Summary
Chapter Eight rewinds from the point at which Fevvers sees Walser in his beard and shaman's robe and picks up in the village where Walser is taken by the shaman after the train crash. The shaman adopts Walser as his protégé, believing that, like him, Walser has special access to an ancestral plane. Walser is not the first white foreigner to show up in the village, but he is perhaps the first who isn't perceived as a threat. The first white foreigner was a fur trader who introduced gonorrhea to the tribe, and, since it has gone untreated, cursed them with a low birth rate. Since the fur trader passed through, the age of steam has grown larger on the village's horizon, and the railway station at a town Carter refers to as only "R" calls to the new generation of villagers, as they dream of what might lie beyond the vast snowscape of Siberia.
Walser has the misfortune, as an amnesiac, to have been found by a shaman whose practices rely a great deal on hallucinogenics; meaning, even as Walser is on the cusp of recovering his memory and, by extension, his sanity, he's being cared for by a man who readily chalks up Walser's revelations to communications from spiritual planes. So, instead of aiding Walser in the recovery of his identity, the shaman further obscures it, and Walser begins to contextualize the fragments of his memory that return to him—for example, Mignon's song, the image of Fevvers' wings, "The Star-Spangled Banner," among other things—as part of his shamanic practice. His mentor encourages this and folds the imagery into Walser's image as a shaman. For instance, in response to Walser's recitation of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and his memory of Colonel Kearney's American-flag-themed suit, the shaman commissions an artisan to weave tin stars into Walser's bearskin robes.
Walser's shaman host experiments with what types of foods to feed his guest, and a handful of times, he feeds Walser a psychoactive ingredient to induce visions. He leads Walser, blindfolded, into the wilderness to find a suitable tree from which to fashion his shamanic drum. Walser cohabitates with the shaman and the sacrificial bear, whom the shaman raises until the bear reaches about a year old, at which point he sacrifices him and the bear is eaten by the villagers. After a bear is sacrificed, the process repeats.
The lessons continue, and the shaman teaches Walser skills like prestidigitation, ventriloquism, and solemnity. Walser learns that, according to his mentor, there are few differences between the practices of a shaman and a showman. He learns that in order to maintain the faith of followers, the shaman must resort to sleight-of-hand tricks and illusions to give the people something to see and therefore believe. The shaman himself very much believes in his own practice, and for this reason, Carter describes his practice as the greatest confidence game of all—because his confidence in himself is genuine and abundant.
For an undetermined amount of time, Walser remains under the shaman's tutelage. The only concrete measure of the passage of time is the length of Walser's beard, and the approaching centennial that will mark the turn of the 20th century. Though the village is removed from the Gregorian calendar and popularly adopted conceptions of time, like Common Era years, the people who live there harbor a looming anxiety about the encroachment of industry. This anxiety looks different for village leaders and elders such as the shaman, on the one hand, and the village youth, on the other. While the shaman and other elders worry about losing their culture to modern ways of living, the youth yearn to see all of what the world has to offer—to them, the train horns are not a threatening specter, but rather a siren song.
The day comes for the shaman to lead Walser on a spirit journey to find the rightful shape for his shamanic cap. So, Walser leads them out toward the town of R., and as they approach, he, the shaman, and the entire village hear an entrancing song. We readers know this song to be that of Mignon and the Princess of Abyssinia, playing from the hut of the former music teacher. In this moment, timelines converge, and we see the scene that concluded Chapter Seven from a different vantage point. Walser and the shaman walk into the clearing, and from a distance, a winged woman calls out Walser's name. She tries to fly, but one of her wings fails, and she falls. The shaman is convinced that all of this serves as further proof of Walser's shamanic gifts. Not only does he see the winged woman and hear the haunting music, but the whole village sees and hears these things as well. When they return to the village, Walser tells the shaman that he knows the winged woman from somewhere. He even remembers her name.
Chapter Nine returns to the Maestro's house with Fevvers, Lizzie, and the remaining circus members. Though Fevvers is back in focus, the narration remains in the third person for the remainder of the novel. The chapter begins with a brief summary of how the Maestro landed under such bleak circumstances: having served as the music instructor for an all-girls school in Novgorod, he was offered the opportunity to open a conservatory in Siberia by a corrupt official, who was only using the Maestro to get himself a quick payday from the government for staffing the Transbaikalian development project. The Maestro is now overjoyed to be joined by Mignon and the Princess of Abyssinia, whom he quickly regards as the daughters he never had.
