Autobiographical Estrangement in Angela Carter’s ‘A Souvenir of Japan’, ‘The Smile of Winter’ and ‘Flesh and the Mirror’

Abstract

Angela Carter’s predilection for estrangement is undeniable. However, this estrangement is not only apparent in the gothic modes of her fiction, but also in a few, rare, autobiographical pieces: ‘A Souvenir of Japan’, ‘The Smile of Winter’ and ‘Flesh and the Mirror’ (Fireworks 1974). The texts appear glaringly against a landscape of fiction in which the author’s textual death is clearly foregrounded with its baroque profusion of intertextual modes. As a partisan of Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’ Carter was vehemently opposed to ‘confession’ in women’s literature. However, interspersed with more gothic, or fantasy, pieces, these three pieces clearly function in the autobiographical mode, setting up an intricate game with genre that leads the reader to reflect on the connection between the real Angela Carter and the anonymous autobiographical ‘I’ of the narrator in her interaction with her Japanese lover/other in Japan. The pieces indeed waver self-consciously on the edges of the genres of confession, travel writing, and romance as the illusion of autobiographical depth or unity is dismantled from within and the I of the narrator/author is transformed into a spiral of loss of identity and performative reiteration. This paper aims to take a closer look at the autobiographical character of these pieces which appear at first glance as being atypical of Angela Carter’s aesthetics, but upon closer investigation reveal a subtle reflection on the themes of sexual/textual identity, alienation, and performance which dominate much of Carter’s fiction.