Radical transformation: Angela Carter's adaptation of the Bildungsroman

Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus rewrites Goethe's novel Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre to present a powerful critique of the optimism implied by the classical Bildungsroman. Carter insists that self-realisation and socialisation cannot be reconciled; rather, the possibility of personal transformation and self-fashioning is predicated upon the occurrence of social change. The narrative of Nights at the Circus is punctuated by a series of disruptions of narrative continuity, which are not in themselves sufficient to induce change but constitute significant opportunities that must be seized. The voluntaristic implications of this emphasis on the conjuncture are counterbalanced by Carter's insistence on the importance of reciprocal relationships in shaping the individual and of acting out virtue in a public arena. Carter's ironic utopianism exhorts her readers to dare to imagine a reality in which confidence, reciprocity and love do not need to appear in the mode of irony.