The concept of weird
as we know it today has it’s roots in Shakespeare’s Macbeth. In Macbeth the Weird
Sisters, also known as the Three Witches, controlled the destiny of the
protagonists through the powers of fate. These great powers were of mystical,
otherworldly origins, hence the idea of weird as unnatural, strange or not of
everyday experience. In the modern usage weird is often used as a kind of
pejorative, employed to quarantine those outliers who operate independent from
the status quo. Many artists have re-appropriated this term, elevating it to a
loose sub-genre of works in the so-called “New Weird”. These artists exalt the
ambiguous experiences separated from the everyday to dig into the least
comfortable realties of human nature. These works are often characterized by an
unexpected point of view and contain surrealist motifs as a means to delve into
the workings of the subconscious mind.
Angela Carter explores weirdness extensively in her novel Nights at the Circus. In Nights
at the Circus journalist Jack Walser becomes obsessed with the truth behind
the life of Sophie Fevvers an orphan girl turned circus performer who has
allegedly sprouted a set of giant wings from her back. Carter plays with our
preconceived notions around the characters in the story. As we are swept into
Fevver’s elaborate narrative, the weird aspects of the so-called “Freaks” are
rendered as mundane with the details of their everyday life and down-to-earth
personalities. However their experiences amongst the supposedly ordinary
populous stand out in stark relief for their strangeness and cruelty.
The setting in Nights
at the Circus is the true source of the stories strangeness. The circus
setting appears in various incarnations; firstly through Jack’s point of view
in London, then through a more fluid narration as we follow the circus across Russia.
Through Fevver’s narrative we learn of the brothel where she was raised. In the
brothel Fevver’s wings did not alarm the other women, rather they saw Fevvers
as a beacon of hope, a physical symbol of their moral separation from the rest
of the world as a result of their profession. The last place Fevver’s describes
to Jack is her stay in Madame Schreck’s house of horrors. Schreck’s house is by
far the most exaggeratedly cruel and shocking example of how people are treated
when they are made to be the mysterious other by exploitative forces. Throughout
Carter’s story we are faced with this dichotomy of the freak or the whore
versus the normal, freaks and whores
in this case being interchangeable stand-ins for the moral other in society.
What makes Nights at
the Circus and similar works in the “New Weird” so intriguing is not
necessarily what they say but what they deliberately occlude. Jack casts his
shadows of doubt over Fevver’s story from the very first sentence. Although
Jack is eventually swayed by Fevver’s tale the audience is left largely in
doubt. The narration from her point of view is never completely stable, in
contrast to Jack’s journalistic grounding in objective fact, Fevver’s narration
makes constant jumps, and the audience never feels completely satisfied with
her explanations. The use of mundane elements lull the reader into a sense of
security then the surreal aspects of the work take hold and the reader is
plunged into a parallel world that is uncannily like their own. Ambiguity is a vital
ingredient to weird. There is always a sneaking suspicion that something is ‘just
a little bit off’. The subjectivity inherent in the “New Weird” forces the
audience to engage with the work on their own terms, as a reflection of their own
perception of reality.
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