HI

SHIVAJI UNIVERSITY, KOLHAPUR

CENTRE FOR DISTANCE EDUCATION

M. A. Part-II : English Semester-III : Paper G1 E4 Modern and Postmodern British Literature

Semester-IV : Paper C-10 Critical Theory-II

KJ(Academic Year 2019-20 onwards)

M. A. Part-II English Paper G1 E4 Modern and Post Modern British Literature Unit-1 Brian Friel : Dancing At Lughnasa

Contents 1.0 Objectives 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Life and Works of Brian Friel 1.3 Plot of the Play 1.4 Characters in the Play 1.5 Themes in the Play 1.6 Brian Friel and Dancing at Lughnasa: Critical Perspectives 1.7 Check Your Progress 1.8 Answers to Check Your Progress 1.9. Terms to Remember 1.10 Exercises 1.11 Further Readings 1.0 Objectives: After completing the study of this unit, you will: • Know about the life and works of Brian Friel • Know about the plot and critical perspectives of the play • Learn the minor and major characters in the play • Learn and explore themes in the play • Be able to answer the questions on the play

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1.1 Introduction: Brian Friel was considered as one of the leading contemporary Irish playwrights of the 20 th century, Ireland. As a modern master, he has maintained a tradition of IrishLiterature by addressing local themes which have universal significance. The play Dancing at Lughnasa, debuted in 1990, received many awards and was adapted to thescreen in a film directed by Pat O'Conner. In this play, Friel contrasts the controlledrespectability and Catholicism within the lives of the Five Mundy sisters with underlying paganism. Besides, it also reflects the traumatic histories, dance performances which recover repressed cultural and spiritual traditions, the decline of village communities, and loss of culture resulting in more frequent alcoholism and depression. It also interrogates the status of women working in domestic places. He was called a voice of Ireland. His work deals with the spiritual and social upheavals of an emerging modern Ireland. Though Friel wrote about Ireland, it could have happened in the world. 1.2 Life and Works of Brian Friel: Brian Friel, an Ulster-born dramatist, was born on January 9, 1929, near Omagh, County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland. He was the son of a Catholic schoolmaster, Patrick, and a postmistress, Christina (Machoone) Friel. He moved with his family to Derry when he was ten years old. His father became the principal there at Long Tower School. Friel attended St. Columba's College from 1941 to 1946, and he graduated with a B.A. in 1948 from St. Patrick's college. Friel attended St. Patrick's School in Maynooth intending to be a priest, but eventually decided against the priesthood and went on to become a teacher as his father had been before him. Then he worked as a school teacher in Derry for ten years from 1950 to 1960 in Londonderry. He began his literary career by writing short stories in the 1950s, and he enjoyed considerable success in the genre of short story publishing two collections as The Saucer of Larks (1962), and The Gold in the Sea (1966). His some short stories were published in The New Yorker. Due to the success of the short stories, he left his job of teaching in 1960 to become a full-time writer of short stories, radio plays and stage plays. They were produced at abbey Theatre in Dublin. His first play, A Doubtful Paradise, was produced by the Ulster Group Theatre in 1960. The play was not well received, leading to a small period of struggle for the

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young writer. Shortly after the failure of the play, Friel travelled to the States to spend six months observing a theatrical season at the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In an interview with Lewis Funke in 1968, Friel described his experience at the Guthrie as 'a marvelous time', stating that he was 'absolutely thrilled and awed by it'. Friel, inspired and invigorated by his experience at the Guthrie, returned to Ireland in 1963 and wrote his first theatrical success, Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964). The play was produced by the Dublin Theatrical Festival and soon was taken to London and New York. Having captured the attention of English, American, and Irish Audiences, Friel went on to write The Loves of Cass McGuire (1966), and Lovers (1967), both play received positive reviews in Ireland and the United States. Friel lived and worked in a tumultuous and rapidly changing Northern Ireland, which served as inspiration for many of Friel's most influential plays. The Freedom of the City (1973) and Volunteers (1975) were some of Friel's most politically charged plays, acting as Friel's commentary on the Troubles which shook Northern during his lifetime. Friel married Anne Morrison in 1954, with whom he had five children. Friel was known for being shy and rarely made public statements. In his Self Portrait (1972), however, the playwright gave the world insight into his views on his own life and his future: 'I am married, have five children, live in the country, smoke too much, fish a bit read a lot, worry a lot, get involved in sporadic causes and invariably regret the involvement, and hope that between now and my death I will have acquired a religion, a philosophy, a sense of life that will make the endless frightening than it appears to me at this moment’. To learn more about the theatre, he spent six months in 1963 at Tyrone Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Nationalism and Catholicism were the formative influences on Friel's life, and his status as Northern Irish Catholic nationalist is often cited as the dominant factor underpinning the sense of the exile and disenfranchisement that permeates his work. His plays deal with the erratic working of memory, the complexities of family relationships where identity is often aligned with the concept of home. His plays are concerned with the personal, interior world of his characters, and how memory or nostalgia facilitates their self-deception. Friel has stated that he had 'a strong belief in racial memory', and he explores this idea through the interplay of history and the unreliability of recollection. A recurring theme in Friel's plays was also the clash between the traditional, religious Ireland of

