Receding behind the Veil: Angela Carter and the Disguise of Femininity
Receding behind the Veil: Angela Carter and the Disguise of Femininity

Summary/Abstract: An emphasis on femininity and its construction is central to Angela Carter’s work, emerging from her desire to unveil “the nature of my reality as a woman, how that social fiction of my femininity was created, by means outside my control, and palmed off on me as the real thing” (Carter, 1983:71). Among feminists it has long been established that “femininity” is a cultural construct: one is not born but rather becomes a woman, as de Beauvoir argues. Seen from this perspective, patriarchal oppression consists in imposing certain standards of femininity on all biological women, and making us believe that the chosen standards are natural. Patriarchy, in other words, implies that there is an essence of femaleness, called femininity, and that such an essence is biologically given. Femininity is then closely linked to the castrated female body, an image which provides a powerful physical correlative to the cultural assumption of women’s inferiority.

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