Title: There Never was a Woman like Leilah: The Passion of New Eve
Abstract: The Passion of New Eve is Carter’s most overtly feminist novel. By her own admission, it is ‘a feminist tract about the social creation of femininity’ (‘Front Line’ 71), containing a ‘careful and elaborate discussion of femininity as a commodity, of Hollywood producing illusions as tangible commodities’ (Haffenden 86). Carter cited the Hollywood noir film Gilda, or rather the film’s advertising slogan, ‘There never was a woman like Gilda!’, as one of the triggers for its writing, adding ‘that may have been one of the reasons why I made my Hollywood star a transvestite, a man, because only a man could think of femininity in terms of that slogan’ (Haffenden 85–6). As Carter indicates here, by revealing that the ultimate male fantasy of woman, the iconic, Garbo-like Tristessa, is actually a transvestite, New Eve makes literal the logic behind the cinematic commodification of female fantasy figures that bear little relation to actual women.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-01-01
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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