Gender Vertigo: Queer Gothic and Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus

Abstract

Angela Carter’s penultimate novel, Nights at the Circus, published in 1984, is commonly regarded as representing a change in both style and approach on the part of its author, replacing the dark, violent and pornographic narratives with which she had become identified with something more optimistic, airy, humorous and — ultimately — kinder. It is a view summarised by Merja Makinen who, in an essay published in 1992, sets up a contrast between the ‘disquietingly savage analysis of patriarchy of the 1960s and 1970s, such as The Magic Toyshop, Heroes and Villains, Passion of New Eve; and the exuberant novels of the 1980s and early 1990s, Nights at the Circus and Wise Children (Makinen 3).