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the past and increasingly progressive and secular Ireland of the 20th century. This clash and its effects on family ties and community is the centre of plays like Translations (1980), Dancing at Lughnasa ( 1990),Friel worked with Seamus Heaney, Thomas Kilroy, Frank McGuiness, and Stephen Rea. In 1980, Friel, along with Stephen Rea, founded the Field Day Theatre Company in Northern Ireland to provide Irish playwrights with an outlet for works of social and political significance. In 1983, the company began publishing various pieces of literature aimed at the academic community on a wide variety of historical, cultural, and artistic topics. Friel spent most of his years living in Donegal. He passed away on 2 nd Oct. 2015 at his home in Greencastle, Co Donegal, at the age of 86. Being a prolific writer, he has produced more than 30 plays in a career spanning six decades. His best-known works are like: Philadelphia, Here I Come! (1964), The Freedom of the City (1973), Faith Healer (1979), Aristocrats (1979), Translations (1980), Dancing at Lughnasa(199Q), Wonderful Tennessee (1993), Molly Sweeney (1994), Give Me Your Answer Do! (1997), and The Home Place (2005). Brian Friel, widely regarded as 'a national cultural icon' passed away on 2 nd Oct. 2015 at his home in Greencastle, Co Donegal, at the age of 86. 1.3 Plot of the play: Dancing at Lughnasa is a two-act play by Irish dramatist Brian Friel. The play debuted in 1990 and received many accolades, including several Tony Awards. It was also adapted into a 1998 feature film directed by Pat O' Connor. The play Dancing at Lughnasa is set in the home of the Mundy family. It is two miles away from the village of Ballybeg, County Donegal, Ireland, in 1936. The places like Mundy Home, Ballybeg and Donegal play important roles as setting in the play. The play tells about the human soul, unspoken longings, hopeless dreams and unshaken faith through words, silence, movement, music, ritual, dance and memory. It is also about passion, paganism, family, marriage, change and escape. In the play, Friel contrasts the controlled respectability and Catholicism within the lives of the five Mundy sisters with underlying paganism. The play has the form of a memory play, and narrated by Michael, the illegitimate son of the youngest of the five sisters. The play is set on a warm day early in August 1936. It is the story of that August as Michael remembers it, as an adult, thirty years later. It is the story of the summer he was seven, the summer life

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changed for him forever. Through Michael's eyes, it is seen that his mother and aunts struggling to find hope, joy, and escape amidst the difficulties of life during Ireland's depression. The women, Kate, Maggie, Agnes, Rose and Chris are trapped by their environment, their society, religion, and poverty. Living on the outskirts of town, unmarried at a time when women married out of necessity, and with a child born "out of wedlock" in a place where the Church was supreme, they were indeed on the fringe of their society. Kate, the eldest at forty, is a teacher at the parochial school in town, and the only one with any real connection to the outside world. Maggie keeps the house; Agnes and Rose take in knitting. Rose is simple, and Agnes is her special caretaker. Chris, only twenty-six, is Michael's mother, although all the women raise the boy together. They live in the family home, two miles outside the village. Michael, now an adult, narrates the story, and watches much of the action. His childhood self is present only in memory, as Michael speaks the lines of the boy but does not represent him physically. The events of that August are memorable for Michael because of three intruders, outsiders who violently disrupt the order of his small world. First, Father Jack, the sisters' older brother, returns home, ill and jaundiced, from some twenty-five years of missionary work in Africa. His arrival offered his sisters hope, a final chance for redemption in the eyes of the village. But Lughnasa addresses the conflict between what is real and what is imagined, between the way things are and the way they should be - and Jack's reality cannot match the brightness of their imagination. He was remembered as "a hero and a saint" by the family he left behind, but they soon realize that "he won't [say Mass again]. He's changed [...] completely changed. He's not our Jack at all" (60). Sent off as a Catholic missionary to a leper colony in "a remote village called Ryanga in Uganda," Jack was instead converted by the African peoples and won over to their beliefs (10). At first, he said Mass in his church but was soon holding ceremonies in the centre of the village, leading the people in offering "sacrifice to Obi, our Great Goddess of the Earth" (58). He spoke Swahili while in Africa and, back in Ireland, finds the transition to English unexpectedly difficult. He cannot remember English words; he cannot forget Ryangan ceremonies. Ballybeg's "own leper priest" is too African, too pagan, to be accepted back into the village's Catholic community. Instead of welcoming him with the promised "civic reception with bands and flags and receptions" (72), the local parish priest marks Jack's return by firing Kate from her teaching position. Jack was sent home by his

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superiors; he will be dead in a year. His presence should restore wholeness to the Mundy family; instead, they are already on the fringe, and the return of the "Irish Outcast" marks them all as too subversive for full community membership. Their hopes - and their family - begin to crumble. The family's instability is reinforced when Gerry Evans, Michael's father, visits for the first time in Michael's memory. A Welsh drifter recently turned ballroom instructor and unsuccessful travelling gramophone salesman, Gerry visits twice over the summer, staying only long enough to dance with and propose to Chris, tell a few stories, fiddle with the radio, and promise Michael a bike. At the end of the summer, he will leave to fight in Spain with the International Brigade; in the next years, he will visit three or four more times before disappearing altogether. In the mid-1950s, Michael will receive "a curt note from a young man of [his] own age and also called Michael Evans," letting him know that their father died peacefully in his "family home" with his wife and children (73). Gerry's presence in the Mundy family's life is fleeting and ultimately apart from his "real life" in Wales, but it is as close as any of the sisters will come to a marriage, and his visits offer Chris a hope that she realizes, even then, is illusory. August 1936 is also marked by the sisters' new Marconi radio: "our first wireless set ...well, a sort of a set; and it obsessed us" (9). Michael describes how the "sheer magic of that radio" - a radio that piped in American pop music as well as Irish tunes - led his carefully Catholic mother and aunts to dance, laugh, and scream "like excited schoolgirls," and how its music was the background for his parents' most intimate communication, their dancing (10). These dances, however, are not the beginning of a bright future, but the last outburst of joy and hope, passion and ecstasy. These women are spinsters, and their dance marks the Lughnasa of their lives, as well - the autumn, the last fling before the bleakness of winter. What follows for them is not a carefree, youthful festival, but the tragic, dismal breakup of the family. Within the first two pages of the play, Michael makes us aware of all this, and notes: Even though I was only a child of seven at the time I know I had a sense of unease, some awareness of a widening breach between what seemed to be andwhat was, of things changing too quickly before my eyes, of becoming what they ought not to be. That may have been because Uncle Jack hadn't turned out at all like the resplendent figure in my head. Or maybe because I had witnessed Marconi's voodoo derange those kind, sensible women and transform them into shrieking strangers. Or

