Introduction
Angela Carter’s writings have the characteristic of a well-defined yet subtle metaphor but are full of imagery. Descriptions are a poet’s dreams. Carter lived up to her dreams and ambitions in her writings.
Body
Black Venus is a fictionalization of historical characters, prominent among these are Lizzie Borden and Baudelaire’s syphilitic mistress.
The main character is Jeanne Duval, referred to as Baudelaire’s black mistress, and who insinuated to have come from Martinique, when it was still under French possession, and slave emancipation was still starting. She also used the names Prosper and Lemee, and said to have come from Mauritius, in the Indian Ocean, or Santo Domingo, in the Caribbean. Charles Baudelaire – Carter said – spent some time in Mauritius. Jeanne met Baudelaire in 1842.
The setting is Paris, at the time of diseases, “scabies, malnutrition and ringworm.” Black Venus starts with a picturization of life and a woman’s travails: alone, seeking wealth, or something that can allow her to survive in a harsh environment. Prostitution was very common. And poverty was everywhere.
Subtle imagery is what I can first describe this sort of a poetic wealth in Black Venus. Well, Venus is Jeanne, black, or a black beauty, who finds herself being sought for by men because of her profession, the oldest one. But in this job which seems she really enjoys, she finds solace; it’s as if she finds her womanhood in being a prostitute, or someone who works in a cabaret, who dances in front of customers. This was also the time of Bohemian revolution, when everyone, especially the young generation at the time, felt free to do what they wanted to do.
Jeanne enjoys dancing naked, as “her necklaces and earrings clinked,” in front of her Daddy, or someone else. She loves the fee. But the prize in the end is syphilis, and the worst kind of syphilis, Baudelarian syphilis, the coveted prize from her Baudelaire. She dances in front of her ‘Daddy’ – a good Daddy who buys her many things – who pressures to take off her clothes. Her dance consisted of “a series of voluptuous poses where following another”, and then a private room follows. “He liked her to put on all her bangles and heads when she did her dance.” (p. 11)
“Prostitution was a question of number; of being paid by more than one person at a time. That was bad. She was not a bad girl. When she slept with anyone else but Daddy, she never let them pay. It was a matter of honour. It was a question of fidelity.” (p. 12)
Another character in the story is the Poet whom Jeanne respects very much. “She did not feel she was her own property and so she gave herself away to everybody except the poet, for whom she had so much respect to offer such an ambivalent gift for nothing.” The Poet is a co-tenant of Jeanne’s in the apartment, where Jeanne receives customers, and who also owns the pussy cat that the woman wanted to strangle and kill.
But when she noticed that the Poet loved her, she changed her plot of killing her.
In page 9 and all throughout is a poet’s paradise, I should say. It is full of imagery, something that is hard to understand at first, that in order to get a quick grasp, you have to know the poet and philosopher moulded into one.
Carter is the master of the art, not an easy feat considering that the figures and characters in her drama are not just a product of her fantastic imagination but true-to-life characters.
This is not easy for a writer to indulge with, and only an expert, born-to-be-one, can do so. Only a courageous writer/poet/philosopher like Angela Carter can have it, with ease and expertise. Sometimes it is so difficult for a student writer to understand or devour the imagery and allusion being employed in the story, and even the many other writings of Carter.
Jeanne’s character and persona, and her innocence, are immediately alluded to as something many of us, women of course, hated to be one, but would dream as something that we can be.
Important theme
There is the reference to the Fall of Man, we all know what this is. We all know whose fault it is – Eve’s. This is a philosophical (theological) and picturesque definition. So much has been written about women, but what about Eve? If there were many men in the time of the “garden of Eden,” Eve could be the first – whatever is the term. But, this is what I understand of the passages here of Black Venus, who is Jeanne.
She is full of innocence, and of course full of sin. But if we try to understand/dissect the philosophy of sin, innocence can be an excuse for sin. Jeanne is pictured here as full of innocence, which makes her “unsinful”. But more of the theme that is being portrayed in the story is the woman’s need for wealth, pleasure, security from a man or husband. Prostitution is just a sidelight of the story in that it is a means to attaining the woman’s goal.
Jeanne’s family background is also important in the story. Her grandmother and environmental background made her what she became as a woman.
Sequence of Events
The sequence of events is that – at first – Jeanne is in a situation where she can not anymore get out from her present situation, that is, her being a dancer and prostitute, then as a wife-lover of black mistress of Baudelaire. Where she came from is only told in the middle of the story. In the end, it seems she has attained her goal – to earn respect.
