Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture

Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture PDF Author: Mara E. Reisman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498581277
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture: Challenging Cultural and Literary Conventions offers a critical analysis of British author Fay Weldon’s major novels from 1967 to the present and addresses how Weldon’s fiction engages with controversial moral, social, and political issues. This book provides an in-depth examination of the relationship between Weldon’s fiction and the contemporary feminist, cultural, and literary movements in Britain. Representative works from each decade speak to the multiple controversies and challenges to convention in which Weldon and her books played key roles. Drawing on Weldon’s personal history, fiction, and nonfiction as well as on historical, sociological, and literary documents, this book builds a cultural framework in which to understand Weldon’s work and the critical response to it. It shows that although Weldon’s battleground may change with the times, her ability and desire to provoke controversy remain constant as she continues to question and upset social, literary, and cultural conventions.

Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture

Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture PDF Author: Mara E. Reisman
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1498581277
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Get Book Here

Book Description
Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture: Challenging Cultural and Literary Conventions offers a critical analysis of British author Fay Weldon’s major novels from 1967 to the present and addresses how Weldon’s fiction engages with controversial moral, social, and political issues. This book provides an in-depth examination of the relationship between Weldon’s fiction and the contemporary feminist, cultural, and literary movements in Britain. Representative works from each decade speak to the multiple controversies and challenges to convention in which Weldon and her books played key roles. Drawing on Weldon’s personal history, fiction, and nonfiction as well as on historical, sociological, and literary documents, this book builds a cultural framework in which to understand Weldon’s work and the critical response to it. It shows that although Weldon’s battleground may change with the times, her ability and desire to provoke controversy remain constant as she continues to question and upset social, literary, and cultural conventions.

The Life and Loves of a She Devil

The Life and Loves of a She Devil PDF Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 1848944160
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 279

Get Book Here

Book Description
'ONE OF OUR VERY BEST WRITERS' Sunday Times 'A tour de force' The Times 'Intoxicating' Daily Telegraph 'Devilishly delightful' New York Times Book Review 'Beautifully and compellingly written' Sunday Express 'Audacious' Times Literary Supplement The bestselling classic tale of a woman scorned, from a much-loved British author Ruth Patchett never thought of herself as particularly devilish. Rather the opposite in fact - simply a tall, not terribly attractive woman living a quiet life as a wife and mother in a respectable suburb. But when she discovers that her husband is having a passionate affair with the lovely romantic novelist Mary Fisher, she is so seized by envy that she becomes truly diabolic. Within weeks she has burnt down the family home, collected the insurance, made love to the local drunk and embarked on a course of destruction and revenge. A blackly comic satire of the war of the sexes, The Life and Loves of a She Devil is the fantasy of the wronged woman made real. PRAISE FOR FAY WELDON 'She's a Queen of Words' Caitlin Moran 'A national treasure' Literary Review 'The literary equivalent of a stiff drink, a dip in the Atlantic in January, a pep talk by a mildly sadistic coach' New York Times 'Times have changed and Weldon is one of the people who have changed them' The Times 'One of the great lionesses of modern English literature' Harper's Bazaar 'Fay Weldon's voice is as unmistakeable as her acerbic wit' Financial Times

Watching Me, Watching You

Watching Me, Watching You PDF Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480412651
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

Get Book Here

Book Description
DIVFay Weldon’s first short-story collection features her trademark themes of feminism, sisterhood, and domestic livelihood, where the ties that bind can also draw blood/divDIV Love, loss, and the ever-changing sexual battlefield are the themes of this early anthology by master storyteller Fay Weldon: In “Christmas Tree,” the adulterous playwright hero embarks on a quest for true love, perhaps the most self-deceiving state of all; “Breakages” explores the fragility of married life as a miserly vicar’s infertile wife contemplates his much-darned socks amid ghostly visitations; the loss of hair and female friendship are brought to poignant life in “Alopecia,” while religion becomes an excuse for infidelity in “Holy Stones”; a holiday game of Monopoly reveals the widening holes in the fabric of a family in “Man with No Eyes”; and an old house and its inhabitants are haunted by doomed love in the title story./divDIV /divDIVBy turns humorous, ironic, and tragic, Watching Me, Watching You presents Fay Weldon at her most witty, original, and courageous./div

The Bulgari Connection

The Bulgari Connection PDF Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
ISBN: 155584801X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 199

Get Book Here

Book Description
“[A] hilarious page-turner...Weldon’s diabolically clever satire of greed, fashion, sex, and age is smart entertainment of the highest order.”—Booklist Grace has just been released from prison, where she was sent for trying to run over her ex-husband’s new wife with her Jaguar in a supermarket parking lot. It may make things a little awkward when all three of them attend a glittering charity ball in London together... From the Booker Prize-nominated author of The Life and Loves of a She-Devil, this “piquant social comedy” (New York Daily News) is a tale of passion, spite, romance, and revenge, set in the world of the rich, the stylish, the famous—and the infamous. “Playful, sharp, and funny.”—Los Angeles Times “Swift and amusing.”—The New York Times

British and Irish Women Writers and the Women's Movement

British and Irish Women Writers and the Women's Movement PDF Author: Jill Franks
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 1476602689
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 231

Get Book Here

Book Description
This study pairs selected Irish and British women novelists of three periods, relating their voices to the women's movements in their respective nations. In the first wave, nationalist and militant ideologies competed with the suffrage fight in Ireland. Elizabeth Bowen's The Last September illustrates the melancholy of gender performance and confusion of ethnic identity in the dying Anglo-Irish Ascendancy class. In England, suffrage ideologies clashed with socialism and patriotism. Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway contains a political unconscious that links its characters across class and gender. In the second wave, heterosexual romantic relationships come under scrutiny. Edna O'Brien's Country Girls trilogy reveals ways in which Irish Catholic ideologies abject femaleness; her characters internalize this abjection to the point of self-destruction. Doris Lessing's The Golden Notebook pits the protagonist's aspirations to write novels against the Communist Party's prohibitions on bourgeois values. In the third wave, Irish writers express the frustrations of their cultural identity. Nuala O'Faolain's My Dream of You takes her protagonist back to Ireland to heal her psychic wounds. In England, Thatcherism had created a materialistic culture that eroded many feminists' socialist values. Fay Weldon's Big Woman satirizes the demise of second-wave idealism, asking where feminism can go from here.