The Colonel's spirits are slightly elevated, despite the fact that all of his performers are refusing to join him on his journey back west, to start from scratch. His only remaining partners are a reluctant Sybil, and the young outlaw who joined their group at the hideout of the brotherhood of free men. The Colonel plans to make the bright young man his business manager. Fevvers feels entirely out of sorts. With the loss of Ma Nelson's clock and Lizzie's handbag full of tricks, she's losing control over her appearance. Her natural, brown hair is showing at least an inch at her roots, and her wings, no longer multicolored like a tropical bird, are reverting back to black, "like the London sparrow" (271), which turns out to be their natural color.
Despite Lizzie's urgings against it, Fevvers convinces Lizzie to set with her to try and find Walser. On their walk, they get into a deep conversation about Fevvers' expectations if they do find him. Lizzie points out that in all the great comedies, when lovers reunite at the end of a story, they get married, which means fusing themselves (granting uneven freedom to the husbands), and that fusion, she pointedly notes, includes bank accounts. Lizzie knows how anxious Fevvers gets about the notion of losing her wealth, and this conversation really throws her off balance. She's convinced things can be different between her and Walser, that they don't have to conform to patriarchal society's script, but her tone suggests that she actually hadn't considered Lizzie's points, and hearing them now, she's rather uncertain whether things can work out between her and Walser after all.
Before they reach the village, they encounter a woman and her infant child struggling to survive in the cold. The infant is covered in its mother's blood to keep it warm, but they are both malnourished and close to death. Lizzie and Fevvers, both dressed in full bearskins and furs, appear to be bears to the woman. Bears being the sacred animal of her people, she welcomes them when they take her and her infant into their arms and carry them away, though the woman believes that the "bears" are carrying them to the afterlife. Instead, they carry them back to the village, straight into the temple. Walser and the shaman confront them there, along with some other villagers, and a brief brawl breaks out: Lizzie and Fevvers against the villagers whose traditions they're challenging. The brawl ends when Walser recognizes Fevvers and, in a radiant moment of clarity, asks her, "What is your name? Have you a soul? Can you love?" to which Fevvers replies, "That's the way to start the interview! ... Get out your pencil and we'll begin!" (291).
The Envoi ends the novel somewhat as it began, with Fevvers in a room with Walser, combing through the finer details of her life. The difference is that this time, instead of her dressing room in the Alhambra, they are alone, naked, in the shaman's bedroom, and Fevvers is revisiting her account of her early life, revising for accuracy. Walser and Fevvers are, it would seem, in love. Her revisions do not include anything about her wings, and Walser notes her lack of a navel, but decides not to pry or think too much about it. It's clear that she is more fact than fiction, after all. Walser has one question, though; he asks why she tried to convince him that she was a virgin. At this, Fevvers laughs, and Carter writes that "she laughed so much the bed shook" (294). Her laugh provides the rhapsodic end to the novel, as Carter describes how the sound of it reverberates and spreads joy and mirth first through the village, then across Siberia, felt by the free women, by the Colonel and his new partner, by the inhabitants of the town of R., and emanates out across the globe to ring in the new century.
Analysis
Carter is known to draw inspiration from classic fairytales and familiar folklore narratives. Being familiar and widely consumed narratives, they come with expectations—expectations for which Carter is also known to subvert. A famous example would be in her tale, "The Werewolf," published in her collection, The Bloody Chamber. In "The Werewolf," the mountaineer's daughter, modeled after Red Riding Hood, walks through the treacherous woods armed with her father's hunting knife to deliver some cakes to her grandmother; on the way to her grandmother's house, she's attacked by a wolf and cuts the wolf's paw off. She wraps the severed claw in the cloth holding the cakes and continues on her way. Ultimately, she realizes that the wolf was her grandmother, that her grandmother is a witch and a polymorph, and she and the village stone her grandmother to death. The story ends on the line, "Now the child lived in her grandmother's house; she prospered."