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maybe it was because during those Lughnasa weeks of 1936 we were visited on two occasions by my father, Gerry Evans, and for the first time in my life I had a chance to observe him. There is also another intruder that summer: the Industrial Revolution. By fall, all home knitting will be replaced by a factory in a nearby town, and Agnes and Rose will be out of work. Ten days after the action of the play ends, the two sisters, already unhappy in Ballybeg, will leave for London, where years later they will die of exposure, homeless and alone. With this backdrop of hopelessness carefully in place, a remembered trace which shapes our understanding of the story, the action of the play begins. It is an everyday, peaceful afternoon, and Kate returns home from school to tell her sisters that the upcoming harvest dance is all the talk of the town. Unexpectedly, Agnes suggests that they all go to the dance this year, as they did when they were young; they are nearly able to convince Kate, who finally refuses. As talk returns to groceries and cigarettes, Rose tells them what she has heard about last week's Lughnasa festival that a boy fell into one of the bonfires and is dying. As this line of conversation, too, is quelled by Kate, Jack wanders through the kitchen, lost, confused, and cold. Determined to believe that he will be well soon, the sisters return to their tasks until Irish dance music is heard on the radio. Defiantly, Maggie begins to dance; Rose, Agnes, and Chris join her. Finally, Kate jumps up and dances too, alone, until the radio abruptly dies. Without looking at each other, the women catch their breath and begin to work again. Only moments later, the sisters are once again thrown into confused chaos when they notice Gerry Evans coming up the lane. Nervously, Chris goes outside to talk to him, and her sisters watch him, appalled, as "suddenly he takes her in his arms and dances" (42). Just as suddenly, he is gone. As if to cut the tension, Jack reappears, trying to remember the strangers who are his sisters and make them understand the value of his African ceremonies. To Kate's great shock, he is pleased to discover that "Michael is a love-child," and hopes that his sisters have other children like him (51). The act ends with Jack in the garden, dancing to the rhythm he makes with two of Michael's kite-sticks, as Michael describes his parents' dancing. Three weeks later, Jack's vocabulary has improved enough for him to describe and enact his favourite Ryangan ceremonies, the harvest festivals of the New Yam and the Sweet Casava. Gerry is back, flirting with Chris in the garden. And after picking bilberries with Agnes, Rose has disappeared to go through the back hills and 7

out on Lough Anna with Danny Bradley, the man she is in love with, and who she believes can love her, now that his wife and children have left him. When Rose returns, Michael describes how she and Agnes will leave, ten days later, and how they will die - and, too, how Jack and Gerry will die. With only ten pages left, which will close the play with a beautiful, if distorted, picnic in the garden, Michael reminds us how hopelessly it will all end. But he does not leave us there: in his memory, dream and reality blur into an illogically enchanted reminiscence. His most vivid memory of that summer is based, not in the bleakness of facts, reality, or words, but atmosphere and nostalgia. Michael brings the play to a close-by describing the way what he remembers that summer as dancing: And so, when I cast my mind back to that summer of 1936, different kinds of memories offer themselves to me. But there is one memory of that Lughnasa time that visits me most often; and what fascinates me about that memory it that is owes nothing to fact. In that memory atmosphere is more real than incident and everything is simultaneously actual and illusory. I that memory, too, the air is nostalgic with the music of the thirties. It drifts in from somewhere far away — a mirage of sound - a dream music that is both heard and imagined; that seems to be both itself and its won echo; a sound so alluring and so mesmeric that the afternoon is bewitched, may be haunted, by it. And what is strange about that memory is that everybody seems to be floating on those sweet sounds, moving rhythmically, languorously, in complete isolation; responding more to the mood of the music than to its beat. When I remember it, I think of it as dancing. (72-73) 1.4 Character in the Play: Father Jack Mundy: Father Jack Mundy, fifty-three years old man, is the brother of the Mundy sisters, and uncle of Michael. He is a retired Catholic missionary and army Chaplain returned from service in Uganda. He has lived as a missionary for 25 years in a leper colony in a remote village called Ryanga in Uganda. He has difficulty with his memory. He struggles with the English language. He has been speaking Swahili for twenty-five years. The character of Father Jack highlights Friel's theme of paganism. While living in Uganda, he has adopted cultural and religious aspects of his host community and consequently, turns away from the tradition of the Catholic Church. Jack professes a broad admiration for the pagan beliefs of the native people of

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Africa. Jack has also forgotten the family's Catholic faith and adopted the theological beliefs of tribes in Africa. Jack never says another mass after his return to Donegal. He has 'gone native' and abandoned much of his Catholicism during his time there. He has changed his outlook about Catholicism. He has accepted beliefs regarding African traditions and customs. He has an interest in the African stories. He causes Kate to lose her job and shame on the family. Michael: Michael is the storyteller of the play. He is also called as the protagonist of the play. He functions as a narrator. He narrates his memories of the summer of 1936. The other characters think that he is an invisible boy. He is adored by his mother and aunts. He is the illegitimate child of Chris Mundy and Gerry Evans, and only he sees his father about once a year. He has an easy relationship with his aunts. In nutshell, Michael acts as a narrator, not only dictating the action as it goes on but reveals the future of the other characters in the play. Gerry Evans: Gerry Evans, 33 years of age, is Welsh. He is a charming, but unreliable, dishonest and always clowning. He tries to deceive others with his charm. He uses his charm as a defence mechanism to avoid unpleasant realities. He is selfish and self-absorbed. He tells stories to impress others, especially Chris. He drifts from job to job. Though he enjoys different jobs, his career is not successful. He is an irresponsible father of theillegitimate son, Michael, whose mother is Chris; Chris and Gerry were never married. He continues to visit Chris and Michael every year. He makes promises only to break. He has a spirit of adventure. He eventually leaves Ireland and joins the international Brigade and goes to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He is wounded in Spain by falling off of his motorbike. After Gerry's death, Michael learns that his father had a wife and three children in Wales, throughout all those years, unbeknownst to Christ. Chris Mundy: Chris, 26 years of age, is the youngest of the Mundy sisters. She is an unmarried mother. Chris is a strong and independent woman in many ways but her weak point is that she could not understand Gerry's deceptive nature and her continued love for him. She is frequently deceived by Gerry; but when he comes at her door, she tries to be cool. When he begins to dance with her, Chris happily becomes a victim of him. 9