Point of View
Black Venus uses third-person limited omniscient. The one speaking in the narrative could be the writer, or a lover, someone who adores Jeanne, or someone who hates Jeanne. There are choices. That’s why this a good piece of writing with ingredients of the three Ps: poetry, philosophy and politics.
Some quotes
“Baby, baby, let me take you back where you belong, back to your lovely, lazy island were the jeweled parent rocks on the enamel tree and you can crunch sugar-cane between your strong, white teeth, like you slid when you were little, baby.”
This is a passage from page 9. I think there is the sixties/seventies music of the hippie era, the carefree attitude, the buying-spree period, the rock music of Elvis, the countryside, the sugar boom. In page 19, the story talks of the “Roaring Forties” and the “Furious Fifties.”
But watch out for the next lyrics.
“When we get there, among the liking palm trees, under the purple flowers, I’ll love you to death. We’ll go back and live together in a thatched house with a veranda over-grown with flowering vine and a little girl in a short white frock with a yellow satin bow in her kinky pigtail will have a huge feather fan over us, stirring the languishing air as we sway in our hammock, this way and that way… the ship, the ship is waiting in the harbor, baby. My monkey, my pussy cat, my pet… think how lovely it would be to live there…” (10)
This talks of a life of pleasure and happiness, of dreams and fantasies, of a childhood life, free of work or problems in life. It may also refer to the pleasures of flesh and sex. This is the initial reference to sex, aside from the first sentences on the First Fall (of the garden of Eden). It talks of the ship in the harbor, where a sailor gets out of the ship and looks for a woman for company. And the woman is out there with open arms.
The lyrical short story in Black Venus points to many images; that’s why it’s a poem, it is a lyrical story of romance and sex.
Jeanne is described in so many things – by the Narrator, and sometimes by her Daddy: she’s a siren who sang whatever songs her Daddy never cared about as long she sang; she had “quick, bright, dark eyes” fixed upon “her decorated skin as if, authentically entranced.” And also, “a woman of immense height, the type of those beautiful giantesses who, a hundred years later, would grace the stages of the Horse of the Casino de Paris … divinely tall.” Also, she was raised in the School of Hard Knocks, “and enough hard knocks can beat the heart out of anybody.”
Try to look at this: “She was like a piano in a country where everyone has had their hands cut off.” (9) The people had only to watch her, they couldn’t touch her. This is because when she was under the “captivity” of Baudelaire, nobody could touch her anymore.
There are more about romance, but majority about the physical, and – of course – sex. Daddy – whoever he is, maybe her husband, or somebody else – wants her to dance, naked. He also dances the sexy dance.
Jeanne’s background is questionable and vague, to say the least. She was raised by her granny who was herself born in the ship where her mother died and was thrown into the sea, eaten by sharks. She said she didn’t know anything about her father, nor was she conceived; her foster-mother died of fever in the plantation. Jeanne inherited the negative attributes from this woman, her grandmother. She swapped Jeanne with the ship’s mate for a couple of bottles, a bargain with which her granny said she was well satisfied because Jeanne was already getting into trouble and was becoming fatter.
The lovemaking is cleverly done. Jane in reverse (like an acrobat), but looking up the window panes, watching the moon and the star “in the top left-hand corner of the top left-hand pane”, as her lover is busy with her and doing his orgasm – the eternity promised by the poet – while Jeanne draws him to her bosom, the moon and the star now arrives at the lower right-hand window-pane. Literally, this is good as saying Jeanne is lying down in reverse, her face at the window panes, her lover in his orgasm, as Jeanne embraces him to her bosom, rewarding him for a job well done. After the sweat and the job, the poet says, “The moon and the star vanish.”
One example why Angela Carter was described as “the opposite of parochial” is her description of Jeanne in this following passage of Black Venus.
Jeanne was kidnapped by a group of Bohemians from her customers at the cabaret, or at least that was the description at first. But she consented to the wishes of the group, and so they wandered along the streets. Jeanne urinated in the street, along the gutter at the sight of her companions. She just pissed as if it was a very natural thing to do. Everyone saw her, including the guys who were turned on by the scene in which Jeanne “hitched up her skirts with her front hand as she stepped across the poll she’d made.” (p. 20)
Features, images, symbols
In Black Venus, Carter used metaphors and a lot of imagery and symbolism. It has many references with sex and the diseases as a result of too much exposure on it, and prostitution. Carter’s sexual fantasies in her writings could be a subject in porn movies and short films.
Conclusion
Carter used the ills of the times in portraying her characters. The character’s dilemma is a result of society’s faults, greed and indifference.