There Never was a Woman like Leilah: The Passion of New Eve

Abstract

The Passion of New Eve is Carter’s most overtly feminist novel. By her own admission, it is ‘a feminist tract about the social creation of femininity’ (‘Front Line’ 71), containing a ‘careful and elaborate discussion of femininity as a commodity, of Hollywood producing illusions as tangible commodities’ (Haffenden 86). Carter cited the Hollywood noir film Gilda, or rather the film’s advertising slogan, ‘There never was a woman like Gilda!’, as one of the triggers for its writing, adding ‘that may have been one of the reasons why I made my Hollywood star a transvestite, a man, because only a man could think of femininity in terms of that slogan’ (Haffenden 85–6). As Carter indicates here, by revealing that the ultimate male fantasy of woman, the iconic, Garbo-like Tristessa, is actually a transvestite, New Eve makes literal the logic behind the cinematic commodification of female fantasy figures that bear little relation to actual women.