She always wants to look good-youngest. She has life-loving and free spirit. She likes to dance but hides her desire to go to a dance. She does not worry about the opinions of the Catholic Church. Kate Mundy: Kate Mundy, 40 years old, is the eldest of the Mundy sisters. She behaves as a Mother figure in the family. She is a national schoolteacher. She is the breadwinner and the support of the family. She tries to impose her rights and thoughts on her sisters. She is proud of religion and family. She behaves like a boss in the home but her sisters do not like it. She thinks that her sisters should behave properly with etiquettes. She does not want her sisters to go beyond the traditions and customs of the society. She is a religious and Catholic figure. She is conservative and morally upright. She is not happy with Jack's references regarding the pagan rituals in Ryanga. Despite her deep conservatism and religiousness, Kate loses her job at the school because of Father Jack's losing his faith, reputation, and becoming a different person, as he changes his attitude about Catholicism. Maggie Mundy: Maggie, thirty-eight, is the second oldest of the five sisters, and works as the cook, housekeeper, and peacemaker of their family instead of pursuing a career. She is the onewho suggests naming the new wireless radio, Lugh. Michael describes her as 'the joker of the family'. She tries to keep everyone together and happy. She changes the subject when arguments start in the family. Her nature is easy-going. She is the first one to get up and dance wild. She leads the pagan dance and names the radio. For personality, Maggie is not as elegant as her other sisters are. She had some hidden passions. She is an avid smoker and is partial to Wild Woodbine brand cigarettes. Maggie was interested in Brian McGuiness, a local boy, in her teens. Agnes Mundy: Agnes Mundy, thirty-five, is the middle of the five sisters. She, quiet and contemplative, is a knitter for a local shopkeeper in town, Vera McLaughlin. She is a special caretaker and protector of Rose. She is patient, lovable, gentle, tolerant, persistent and kind. She is knitting gloves with Rose. She is deeply concerned with Rose. She does most of the housework. She has high ideas about herself. She is more welcoming to Gerry than other sisters. She is shy but has secret longings for Gerry Evans. She resents Kate's imposing nature. She suggests all sisters go to the harvest 10

dance. After losing her job of a knitter and due to her sense of parental regard for Rose, she emigrates with Rose to London, breaking off, all contacts with the family. She eventually becomes homeless and Agnes dies in dire circumstances in the 1950s. Rose Mundy: Rose Mundy, 32 years old, is a knitter like Agnes. She knits gloves to sell in the town. She is 'simple' and behaves much younger than her years. She behaves like a child. She relies on Agnes. Rose is in love with Danny Bradley, a married man with three children. Her sisters do not like it. She thinks that her sisters have jealous of her love with Danny Bradley. Agnes has a great love for Rose. Rose is stubborn, independent and rebellious. She is always optimistic and ready for fun, singing and dancing. Though she is stubborn and arrogant, she cares for Michael and loves him. 1.5 Themes in Dancing At Lughnasa: Dance: Brian Friel, in his interview, says, 'When you come to the large elements and mysterious of life, they are ineffable. Words fail us at moments of great emotion. Language has become depleted for me in some way; words have lost their accuracy and precision. So I use dance in the play as a surrogate for language ’. Brian Friel uses a variety of dance techniques to convey the significance of dance as a projection of universal and primal desires to which everyone is submissive. The play Dancing at Lughnasa has a dance background. The significance of dance and its effect n the audience is echoed throughout the play with different circumstances. The pages like 20 to 23 of the play highlights how all sisters dance in unity. "She (Chris) switches the set on and returns to her ironing. The music, at first scarcely audible, is Irish dance music —'the Mason's Apron', played by the ceili band. Very fast; very heavy beat a raucous sound. At first, we are aware of the beat only. Then, as the volume increases slowly, we hear the melody. For about ten seconds ~ until the sound has established itself — the women continue their tasks. Then MAGGIE turns round. Her head is cocked to the beat, to the music. She is breathing deeply, rapidly. Now her features become animated by a look of defiance, of aggression; a crude mask of happiness. For a few seconds, she stands still, listening, absorbing the rhythm, during her sisters with her defiant grimace. Now she spreads her fingers [which are covered with flour], pushes her hair back from the face, and pulls her hands down her cheeks and patterns her face with an instant mask. At the same time, she opens her mouth and emits a wild, raucous 'Yaaaah!' - and

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immediately begins to dance, arms, legs, hair, long bootlaces flying. And as she dances she lifts - sings - shouts and calls, 'Come on and join me! Come on!'. For about ten seconds she dances along - a white-faced, frantic dervish. Her sisters watch her. Then ROSE's face lights up. Suddenly she flings away her knitting, leaps to her feet, shouts, and grabs MAGGIE's hand. They dance and sing - shout together; Rose's Willington pounding out their erratic rhythm. Now after another five seconds AGNES looks around, leaps up, and joins MAGGIE and ROSE. Of all the sisters she moves most gracefully, almost sensuously. Then after the same interval CHRIS, who hasbeen folding Jack's surplice, tosses it quickly overhead her head KATE cries out in remonstration, 'Oh, Christina --!'. But her protest is drowned. AGNES and ROSE, CHRIS and MAGGIE, are now all doing an almost recognizable dance. They meet - they retreat. They form a circle and wheel round and round. But movements seem caricatured; and the most recognizable dance is made grotesque because - for example -instead of holding hands, they have their arms tightly around one another's neck, on another's thewaist. Finally, KATE, who has been watching the scene with unease, with alarm suddenly leaps to her feet, flings her head back, and emits a loud 'Yaaaah!'. KATE dances alone, totally concentrated, totally private; a moment that is simultaneously controlled and frantic; a weave of complex steps that takes her quickly round the kitchen, past her sisters, out to the garden, round the summer seat, back to the kitchen; a pattern of action that is out of character and at the same time ominous of some deep and true emotion. Throughout the dance ROSE, AGNES, MAGGIE and MAGGIE and CHRIS should - call - sing to each other. KATE makes no sound. With this too loud music, this pounding beat, this shouting - calling - singing, this periodic reel, there is a sense of order being subverted, of the women consciously and crudely caricaturing themselves, indeed of near-hysteria being induced. They must stop abruptly in mid-phrase. But because of the noise, they are making the sisters do not notice and continue dancing for a few seconds. Then KATE notices — and stops. Then AGNES. Then CHRIS and MAGGIE. Now ROSE is dancing her grace dance by herself. Then finally, she, too, notices and stops. Silence. For some time they stand where they have stopped. There is no sound but their gasping for breath and short bursts of static from the radio. They look at each other 12

