ABSTRACT
This chapter explores Angela Carter's early works, demonstrating how her interest in Gothic literature, comparative anthropology, and medieval literature merged with her own evolving understanding of sexuality and gender relations. The British Library's collection of Carter's journals begins in 1961, while she lived in Bristol with her first husband, Paul Carter, who taught chemistry at Bristol Technical College. As in Freud's theory, Carter saw herself in terms of an overriding need for a sadistic control of reality, which Freud links to obsessional neurosis caused by a regressive investment in the anal stage of psychosexual development. While Shadow Dance seems to share much with the Gothic tradition, Carter herself saw the novel in more realistic terms. With either identification Carter places herself into an ambiguous gender role, suggesting an embrace of what she saw as her masculine side in a kind of hermaphroditic ideal.
