Feminist Ideas In The Passion Of New Eve

Angela Carter (1940-1992) is a celebrated female writer in contemporary English literature. Her novel The Passion of New Eve, written in the1970s, has aroused a widespread debate since its publication. Carter claimed the book as "a feminist tract", yet the feminist ideas it conveyed has not been studied comprehensively. Therefore, the author of the thesis tries to make a thorough research of the feminist thoughts in the book on the basis of other scholars’ studies.The thesis, based on exhaustive textual analysis combined with a feminist perspective, gives a detailed analysis of the feminist ideas conveyed in The Passion of New Eve. Carter denies both male hegemony in patriarchy and female hegemony in matriarchy. To her, nothing but the heterosexual relationship established on love and equality can usher in a happy world. In the book, through the protagonist’s experiences, Carter exposes the miserable state of women in patriarchal society—they are not only marginalized and degraded into meaningless objects but face the danger of self-objectification by internalizing the patriarchal norms. The gradual establishment of the protagonist’s gender indicates that gender is a social construct. Through this disposure, Carter attacks the suppression and degradation of women in patriarchal society. She urges women to be fully aware of their situation and rise up to make a change of the status quo. On the other hand, despite her discontent with male patriarchy, however, she does not consent to female hegemony and androgyny proposed by some radical feminists. In Carter’s point of view, the ideal male and female relationship should be established on love and equality, as displayed in the relationship between Eve and Tristessa. Hegemony of any kind impedes the happy life of human beings.