Towards a Critique of Gender Narratives: Angela Carter’s The Passion of New Eve

Abstract

The present article seeks to analyse and evaluate critically the gender-narrative relationship in the light of Angela Carter’s famous novel The Passion of New Eve (1977). Angela Carter has always believed in the change of mindset of social beings. Being visionary, prophetic and imaginative, Carter transports her readers from the unreal world of dreams and fables to the grim realities of life. The structure of ‘gender’ thrives on the power of ‘narrative’. If say more precisely, the former is performative aspect and the latter ideological. Both to get together set in the programme of exploitation. The narratives are the very breath of ‘gender’. In this sense, narrative is political. It naturalizes effectively the expected socio-cultural codes and roles stipulated for the each of ‘sex’- male and female. In the novel The Passion of New Eve, Carter breaks down the social constructs of ‘femininity’ and ‘masculinity’ by creating her own model of a woman, bisexual in nature resuscitating herself from the condemned position of a ‘sinful Eve’ or ‘ugly Eve’ to the angelic excellence of a liberated ‘New Eve’.