Getting Ahead by Walking in the Opposite Direction: Changes in Melanie’s Scale of Values in Angela Carter’s Magic Toyshop
Getting Ahead by Walking in the Opposite Direction:
Changes in Melanie’s Scale of Values in Angela Carter’s Magic Toyshop
Hereby I certify that the essay conforms to the international copyright and plagiarism rules and regulations. Guba Dorina
Guba Dorina Moise Gabriella Modern British Literature and Culture BTAN22008BA-K3 28th November, 2012
Angela Carter’s probably most famous work is The Magic Toyshop in which she writes about “slipping out of your precarious middle-classness into the house of […] horrors” (Sage 8). Through Carter’s interpretation we can get an insight of a pubescent girl’s life which turns upside-down when her parents die in a plane crash. However, she had everything she could dream of before the catastrophe, silver hairbrush, money, good education and freedom; the difficulties she go through, and the loss of her comfort-zone have rather positive effects on her superficial values after all. Actually by losing everything she gets a chance to build up a better life without other’s affection and expectations on her, and the chance of gaining everything in the end.
The first chapter of the novel perfectly represents Melanie’s, fifteen-year-old mentality which shows “a moment of hesitation between childhood and adulthood” (Gamble 69), her evolved ideology about gender, family and sex. Her ideologies stem from her family background, since she lives in a house of
Changes in Melanie’s Scale of Values in Angela Carter’s Magic Toyshop
Hereby I certify that the essay conforms to the international copyright and plagiarism rules and regulations. Guba Dorina
Guba Dorina Moise Gabriella Modern British Literature and Culture BTAN22008BA-K3 28th November, 2012
Angela Carter’s probably most famous work is The Magic Toyshop in which she writes about “slipping out of your precarious middle-classness into the house of […] horrors” (Sage 8). Through Carter’s interpretation we can get an insight of a pubescent girl’s life which turns upside-down when her parents die in a plane crash. However, she had everything she could dream of before the catastrophe, silver hairbrush, money, good education and freedom; the difficulties she go through, and the loss of her comfort-zone have rather positive effects on her superficial values after all. Actually by losing everything she gets a chance to build up a better life without other’s affection and expectations on her, and the chance of gaining everything in the end.
The first chapter of the novel perfectly represents Melanie’s, fifteen-year-old mentality which shows “a moment of hesitation between childhood and adulthood” (Gamble 69), her evolved ideology about gender, family and sex. Her ideologies stem from her family background, since she lives in a house of
Cited: Carter, Angela. The Magic Toyshop. UK: Virago Books, 1981. Gamble, Sarah. Angela Carter: Writing From the Front Line. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997. Sage, Lorna. Angela Carter. UK: Northcote House Publishers, 19994.