obliquely; avoid looking at each other; half-smile in embarrassment; feel and looks slightly ashamed and slightly defiant" (20-23). Each description or outburst of dance involving the characters gives the audience an insight to not only their true personality but also the strains of their current situations. All characters share their dances and express true and raw feelings in their minds. The writer has used the juxtaposition of native tribal dancing and localized northern Irish dancing with the use of Father Jack. Dancing as a whole is seen to give the sister the ability to letgo and forget about who are they. It is a representation of paganism in the play and it can show the volatile nature of believing in these traditions. Throughout the play, the Mundy sisters burst into fits of sporadic dancing multiple times. They dance with Chris's lover, Gerry, and Uncle Jack even introduces Ugandan forms of dance to their home. Kate, the eldest sister, scorns and resists the drinking, dancing and revelling of her sisters but eventually, even she comes to terms with the family's keen pull to ancient rituals. Order is Disordered/Change: In Dancing at Lughnasa, Friel explores the complexities of a society on the brink of change. He reflects the dichotomies between pagan tradition and the Catholic religion; rural lifestyle and increased industrialization; and outward propriety against inner longing and instinct. It also reflects the tension between pagan tradition and catholic religion. Modernization or industrialization poses a threat to the rural simple lifestyle. The theme 'Order is disordered' deals with the rules which are not followed, and faith is lost. It indicates the struggle, conflict and tension between restriction and liberty, Catholicism and paganism, patriarchy and individualism etc. As the play opens, Michael narrates that during the summer in 1936, the family bought their wireless radio. All sisters discussed too much regarding the naming the radio. They wanted to give the name to wireless radio as 'Lugh' after the pagan God of the upcoming Lughnasa Harvest Festival, but Kate, who is very staunchly catholic disapproved it. She says that it would be sinful to christen an inanimate object with the name of God. All sisters except Kate want to attend the Lughnasa dance. Despite all the trouble insights and bravura performances, all sisters express their desire to attend the harvest dance at any cost at the annual Festival of Lughnasa. This idea is rejected by Kate saying that Ballybeg is in Frenzy over the festival. She scolds the

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sisters for talking about the festival and tells them that it is an insult to the Catholicism. Jack has also forgotten the family's Catholic faith and adopted the theological beliefs of tribes in Africa. Jack also goes with changes and against the order restricted by the family and society. Jack represents change. He has changed his outlook about Catholicism. He has acceptedbeliefs regarding African traditions and customs. He turns the swap into a non-catholic ceremony as well as referring to Uganda as his home. As a staunch Catholic and the head of the family, Kate opposes the traditional pagan Irish celebration of Lughnasa, refereeing inhabitants as 'savages'. She is the most resistant to the changes taking place around her and is especially critical of the 'pagan' singing and dancing that the radio has brought into her household. She is a religious and catholic figure. She is conservative and morally upright. She does not like anyone to go against church teachings and morals. She thinks that the people who participate in the rituals of Lughnasa, they are savages and she also hates them. In nutshell, Kate is a symbol of order, authority and catholic belief which are refused to follow; it means her 'order is disordered'. Kate loses her control over her family though she looks confident, strong and authority figure. Tragic Homecoming: With various themes, the play Dancing at Lughnasa also deals with the theme of tragic homecoming which is related to Father Jack. The Mundy sisters live together in their home with Michael, the illegitimate seven year-year-old. The sisters' uneventful lives are disrupted on the return of their beloved brother, Father Jack, who has lived as a missionary in a leper colony in a remote village called Ryanga in Uganda. He is suffering from malaria and has trouble remembering many things, including the sisters' names and his English vocabulary. It becomes clear that he has 'gone native' and abandoned much of his Catholicism during his time there. Father Jack returns home in a state of mental confusion after some unspecified transgression, and the sisters' efforts of maintaining their respectable lives in the village are upended by their brother's return. Marriage and Family: Marriage is an important issue in the play. The play gives a big part for the romanticized (re)encounter of Gerry and Chris. The play pinpoints the Mundy's struggle to survive all the obstacles of that harsh life, also fact that the Mundy

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women are getting old and destined to end their lives alone. Michael's illegitimacy is also a counterpart as it is provocatively and systematically developed by Friel as a break of the rules, Michaelwas born outside marriage. Michael is the good and the bad family after all because he is young and brings life to Mundy sisters. With this information, it is seen that how this family (Mundy family) struggles in such a conservative Irish Society because they all need at all times to preserve their dignity and cover what has been evaded. Marconi and Music: Dance, music and songs go hand in hand in the play. Music works as an agent of the identity of Friel's plays. The action of the play centres on 'Marconi'. It is a symbol of music and dance. The radio 'Marconi' remains in a play as a character. The music and songs come from the radio also remain significant in the play, as 'a member of the Mundy family'. The Mundy sisters' dialogue tends to reflect this personification; Agnes remarks that 'how old and useless it is' and Maggie addresses the radio as 'Marconi, my friend, you're not till asleep, are you? As 'Marconi' is a major element in Mundy sisters' everyday lives, they reveal much more complex emotions. When Chris sees Gerry dances with Agnes, she becomes understanding jealous. She eventually responds by angrily shutting the wireless off, declaring that she is 'sick of the damned thing'. In Act-I, when Gerry first visits Chris, Agnes acts out of the same confused romantic tension, but oppositely- she refuses to turn off the radio even when Kate asks her to. The wireless first plays directly following Maggie's long and emotional speech about Bernie O'Donnell, a former friend whose return to Ballybeg leaves Maggie visibly upset. In all of these cases, the wireless set connects to strong emotion, generally distress of some sort. This serves a twofold purpose. First, turning on or off the music becomes a cathartic resolution for the sisters, an avenue by which they can easily express their frustration against external events. Though Kate, Chris, and Agnes do not themselves sing, they still express themselves in music through their interactions with Marconi, turning to the music from the radio to channel their own emotions. Friel provides a very specific description of the radio music in the stage directions. Besides, the play also deals with development in society, technology (Marconi, factory, gramophone), sexual freedom, domestication, and the industrial revolution, Paganism versus Catholicism, the clash between traditional Ireland and progressive secular Ireland. 15

