CW: suicidal ideation, forced transition, pregnancy, rape, and coercive relationship
I was today years old when I found out Angela Carter was a Sex Worker. Before the term had been invented, she was a hostess in Japan. I love Angela Carter. I have met few people who have read her transgressive work, let alone extensively. I know poets who love her novels and know nothing of her fantastic poetry collection Unicorn. Unicorn spoke to me so strongly as a young adult, she was taking the piss out of the cannon medieval poetry I was forced to endure in my first year at university. Carter wrote prolifically, and not just prose, she is well known for her magical realism. Her work has numerous TV and film adaptations, and I was recently recommended The Passion of New Eve by a fellow drag performance artist and I am incredibly thankful.
The Passion of New Eve is dystopian science fiction about trans reproduction and the heralding of a new messiah in the desert. First published in 1977, I hadn’t heard of it until this, the year of our late stage capitalism 2024, despite being a besotted fan. I had read The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman about a year ago and that was the last title of her’s I had read, it was reminiscent of the surreal masterpiece Locus Solus. I found myself joking in the bath that the only good white cis academic feminist is a dead one, that way they cannot betray us. Angela Carter’s feminist critique in The Sadeian Woman carries a torch of what 70’s feminism could have, should have been. The discussion of “flesh” in this essay has stuck with me, I finished it in a basement one bed Camden studio flat and I still remember how it felt in my body, I wept.
I found myself joking in the bath that the only good white cis academic feminist is a dead one, that way they cannot betray us.
I bring up Angela’s passing to also mention that there is a street in Brixton, London that is dedicated to Angela. It’s on the outskirts of the borough, nestled inside a council estate of small flats. Angela Carter Close is tucked behind these flats from which the tenants' respective refuse is collected. This is how the council chose to honour her. Was it in good humour? It’s extremely hard to know if they are, in fact, rubbishing her. In 1969, she used the proceeds of her Somerset Maugham Award to leave her husband and relocate for two years to Tokyo, where she claims in Nothing Sacred (1982), that she "learnt what it is to be a woman and became radicalised”. According to the introduction of Shaking A Leg, Carter's collection of essays published posthumously, this is where she began working as a Hostess and felt her ‘breasts were no longer her own.’ – from wikipedia.
Carter’s 1977 novel The Passion of New Eve, features protagonist Eve, who having recently undergone a reproductive transition – somewhat against her will at the hands of a cult leader - with whom she is experiencing a kind of Stockholm-Syndrome-slash-love-affair with. Eve is terrified of conception. Eve knows she will soon be inseminated and desires nothing more than to be left alone. She is possessed of a strong terror after transitioning, of becoming pregnant, to the point of suicidal ideation. “She was much more independent-minded than the traditional feminist of her time”, is how historian Maria Warner, describes Carter. The Passion of New Eve reminds me of much more modern work, like the early writing of Chuck Palahniuk. Both authors are not afraid to write from the perspective of trans women, of sex workers and spin tales that are thoroughly entertaining and equally bizarre. We are present in their narratives as whole people.
She began working as a Hostess and felt her ‘breasts were no longer her own.’
Sex workers feature heavily in this novel, Eve is seduced by a ‘naked dancer’ who entices Eve to follow her home through the dystopian wasteland of a New York City ravaged by late stage capitalism. There is also a group of women Eve briefly becomes ensconced with who ‘peddle’ their ‘asses’ for the profit of their shared husband, and have secret trysts with each other when they hope he isn't listening. ‘Fallen Women’ are at the helm of the story’s revolution. Lilith, a highly ranked resistance activist, says of her rouged nipple dance: “I called myself Leilah in the city in order to conceal the nature of my symbolism. If the temptress displays her nature, the seducee is put on his guard. Lilith if you remember, was Adam’s first wife, on whom he begot the entire race of the djini. All my wounds will magically heal. Rape only refreshes my virginity. I am ageless, I will outlive the rocks.”
Carter published in New Society 1977, “After all, isn’t capitalism the brothel in which we all have our cribs?” Despite the book's age, the story is a progressive, unflinching tale featuring many a trope that was not yet a trope at the time, perhaps even coining a few. The ‘Children’s Crusade’ in the later chapters feels like it could have been the nexus of Tyler Durden’s ‘Project Mayhem’. The apocalyptic scenes take place in what the English would call a ‘pleasure dome’ and what the American’s would simply call a ‘mall’. For such a slim novella length story this book is a heady and dense narrative of queer love, resistance, and I would highly recommend this wild post apocalyptic ride through the fictional downfall of American imperialism.
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