{"id":260,"date":"2014-02-12T14:07:33","date_gmt":"2014-02-12T19:07:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/?p=260"},"modified":"2014-04-11T12:35:41","modified_gmt":"2014-04-11T16:35:41","slug":"fevvers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/fevvers\/","title":{"rendered":"Sophie Fevvers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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 <\/p>\n

\"2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Character: <\/span><\/strong>Sophie Fevvers<\/span><\/p>\n

Source Text:<\/strong> <\/span>\u00a0Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus<\/span>. New York: Penguin, 1984.<\/p>\n

Entry Author:<\/span>\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>Alexandra Katechis<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Sophie Fevvers is the protagonist of Angela Carter\u2019s Nights at the Circus (1984). Her status as a mixed race character stems from the very physical reality of being half bird and half human. In this work, I attempt to mirror Fevvers\u2019 progress as an extremely complex character, beginning with the preposterous self-idealizations and transitioning slowly to the empowering self-reclamation. Voice is manipulated to emphasize the difference between self-identification and outer authorization of identity, a main (feminist) theme of the novel.
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Fevvers
\nA found Abecedarian<\/strong><\/p>\n

Anatomy of our avian wonder, aerialiste extroidinare:
\nAzrael, Azrail, Ashriel, Azriel, Azaril, Gabriel,<\/p>\n

Broken blossom of the present tense. Fevvers,
\nBrothel-bred burlesque of Brobdingnagian symmetry, a<\/p>\n

Chorus of a woman, cheering on the coming century, the
\nCircus of our Cockney ringmaster, celestial fishwife,<\/p>\n

Dark angel of many names, and all the rest of this dolorous litany. We, the
\nDenizens of down below, all with hearts that beat and souls that suffer, sir,<\/p>\n

Excavated from England, once held above the spinning world,
\nEffervescent and eager, now dropped back into place. Think twice about turning<\/p>\n

From a freak into a woman, the female part where Terror rules. Our
\nFeathered friend advises the fool with festering teeth. Fevvers<\/p>\n

Groks with a joyous awe, almost a gratitude, that luxury should exist like
\nGin palaces in heaven where she might reside behind the bar<\/p>\n

Hemmed in the heavy envelope of simplest delusion. Walser and
\nHis hobby of the humbug hunt, hung up with her on the high trapeze.<\/p>\n

Is she fiction or is she fact? The idea of it condemns them both.
\nI feared the proof of my own singularity, and no longer alone, they<\/p>\n

Join in with the stable-boys, roustabouts and grooms, elephants and equestrians,
\nJugglers and tumblers, all drawn to the amazing spectacle, all succumbed to it.<\/p>\n

Knowing no other tricks, the circus could absorb madness and slaughter, and
\nKnit together the hypnotic tension between the flesh and the spirit.<\/p>\n

Lovely London, the shining city, the new Jerusalem,
\nLit with candles of midnight, burns up the nuclear core of our luciferity:<\/p>\n

Magic, the museum of women monsters, made pure in
\nMidsummer, yes, the year\u2019s green hinge.<\/p>\n

Once and for all, find the oracular proof in the organ of this gilded cage, and
\nOne by one we might be made free from this<\/p>\n

Panopticon, step from our platforms of prolegomena and slowly, slowly begin to
\npull, dragging with us our freight of dreams. With a pressure<\/p>\n

Queer as combustion and composure of equal and celebratory
\nQuality, she proclaims, all the women will have wings, the same as I. The<\/p>\n

Rhapsodic rush of the interrogatory, What is your name? Have you a soul? Can you love?
\nRequiem for her dazzling reflection, restorer of her soul. We rise from a<\/p>\n

Sleep more lifelike than living which consumes the world, the
\nshaman\u2019s elixir coaxed out of the samovar with sulfuric<\/p>\n

tongues. We are abandoned between tundra and taiga in our mind\u2019s
\nTransbaikalia, steeped in the bliss of a new century. Fevvers, the<\/p>\n

Universal word of wonder, of grief, cracks the black, black vortex of the
\nUroboric snake with its tail in its mouth. Once the<\/p>\n

Verified and venerated virgin whore, channel of volcanic sighs; now a miracle of frail
\nViolets, frost nipped and pale, the colour of tired eyelids yet big<\/p>\n

With wilderness and wildness, in full bloom\u2026Violets on New Years Eve.
\nWherever we go we\u2019ll need no more fathers, her heart crushing with commotion and<\/p>\n

Expectation of pleasure. Once the old world has turned on its axis,
\nexacerbated with the customary endings of the old comedies,<\/p>\n

You shall give yourself to me but I shall not possess you.
\nYear One, the envoi of this extensive ritual;<\/p>\n

Zed to this linear story which seemed to happen in the third person<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Character: Sophie Fevvers Source Text: \u00a0Carter, Angela. Nights at the Circus. New York: Penguin, 1984. Entry Author:\u00a0\u00a0Alexandra Katechis   Sophie Fevvers is the protagonist of Angela Carter\u2019s Nights at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[20649],"tags":[20602,20601,20619,20590],"class_list":{"0":"post-260","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-nights-at-the-circus","7":"tag-animal","8":"tag-beast","9":"tag-bi-racial","10":"tag-human","11":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/365"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.clarku.edu\/mixlit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}