The Passion of New Eve
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The Passion of New Eve is a novel by Angela Carter, first published in 1977. It is a magic realist post-feminist novel, in which the female characters dominate the males. In the novel, Angela Carter satirises America as portrayed in films, and from her own experience of the United States, particularly in terms of gender.
At the start of the novel, Evelyn, a male English professor, arrives in a dystopian New York. He has a relationship with Leilah, a young African American woman, but makes no emotional link, seeing her only in terms of sex. He then leaves for the desert and is captured by Mother, a cruel mother goddess figure who changes him into a woman and aims to impregnate him with a new Messiah.
Eve escapes but is captured by Zero, a cruel male cult leader whose followers are all passive, slavish "wives." He rapes her and plans to make her his newest wife. He then leads Eve on a search for the silent film star Tristessa, an embodiment of beauty, sorrow, and loneliness, whom he hates obsessively. Tristessa was Evelyn's first object of desire in his boyhood, and Evelyn/Eve has her own obsession with this figure, who turns out to have been a man all along. Eve is then symbolically reborn, guided by Leilah, and rejects her chauvinistic male past.
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| Novels by Angela Carter |
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| Shadow Dance | The Magic Toyshop | Several Perceptions | Heroes and Villains | Love | The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman | The Passion of New Eve | Nights at the Circus | Wise Children |
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