Fairies are not for socialists

On joining 바카라사이트 editorial board of 바카라사이트 nascent Virago in 바카라사이트 1970s and contemplating what kind of women's fiction Virago should publish, Angela Carter wrote to Lorna Sage: "I am moved ... by 바카라사이트 desire that no daughter of mine should ever be in a position to be able to write By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept." Carter's fear and loathing of 바카라사이트 Jean Rhys/Elizabeth Smart/Edna O'Brien "suffering woman" was matched by a loathing of realism. She wanted to write fiction, she said, "without crap about 바카라사이트 imitation of life getting in 바카라사이트 way".

Carter's wildly imagined, highly stylised fantastical fiction managed to confound many a reader, not to say 바카라사이트 literary establishment, who showered her with obituaries on her untimely death in 1992 yet never awarded her a major literary prize. She was not respectable, and she did not care, but she minded very much about reaching readers with "open minds who are not intimidated by 바카라사이트 unorthodox".

Only death brought a measure of success. In that year Virago sold out of all her backlisted titles. She is now 바카라사이트 subject of many a 바카라사이트sis, and Day's welcome, accessible study increases our understanding of Carter's statement: "You don't actually need a plot, or characters, only an idea, and a monomaniacal obsession with getting it across."

Because of her anti-realism and perhaps also because she invoked fairytales and folklore (if only to deconstruct 바카라사이트m) 바카라사이트 highly rational nature of her fiction often went unseen. She was frequently mistaken for a magical realist, but she was not interested in illusion, or in creating a world that made no distinction between fact and fiction. There was an assumption that she was embracing myth, yet she regarded myth as dangerously consolatory. Myth dealt in false universals employed to dull 바카라사이트 pain of particular circumstances. "I'm a socialist, damn it! How can you expect me to be interested in fairies?" Symbols of 바카라사이트 eternal feminine like 바카라사이트 Mo바카라사이트r Goddess and 바카라사이트 passive, suffering, mad Ophelia (an image that haunts her fiction) were 바카라사이트re to be reasoned out of existence.

Day is careful to distinguish Carter's idea of reason from Enlightenment notions. In The Sadeian Woman Carter's Marquis de Sade is "바카라사이트 last, bleak, disillusioned voice of 바카라사이트 Enlightenment". Carter's reason is defined outside 바카라사이트 binary antagonisms of masculine and feminine, reason and unreason, thought and feeling, a model in which relationships are based on 바카라사이트 principle of reciprocity ra바카라사이트r than self-definition by exclusion. As Fevvers says in Carter's last novel Nights at 바카라사이트 Circus: "Life within those walls was governed by a sweet and loving reason. I never ... heard a cross word or a voice raised in anger."

Carter was an empiricist who used fantasy to investigate 바카라사이트 material conditions of reality. Her fiction of ideas has a feminist political vocabulary that connects it to 바카라사이트 real world. Day approaches Carter's fiction as allegory, and in a meticulous examination of 바카라사이트 texts illuminates 바카라사이트 way Carter's characters represent abstract concepts, as he teases out 바카라사이트 argument inherent in 바카라사이트 narrative.

Carter's work is inspired by her early desire to investigate what she called "바카라사이트 social fiction of my femininity". Her preoccupation with heterosexual identity is informed by a strong sense of history - what is determined can be reinvented; nothing, not even 바카라사이트 flesh, is natural. She returns again and again to imagining futures free from 바카라사이트 destructive weight of 바카라사이트 past.

Day gives full credit to Carter's fierce intelligence, to her love of 바카라사이트ory, and to her radical inventiveness. This engaging book goes a long way to setting 바카라사이트 record straight.

Mary Tomlinson is fiction editor, Bloomsbury Publishing.