Abstract:

Shadow Dance, the first novel written by Angela Carter, who claimed to be a feminist, showcases Carter’s criticism against the adverse effects of culture on both genders, demonstrating her initial awareness of feminism. Yet this awareness is indirect and implied, as it is embedded in the narrator’s surrealist perspective, and therefore readers readily blame the novel for its preoccupation with female masochism, and are blind to the “revolution” intended by surrealism. With an analysis of the narrator’s surrealist narrative perspective on the three female characters, this article intends to probe the perspective for its feminist ethics that challenges the patriarchal law embedded in them to different degrees. It argues that Ghislaine, seen from the counterculture in the 1960s, “no longer ‘performs’ her prudishness of the past” but her “liberation”, Edna has been awakening, and Emily is a woman warrior almost from the start.

Key words:Shadow Dance,surrealism,narrative perspective,ethics