Bennett, Claire

The relationship between the male founders of the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and their models offer a complex example of the power balance between men and women. Women like Elizabeth Siddall occupied a prominent role in the art movement as muse, lover and ultimately wife to Gabrielle Rossetti, she also represented the feminine as ‘the passive, beautiful or erotic object of a creativity exclusively tied to the masculine’ (Griselda Pollock). Angela Carter’s 1967 novel, The Magic Toyshop, explores the social expectations of the female body by creating deliberate parallels between Melanie and her Uncle Philip to Siddall and Rossetti. Carter’s novel innovatively reworks cultural references such as the pre-Raphaelite movement to comment on modern social expectations of the female body. Her exploration of ekphrasis - the detailed description of a visual work of art as a literary device – highlights an acute awareness of the historical influences that art and literature have over the perception of individuals. Carter considers the consequences of interpreting the female body as a ‘passive medium on which cultural meanings are inscribed’ (Judith Butler) through Melanie’s performance of idealised femininity by posing as women from art. She consequently conforms to the dominating influence of the male gaze as the artists referred to are exclusively male. Melanie’s perception of femininity and heterosexual relationships are ‘mediated by culture and history’ (Elizabeth Gargano) and the treatment she receives from Uncle Philip. Like Siddall, Melanie ultimately becomes a spectacle for the dominating male gaze, which projects an unrealistic expectation of femininity onto the female body.

Claire Bennett is a second year part-time PhD student at the University of Chester in the departments of Literature and Gender Studies, supervised by Professor Emma L. E. Rees. Claire presented her first paper at international biennial Talking Bodies conference 2019 from her current research which has developed from her MA thesis, focusing on subverting Laura Mulvey’s theories about the male gaze in the fiction of Angela Carter. Claire’s research challenges Mulvey’s acceptance of the patriarchal assertion that the female body is a symbolic object for the desiring heterosexual male spectator. Claire contends that Carter’s novels establish female narratives that challenge the male gaze by revivifying existing patriarchal themes of a patriarchal society in art, literature and film. The result is a sustained critique of such themes through the treatment of her female protagonists by male characters. Claire’s research demonstrates how Carter’s writing playfully deconstructs binary expectations of gender in a way that transcends social norms of the twentieth century.

Return to:

• Panels
• Overview