Angela Carter’s Book of Wayward Girls & Wicked Women edited by Angela Carter, Virago, $35
A revolutionary and pioneering collection of short stories about mad and bad women, written by women writers, including Angela Carter, this anthology was first published in 1986, just six years before Carter’s premature death at 51. In the preface she noted that: “Most of the girls who inhabit these stories, would seem much worse if men had invented them… predatory, drunken hags… promiscuous heartbreakers. On the whole women writers are kind to women.”
With a debut tale, The Last Crop by the late Elizabeth Jolley, the British-born Australian writer, who only won acclaim as a writer in her fifties, an ex-con mother and apartment block cleaner, welcomes the poor neighbourhood to make use of the washing machine in the penthouse, canoodle in the comfort of the plush bedroom, while the out of town residents are away. She is depicted by Jolley, as Carter suggests, to have extenuating circumstances for her “crimes”.
Through the eyes of a woman, her acts are more ingenious and generous, than low down and devious. Carter’s own contribution, The Loves of Lady Purple, manipulates marionette virtuoso the Asiatic Professor, as he twists and turns murderous, necrophiliac prostitute puppet Lady Purple to a life imitating art (or is it the other way around?) finale. As deliciously and dangerously disruptive today, as it was when published 24 years ago.
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