1.6. Dancing at Lughnasa: Critical Overview: Brian Friel was considered as one of the leading contemporary Irish playwrights of 20 th century. He was part of the generation of Irish dramatists who came of age after Samuel Beckett which include Hugh Leonard, torn Mclntyre, Thomas Kilroy and Tom Murphy. Aside from Leonard, who found success on Broadway with hid play 'Da', Friel was the most internationally celebrated of his peers. Richard Pine praises Friel as a 'modern master' because 'he has maintained a tradition of Irish literature by addressing local themes which have universal significance'. Pine goes on to describe the thematic concerns of Friel's dramatic settings in Ireland: Friel's Ireland, if it exists at all, is a complexity of loyalties, horrors, hopes, confused time sequences, hostilities of the sacred and the profane, a constant probing of its role as victim, a continual belief in the restoration of a way of living and thinking which was beneficent and provident but which has somehow turned tragic and punitive. The play Dancing at Lughnasa features dance and music as well as pre-Christian spiritual traditions connected to nature. It deals with themes like traumatic histories and dance performances which recovers repressed cultural and spiritual traditions. It also reflects the decline of village communities and loss of culture resulting in more frequent alcoholism and depression. Critics have analysed these tragic in Mundy family as signifying Ireland's failure to accommodate single women and address the ongoing economic problems in the early Republic. Yu Chen Lin claims that the replacement of the gift economy with industrialization marginalized women working in domestic spaces. Lin notes that Friel's play interrogates the status of women who don't fit the model of wife and mother outlined in the constitution. According to Lin, this ideal model was unrealistic due to the economy of Ireland in the 1920s-30s which resulted in very low marriage rates and one half of the female population is unmarried. Catriona Clutterbuck asserts that Friel treats 'the struggle of the individual to achieve full subject status within a communal living situation that is inflected by imperialist polities' (1999:101). Clutterbuck prefers to the term imperial rather than colonial to describe the historical context of the play because the forces of imperialism, more indirect thancolonialism, resulting in a marketplace in which encroaching industrialization restricts the domestic sphere so that the sisters lose

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their work making gloves in their home. She ascribes tensions in the play to imperialism's construction of binaries between the visionary and the rational as well as 'Irish barbarity versus English civilization — territorial politics versus class politics and sexuality versus spirituality (105). Richard Cave interprets Dancing at Lughnasa as the representation of a society whose ethical code has 'lost all concern with spiritual fulfillment and most crucially has in the process come to deny that there is any connection between sensual and spiritual awareness (1990:118-19). He is too critical of the moral binaries which govern Ballybeg behaviour since natural bodily urges expressed in dancing were judged as sinful, pagan and subversive of mores. Cave thinks that Friel's play sustains a 'profound and disturbing tension between the social crisis of the family and the ageless traditional rituals outside time' (115). He describes Kate's skilful dancing as imaging the 'pattern of a very different lifestyle which would respect her wealth of emotion, her creativity and zest, her capacity for joy - her gifts of exquisite coordination and physical rhythm' (118). Unfortunately, this creativity, Kate's moments of being other than her mundane self, must be repressed in the context of the women's precarious status in Ballybeg. Kate gradually realizes how repressive she is about her sisters having fun when she comments on Maggie's singing 'If you know prayers as well as you know the words of those aul pagan songs! ... She's right: I am a righteous bitch, ain't I? (Friel, 35). Yet Kate accurately comprehends the danger of their world collapsing when she reflects 'You work hard at your job. You try to keep the home together ...And then suddenly you realize that hair cracks are appearing everywhere; that control is slipping away' (35). The dance in the play is associated with the ancient seasonal festival, the unheimlich other in modern societies. Lughnasa was a typical pre-Christian harvest in Celtic Ireland. Originally the cutting of the first year of corn was offered to a deity. The festival is still celebrated with storytelling, matchmaking, and music and dancing. This essentially pre-Christian custom balanced sensuality and spiritually with wild nature in a festival celebrating libidinal energy such as Lughnasa which was not shameful. Yet in patriarchal rural Ireland, paganism was a threat to controlling women's bodies and paternity of their children. In her article 'In touch with some otherness: gender, authority and the body in Dancing at Lughnasa\ Anna McMullan states that 'as it is the women who are most corporeally restrained by the prevailing religious discipline it is the dance amongst women which subverts that

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discipline most radically' (1999:22). Clutterbuck mentions the unheimlich connection of Irish and Ryangan equivalents in Gerry's polygamy; Michael as love child; and Lughnasa as a harvest festival. She sees the challenge for the sisters as a need to recognize the intersections between their seemingly normal home life and the unhomely experience of dance as 'ritualized or revelatory spirituality' in which the women become other than their usual, controlled selves (108). Friel's plays deal with the erratic working of memory, and the complexities of family relationships, where identity is often aligned with the concept of home and how one remembers this emotional terrain. His plays are concerned with the personal and interior world of his characters, and how memory or nostalgia facilitates their self-deception. Friel himself has stated that he had 'a strong belief in racial memory', and he explores this idea through the interplay of history and the unreliability of recollection. At the heart of each play is the primacy of language, the double-edged danger of the spoken word, and the fact that what is left unspoken is often just as important as the dialogue on the stage. Critics particularly note Friel's use of language as a means of expressing issues of Irish nationalism. F. C. MaGrath notes that in Dancing at Lughnasa, 'the language ... is intensely lyrical'. Richard Pine asserts that 'Friel has provided us with a new language, an Irish-English more powerful than English-English, to express ... concepts of Irishness'. Alan J. Peacock states that several of Friel's plays 'make exhilaratingly explicit a preoccupation with the dubieties, the duplicities, limitations and simultaneous analytical, expressive and transcendent qualities of language which is ubiquitous in Friel's drama'. Peacock goes on to list some of the thematic concerns addressed by Friel use of language: The power of naming and its political or metaphysical consequences; the problematic of self-definition through language and the tyranny of imposed definition at a personal, social or national level; emotional inarticulacy at the individual level and cultural aphasia at the national; authentic and unauthentic narrative — these are kind of themes which insistently feature in Friel's drama. The play Dancing at Lughnasa also deals with Ireland, Nostalgia and globalization. Nicholas Grene claims that Friel's much higher profile is a consequence of the fact that his plays have tended to confirm for metropolitan audiences at home and abroad, in the 'global village', the discursive construction of Ireland as the place of the pre-modern other, and this made Friel 'readable' to metropolitan audiences, both domestic and international. 18

