Grotesque Motif of Madness and Feminist Critique of Enlightenment Reason

Abstract

The paper discusses the motif of madness that Angela Carter employs in her novel Several Perceptions. Romantic and carnivalesque aspects of the motif are analyzed with the aim to examine its role in Carter’s feminist critique of Enlightenment reason. The author argues that the ‘official reason’ that is challenged by the grotesque behavior of Carter’s ‘mad’ hero acquires the form of the middle-class culture of ‘normality’, rooted in the Enlightenment tradition. Undermining the validity of the rationality that itself produces the madness of war, Carter at the same time draws attention to its patriarchal nature.