Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions

Read Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions Online

Authors: Regina Barreca

Tags: #Women and Literature, #England, #History, #20th Century, #Literary Criticism, #General, #European, #English; Irish; Scottish; Welsh, #Women Authors, #Social Science, #Women's Studies, #test

 
title
:
Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions
author
:
Barreca, Regina.
publisher
:
University Press of New England
isbn10 | asin
:
0874516420
print isbn13
:
9780874516425
ebook isbn13
:
9780585322940
language
:
English
subject
 
Weldon, Fay--Criticism and interpretation, Women and literature--England--History--20th century.
publication date
:
1994
lcc
:
PR6073.E374Z65 1994eb
ddc
:
823/.914
subject
:
Weldon, Fay--Criticism and interpretation, Women and literature--England--History--20th century.
Page iii
Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions
Edited by
Regina Barreca
 
Page iv
Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755
© 1994 by Regina Barreca
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America 5 4 3 2 1
CIP
data appear at the end of the book
 
Page v
TO FAY WELDON,
whose wicked fictions
lead her readers to better lives
 
Page vii
Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
List of Contributors
xi
Introduction
Regina Barreca
1
Witch Weldon: Fay Weldon's Use of the Fairy Tale Tradition
Nancy A. Walker
9
Slam Dancing with Fay Weldon
Siân Mile
21
Classic Weldon
Margaret Anne Doody
37
The Importance of Aunts
Rachel Brownstein
59
"Say Your Goodbyes and Go": Death and Women's Power in Fay Weldon's Fiction
Elisabeth Bronfen
69
Going to Extremes: The Foreign Legion of Women in Fay Weldon's
The Cloning of Joanna May
Rose Quiello
83
"Energy and Brashness" and Fay Weldon's Tricksters
Julie Nash
93
 
Page viii
Fay Weldon's
Life and Loves of a She-Devil:
The Speaking Body
Susan Jaret McKinstry
104
They Should Have Called It "She-Angel"
Pamela Katz
114
Fay Weldon: Leader of the Frivolous Band
John Glavin
133
Journalist of the Heart
Robert Sullivan
152
The Monologic Narrator in Fay Weldon's Short Fiction
Lee A. Jacobus
163
It's the End of the World As We Know It: Bringing Down the House in Fay Weldon's Fiction
Regina Barreca
172
The Changing Face of Fiction
Fay Weldon
188
Of Birth and Fiction
Fay Weldon
198
When the Writer Visits the Reader
Fay Weldon
209
Infidelity
Fay Weldon
219
On the Reading of Frivolous Fiction
Fay Weldon
227
Index
229
 
Page ix
Acknowledgments
In addition to thanking Fay Weldon, not only for her work but for her generosity of spirit and willingness to support this project through all its phases, I want to thank Fay's assistant and my lifeline in London, Jane Wynborne, who helped every inch of the way. In my own office, the work of two extraordinary research assistants, Julie Nash (who saw the manuscript through from the beginning) and Valarie Smith (who added essential finishing touches), allowed me to focus on the business of creating a better book rather than frantically searching for yet another misplaced footnote. In addition, agent Diane Cleaver, editors Jeanne West and David Caffry, and the Research Foundation at the University of Connecticutespecially the office of Dean Thomas Giolasall contributed their support and encouragement in essential ways. My thanks, too, to the various publishers who have allowed material initially or partially printed elsewhere to be published here, including
Allure
magazine (where "Infidelity" first appeared), Wayne State University Press, and Gordon and Breach, Publishers.
 
Page xi
Contributors
REGINA BARRECA
is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. She is the author of
Perfect Husbands and Other Strangers: Demystifying Men, Marriage, and Romance
(1993),
They Used to Call Me Snow White, But I Drifted: Women's Strategic Uses of Humor
(1991), and
Untamed and Unabashed: Essays on Women and Humor in English Literature
(1993). She is the editor of several volumes of essays. Barreca is Fay Weldon's designated biographer.
ELISABETH BRONFEN
is an Associate Professor at the University of Zurich (Switzerland). She has written extensively on "the dead woman as muse" in women's literature, and her most recent book is
Over her Dead Body: Death Femininity and the Aesthetic
(1992).
RACHEL BROWNSTEIN
, who teaches at the Graduate Center, CUNY, is the author of
Becoming a Heroine: Reading About Women in Novels
(Viking, 1982), and
Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comedia Française
(Knopf, 1993). She believes in the importance of novels and novelists.
MARGARET ANNE DOODY
, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, is the author of two novels,
Aristotle Detective and The Alchemists,
as well as other books, including
Frances Burney: The Life in the Works
. She is completing a book-length study of prose fiction in the West from antiquity to the 1990s. At present she is Director of the Comparative Literature Program at Vanderbilt.
JOHN GLAVIN
is a playwright and Associate Professor of English at Georgetown University. He has published on a variety of literary figures
 
Page xii
and topics from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His current projects include the pilot script for a television series "Remnants" and a book-length study of Dickens's theatricality,
A Book in Company
.
LEE A. JACOBUS
is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He has written on Milton, Shakespeare, and modern Irish literature. Jacobs has edited several books, including
The Bedford Book of Drama
.
PAMELA KATZ
is an award-winning filmmaker and screenwriter. She has worked in the world of motion pictures for 14 years and her career spans documentary, television, and feature films. Katz is the author of the screenplay Angel,
All Innocence,
a film adaptation of Fay Weldon's short story by the same title. She co-authored the screenplay
Lenya
with Steven Bach and is currently working on an adaptation of the novel
Simulacron III
.
SUSAN JARET M
c
KINSTRY
is an Associate Professor of English and Film at Carleton College, where she teaches on the nienteenth-century British novel, literary theory, and film narrative. She has written on Emily Brontë, Ann Beattie, Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, Emily Dickinson, and Jane Austen, and she co-edited
Feminism, Bakhtin, and the Dialogic
with Dale Bauer.
SIÂN MILE
is currently finishing up her dissertation, "Slam Dances: Collisions/Collusions between the Theories and Practices of Feminism and Punk," at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her work is grounded in an ongoing fascination with feminist theory and its place in and out of the academy, twentieth-century British literature, and popular culture. She has published articles on Marilynne Robinson's
Housekeeping
and on Roseanne Arnold, and hopes, in the future, to produce work that is as revolting as possible.
JULIE NASH
is working on her Ph.D. in English at the University of Connecticut, where she teaches literature and composition. She is also an instructor at Eastern Connecticut State University. Nash has published on James Baldwin and has delivered papers on
Frankenstein, Jane Eyre,
James Baldwin, and David Mamet. She specializes in contemporary literature and feminist archetypal theory.
ROSE QUIELLO
, who considers herself to be a "late bloomer," holds a Ph.D. in literature. She has been involved in women's and children's issues, in life and in literature, by her active work as an English professor and a registered nurse.
ROBERT SULLIVAN
is a senior writer and editor at
Life Magazine
.

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