A Dissenting Voice: Angela Carter’s Passion of New Eve and ‘Women’s Time’

The title of Carter’s novel, The Passion of New Eve , places it at the centre of any discussion of the influence of the Bible on women’s writing. By yoking together the central story of the New Testament — the Passion of Christ — with arguably the central story of the Old — the story of the Fall — Carter indicates that the novel will address those myths in a typically challenging way. As she said in an interview, Tf it’s not blasphemous, why bother to make it up?’ 2 Unlike the other novelists discussed so far, however, while ready to use biblical myths and others in her work, Carter is not interested in constructing alternative, feminist myths as a source of positive imagery and symbolism for contemporary women. Her evident concern with the ahistoric nature of myth suggests she shares the reservations expressed by Kristeva in ‘Outside Time’, and explored more fully in her essay, ‘Women’s Time’ (Kristeva Reader , pp. 188–213). These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.