Angela Carter's fiction: Wise Children

A continuation of my series on Angela Carter's fiction.

The Dolly Sisters on the cover of the  first British edition of Wise Children

Wise Children (1991), Angela Carter's final novel, takes the working-class ventriloquism of Nights at the Circus and sustains it more consistently and entertainingly. Perhaps recognizing that the most enjoyable sections of her previous novel were the parts in which Fevvers recounted her life story, Carter wrote Wise Children entirely in the first-person voice of music-hall performer Dora Chance.

Raised by a woman they think of as their grandmother, Dora and her twin sister Nora are destined for the stage from an early age. Their career as the Lucky Chances (loosely based on the real-life vaudeville stars the Dolly Sisters) spans eight decades of popular entertainment, from pantomime and music hall to movies (a Hollywood version of A Midsummer Night's Dream that bears a close resemblance to Max Reinhardt's 1935 Warner Brothers production), the West End (a Shakespearean revue variously entitled What You Will, What? You Will? or What! You  Will!), and finally burlesque. Television also makes an appearance in the person of game-show host Tristram Hazard, who is either the cousin or half-brother of the Chance twins.

Still from Max Reinhardt's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)

As the uncertain relationships among the characters imply, as well as the names "Chance" and "Hazard" (one of whose meanings is "chance"), the wise (or otherwise) children in this novel do not know their own fathers. The chief perpetrators of this ambiguity are the Shakespearean actor Melchior Hazard and his twin brother Peregrine, who between them beget three pairs of twins on Melchior's various wives and lovers.

The novel is organized around a series of celebrations that quickly descend into disaster, as revelations, resentments and jealousies erupt. There's a catastrophic Twelfth Night party which ends with Melchior's country manor, Lynde Court, burning to the ground; a calamitous 21st birthday party for Saskia and Imogen, the twin daughters of Melchior (or is it Peregrine?), which ends with the birthday girls smashing everything in sight when Melchior announces his remarriage to a woman no older than they are; and an ill-starred Hollywood triple wedding, which ends with the mother of Nora's groom dumping a vat of tomato sauce over the bride's head ("What? Her son marry a born-again virgin? Not good enough for Little Italy!" [1]).

The Dolly Sisters

So when Dora and Nora crash Melchior's hundredth birthday party in the company of his long-ago discarded first wife, we know that chaos is about to ensue (another meaning of "hazard," of course, is "danger"). As it does, but by this time the impending debacle has become a bit too predictable.

Wise Children is breezy reading, and bursts with Shakespeare, opera, literary and pop-cultural references. There are characters who bear strong resemblances to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Mickey Rooney, Jack L. Warner, and John Christie, the founder of the opera festival at Glyndebourne (to which Lynde Court bears more than a passing resemblance [2]). And Dora's narrative voice is delightful, even if in the dark it would be impossible to tell her apart from Fevvers.

So it seems perverse to complain that the novel is too enjoyable, but somehow that's my feeling. I was a bit surprised to learn from Gordon's biography of Carter that I'm not the only person to feel this way; both Victoria Glendinning and Harriet Waugh "agreed that the hilarity came at the expense of emotional depth." [3] Wise Children is like a relentless Rossini farce instead of a mature Mozart opera. I have to say that while I can enjoy The Barber of Seville I much prefer The Marriage of Figaro, which reveals "the shadows of human sadness cast by the sunlight of comedy." [4] Your reaction may vary.

Wise Children has been adapted into a play by Emma Rice, which premiered at the Old Vic, London, in October 2018: https://www.oldvictheatre.com/whats-on/2018/wise-children

Next time: The Bloody Chamber
Last time: Nights at the Circus 

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1. Angela Carter, Wise Children, Chatto & Windus, 1991, p. 161.
2. Just so I'm not accused of seeing Glyndebourne references where they don't exist, Carter regularly attended the Festival Opera in the 1970s and 1980s. 
3. Edmund Gordon, The Invention of Angela Carter, Oxford University Press, 2017, p. 405.
4. Spike Hughes in Glyndebourne: A History of the Festival Opera, Second edition, David & Charles, 1981, p. 259.