50 pages • 1 hour read
Angela CarterNights at the Circus
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Sophie Fevvers
Sophie “Fevvers” is the protagonist and narrator of the novel. The narrator is ambiguous during Parts 1 and 2 of the novel, situated as mostly third-person omniscient. In Part 3, this perspective becomes interspersed with first-person narration from Fevvers’s perspective. The narration still switches back to third-person narration on occasion, however, without break or warning. This indicates the perception she has of herself and reflects the ultimate theme of her character arc and the narrative as a whole: Her warring self-perception as either human or as an object and concept.
Throughout the novel, Fevvers is treated as an object for observation. Her first experience with this is posing as the Winged Victory Statue at Ma Nelson’s brothel in Part 1. Fevvers says of this experience that it was her “apprenticeship in being looked at—at being the object in the eye of the beholder (23), establishing Fevvers’s role as object. After Ma Nelson’s, Fevvers serves as again as an object in a tableau vivant at Madame Schreck’s; after that, she joins the circus and subjects herself to “being looked at” by the circus audience. However, at the circus lies the conflict in her character—to what degree Fevvers is a participant in her objectification. At Madame Schreck’s, Fevvers was exploited and stripped of agency, however, Fevvers has control over her presentation at the circus. She operates within the constraints of the audience’s perceptions to control how they see her. She crafts a public persona, the “Cockney Venus” and “Helen of the High Wire” to evoke their awe and admiration. She is aware of how others perceive her, and she actively manipulates their perceptions to get what she wants, as she tries to do with the Duke in Part 2, Chapter 11. Despite the constraint the perceptions of others have on Fevvers’s identity, Fevvers still participates in her objectification to achieve her own ends. Her character arc in the novel ultimately relies on her determining her own identity.
Fevvers’s character arc also exemplifies the theme of illusion belying truth. Juxtapositions and contrasts in her character act as a vehicle for this theme. In Part 1, Rosencreutz says that Fevvers is “Queen of ambiguities, goddess of in-between states” (81), referencing her part-human part-swan composition. However, this is also true for Fevvers’s presentation as a character. Fevvers appears lower-class and speaks with a Cockney accent, her voice “clanging like dustbin lids” (7). However, Fevvers is clearly quite intelligent; she alludes to highly intellectual works or theories, such as thinking to herself that “This is some kind of heretical possibly Manichean version of neo-Platonic Rosicrucianism” (77) when encountering Rosencreutz’s unhinged theories in Part 1, Chapter 5. Fevvers’s character arc in resolving the conflict of her identities also reinforces this theme.
The culmination of Fevvers’s character arc occurs with the climax of the narrative, complementing the thematic paradox of the other’s necessity in self-determination. Part 3 finds Fevvers without the tools of her illusion in the wasteland of Siberia. She cannot dye her hair or color her wings, the key symbols of her performance persona. The beauty that is part of her illusion fades away, leaving her more like her true self; Lizzie even tells her at the beginning of Part 3 that since Fevvers met Walser in St. Petersburg, Fevvers has been “acting more and more like yourself” (197), foreshadowing the deconstruction of Fevvers’s public persona into her true identity. The mention of Walser precipitating this revelation of Fevvers’s true self is reinforced by his role in the resolution of Fevvers’s character arc. Fevvers reunites with Walser at the climax of the novel in Part 3, Chapter 10, and when she sees herself through his eyes and the eyes of the tribespeople, she feels as though she’s remembered herself: “…the eyes fixed upon her with astonishment, with awe, the eyes that told her who she was” (290). Only when witnessing herself through another’s eyes does she determine her own identity. However, ultimately she chooses her public persona, her illusion, as part of her identity; she compares the eyes of the tribespeople to “stage-lights” (290), recalling her stage persona and indicating that remembrance of this is what helps her recall her own sense of self. This ultimately demonstrates that the identity Fevvers composed for herself still represents her true self because that’s what’s she has chosen to be. Seeing herself through Walser’s eyes and the tribespeople’s eyes helped her recall it to herself, demonstrating the necessity of witness in self-determination. The culmination of her arc reinforces the two paradoxical themes of illusion belying truth, and of the necessity of witness in self-determination.