1.7Check Your Progress: 1. When and where Friel was born? 2. What are the titles of Friel's collections of short stories? 3. Which is the first play of Friel? 4. How many plays has Friel produced? 5. When did Friel pass away? 6. When was Dancing at Lughnasa adapted into film? 7. Where does Dancing at Lughnasa set? 8. Who is the eldest sister of the Mundy family? 9. Who is the caretaker of Rose? 10. Who is Michaels's mother? 11. What kind of work Agnes and Rose do? 12. Who is the narrator of the play? 13. Why was Jack called as 'a hero or saint' by family? 14. Which language did Jack speak in Africa? 15. What does Gerry promise to Michael? 16. With whom Rose was disappeared? 17. How many years Jack has lived in a leper colony? 18. Which culture did Jack adopt while living in Uganda? 19. Why Jack is called 'Gone Native'? 20. Which memories does Michael narrate? 21. Why Michael is called the illegitimate child? 22. Why does eventually Jack leave Ireland? 23. What does Michael learn about Gerry after his death? 24. Why does Kate try to impose her rights on her sisters? 25. How does Michael describe Maggie?

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26. In which person Maggie was interested? 27. What does Agnes knit? 28. Where does Agnes go after losing her job? 29. When does Agnes die? 30. To whom does Rose love? 31. How is Gerry wounded in Spain? 32. What did the Mundy family buy during the summer in 1936? 33. Why does Kate hate her sisters? 34. Who is the Catholic priest? 1.8 Answers to Check Your Progress: 1. On January 1929, near Omagh, County Tyrone, in Northern Ireland. 2. The Saucer of Larks, the Gold in the Sea 3. A Doubtful Paradise 4. More than 30 plays 5. On 2 nd Oct. 2015, at the age of 86. 6. in 1998 7. Set in the home of Mundy family 8. Kate 9. Chris 10. Chris 11. knitting 12. Michael 13. Because he was a catholic missionary. 14. Swahili 15. about a bike 16. Dunny Bradley

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17. 25 years 18. Pagan culture and the theological beliefs of tribes in Africa. 19. Because Jack abandoned his Catholicism. He changed his outlook about Catholicism and accepted beliefs regarding African tradition and customs. 20. His memories of the summer of 1936. 21. Because he was born 'out of wedlock'. 22. To join the International Brigade, to fight in the Spanish Civil War. 23. Gerry is already married and he has children. 24. Because she is the elder sister and authority figure in the family. 25. The joker of the family. 26. McGuiness, a local boy. 27. gloves 28. London 29. in the 1950s 30. Danny Bradley, a married man with three children. 31. by falling off his motorbike 32. a wireless radio 33. Because of their desire to attend the harvest/pagan dance which is an insult to the Catholicism. 34. Jack 1.9. Terms to Remember Marconi: the wireless radio in the Mundy home was created by Marconi's Wireless Telegraph Company; named for Gugliema Marconi, the Italian Physicist and inventor of the wireless telegraph. Lugh: The Celtic god of the sun, Lugh, was a prominent figure in Irish pagan mythology.

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Lughnasa: Lughnasa (sometimes spelled Lughnasadh )is one of four Gaelic seasonal festivals. Uganda: Uganda is a country in Africa. Swahili: Swahili is a language spoken by Uncle Jack in Uganda. Father Jack: He was a Catholic priest who would have had a non-combatant status while serving in the war effort. Going Native: It is a term that exists as a testament to the significance of the phenomenon and bears some shadows of the negative connotations 'going native' had in the Christian West. Pagan: having the religious belief that does not belong to any of the main religions Obi: the great goddess of the earth. Fringe: edge Intruder: one who enters Redemption: the action of being saved from evil Crumble: break into very smallpieces Ballroom: a large room used for dancing on formal occasions Fiddle: change the facts of something Fleeting: go together Resplendent: blazing Bilberries: one type of fruit Reminiscence: remembrance Bleakness: cheerless Nostalgic: a feeling of pleasure, mixed with sadness. Alluring: attractive and exciting in a way that is not easy to understand or explain. Mesmeric: to hold somebody's attention Bewitched : attractive/interesting Theological: religious

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Adore: to love and admire Illegitimate: born to parents who are not married to each other Upright: honest and responsible Conservatism: the disapproval of new ideas and change Avid: a very enthusiastic about something Ineffable: unspeakable Defiance: open refusal to obey somebody Grimace: an ugly expression on your face that shows that you are angry or disgusted. Raucous: loud and unpleasant Stubborn: obstinate Erratic: changing without reason Remonstration: complain/expostulate Dichotomies: the separation that exists between two groups that opposite to and different from each other. Staunchly: believing in something strongly swap: to exchange 1.10. Exercises: 1. Bring out the contrast of women characters in the play Dancing at Lughnasa. 2. Comment on the themes of Dancing at Lughnasa. 3. Brian Friel contrasts the controlled respectability and Catholicism within the lives of Mundy sisters with underlying paganism. Discuss. 4. Dancing at Lughnasa is a memory play. Discuss 5. Dancing at Lughnasa is a clash between the traditional religious Ireland of the past and increasingly progressive and secular Ireland of the 2oth century', Discuss. 6. Comment on the role of dance and Music in Dancing at Lughnasa. 7. Discuss the significance of 'Marconi' in Dancing at Lughnasa.

