Conclusion

My engagement with Carter’s penultimate novel, Nights at the Circus, started out with a strong sense of the text’s suggestiveness in relation to its own reading. I was intrigued by the novel’s close and self-conscious interaction with post-modern critical theory, in effect forming an invitation to be read within a certain framework of ideas. This impression was strengthened by a study of the critical response the novel has generated. Judging from the relative homogeneity of its reception, Carter’s text appeared to “mean” only in a closed universe. Consequently there appeared to be a tension between the novel’s intertextuality as a means to guide the reader’s response on the one hand, and intertextuality as serving to open up the borders of Carter’s text on the other. Also the established reading of Carter’s allegory as empowering the reader seemed to form a contrast to this kind of closure.

On the one hand, the novel’s overt intertextuality demonstrates the text’s dependency on other texts to achieve its identity, giving the intertextually constituted reader an important role in the production of meaning. Still, this role, in relation to such a self-conscious text as Carter’s, is one with a tight script. According to Peter Rabinowitz, every text invites the reader to read it in “a particular socially constituted way” (22). It may seem that in the case of metafiction, this claim is particularly pertinent, as, in the words of Linda Hutcheon, such fiction “constitutes its own first critical commentary, and in so doing (...) sets up the theoretical frame of reference in which it must be considered” (6). This limitation of the freedom of the reader is obscured, however, by the metafictional text’s invitation to the reader to work as co-creator of its imaginative world. My aim, then, has been to investigate the role of the reader/critic of such a text, which, according to Carter herself, may bee seen as constituting “a kind of literary criticism” (Haffenden: 79).

I have used the term metafiction about Carter’s text in an extended sense throughout this thesis, referring to the novel as a fiction that investigates social and literary fictions, as well as the relationship between reader and text. Part of the novel’s metafictionality, then, is the allegory of reading that it offers. It is from the basis of this I have addressed the issue of the power of the reader. Although the reader in the allegory is initially pacified, as Fevvers takes control of her narrative, he is later seemingly given an important role in rescuing her from disintegration. The established reading of Fevvers’ relationship to Walser focuses on this latter observation, preaching, in true post-modern spirit, the interdependency of reader and text, and the reader’s freedom in this dialectic. This freedom, however, as I have attempted to show, is illusory.

“London” apparently favours the voice and point of view of Walser, the reader in the allegory, by representing events as filtered through his mind. Read in light of the novel’s ending, though, its first section may be established as originally being Walser’s embedded narrative. He is, however, deprived of narratorial status, as the first narrator’s metalepsis incorporates the narrative into its own discourse. Similarly, the novel’s second section, “Petersburg”, also presents Walser in possession of an illusory freedom. In my second chapter I investigated the metaphors of play and the mask to elucidate the mechanisms of the reading process. In “Petersburg” Walser joins the circus and takes on the role of a clown in order to be able to finish his reading of Fevvers. His stepping into the new and unknown in these terms was read as analogous to the reader of a text having to take on a different role during the process of reading. Behind the mask Walser envisages his own freedom and creativity, his “chance to juggle with being” (103). As he loses himself behind the disguise, however, and becomes nothing but a “real clown” (145), such play is inhibited.

In “London”, as mentioned, Fevvers was seen to pacify Walser by taking control of her own narrative, seemingly being independent on his questions and response to continue her story. In “Siberia”, however, she falls apart in his absence. Their separation is not only physical; Walser has also lost his place in language and is at this stage consequently incapable of aesthetic experience. The dynamic lingering between the reader’s belief and disbelief, which is seen to constitute the aesthetic experience, thus the representation of the text, is inhibited in this section. Consequently Fevvers starts to fall apart, and she does not regain her former splendour until reunited with Walser in the end. On the surface, then, Fevvers is vitally dependent on the imagination of her reader in order to exist. This latter aspect of Fevvers and Walser’s relationship is, as mentioned, usually foregrounded in criticism. But although Fevvers does indeed turn to Walser, seemingly inviting a dynamic interaction, this is merely, I have argued, in order for him to reflect her self-constructed image. Walser may thus be likened to Gadamer’s player, whose activity is guided by and directed towards the self-representation of play. In the allegory, the reader is played out in order to secure the self-representation of the text. Like a game plays its players, using them for the sake of self-representation, a text may be seen to write its reader.

My last chapter considered the relationship between Walser and Fevvers as one of love, reading it in the light of Roland Barthes’ simulation of the lover’s discourse. From this perspective as well, Fevvers was seen to reverse traditional patterns of power to her own advantage. As it appears, her turning to the loved object, Walser, is in the end only narcissism in disguise, a consequence of her need for him to reflect her self. As such Fevvers’ relationship to Walser is seen to mirror that of the self-conscious text to its reader. While the reader is invited by the text to act as a co-producer of its universe, she is only given status as a mirror of the image the text has constructed for itself. Fevvers does need her reader, but she experiences as a threat the readers who believe her to exist only as a product of their own imagination:

This passage modifies the extent to which Fevvers needs the creative ability of others in order to exist, emphasising how she is nobody else’s invention. In the end, the power Fevvers’ reader has to shape her identity seems to be weaker than the one she has in shaping his, as she firmly controls her audience’s response. As Carter herself puts it,[42] “[e]veryone changes throughout the novel (...) except for Fevvers who doesn’t so much change as expand” (Haffenden: 88).

