Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions by Regina Barreca
Authors: Regina Barreca
Tags: General, Social Science, History, Literary Criticism, European, England, English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, 20th Century, Women Authors, womens studies, test, Women and Literature
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not destined for a quiet life. It was always to be like this. Fate would allow her some small pleasant respite, then whirl her up and set her down on an altogether different and not necessarily pleasant path. Good fortune and bad were always, for Nell, to follow close upon each other's heels, and snapping at hers. [P. 161]
Fate is a favorite figure of the ancient novelistsFate ( Tyche *) being a feminine deity who takes part in the action. As Chariton has it, leading into Kallirrhoe's pregnancy and her marriage with Dionysius, "Fate ( He * Tyche *) was plotting against the chastity (or virtue: sophrosyne *) of the
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young woman." Fate is always up to somethingand, as the ancient novelists (like the moderns) know, novel characters are there for nothing if not to have fates, although those fates are really handed them by their authors. Woman's anatomy, her fate to be a reproducer, is always in large part her "Fate"a notion that Weldon celebrates. That sexual "Fate" always plots against virtue, niceness, nice-mindedness, sophrosyne *. The Fate of many novels is felt to be in Eros-Amor, Love, which, as Chariton says in the beginning of his novel, loves to stir things up and take control: "Eros loves conflicts." So it does in Hearts and Lives which begins with "Love at first sightthat old thing!'' (p. 1). Nell is, of course, to be restored to her parents, recognized through the classic token, her emerald, although by this point she has had a life and has embarked herself on the course of love and sexuality. Her parents, however, can rejoice in their renewal: "But how lucky they were, to be given this second chanceand how little, you might think, they deserved it" (p. 373).
The parents in this kind of novel, ancient or modern, often do not deserve to have the children restored to themthe very children whom their own carelessness or cruelty, greed or frailty have put at risk. Nell is restored, like the heroine Charikleia of Heliodorus, or like the heroine in Evelina by Frances Burney (another situational writer). But the process of restoration portrays the independent agency of the child and the weakness of the parents. The weakness of the parents is most strikingly seen in The History of Apollonius King of Tyre, one of the ancient novels best known to us because of Shakespeare's adaptation of it in Pericles, Prince of Tyre . In the novel, which is the basis of the play and which bears some odd ancestral relation to Weldon's Hearts and Lives, the heroine grown up is not rescued by the parent, but must herself perform the rescuing of a parent gone astray spiritually and emotionally.
Secrets of human behavior, of human meanings, of the possible ways we can relate ourselves to the cruel but fascinating physical world in which we find ourselvesthese are "secrets" that the novel as a form of literature can deal with, partly by setting us upon a quest for meanings, an increased attentiveness to what we are and what we do. Attentiveness may sometimes be increased by a jolt, a sudden shove, a journey away from what we find comfortable and ordinary. Jean Marsh introducing the dramatized Cloning of Joanna May to the Arts and Entertainment Network in the United States calls it "surreal," and suggests that the story relates to science fiction. This is true enough, but the terms don't get us very far. We don't think of Cloning as science fiction much more than we think of the ring of Gyges as science. What we see in this situation is certainly an image of the world our society has used science to produce, the world in
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which men are trying to control the business of generation. The author's production of an expressive central comic situation works by giving us (as well as the characters) extra bursts of energy combined with astonishment. The situation is a comic emblem with possibilities that the author as narrator can then set out and read or interpret with hermeneutical gusto.
Fay Weldon's kind of novel is sometimes
Fate is a favorite figure of the ancient novelistsFate ( Tyche *) being a feminine deity who takes part in the action. As Chariton has it, leading into Kallirrhoe's pregnancy and her marriage with Dionysius, "Fate ( He * Tyche *) was plotting against the chastity (or virtue: sophrosyne *) of the
Page 53
young woman." Fate is always up to somethingand, as the ancient novelists (like the moderns) know, novel characters are there for nothing if not to have fates, although those fates are really handed them by their authors. Woman's anatomy, her fate to be a reproducer, is always in large part her "Fate"a notion that Weldon celebrates. That sexual "Fate" always plots against virtue, niceness, nice-mindedness, sophrosyne *. The Fate of many novels is felt to be in Eros-Amor, Love, which, as Chariton says in the beginning of his novel, loves to stir things up and take control: "Eros loves conflicts." So it does in Hearts and Lives which begins with "Love at first sightthat old thing!'' (p. 1). Nell is, of course, to be restored to her parents, recognized through the classic token, her emerald, although by this point she has had a life and has embarked herself on the course of love and sexuality. Her parents, however, can rejoice in their renewal: "But how lucky they were, to be given this second chanceand how little, you might think, they deserved it" (p. 373).
The parents in this kind of novel, ancient or modern, often do not deserve to have the children restored to themthe very children whom their own carelessness or cruelty, greed or frailty have put at risk. Nell is restored, like the heroine Charikleia of Heliodorus, or like the heroine in Evelina by Frances Burney (another situational writer). But the process of restoration portrays the independent agency of the child and the weakness of the parents. The weakness of the parents is most strikingly seen in The History of Apollonius King of Tyre, one of the ancient novels best known to us because of Shakespeare's adaptation of it in Pericles, Prince of Tyre . In the novel, which is the basis of the play and which bears some odd ancestral relation to Weldon's Hearts and Lives, the heroine grown up is not rescued by the parent, but must herself perform the rescuing of a parent gone astray spiritually and emotionally.
Secrets of human behavior, of human meanings, of the possible ways we can relate ourselves to the cruel but fascinating physical world in which we find ourselvesthese are "secrets" that the novel as a form of literature can deal with, partly by setting us upon a quest for meanings, an increased attentiveness to what we are and what we do. Attentiveness may sometimes be increased by a jolt, a sudden shove, a journey away from what we find comfortable and ordinary. Jean Marsh introducing the dramatized Cloning of Joanna May to the Arts and Entertainment Network in the United States calls it "surreal," and suggests that the story relates to science fiction. This is true enough, but the terms don't get us very far. We don't think of Cloning as science fiction much more than we think of the ring of Gyges as science. What we see in this situation is certainly an image of the world our society has used science to produce, the world in
Page 54
which men are trying to control the business of generation. The author's production of an expressive central comic situation works by giving us (as well as the characters) extra bursts of energy combined with astonishment. The situation is a comic emblem with possibilities that the author as narrator can then set out and read or interpret with hermeneutical gusto.
Fay Weldon's kind of novel is sometimes
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