"It is, perhaps, better to be valued as an object of passion than never to be valued at all"
About this Quote
Better to be consumed than ignored: Angela Carter slips a provocation into that careful little “perhaps.” The line flirts with surrender to objectification, then immediately complicates it. “Valued as an object of passion” is a phrase that sounds like a concession to the male gaze, but Carter loads it with baited irony. “Valued” is an economic verb, transactional and chilly; “object” is a philosophical demotion; “passion” is the glossy alibi that makes exploitation feel like romance. Put together, they describe a culture where women are offered a cruel bargain: be desired on someone else’s terms, or vanish.
The intent isn’t to endorse the bargain so much as to expose the desperation that makes it tempting. Carter understood that in a world calibrated to reward women for attractiveness and availability, being wanted can read as proof of existence. The subtext is bleak: even “passion” can be a kind of appraisal, a market price pinned to a body. That “never to be valued at all” is the real horror here, pointing to social invisibility as punishment for refusing the role.
Context matters: Carter’s fiction (The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus) rewires fairy tales and pornographic tropes to show how desire can be both weapon and energy source. She’s not anti-sex; she’s anti-mystification. The sentence works because it stages the trap in real time, letting readers feel the seduction of being wanted and the humiliation of being reduced, then leaving “perhaps” like a splinter: are you agreeing, or noticing how you were trained to?
The intent isn’t to endorse the bargain so much as to expose the desperation that makes it tempting. Carter understood that in a world calibrated to reward women for attractiveness and availability, being wanted can read as proof of existence. The subtext is bleak: even “passion” can be a kind of appraisal, a market price pinned to a body. That “never to be valued at all” is the real horror here, pointing to social invisibility as punishment for refusing the role.
Context matters: Carter’s fiction (The Bloody Chamber, Nights at the Circus) rewires fairy tales and pornographic tropes to show how desire can be both weapon and energy source. She’s not anti-sex; she’s anti-mystification. The sentence works because it stages the trap in real time, letting readers feel the seduction of being wanted and the humiliation of being reduced, then leaving “perhaps” like a splinter: are you agreeing, or noticing how you were trained to?
Quote Details
| Topic | Love |
|---|
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