Jack Walser
Jack Walser is the second protagonist of the novel. In Part 1, Walser is a static character; however, his blank personality sets him up for the transformation he undergoes in the narrative. Like Fevvers, Walser’s arc serves the theme of the importance of self-determination in identity. While both Fevvers and Walser must learn to determine their own identity, Fevvers must balance her perception of herself with integration of one who can truly witness her, while Walser must first develop his own stable sense of self.
In Part 1, Chapter 1, the narrator describes Walser as “like a handsome house that been let, furnished. There were scarcely any of those little, what you might call personal touches to his personality, as if his habit of suspending belief extended even unto his own being” (10); this demonstrates that Walser has no personal sense of identity. In Part 2, Walser takes on the identity of the clown, which is defined by its adherence to a false construct of identity undertaken for the pleasure of the audience. However, ironically, he feels a kind of freedom in this: “…he experienced the freedom that lies behind the mask, within dissimulation, the freedom to juggle with being” (103). This reflects Walser’s slow development of an identity in Part 2, foreshadowing the total erasure of self he undergoes in Part 3 which ultimately leads to determination of full identity.
As a foil to Fevvers’s character arc, Walser’s character developments parallel Fevvers’s own realizations. Walser’s character growth in the narrative comes first from a state of total erasure: his own identity is erased as he takes on the emptiness of the clown identity, which he finds oddly freeing, paralleling the freedom Fevvers finds in constructing her own persona, taking on her performance/public persona and being an object over which she has control. In Siberia, both find themselves erased, Walser more completely than Fevvers. Walser loses all sense of himself, and his memories only resurface to him in a haze. He reconstructs his perception of himself, and his perceptions of Fevvers are what restores both characters to their identities. In the Envoi, Walser “took himself apart and put himself together again” (294). He tells the story of his adventures to himself but acknowledges that “All that seemed to happen to me in the third person as though, most of my life, I watched it but did not live it. And now, hatched out of a shell of unknowing…I shall have to start all over again” (294). Walser’s perception of himself transforms at the end of the narrative, and, like Fevvers, he has embraced self-definition and rejected experiencing himself as an object, reinforcing the narrative’s theme of self-determination.
Lizzie
Lizzie is a middle-aged woman, foster mother, and companion to Fevvers. Lizzie guides Fevvers in her developing knowledge of self, offering wisdom or directives to Fevvers that influence the direction of Fevvers’s character arc. Like Fevvers, Lizzie represents the juxtaposition between the vulgar and refined. Although Lizzie also appears lower-class because of her background and accent, she is actually a highly aware political radical. Lizzie’s awareness made her unsuccessful in conventional feminine roles, such as being a sex worker:
And it was, of course, never religion that made her [Lizzie] such an inconvenient harlot, but her habit of lecturing the clients on the white slave trade, the rights and wrongs of women, universal suffrage, as well as the Irish question, the Indian question, republicanism, anti-clericism, syndicalism and the abolition of the House of Lords (292).
Along with her political knowledge, Lizzie also has a “household magic” (199), but Fevvers clarifies that this is more like science: “What would you think, when you saw the bread rise, if you didn’t know what yeast was? Think old Liz was a witch, wouldn’t you!” (199). Lizzie’s advanced knowledge sets her apart from others, and it makes her as alien to this century as the part-bird part-woman Fevvers. Like Fevvers, Lizzie is also subjected to constraining definitions by others. While Fevvers is objectified and abstracted to fit her audience’s perception of her, Lizzie’s advanced knowledge is chalked up to “witchcraft” to avoid having to deal with the reality of an independent and self-sufficient woman.
Lizzie is a static character in the narrative, but she functions as a vehicle for discoursing on the affect the observer can have not just on those with abnormalities or supernatural abilities, but on those who simply do not fit conventional societal molds. Lizzie hides her “magic” in order to avoid being perceived as a witch; she has no supernatural ability, yet if others were to find out about her abilities, they would ascribe her a role that denies her humanity. This reinforces the dehumanizing effect it has on others like the circus performers, who are seen as ‘freaks’ because of physical abnormalities, like Fevvers or Samson the Strong Man; or for emotional difficulties like Mignon and the Princess. This underscores the oppressive nature of these perception because it the dehumanization they are subjected, and the effect denial thereof has.
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By Angela Carter
