English Literature

Angela Carters The Wise Children and Carol Ann Duffys The Worlds Wife present two quite distinctive views of feminine agency which become quite apparent when the two works are compared.  Duffy, for instance, seems to be arguing for pure equality between the sexes, as she recasts classic works with masculine protagonists replaced with female ones.  Her choice of works, however, is what illustrates equality rather than superiority.  For every poem such as Anne Hathaway that reinvents someone who is often thought of as a footnote to her great husband as a powerful, sexually aggressive and self-actualized woman, there are poems such as Mrs. Faustus which illustrate that folly and heartlessness are not the sole domain of men and men alone.  These poems show both the scope and the limit of Duffys experimentin placing women in the forefront of what would be considered masculine worlds and patriarchy-defined realms (such as the literary canon), Duffy is offering a feminine counterpoint to these distinct male perspectives, a trend that would later be followed by authors such as Sena Naslund, author of Ahabs Wife.  However, as a whole, a collection of poetry is necessarily limited to snapshot viewsa reimagining here, a retelling thereand then the author moves on to another topic.  In the examination of feminine agency over a period of a long, full life, The Wise Children certainly exceeds all expectations.

In choosing a narrator who is seventy-five years old, Carter is making a deliberate choice regarding the feminist lens that her characters must be viewed through.  Increasingly in popular culture, tales that are considered feminist (such as Mean Girls) center on a young girl who must overcome various external and mental obstacles to ultimately establish her own separate identity.  While there is nothing wrong with this message on the surface, it is dangerous to think feminism must always be heteronormative, not sexually transgressive, and centered on a young person.  Such a view produces female bildungsromans that are not as divorced from the dominant-male fairytales of old as the viewers would like to imagine.  In presenting a protagonist close to the end of her life, Carter examines how feminine agency (and the lack thereof) can affect a persons life over a period of decades.  She also links sex to politics, which allows readers to reframe notions of what sexual transgression means outside of normative values judgments.  The sexual politics are linked to the snapshots of Doras life that viewers are offeredunlike Duffys work, however, the consistent narrator is forced to contextualize these moments from her life and determine whether the patchwork of her life is really a quilt or not.

Key to this context is Doras consistent humor.  It is her presentation that ensures that the various atrocities elaborated on throughout the book are part of an amusing absurdist theatre, as opposed to vignettes of poverty and misery.  Duffy, in situating her work with a variety of historical and literary contexts, is simply not as funnyunless one is a sadist, it is difficult to find humor in Havisham.  Even poems which seem meant to be humorous, such as Elviss Twin Sister, rely upon the amusement value of word choice (such as yall) and absurd comparison (that rock star Elvis would have a twin sister in a convent).  However, the humor is mere decoration on the road to macabre realizationthat one must often choose, as Elvis did, a path of righteous blandness, or a rollicking ride to hell.  Despite the humor, readers arrive back at the question posed by Paradise Lost is it better to be a slave in heaven or a ruler in hell  The idea that entire lives (and perhaps entire afterlives) can be determined by such a stark dichotomy is sobering indeed, cancelling out the humor of the presentation.  In contrast, Carters Dora starts in a place of misery and pain.  The humor comes off as more authentic because it is a survival mechanism for both narrator and readerwithout a sense of humor (albeit a morbid one), Dora likely would not be able to make sense of the pain and horror of her life.  And without the humor of the presentation, readers would not be able to make it through the pages.

Despite the differences, there are times when Carter and Duffys works certainly seem to be on the same page.  Poems like Havisham explore the gap between the sign and the signifier, as a character that readers previously see as mostly unsympathetic is shown in abject misery, in an attempt to elicit pity from readers.  Carter, too, explores this gap between object and meaning in The Wise Children by situating the narrative in the realm of the theatre, where every action seems to have layers of meaning.  Dora, for instance, is focused on performing legitimacy her entire life, despite the illegitimacy of her birth.  Legitimacy, then, must be something that is personally determined, rather than some arbitrarily determined by others.  Of course, depending on how cynical one wanted to be, it can certainly be argued that the characters in Duffys work are performing legitimacy by their very presence, consciously chosen by the author to provide a feminine counterpoint to traditional male narratives.  This presents an interesting dilemma for modern feminist readers, as the agency exhibited by the characters is largely limited by the perceived legitimacy of those masculine counterparts.  If, for instance, one felt empathy with Dickens Pip as a character that is tormented by unrequited love, then Havisham becomes a sympathetic feminine counterpart, as well as an important feminist argument regarding how much more difficult society can make it for women jilted by men, rather than vice versa.  However, the more militant viewthat Great Expectations fostered the necessity of patriarchy in economy, society, and love as integral to the happiness of both men and womenthen Havisham could even be viewed as a triumphant work, with a character realizing the folly of making herself vulnerable to a man and taking active measures to ensure that she will never be at the mercy of a man again.

Both The Wise Children and The Worlds Wife offer ironic titles which give a hint as to the message each contains.  The Wise Children literally refers to Dora and Nora, who (particularly Dora) acquire wisdom through examinations of their lives and reconciliation with their father.  It also playfully tweaks the patriarchal idea of women as helpless children who are shaped by men.  Through Dora, we see a character that despite facing every hardship (poverty, lack of education, possible incest) emerges as an authentic voice, telling a story that is distinctly hers.  The Worlds Wife, too, has a playful title.  It is evocative of the wives of the world, which jives with the various stories that present the female perspective of a famous male.  However, it also broaches the topic of women as somehow belonging to the world, in the sense that they cannot have a separate identity.  History will never know Anne Hathaway in and of herself she will always be known as Shakespeares wife.  In telling these stories, Duffy challenges us to find the individual woman that has been historically hidden behind these famous men.

Both of these authors challenges notions of what it means to be a woman in what remains, unfortunately, a mans world.  Readers can certainly hope for a happy ending, as in the inexplicably amicable resolution of Wise Children.  However, Carter seems to be challenging, ironically, the legitimacy of this viewrather, she offers the idea that women waiting their entire lives for a fairytale ending are effectively wasting their lives.  Feminine agency, as elaborated on above, should not solely be the domain of the young.  However, on a very basic level, one does not want to be Dorato be seventy-five years old and still waiting for life to truly start.  Thats the problem with waiting on fairytalesone can be waiting a long time.  For Duffy, the challenges is to step out of the mans shadow, whether its the shadow of a memory (as in Havisham) or the shadow of fame (as in Elviss Twin Sister), one must step into the light, and not simply be an afterthought to a masculine voice.  Only then can a woman be who she wants to be, rather than who everyone else wishes them to be.