Wise Children
The story of Wise Children is based on two twin Chance girls, who are music hall performers as well as the daughters of the famous Shakespearean actor Sir Melchior Hazard. The story takes place at the time of the 75th birthdays of twins identical to each other Dora Nora and Nora Chance.
It happens to be Shakespeare’s birthday as well as the 100th birthday celebration of their father Sir Melchior Hazard as well as his brother Peregrine Hazard.
Wise Children is a novel that is based on contradictions. It draws on a rich variety of high and low culture – music hall, cinema and Hollywood, theatre and Shakespeare – and features central themes of doubling (or twinning), identity, fatherhood and legitimacy/illegitimacy.
It’s quick-paced humorous and enjoyable and, for this reason, it is considered to be more accessible than her earlier works by Angela Carter; It is widely regarded as an engaging and subversive study of British culture and identity.
Carter, Shakespeare and London
Carter lived a lot of her early and her later years in south London in addition to Wise Children is a mourning for the past of Lyons tea houses, but as a celebration of the incredible linguistic variety of the Londoners. The power of the metaphor comes due to the geographical location and geography of London.
Wise Children can also be described as a novel about opposites. Dora the protagonist starts her tale with a description of the rich/poor, north/south London divide. “Welcome on this side’ she writes: ‘the left side, the one that tourists rarely see and the shabby part of the old father Thames’ (p. 1).
This geographical polarity is a complement to the stark contrasts between high and low cultural values (music halls and Shakespeare) as well as legitimacy and illegitimacy (the Chance twins and the Hazards).
Shakespeare as well as London are at the center of this novel which aptly starts and ends with the ’49 Bard Road, Brixton, London, South West Two’ (p. 1) The residence of twins and characters Nora Dora Chance and Nora Dora Chance.
As this Atlas illustrates, there’s an actual Shakespeare Road in Brixton, south London. The critics have suggested it is possible that Angela Carter, who lived near Clapham could have taken Brixton Road as the source to write Her Bard Road (Shakespeare was often referred to as the Bard’).
Wise Children was Carter’s final work. Carter died in 1992 at the age 52. It’s an appropriate tribute to her that there’s now an Angela Carter Close in Brixton.
Angela Carter’s Notebook
This is the journal that Angela Carter used to record ideas and research in the book Wise Children. The notebook is divided into sections like Hazards/High Life plus people Screen + stage The notebook features Carter creating characters and plots from her research before she wrote a first manuscript of the book. In the notes there are also some longer prose pieces – basically the very first drafts in Wise Children.
Similar to the final novel The notebook combines the worlds of high and low for an entertaining and sometimes loud reading. With a wealth of rich and precise detail, we witness Carter collecting ideas and inspiration from a range of materials.
The material ranges from Max Reignhardt’s Hollywood production A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Walter Benjamin’s essay , ‘The Art of the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ as well as biographical sketches of Victorian Shakespearean actors and many stories about the world of pantomime and music hall.
What unites the content is Carter’s enduring eye for the funny and the ridiculous and also for the fantastic and kitsch. Thus, a note about World War Two irreverently details the escape of a zebra following the London Zoo was bombed, and tells stories of nightclubs in which it was claimed that the Army boots were making dance floors spongy’.
It’s particularly fascinating to observe how Carter weaves real, often bizarre tales into the story, transforming them to carnivalesque extremes. In the page. 5r for instance, Carter records how in 1936, the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival Company received a cable from Dallas, Texas, requesting an amount of earth from Shakespeare’s gardens as well as drinking water from River Avon to consecrate a production.
The story of Wise Children, Sir Melchoir organizes to allow the Chance twins to take the same sacred earth for his Hollywood production.
The process of drafting character and structure
In addition to it contains information about research, this notebook shows the emergence of the design in Wise Children and its characters.
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