My aim has been to show that the freedom of the reader in the allegory - his power in the creation of the text - is much more limited than is generally recognised. I still retain, however, the assertion that a text’s dynamic interrelation with its reader is demanded for the former to exist. While other readings of the allegory emphasise the reader’s vital and creative role in this process,[43] I have argued that this dynamic movement is directed by the text’s self-consciousness, only on the surface freeing the reader. The reader’s role is important as a reflector rather than as a narrator.

The limitation of the reader’s productivity is, on the allegorical level, obscured by Fevvers’ apparent turning to Walser in the end. This tendency is mirrored in the narrator’s apparent favouring of Walser’s perspective by presenting him as a reflector-character in “London”, while in the end depriving him of his status as narrator. Furthermore one may also relate this to how Carter’s novel itself works on its reader. Being a text that constantly draws attention to its own fictionality, thus making the reader aware of her role as a co-creator of its imaginative world, the novel’s self-consciousness paradoxically also serves to direct the reader to a position from which to perform her reading. As in the case of Fevvers, whose extra attributes, her wings, are what draw attention and thus guide the audience’s response, it may seem that the self-conscious attributes of Carter’s novel, rather than its “gaps”, direct its reading. In the last instance it is what the text does say about its own interpretation, rather than what is left unsaid, which govern the reader’s response.

As argued, Carter’s novel is almost invariably read according to strategies that emphasise typical postmodernist themes, such as openness, fragmentation, the freedom of the reader, polyphony etc. This, paradoxically, has turned into a conventionalised approach to Carter’s fiction (and perhaps to self-conscious post-modern fiction in general), and seems to blind critics to the fact that their own freedom in reading is consequently restricted. Similar to Walser’s relation to Fevvers at the allegorical level, the restricted freedom and power of Carter’s own reader is masked as its opposite. This masking is achieved mainly through the novel’s metafictionality, which self-consciously inscribes the text into the context of a typical post-modernist aesthetics/poetics and guides the reader’s response in this direction. Obviously the existing corpus of criticism, as well as Carter’s own comments on her fiction is part of this inscription, constraining the reader’s response to the novel, while disguising it as her complete and unrestricted freedom. Slightly modifying Iser’s claim, one may contend that the reading of self-conscious, post-modern texts such as Carter’s, involves thinking the thoughts of someone else – believing them to be one’s own.

As discussed, the discrepancy between the novel’s allegory of reading and the way in which the novel itself works upon its reader proved to be illusory. Carter’s novel, as well as its allegory falsely give an impression of a free and empowered reader. The question of whether one should thus read the allegory as deconstructing the project of the novel, or regard it as yet another twist in Carter’s post-modernist play, is pertinent. However, it is the reading strategy which the novel invites, rather than the allegory itself which demands that this question be raised. Viewing Carter’s allegory as a self-conscious and demythologising imitation of the way we are brainwashed by reading strategies, appears to be a too delicately constructed interpretation. Yet, the possibility of such sliding of meaning is suggested by Carter’s text through the interpretive approach it encourages, and may therefore not be excluded by the reader who has agreed to read the text according to this. The necessity of the above question itself consequently suggests a reader caged in the reading strategies summoned by the text, paradoxically being strategies that embrace openness.

Trough its metafictionality Nights at the Circus inscribes itself, as well as its reader into a post-modern ideology of instability and ambiguity. Although I regard my reading of Carter’s allegory to be performed as a member of its authorial audience, the question of whether or not it corresponds to authorial intention will remain unsettled. Carter may claim that she wishes her reader to construct a new text for herself when reading her fiction, but obviously, not any reading would do for her stated aim of demythologising to take effect. The story of the reader’s illusory freedom is my construction of a new text through a reading of Carter’s, thus the latter may hardly be self-conscious at this level. Because I read within the particular conventions the novel encourages, however, it is required of me that I contemplate the possibility of the masked disempowering of the reader in Carter’s text as being part of her subversive project. Thus, whether one takes Carter’s novel to be an unintended self-revelation of post-modern literary strategies or not, her text may be characterised as obscuring, rather than revealing the real conditions of reading in its emphasis on openness. The possibility that Carter’s allegory is a self-conscious commentary upon the illusory openness of institutionalised ambiguity, has to be contemplated by the reader who has agreed to decode the text in accordance with the strategies it calls for. Hence the reader is either way trapped in, rather than freed by the openness the novel suggests. The instability of Carter’s allegory addressed by the question above, then, is primarily the interpretive product of a post-modern reading strategy demanded by the text itself, thus inseparable from it. By having the reader adopt a certain strategy of decoding which makes her incapable of taking anything at face value, the novel secures its own ambiguity, masking the institutionalisation of this as openness. The reader of Carter’s novel is consequently played out to secure the self-representation of the post-modern game of reading.