Wise Children
The story of Wise Children is based on The twin Chance girls, who are music hall performers as well as the daughters of the famous Shakespearean actor Sir Melchior Hazard. The novel is set around the 75th birthday celebration of twins identical to each other Dora Nora and Nora Chance.
It happens to be Shakespeare’s birthday and the 100th birthday celebration of their father Sir Melchior Hazard along with his identical twin brother Peregrine Hazard.
Wise Children is a novel with a strong foundation of 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 funny and engaging and as such is thought to be more accessible than some of her earlier work; it is considered by many to be an intriguing and subversive examination of British culture and identity.
Carter, Shakespeare and London
Carter was a resident of south London for a large part of her early and her later years in south London as well. Wise Children is a mourning for the past of Lyons tea bars, but it is also a celebration of incredible linguistic variety of London’s residents. Its metaphorical power comes by the geographic location and geography of London.
Wise Children can also 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 an unintentional side’ she writes: ‘the left side, which is the one tourists rarely see and the shabby part of the The Old Father Thames’ (p. 1).
This geographical polarity is in line with the stark contrasts between high and low society (music halls and Shakespeare) as well as legitimacy and illegitimacy (the Chance twins and the Hazards).
Angela Carter’s Notebook
This is the journal that Angela Carter used to record research as well as ideas to write Wise Children. It is divided into various sections, including “Hazards/High Life + people Screen + stage The notebook depicts Carter creating characters and plots based on research before writing the initial manuscript of her book.
In the notes there are also some longer prose sections – which are essentially the very first drafts from Wise Children.
As with the novel’s conclusion The notebook combines both low and high culture to create an entertaining and sometimes noisy reading. With a wealth of rich and precise details, we can see Carter collecting ideas and inspiration from a wide range of sources.
It ranges from Max Reinhardt’s Hollywood production A Midsummer Night’s Dream to Walter Benjamin’s essay , ‘The The Art of Reproduction in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ and biographical sketches of Victorian Shakespearean actors and many stories about the world of music hall and pantomime.
What unites the content is Carter’s constant vigilance for the funny and the ridiculous as well as the fantastic and kitsch. A section of notes concerning World War Two irreverently details the escape of a zebra following the London Zoo was bombed, and also tells tales of nightclubs in which it was claimed that the Army boots were damaging the dance floor’.
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