The death of the stereotype: Reclaim of self in Angela Carter’s “The Loves of Lady Purple”

Abstract

Women have almost always been depicted stereotypically in literary history. Female characters have been presented acting in accordance with the pre-determined and recursive roles casted for them. In relation to this, female is pictured as either too good or too evil lacking a significant individualism and complexity. Accordingly, literary history has revolved around such stereotypes as “damsel in distress,” “angel in the house,” or “femme fatale” in the construction of its female characters. Nevertheless, there is a strong and noteworthy contestation against such stereotypical appropriations of women in literature especially within feminist context. Indeed, such female characters negate stereotypical representations, and surpass cliché scenarios envisioned for them in exceedingly subversive texts. “The Loves of Lady Purple” by Angela Carter, for instance, is a story that simultaneously relies on and subverts the female stereotype, femme fatale, which stands for the overtly seductive, abusive, and destructive female. Even though the story enacts a femme fatale, the characterization of the stereotype serves not to promote but to problematize stereotypical representations of female in the overtly male-centered literary canon. The femme fatale depicted in the story inclines to subvert the stereotypical traits imposed upon her by utilizing the very characteristics the stereotype would substantially demand. To this end, this paper specifically analyzes the representation and re-representation of the femme fatale in “The Loves of Lady Purple,” and it aims to lay bare how femme fatale dismantles her objectification, suppression, and configuration by the male, and reclaims her own self.