The cacophony of theatre life and many, many, many twins. Wise Children by Angela Carter
Watch the spoilers. Read the book.
“Comedy is tragedy that happens to other people”
Angela Carter is one of those writers who’s elusive as fuck. Her works are barely known to those outside the reading circles in this day and age, yet she still features prominently in plenty of book lists and what’s more, her books were published as Classics by Vintage. This is the old argument of what makes a classic all over again — do we make a classic simply by having a reputable publisher publishing the book as a classic, or is it much more? It should be the latter.
Yet, when we dig deep into her work, there are resemblance of what could be a classic but that it seems to fall short. Wise Children is a case in point: that is a novel which touches some important and uncomfortable topics, such as literature and theatre, the nature of family, incestuous relationships and time, the perennial nemesis. Yet, it is almost a nonsensical novel in the vein of a Shakespearean comedy.
Dora Chance telling you her life story over a drink
No, not really over a drink but it feels like it: The tone of the novel is conversational, told over the first person narration of Dora Chance on her 75th birthday. We are forced to stick with Dora in her meanderings over her life which may not be as straighforward at the best of times. She shares her house with her twin sister Nora and her father’s ex-wife who’s confined to a wheelchair (who conveniently is also nicknamed Wheelchair). How this situation comes about we’ll find out at the latter parts of the story.
Dora’s ramblings takes us to her birth, abandoned by an actor father, Melchior before he became filthy famous, who passed through a guesthouse. The mother expired with a sigh at the birth of her and her sister. The landlady, now affectionately called grandma, decides to take care of the twins as a substitute mother. Overtime, the twins reconcile with some of their long lost half relatives, such as the brother of their absent father, Peregrine and half siblings who were borne out of their father’s legitimate marriages as you guessed it, their father is a bit of a slurry.
But at some point, they came across this negligent father, who immediately thought them as his brother’s daughters. In typical Angela Carter fashion, it all gets very confusing. Melchior would reject the claim of this parentage outright, but somehow still managing to connect them to some roles in Hollywood perhaps to make it up to his daughters somewhat. Their profession though, has always been dancing and singing, in a way following their father’s success to a degree.
In their brief seventy five years of living, the Chance sisters managed to travel around the world dancing, shared the love of men, reconnect with their psychologically distant half families and get through the great war almost unscathed. In all this time, their one wish was to be acknowledged by the father that has refused to do so since their spawning.
Messier than the worst of Shakespeare’s comedies
I thought As You Like It was messy as fuck, but wait til you read Wise Children. We know that the novel is self-aware, as Carter is not afraid to stack the number of twins in the novels as though it was a Jerry Springer show (in some ways, it is very much like watching a Jerry Springer show). This oddity is somewhat Shakespearean in nature, but Shakespeare features prominently in the novel not as a template for the plot but a leitmotif.
In the novel, roles are often reversed, as kings become jesters and jesters become protagonists. Ranulph Hazard, the supposed father to Melchior, played King Lear in one of his most well-known role, but in the plot he was a mere jester being a cuckold. Dora and Nora, as insignificant as they are in the Hazard family tree were the main characters of the play. Perhaps there is a touch of Stoppard’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead here where the minor characters feature prominently despite their lowly roles.
This self-awareness is also a parody of the theatre itself, as most of the players in the novel are connected to the theatre. They then each play a dual role in regards to their external and internal psychology. This is reinforced in the messiness of the incestuous relationships: Peregrine was the father to Saskia and Imogen, but had to pretend otherwise though he showed them the proper paternal affection. Conversely Melchior is the father of Dora and Nora, reluctant to recognise this in public but inwardly guilty of not admitting so.
For some, like Melchior, this drama and play-acting of life is life itself. Theatre acting for him is the ultimate reward, more important than any of his relationships, including his family (biological or otherwise). This is perhaps perfectly embodied in the flimsy symbol of the cardboard crown he worships to emulate his father’s career. Melchior, a paper actor, worshipped a paper crown of little value. But this theme of theatre versus life has been explored by other writers and had been explored better, for example in Maugham’s Theatre.
But take away the gloss of the theatre, Dora’s cynical conversational narration and the bizarre plot, Wise Children stripped bare is a novel where kindness lies at its true centre. It is tragic, in its way, that both Dora and Nora still root for their father even though he had largely been absent, that they are still awestruck at his presence and are glad for it (“joy, terror, heartsick, lovesick”). It is the kindness of Peregrine that kept the twins alive, to support them though sporadically. It is the kindness of Grandma which took the twins in (though the possibility that she was the biological parent is not out of the question). It is the twins’ who learned the kindness of strangers who would take in their father’s second wife who had already been abandoned and robbed clean by her own children.
Kindness, within the core of the novel is what made the experience of reading the novel almost worthwhile. The rest is just noise, as wonderful and baffling the noise might be.
