudos Ingleses), Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras, 2013

/pdf/dealing-with-appetites-angela-carter-s-fiction-1vq6u4wjct.pdf

Dealing with appetites: Angela Carter’s fiction

This thesis investigates the relationship between gender and the visual in texts by Virginia Woolf and Angela Carter. Drawing on visual studies, gender studies and film theory, I argue that my selected texts present the gendered visual field as dynamic and layered, foregrounding both a masculine economy of vision and the possibility of alternative forms of gendered subjectivity and ways of looking.

The Introduction discusses the key methodological frameworks used in this thesis, including Jonathan Crary’s account of the historical construction of vision, the debates around gender, mobility and visuality centred on the figure of the flâneur, and Laura Mulvey’s account of the cinematic male gaze. I argue for the importance of recognising that the field of vision is a site of contestation composed of an interplay of connected gendered looks. Chapter One focuses on the unresolved tensions between different gendered looks in Mrs Dalloway (1925) which take place across a number of spaces and are mediated by a variety of visual frames. Chapter Two turns to Orlando (1928) to explore Woolf’s playful subversion of a masculine visual economy through a protagonist who changes sex and dress. In addition to this vacillation of appearance, I argue that the text’s representations of London in the 1920s, in particular the department store and motor-car, contribute to a proliferation of gendered looks. In turning to The Passion of New Eve (1979), Chapter Three shows how Carter foregrounds the violence involved in the performance of gender, particularly as mediated through the cinema, and further subverts masculine vision by representing gender as a masquerade. The fourth chapter focuses on The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman (1972) and argues that, despite its intended revolutionary purpose, Hoffman’s optical invention fails to transform the gendered visual field and instead reinscribes the patriarchal conventions of gender and looking that it has the potential to subvert.

Ultimately, this thesis suggests that the works examined foreground the gendered visual field as a site of contested forms of gendered subjectivity and ways of looking. The texts map out an unresolvable tension between the masculine, hegemonic conventions which exert a powerful influence in everyday life and the possibility of going beyond them.

The politics of gender and the visual in Virginia Woolf and Angela Carter

Essa dissertacao examina a ficcao de Angela Carter,The Magic Toyshop ,Nights at the Circus e outras obras selecionadas, para iluminar a relacao entre feminismo e pos-modernismo em sua obra. Comparou-se ficcoes escritas por Carter a fim de analisar a evolucao de sua abordagem a teoria feminista. Argumenta-se que ha um progressivo enriquecimento das discussoes de Carter acerca de feminismo e genero, bem como uma gradual transicao estetica e teorica em direcao ao pos-modernismo. A analise de questoes de identidade baseou-se centralmente no trabalho de Susan Stanford Friedman, que retrata identidades como sendo continuamente construidas, profundamente marcadas por elementos temporais e espaciais, e moldadas por uma serie de constituintes alem de genero. Em vista do crescente numero de leituras criticas de Carter que recorrem a teoria de performatividade de genero de Judith Butler, buscou-se investigar nao apenas as correspondencias entre Carter e Butler, mas tambem suas divergencias. Defende-se que as concepcoes de genero de Carter e Butler diferem quanto a enfase da primeira no corpo sexuado como elemento importante para o feminismo, o que e notavel em Nights at the Circus . Nesse sentido, Carter e mais adequadamente associada a teoricos de genero que, ao contrario de Butler, fazem uma reflexao sobre o essencialismo estrategico de genero como resposta aos avancos da relativizacao pos-modernista.Quantoaodesejo,utiliza-seumafundamentacaoLacanianaque revela o desejo em The Magic Toyshop como cultural, e nao organicamente, vivenciado, e argumenta-se que Nights at the Circus questiona a heterossexualidade compulsoria e reflete acerca da possibilidade de relacoes heterossexuais mais igualitarias

/pdf/postmodern-politics-feminism-identity-and-gender-in-angela-1ifkrbjr5s.pdf

David Punter

Papers

Angela Carter: Supersessions of the Masculine