Angela Carter (1940-92) is considered one of the greatest twentieth-century female writers that Britain ever produced. Her novel, Nights at the Circus, published in1984, is generally viewed as the most celebrated and sophisticated feminist novel she has ever written; it is in this work that Carter finally "explained herself, unpacked her gifts" (Sage 221). Nights at the Circus is classified as a postmodern novel that defies narrow categorization. It is easy to think of the novel as a good example of metafiction, magical realism, “a grim and decadent masquerade…fantasy, historical fiction, science fiction, feminist polemic, or anti-feminist polemic” (McGuirk 473). However, none of these literary styles, as McGuirk argues, offers plausible answers to the complex problems that the novelist explores. Carter's novel can be variously interpreted; it may belong to many categories because the novelist focuses on themes and characters that provoke many questions about postmodern female self. This paper shows how useful the theory of the carnivalesque grotesque is for an overall understanding of Carter's novel.