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  • Essay / Angela Carter's Good Children - 2737

    Angela Carter's attitude toward her work has always been rooted in intrinsic feminism. Carter's feminist attitude in her novel Wise Children gave the reader a much more realistic and intuitive approach to Shakespeare. Carter conveys the ideas of feminism through matriarchy and the power of femininity, or rather new family structures of acceptance of an absent father. In some ways, her work is an invitation to criticism of Shakespeare's lack of matriarchal focus and sometimes absentmindedness, as well as realistic approaches to female characters. However, in other ways it is more of a eulogy to him, meticulously alluding to countless works of Shakespeare. Angela Carter uses Wise Children as an invitation to her own feminist critique and to pay homage by urging the reader to compare themselves to Shakespeare, to hold them in the same high esteem. Angela Carter's work could be described as radical, original, surreal, and has also incorporated elements into her novels that create a Shakespearean presence among them. Wise Children, manages to merge allusions and images to Shakespeare's plays, almost like a tribute to the writer. Perhaps the most complete allusion is the book itself, structured into five chapters, an allusion to Shakespeare's five-act plays, accompanied by a Dramatis Personae at the end of his novel. Almost like the beginning of a CS Lewis novel, Angela Carter, born Angela Olive Stalker, was evacuated as a child to Yorkshire to live with her grandmother due to the outbreak of the Second World War. Her grandmother was described as a feminist and working-class “northern grandmother.” His grandmother would...... middle of paper...... froze. Good children. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1991. N. pag. Print. Gruss, Susanne. The pleasure of the feminist text: reading Michele Roberts and Angela Carter. Np: Rodopi, 2009. 121-26. Print.Bayley, John. Contemporary literary criticism. Flight. 76. Np: Gale, 1992. 322-31. Internet. December 17, 2013. OED online. December 2013. Oxford University Press. December 17, 2013Shakespeare, William. Twelfth Night, or whatever you want. The finished Oxford Shakespeare. 2nd ed. United States: Oxford University Press, 2005. 3614-725. Internet. December 14, 2013. Shakespeare, William. The tragedy of Othello, the Moor of Venice. The finished Oxford Shakespeare. 2nd ed. United States: Oxford University Press, 2005. 4329-504. Internet. December 14, 2013. Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. The finished Oxford Shakespeare. 2nd ed. United States: Oxford University Press, 2005. 6024-135. Internet. December 14. 2013.