Malapropism and the meaning behind Carter's language

            One way to consider Carter’s “delicate malapropisms” in Circus is as divisive, and one that contributes to a feminist reading of the text.  In other words, Carter purposefully misuses words to alert the reader of both the subtext of the moment and satirical implications of the passage in relation to the story as a whole.  For example:

“Oh, her little plump thighs like chicken cutlets in her doeskin britches!  What a quaint figure she cut!  He was a Scottish gentleman with a big beard.  I remember him well.  Never give ‘is name, of course.  Left her his library.  Our Fevvers was always rooting about in it, nose in a book nothing but a poke of humbugs for company.” (40)

            “Chicken cutlets” and “doeskin britches” is diction most commonly associated with food, yet Carter uses it here to describe Ma Nelson.  This objectification of Ma Nelson, a heroic heroine in the story, by Carter suggests that she is mocking the kind of language men like the Scottish gentlemen use to describe women, and, furthermore, the way men perceive women: as meat.  This language informs the sarcasm we encounter in the subsequent sentence: “What a quaint figure she cut!”  We know that the two are directly related because the latter maintains the same diction is the former. 

            Lizzie, Fevvers’ companion in the novel, is telling this excerpt and we learn that Fevvers uses the library donated by the Scottish patron to educate herself.  This performance is ironic because a man who is clearly depicted as one of their many oppressors donates the library, an understood source of knowledge to the whorehouse.  This knowledge seems to be an important contribution to Fevvers’ feminism in the story.  And if the characters (whores) within the home are meant to represent all women in the world, Carter may be suggesting that education is the key to liberation.  Just moments earlier, Ma Nelson’s house is described: “Yet we were all suffragists in that house…it was a wholly female world within Ma Nelson’s door.” (38)

The final sentence of the chosen excerpt illustrates both Carter’s sarcasm and manipulation of words to connote certain intended meanings.  The use of “poke” is purposeful as it has sexual connotation.  But not sexual connotation in its grandest.  “Poke” suggests the meekness of man – his furtive attempts at intercourse; it suggests repetitive sexual shortcoming.  


Related moments:

1.     “The room, in all, was a mistresspiece of uniquely feminine squalor. (9)

2.     “She invitingly shook the bottle until it ejaculated afresh.” (12)

3.     “…every morning…I lit the fire…until…the drawing-room was snug as a groin.” (27) 

“…this lumber room of femininity, this rag-and-bone shop of the heart…” (69)