SOURCE: Parker, Emma. “The Consumption of Angela Carter: Women, Food, and Power.” Ariel 31, no. 3 (July 2000): 141-69.

In the following essay, Parker interprets Carter's literature of consumption as a rebellion against patriarchy.

A great writer and a great critic, V. S. Pritchett, used to say that he swallowed Dickens whole, at the risk of indigestion. I swallow Angela Carter whole, and then I rush to buy Alka Seltzer. The “minimalist” nouvelle cuisine alone cannot satisfy my appetite for fiction. I need a “maximalist” writer who tries to tell us many things, with grandiose happenings to amuse me, extreme emotions to stir my feelings, glorious obscenities to scandalise me, brilliant and malicious expressions to astonish me.

(Almansi 217)

As Guido Almansi suggests, consuming Angela Carter's fiction is simultaneously satisfying and unsettling. This is partly because, as Hermione Lee has commented, Carter “was always in revolt against the ‘tyranny of good taste...