Wise Children

The narrator of Angela Carter's Wise Children (1993) Dora Chance is one-half of a pair of twins, two vaudeville dancers and singers known as the Lucky Chances. Dora and Nora Chance are the illegitimate daughters of Britain's most distinguished stage actors, Sir Melchior Hazard. The mother of the girls died in childbirth and they were raised by "Grandma" Chance, their landlady. Carter's book is filled with humor, poignancy, magical realism and a sense of "seizing the day" as the main refuge against mortality. Dora Chance narrates the novel that is a recollection of career of the Lucky Chances and an account of their celebrated acting family, both on the legitimate and illegitimate side. These themes and elements of the novel are illustrated in the opening section of the book, our introduction to Dora and her sister on the morning of their 75th birthday. This section of the book demonstrates the humor and resolve that have enabled the Chance sisters to retain their joy of living despite numerous challenges.

The birth of the Chance sisters immediately provided them with one major advantage and one major disadvantage. The major advantage of their birth is having Britain's icon of the stage, Melchior Hazard, as their father. This provides them with the genetic gifts of natural talent and the requisite physical endowments to succeed as entertainers. Dora tells us as much when she comments on her condition and that of her septuagenarian sister, "Our cheekbones stick out mo

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