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The Passion of New Eve by Angela Carter: A Review





I know nothing. I am a tabula rasa, a blank sheet of paper, an unhatched egg. I have not yet become a woman, although I possess a woman's shape. Not a woman, no: both more and less than a real woman. Now I am a being as mythic and monstrous as Mother herself . . . '


New York has become the City of Dreadful Night where dissolute Leilah performs a dance of chaos for Evelyn. But this young Englishman's fate lies in the arid desert, where a many-breasted fertility goddess will wield her scalpel to transform him into the new Eve.


Written in 1977 against the backdrop of second wave feminism, Angela Carter writes The Passion of New Eve. A darkly satirical novel which comments on the notions of power, sexual identity and gender. Carter herself describes it as ‘anti-mythic...I conceived it as a feminist tract about the social construction of femininity, amongst other things.’ In Angela Carter: Of Wolves and Women (an incredible documentary on Carter’s work), she says ‘I wanted to write what seemed to be a deeply, deeply serious piece of fiction about gender identity, about our relation to the dream factory, our relation to Hollywood, our relation to imagery.’ 

For an 187 page book, The Passion of New Eve really does have a hell of a lot going on. Some of those things include New York under siege by angry feminists, a forced sex change, a goddess with six breasts trying to take revenge on misogynists, caves and boats and apocalyptic settings. Reading this in one sitting was like being dragged through a hedge backwards whilst being slapped in the face. But I loved it. So if that’s your kind of thing, I would highly recommend it. 
But, what is most interesting about the novel is that it is less about the plot and more about the ideas and commentary behind the writing. Carter wants to show how the ‘ideal woman’ is a complete male construct, in her own words ‘the heroine as someone who has been completely constructed by the rules of the cinema. Really on terms quite strictly of what men want from Goddesses, how that face is created from raw material, how it’s invented like a piece of...cookery, really.’ With the character of Tristessa demonstrating this idea of the perfect woman - 

‘Tristessa. Enigma. Illusion. Woman? Ah! 
And all you signified was false! Your existence was only notional; you were a piece of pure mystification, Tristessa.’ 

But what makes Tristessa the perfect woman? *spoiler*, she is transgender. Highlighting that feminine perfection is a construct, a performance. To become the perfect woman, she must perform her previous male ideal of femininity.

The novel then goes on to the plot of the protagonist, Evelyn, an Englishman who travels to New York for work and is quickly shown to treat the women around him, particularly his new lover Leilah, as objects. For his sexist crimes, he is taken in by a tribe of ‘super-women’ and is forced to undergo a sex change so that he can experience life as a woman, learning to perform as one. Thus becoming the 'New Eve'. 

It’s easy to mistake The Passion of New Eve as a ‘man-hating’ novel in which Carter is saying ‘all men must suffer for their crimes’ but that isn’t entirely fair. Carter is purely taking the piss out of some of the second wave feminists who wanted to be these Goddesses that rule over men and punish them. By doing so they are othering themselves even further, rather than fighting for what is at the core of feminism - equality. Carter almost effortlessly conveys her beliefs through the medium of fiction, not only highlighting the sexism that occurs through the Hollywood invention of the ideal woman, but also highlights where she believes the feminist movement can improve. Not only is it a political commentary, but it is beautifully written, colourful, weird and wonderful. Which is exactly why Angela Carter is one of my favourite writers. It’s no surprise that The Passion of New Eve is hailed as a modern classic. 

4.5 stars


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