The Passion of New Eve
Novel by Angela Carter.
In The Passion of New Eve Carter’s treatment of transgression clarifies into an exploration of gender: transgression becomes transsexual.
The plot follows Evelyn, an arrogant young Englishman, on his travels through an ugly, dystopian America where gang warefare is rife and militant feminist terrorists leave their symbol (the female sign with teeth in the circle, a vagina dentata) all over the cities. Evelyn meets the beautiful black stripper and hash addict Leilah, whom he abandons after she has to have an abortion. Heading out into the desert, Evelyn is captured by a group of feminists who forcibly give him a sex change: Evelyn becomes Eve and goes beyond his all-male boundaries into her new-found sexual America. As a woman (and a reluctant woman at that, one who still has ‘a cock in [her] head’) , Eve is forced into the same world in a different body, discovering the limits men impose on women (the animalistic parody, Zero, who rapes her) and transgressing them when she has sex with the drag queen extraordinaire, Tristessa.
Themes/Literary Devices
- Magic realism: Carter knows her sf, and is more than comfortable borrowing aspects of the genre, but her key mode of writing is magic realist at heart. Magic realist texts, unlike sf ones, do not explain the supernatural (through science, etc). Likewise, sf often has a fantastical, furturistic framework (another planet, 1000 years into the future, etc), while magic realism works from a realistic background. Carter mingles the two genres almost equally here: science explains how Evelyn's sex change is possible, but does not explain Eve's mystic experiences with Tristessa, nor does it account for Leilah's transformation into Lilith.
- Transgression: The novel centres around a series of transgressions in behaviour, sex, and gender.
- Archetypes: with typical energy, Carter attacks both misogynistic and feminist archetypes, creating an independent feminist voice for herself.
Editions
- 1977: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, New York
- 1982: Virago Press, London