Gender - bending fantasies inwomen's writing: fantastic in Angela Carter's the infernal desire machines of Dr. Hoffman nights at the circus and Jeanette Winterson's the passion, the.powerbook.

Abstract

Mine Ozyurt Kilic’s discussion of gender bending in Angela Carter’s The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman and Nights at the Circus and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion and The.Powerbook is particularly insightful in illuminating how the fantastic is deployed subversively by these two contemporary women writers. As a part of her analysis, she revisits Tzvetan Todorov’s concept of hesitation between the marvellous and the uncanny, convincingly demonstrating the pertinence of this to the surrealistically winged Fevvers in Carter’s Nights at the Circus and the web-footed Villanelle in Winterson’s The Passion and clarifying how Todorov’s “road to the marvellous” is exemplified by Patrick’s miraculously voyeuristic vision in The Passion.