Essay Comparing Nightwood And Djuna Barnes

Angela Carter's 1984 novel “Nights at the Circus” is divided into three main parts which, through characterization and socialization, ultimately focus on the feminist Avant Garde. The novel compares with Djuna Barnes’ novel, “Nightwood” published in 1936. Barnes' text stands out as a novel that explored the periods controversial concept of homosexuality among women as early as the beginning of the 20th century. Both novels capture the reader in its literary gothic prose. Many authors and analysts alike have dissected both novels use of language, or in the case of Robin in Djuna Barnes' Nightwood, lack of language. For example, Katherine Fama considers Barnes’ characterization of Robin and her primitive behavior to be analogous to feminine resistance in society. Likewise, language plays an important role in Angela Carter's "Nights at the Circus" when it is used to portray Fevvers as an outlandish, freakish, and dominant figure as well as strongly desired by all who witness her femininity. Abigail Dennis calls on this juxtaposition in

There are many examples of the gothic nature of Nightwood and its relation to feminine resistance and/or individuality. In what was supposed to be a lengthy consoling speech, Doctor O'Connor tells Nora that her pain and suffering is something he knows well, and continues to describe pain's silence. O’Connor details silence in the pose of the poorest prostitutes at their “last stand, letting you do it, silent and as indifferent as the dead, as if they were thinking of better days, or waiting for something that they had been promised when they were little girls” (Barnes 139). Barnes used gothic prose elements such as Nora's severe distress and anxiety as well as the morbid depiction of female submission in the form of prostitution to spur the thought of a soon to come female rebellion and/or age of feminine individuality and