Clearly, then, Carter rejects conventional, "happy" endings, and she rejects certain tropes and archetypes, especially those that shape societal perceptions of women, as a group—even some tropes considered valuable to early feminist movements, like that of the "earth mother," Carter rejects. This is clear in "The Werewolf." By the penultimate chapter of Nights at the Circus, it appears that Lizzie's sound counsel to Fevvers may win out, and that, once again, Carter will feint away from genre expectations. As they traverse the Siberian landscape in search of Walser, Lizzie asks Fevvers, "And, when you do find the young American, what the 'ell will you do, then? Don't you know the customary endings of the old comedies of separated lovers, misfortune overcome, adventures among outlaws and savage tribes? True lovers' reunions always end in a marriage" (280). This pronouncement literally stops Fevvers in her tracks.
"But it is not possible that I should give myself," Fevvers responds, half-dumbfounded. "My being, my me-ness, is unique and indivisible. To sell the use of myself for the enjoyment of another is one thing; I might even offer freely, out of gratitude or in the expectation of pleasure—and pleasure alone is my expectation from the young American. But the essence of myself may not be given or taken, or what would there be left of me?" (280-281). She goes on to point out that they're nowhere near any churches or courthouses, but Lizzie assures Fevvers that the tribe will have an answer for legal marriage—"Oh, I daresay you'll find these woodsmen ... uphold the institution of marriage as enthusiastically as other men do..." (281). Then, just before they reach the village, they encounter mother and infant, clinging to life, left basically to die by their tribal traditions, which are dictated and upheld by men, like the shaman. Lizzie suggests to Fevvers, "this tableau of a woman in bondage to her reproductive system ... has been set here on purpose to make you think twice about turning from a freak into a woman" (283). Through all this, Fevvers talks about the New Woman, and how she can "hatch" Walser into the New Man, as they all cross triumphantly into the 20th century. Lizzie remains deeply skeptical.
The end of Chapter Nine ends with a violent clash between Walser and his new mentor, in defense of tradition (after Lizzie and Fevvers carry the ailing mother and child to safety) against Lizzie and Fevvers, who place the needs and wellbeing of this new mother before tradition and ceremony. The chapter abruptly ends when Walser recognizes Fevvers, but up to that point, things do not look good for Fevvers and Lizzie. They are surrounded and outnumbered by hostile adversaries. The Envoi, on the hand, cuts suddenly to a scene of eerily harmonious domestic bliss. According to the narration, after Walser's moment of recognition, the tribesmen back off, Fevvers and Walser skip away to the shaman's house, and the shaman is enamored of Lizzie, as is the sacred bear. A major upheaval of generations' worth of tradition occurs in a matter of moments, and Walser, having regained his faculties, is already considering Fevvers as his wife in his internal monologue (293). Then, when he asks Fevvers why she tried to convince him she was a virgin, she gleefully says, "I fooled you, then! ... Gawd, I fooled you!" The final line of the story, as with the first line, is uttered by Fevvers—"To think I really fooled you! ... It just goes to show, there's nothing like confidence" (295).
These last lines are a final, disorienting shove to keep the reader wondering what is "fact" and what is "fiction" in the context of this fictional universe. Nights at the Circus is a book deeply if not primarily concerned with the power of point-of-view and narrative reliability to shape a reader's temporal understanding of the rendered world. The Envoi Carter presents is one of triumph—she shows Fevvers' triumphant thrust into the 20th century—a perfect, pleasing picture of progress and hope for the New Age, the New Woman, and the potential for men like Walser and Samson to embody the New Man. But this optimistic conclusion stands at odds with Lizzie's nuanced skepticism in the chapter directly preceding it. So, in postmodern fashion, Carter's conclusion slingshots the reader right back to the beginning of the narrative, in search of meta-narrative clues as to what, exactly, just took place on the page. Can any of it be trusted, or is it all a confidence game? And if the reader leaves with more questions than answers, more curiosity about what lies beyond the novel's margins than when they began, and a mind more open about what it might mean for the New Woman to be, literally or figuratively, a "winged woman," then it would seem that Carter's experiment worked just as she planned.
