Women Identity and Meta-fictional Features in The Loves of Lady Purple

摘要

Two of most prominent characteristics of Angela Carter’s short stories are unconditional female protagonists and metafictional features. Carter is known as an eccentric feminist, however due to her radical attitude towards marriage, woman and prostitute; she is criticized and denounced by some other feminists. Female protagonists in her short story are often depicted as fatal women. On the other hand, as a post-modernist writer, Carter constantly explores fundamental questions like the nature of language, the relationship between text, reader and author, etc. How does Carter depict a fatal woman? What are the answers towards those essential inquiries? With those questions in mind, this paper will first analyze one of the typical Carter’s heroines Lady Purple, to examine the multiple identities in this persona and then analyze the meta-fictional features in this short story.