88 CRITICAL READINGS reluctance of a blooming young woman to take any part in such restricted adult womanhood (I use the performance metaphor deliberately) The only exception, in terms of gender, is Toussaint, the black servant, who, with heavy symbolic resonance, lacks a mouth Significantly, he is named after one of the leaders of the Haitian slave uprising of 1791, and Lizzie’s reference to his fictional afterlife suggests he lives up to his name in becoming a political orator Toussaint’s plight parallels the women’s in terms of oppression (the construction of an enslaved masculinity makes no provision for a voice), but he refuses to take part in the tableaux vivants, removing himself, by his own agency, from being an object of the (masculine) gaze Carter thus extends her range of concern with restrictive constructions beyond gender to include race but does not conflate the two Notwithstanding the implied coercion, the motif of imprisonment within a constructed gender throughout Fevvers’ opening ‘autobiography’ is loaded with references and images suggesting a challenge to or subversion of the ‘social fiction’ of gendered or, to a lesser extent, racial or class identity The studying whores, recurrent instances of female solidarity, Lizzie’s – and Toussaint’s – politics and especially the sword with which Ma Nelson equips Fevvers, all provide examples of resistance to the given order But it is towards the end of Part I of the novel that the emphasis shifts more emphatically towards agency as Fevvers ceases to be a puppet of the various madames and begins to take action for herself When Fevvers is kidnapped and taken to Mr Rosencreutz’s Gothic mansion, she does active battle with his attempts to ensnare, elevate and sacrifice her on the altar of his impotence and superstition First, she identifies and pigeonholes his peculiar brand of misogyny, thereby empowering herself though knowledge and analysis: ‘This is some kind of heretical possibly Manichean version of neoPlatonic Rosicrucianism, thinks I to myself’ (Pt I, Ch 5, p 77) Then – after she belatedly realizes that he intends a ritual sacrifice – she fends him off with her sword and takes flight out of the window Carter does not make it easy; Fevvers’ escape is described as a scramble, and her ungainly flight from tree to tree is hardly a soaring victory But, despite her inexperience and limited capabilities, she acts: she makes use of a sword (that peculiarly phallic symbol of power), quick thinking and her body’s attributes and abilities There is an issue of biological essentialism in the representation of Fevvers’ escape; of whether it is her wings or own sense of personal agency that cause it to happen Without wings – that is without what makes Fevvers physically distinctive – she would not be able to make her escape: she would fall to the ground and die Since earlier, when describing how she learned to fly, she proclaims: ‘I only knew my body was the abode of limitless freedom’ (Pt I, Ch 2, p 41), we must assume that her physical attributes give her confidence and ambition, that it really is the case that in her body lies her freedom This body is no social artefact; it is not moulded by conventional mores and is very materially present Indeed, Fevvers’ body may be said to be constructed in defiance of social norms (as it is, of course, quite deliberately, by Carter) in its resistance to models of delicate, responsive femininity and its overt expressions of need, satisfactions and desire Fevvers might even be said to confound Rivière inasmuch as she performs but adopts no defensive mask; she is defiantly masculine and erotically feminine I will return to the body later First, however, there is more to say about