Overloaded

Overloaded PDF Author: Imelda Whelehan
Publisher: Women's Press (UK)
ISBN:
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume examines the phenomenon of laddishness and the cult of the girlie in film, TV, advertising, music, politics, literature and society. It interprets these trends as a nostalgic longing for a pre-feminist society which, through the medium of comedy and irony, has been manipulated by popular media as a liberation from political correctness. Contrasting the culture icons of the 1990s with the 1970s tough chicks and the 1980s New Man and Have-It-All Woman, the book aims to show how the rhetoric of laddism emerged and how it has infused so many aspects of our cultural identity.

Coming to Birth

Coming to Birth PDF Author: Marjorie Oludhe Macgoye
Publisher: The Feminist Press at CUNY
ISBN: 1558617078
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 204

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this quietly powerful and eminently readable novel, winner of the prestigious Sinclair Prize, Kenyan writer Marjorie Macgoye deftly interweaves the story of one young woman’s tumultuous coming of age with the history of a nation emerging from colonialism. At the age of sixteen, Paulina leaves her small village in western Kenya to join her new husband, Martin, in the bustling city of Nairobi. It is 1956, and Kenya is in the final days of the "Emergency," as the British seek to suppress violent anti-colonial revolts. But Paulina knows little about, about city life, or about marriage, and Martin’s clumsy attempts to control her soon lead to a relationship filled with silences, misunderstandings, and unfulfilled expectations. Soon Paulina’s inability to bear a child effectively banishes her from the confines of traditional women’s roles. As her country at last moves toward independence, Paulina manages to achieve a kind of independence as well: She accepts a job that will require her to live separately from her husband, and she has an affair that leads to the birth of her first child. But Paulina’s hard-won contentment will be shattered when Kenya’s turbulent history intrudes into her private life, bringing with it tragedy—and a new test of her quiet courage and determination. Paulina’s patient struggles for survival and identity are revealed through Marjorie Macgoye’s keen and sensitive vision—a vision which extends to embrace the whole of a nation and a people likewise struggling to find their way. As the Weekly Standard of Kenya notes, "Coming to Birth is a radical novel in firmly asserting our common humanity."

After the Peace

After the Peace PDF Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1784082090
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
How many parents does it take to make a baby? In the case of Rosalind Melrose Smithson it took four: one birth mother; one legal father; one interfering neighbour and one turkey baster filled with the defrosted essence of an anonymous donor. Or not so anonymous as it turned out. For donor no. 116349, '6ft 1in, blue eyes, blond hair, BA (Oxon), action man...' is the 9th Earl of Dilberne, who gave his seed back in 1979 as a stripling of twenty-two, and has now conceived a daughter – unknowingly – at the riper age of forty-two. As they say, the truth will out. And what will our Rozzie do when she finds out about her patrimony? All we know is that as a true Millennial, she will not take it lying down...

Letters to Alice

Letters to Alice PDF Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1480412422
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 197

Get Book Here

Book Description
An aunt imparts wisdom to her teenage niece, inspired by the works of Jane Austen, in this novel from the Man Booker Prize–nominated author. Alice is an aspiring novelist with green hair and zero interest in reading Jane Austen for her college English class. However, her Aunt Fay, a novelist herself, isn’t about to let Alice stick her nose up at Austen or other enduring authors. “You find her boring, petty and irrelevant, and, that as the world is in crisis, and the future catastrophic, you cannot imagine what purpose there can be in reading her,” Fay writes her. “My dear pretty little Alice, now with black and green hair . . . How can I hope to explain Literature to you, with its capital ‘L’?” Alternating between passages from Jane Austen’s novels and accounts of her own career, Aunt Fay pays tribute to a great author, explores the craft of fiction, and charts her niece’s development as a writer in this unique book that reveals how Austen—and great literature—is truly, wonderfully timeless.

The Spa Decameron

The Spa Decameron PDF Author: Fay Weldon
Publisher: Hachette UK
ISBN: 184916892X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 358

Get Book Here

Book Description
Ten high achieving ladies are gathered together in the week between Christmas and the New Year, at the expensive Castle Spa, seeking, through Botox, aromatherapy and general all round pampering, a new beginning to their lives. The Ladies lounge around in the Jacuzzi, drinking champagne and eating chocolate telling each other the stories of their lives. Starting with the Trophy wife's tale: her spell in a Greek prison has left her in serious need of a makeover; the Brain Surgeon's tale: of twins and mistaken identity; the Judge's tale: of the sex change which allowed him to judge the pleasures of the bedchamber from both male and female perspectives. The manicurist, the public speaker, the journalist, the company director, the ex vicar's wife, the screenwriter, all share their stories, ending with the stepmother's tale, a reversal of Cinderella's fate, with the stepmother as victim... Sparkling, witty, always compassionate and occasionally libidinous, Fay Weldon's new novel recalls Boccaccio's late medieval masterwork, The Decameron. Boccaccio dedicated his book to the ladies of his time, who were forced to hide their amorous passions under a veil of discretion, while men were free to indulge theirs.