Fevvers experiences a dreadful sensation of shrinking, and she knows that the eggs all represent possible futures. The custom egg with the cage is clearly meant to trap her forever, so as soon as the Duke climaxes, Fevvers takes the opportunity to break away and jump into the train egg, where she falls right into the train car, finds Lizzie, and weeps. Lizzie tsks and resists the urge to say "I told you so." In this disheveled state, Fevvers joins the Grand Imperial Circus on its way to Siberia.

Nights at the Circus Summary and Study Guide | SuperSummary

In Fevvers' recounting of her childhood, she describes to Walser the moment her wings spread. At this point in the retelling, Fevvers quotes Ma Nelson, who casts metaphorical significance on Fevvers' wings. Nelson's words loudly underscore Fevvers' role as a symbol of women's liberation. Throughout Part 1, Fevvers exerts her power over the narrative to ascribe symbolic and allegorical significance to her biography, often making subtle allusions and refracting her life story through characters from literature, poetry, and theology. Versatility Required In Marx Bros. Film". The Montreal Gazette. Montreal. Jan 2, 1940 . Retrieved 19 May 2013.Little Ivan – the son of Olga Alexandrovna; attempts to run away with the circus but is prevented from doing so by Walser Fevvers continues to pose as Winged Victory until the age of seventeen, when Ma Nelson dies suddenly after slipping on Whitechapel High Street and being trampled by horses. Since she never established a will, the brothel falls into the possession of Nelson's miserly, puritanical brother, who immediately evicts all of the residents, whom Ma Nelson considered family. He intends to convert the building into a halfway house for "fallen girls" (44), and invites any of the women to "repent and stay on" because "he thought a repentant harlot or two would come in handy about the place" (44). None of the women there accept his insulting offer, and they all set out on seperate paths.

Nights at the Circus Study Guide | GradeSaver

The Maestro – The master of a music school in Transbaikalia that has no students. He eventually provides shelter for what is left of the circus after they escape from the convict campThink of him as the amanuensis of all those whose tales we've yet to tell him, the histories of those woman [sic] who would otherwise go down nameless and forgotten, erased from history as if they had never been, so that he, too, will put his poor shoulder to the wheel and help to give the world a little turn into the new era that begins tomorrow. Fevvers, p. 285 First place, what is this soul of which you speak? Show me its location in the human anatomy and then I might believe in it. But, I tell you straight, dissect away how much you like, you won't find it. And you can't make perfect a thing that don't exist. So, scrub the "soul" from out of your discourse. Lizzie, p. 239 Fevvers and the rest of the party are being held captive by the convicts. Fevvers tells the convict leader that she cannot help them as everything that they have heard about her is a lie. Depressed, the convicts sink into drunken mourning. Lizzie convinces the clowns to put on a show for the convicts, during which a blizzard comes, blowing the clowns and the convicts away with it into the night. The remnants of the circus begin to walk in the direction in which they hope civilization lies. They come across a run-down music school and take shelter with its owner, the Maestro. A brief encounter with Walser, now thoroughly part of the shaman's village, convinces Fevvers and Lizzie to leave the safety of the Maestro's school to search for Walser. Colonel Kearney leaves the group to continue his quest for civilization so as to build another, and more successful, circus. Mignon, the Princess and Samson remain with the Maestro at his music school. Fevvers finds Walser and the story ends with them together at the moment that the new century dawns and Fevvers' victorious cry "to think I really fooled you". At the start of Chapter Two, just as Walser’s interview is getting underway, he remarks that he’s “known some pretty decent whores, some damn’ fine women, indeed, whom any man might have been proud to marry,” and Lizzie responds, “Marriage? Pah! … Out of the frying pan into the fire! What is marriage but prostitution to one man instead of many? No different! D’you think a decent whore’d be proud to marry you, young man? Eh?” (21). Lizzie remains the primary lobbyist against marriage throughout the novel, while Ma Nelson, in what little we hear of her reported dialogue, explicates Lizzie’s wings as a symbol of women’s liberation. When her wings spread in the brothel for the first time, Nelson weeps, and says, “Oh, my little one, I think you must be the pure child of the century that just now is waiting in the wings, the New Age in which no women will be bound down to the ground” (25). Comedy legend Buster Keaton's career had long been on the downside, and he was reduced to working for scale at MGM as a gag man. Keaton's complex and elaborate sight gags did not mesh well with the Marx Brothers' brand of humor, and was sometimes a source of friction between the comedian and the brothers. [1] When Groucho called Keaton on the incompatibility of his gags with the Marx Brothers, Keaton responded, "I'm only doing what Mr. Mayer asked me to do. You guys don't need help." [2]

Nights at the Circus Characters | GradeSaver Nights at the Circus Characters | GradeSaver

Mitchell, Glenn (2006). The Marx Brothers Encyclopedia. London, UK: Reynolds & Hearn. p.164. ISBN 1-905287-11-9. In 1994, the novel was broadcast by BBC Radio 4 as a series of readings. It was read by Lesley Manville, abridged by Neville Teller and directed by Neil Cargill. Mosher, John (November 25, 1939). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. New York: F-R Publishing Corp. p.83. Groucho was aged 48 during the filming of At the Circus, and his hairline had begun receding. As such, he took to wearing a toupee in the film and would do the same for the following Marx Brothers film, Go West.Fevvers goes on, against Lizzie’s skepticism, to say that she’ll make Walser into the New Man to suit her New Woman as they march forth into the New Century, but Lizzie remains unmoved, and the novel ends in a place of ambiguity as to whether marriage and women’s liberation can ever truly be squared. Deception and Confidence Games

At the Circus - Wikipedia At the Circus - Wikipedia

Oh, that Toussaint! ... How he can move a crowd! Such eloquence, that man has! Oh, if all those with such things to say had mouths! And yet it is the lot of those who toil and suffer to be dumb. But, consider the dialectic of it, sir, ... how it was, as it were, the white hand of the oppressor who carved open the aperture of speech in the very throat you could say it had, in the first place, rendered dumb..." Lizzie, p. 60

Select a format:

Sybil – Colonel Kearney's pet pig, intelligent and clairvoyant, whom he unquestioningly relies on to make nearly all of his business decisions At the Circus screenwriter Irving Brecher stood in for an ailing Groucho when publicity stills for the film were first taken. Brecher bore a marked resemblance to Groucho and is nearly unrecognizable in the photos, sporting Groucho's greasepaint mustache, eyebrows and glasses. Samson – The strong man of the circus and Mignon's lover before she falls in love with the Princess