Happy Ending

In Book One of Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus I noticed that all the female characters from Nelson's whore house and Madame Shreck's museum all had happy endings. Every character went on to live life happily or atleast comfortably, none of them were left for dead or taken advantage of.

I was left to wonder why the author purposely chose to give all the female characters from the whore houses happy endings. There are three possible motives that I could think of, all of which may be true. The first is that this was the author's way of indicating that Fevvers is more fiction than fact. Angela Carter is constantly bringing up the theme of whether Fevvers is "fact or fiction" and since in real life situations rarely does everyone end up with happy endings this might be the author's way of helping the reader resolve whether Fevvers narrative is believable. Another possibility, is that Angela Carter was incorporating elements of Magic Realism into the narrative by maintaining the fairy tale happy ending motif. As mentioned, happy endings are not an element experienced in the factual world but are a common element of most Disney fairy tale movies. A final possibility is that this novel has a reaccuring theme of female empowerment and thus to have female characters end up in tragic circumstances would take away from that theme.

I feel like all of these motives are possible because all add to the overall story and the themes the narrative is trying to achieve. It was not accidental that Angela Carter took the time to detail out what happened to every female character after they left contact with Fevvers. I found this to be one of the most noticeable elements of the story because at first I was left wondering why the author was spending so much time talking about characters that were barely even in the story. Nothing is left in a story that does not have a purpose, however, only Angela Carter is the only one who knows the whole purpose. I can only speculate.