‘Second-Hand’ and ‘Hardly Used’: Gendered Violence and Rape Culture in Angela Carter's Shadow Dance

Abstract

In this analysis, Angela Carter's first novel, Shadow Dance (1966), is viewed as an initial diagnosis of the structures that promote and uphold gender inequities and feed the fantastical pathologies that underpin gendered violence and rape culture. While Carter's life's work can now be seen as dedicated to the feminist project of rethinking the relationship between power and desire through a process of resignification, this early work has often been read as resolutely pre-feminist, a fetishization of the specularized woman and, even, verging on complicity with patriarchy. This article argues instead that this novel represents Carter's first and youthful attempt to fathom the sexual dynamics that inform her 1960s subculture in Bristol. It explores the sociocultural inheritance of gender norms and interpersonal dynamics of the period. This article reads Shadow Dance with attention to its construction—the topoi of impersonation and performativity, the narrative point of view and the formal qualities, all of which reveal that the logic of male domination/female subordination is pathological for men and women alike. In particular, the focalization of the narrative through the perspective of a virulent misogynist reveals a specific fetishization of youthful femininity, as well as other problematic ideations that attend rape culture. This article thus advances the thesis that Carter's first novel can be read as a diagnosis of the gendered pathologies embedded in received histories. As a diagnosis, it may assist us in moving towards a reassessment of the ways in which we are still in thrall to this history.