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8. Write in a brief outline of the play Dancing at Lughnasa. 9. Paganism versus Catholicism is a dominant theme of Brian Friel's plays. Explain with special reference to Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa. 10. Sketch the character of Kate in Dancing at Lughnasa. 11. Write a note on the women characters in Dancing at Lughnasa. 12. Write a detailed note on the portrayal of the character, Jack Mundy. 13. Bring out the significance of the title Dancing at Lughnasa. 1.11. Further Readings: Friel, Brian. Dancing at Lughnasa, Faber and Faber, 1990 ——. Brian Friel: Essay, Diaries, Interviews, 1964-1999. Ed. Christopher Murray, London: Faber, 1999. Cave, Richard Alien. Questing for Ritual and Ceremony in a Godforsaken World: 'Dancing at Lughnasa' and 'Wonderful Tennessee', Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 1999,5(1). Gale. 'A Study Guide for Brian Friel's 'Dancing at Lughnasa ', Gale Group, Inc., 2001. Kerwin, William. (Ed.) Brian Friel: A Casebook, Garland, 1997. Aragay, Mireia. 'Ireland, Nostalgia and Globalization: Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa on the Stage and Screen, International Journal of English Studies, University of Murcia, Vol. 2, 2002. O'Toole, Fintan. 'Marking Time: From Making History to Dancing at Lughnasa', in The Achievement of Brian Friel, edited by Alan J. Peacock, Colin Smythe, 1993. Tetz, Catherine, 'A Language Without Words: Music as an Agent of Identity in Brian Friel's Dancing at Lughnasa, Honors Theses, Andrew University, 2012. JJJ

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Unit-2 British Feminism : The Fat Woman's Joke by Fay Weldon

Contents 2.0 Objectives 2.1 Introduction 1.1.1 Life and Work of Fay Weldon 2.2 Introduction to The Fat Woman’s Joke 2.2.1 Summary of The Fat Woman’s Joke : In Brief 2.2.2 Summary in Detail Check your progress 1 2.3 Characters in The Fat Woman’s Joke 2.3.1 Major Character 2.3.2 Minor Characters Check your progress 2 2.4 Themes Check your progress 3 2.5 Humour, Wit and Irony 2.6 Symbolism in The Fat Woman’s Joke 2.7 Answers to check your progress 2.8 Exercises 2.9 References

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2.0 Objectives After studying this unit you will be – 1. introduced to the feminist literature 2. able to understand the life and work of Fay Weldon 3. able to analyse The Fat Woman’s Joke 4. introduced with the characters and themes in The Fat Woman’s Joke 2.1 Introduction In the previous unit you have studied Brian Friel’s Irish play Dancing at Lughnasa . That play represents the modern Irish drama. Now in this unit you are going to study one of the British feminist novels written by Fay Weldon, a British novelist who is popular both in Britain as well as in America. Let us study now The Fat Woman’s Joke , a novel by Fay Weldon. 2.1.1 Life and Work of Fay Weldon Fay Weldon is a significant modern British novelist. She was born in Alvechurch, Worcestershire, England on 22 nd September 1993. Her father Frank Birkinshaw was a doctor and her mother Margaret Jepson was a writer of commercial fiction. Her parents divorced when Fay was five in 1937, then she moved with her mother, sister and grandmother to New Zealand. Thus she was raised in all-female household. She was educated at Girls’s High School, Christchurch. She and her mother returned to London. She completed her M.A.s in Economics and Psychology at the University of St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland. Weldon was an unmarried mother in the 1950s. In her early twenties she was married for a short period to a man more than twenty years her senior. During this period of a single parent of a son, she worked as an advertising copywriter. She also worked on the problem pages of the Daily Mirror and The Daily Mail , and worked as a copywriter for the Foreign Office. She earned her living by writing in advertising agencies, or on market research. In 1962, Weldon married Ronald (Ron) Weldon, an antique dealer, Jazz musician and painter, and had three more sons within a long period of twenty-one years. When she was thirty she went through a mid-life crisis as she was depressed

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so she went through psychoanalysis which gave her the self-knowledge and courage to give up advertising and start writing. Her first novel, The Fat Woman’s Joke (1967), first appeared as a television play of the same title in 1966. By then, she had already written some fifty plays for radio, stage or television. The most well-known were Upstairs, Downstairs and her adaptation of Jane Austin’s Pride and Prejudice. She had a very successful career publishing over twenty-five novels, collections of short stories, television movies, plays, newspaper and magazine articles and becoming a well-known face and voice on the BBC. She and Ron spent their time between Somerset and a flat in London. However, Ron left her, refused to speak to her for two years and went off with his new-age therapist who had convinced him that they were astrologically compatible. The day after their divorce that came through in June 1994, Ron fell dead of a stroke. She then subsequently married Nick Fox, a poet 15 years her junior. Since then they have been living in Hampstead, London. Fay Weldon has won a number of awards in her career as a writer. She won the SFTA (The Slovak Film and Television Academy) Award for the Best Series for Episode I of Upstairs, Downstairs in 1971, Writer’s Guild Award for radio play in 1973, Giles Cooper Award for the Best Radio Play Polaris in 1978, Society of Authors Travelling Scholarship in 1981, Los Angeles Times Fiction Award for The Heart of the Country in 1989, and the Silver Pen Award for her collection of stories, Wicked Women . Her novel Worst Fears was nominated for The Whitbread Prize. Fay Weldon worked as Chairwoman of the Booker Prize in 1983, and Sinclair Prize in 1986. She was on the Video Censorship Appeals Committee, and was a member of the Arts Council Literary Panel. She was also a member of the Royal Society of Literature, Management Committee of Society of Authors, and Writers Guild of Great Britain. She had judged literary prizes like the Whitbread Fiction Prize, the GPA Irish Prize, the Peninsula Prize, the Mail on Sunday first-paragraph- of-a-novel award. 2.2 Introduction to The Fat Woman’s Joke The Fat Woman’s Joke is the first novel written by Fay Weldon published in 1967. It describes the devastating effect on a protagonist when she decided to curb her habit of eating. As per husband’s wish, she agrees to eat less in order to reduce her weight and remain young and active. In a course of the novel, we come to know

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how she protests against her husband’s wish and starts living alone, leaving her husband and son, and enjoying every kind of food she likes. 2.2.1 Summary of The Fat Woman’s Joke : In Brief Esther Wells/Sussman, a middle aged fat woman is driven into miserable condition by her husband, Alan, who makes her go on a diet in order to fight against the middle age and look younger and active in sex. However, this diet takes a different turn in the married life of the couple as Alan tortures Esther during this period. On the very first day of their diet Alan falls in love with his secretary Susan Pierce, who is 24, is a girl twenty years younger than him. He continues his love relationship with Susan at the cost of his relations with Esther, who calls her cheat and tells him that she has given him everything, all her life, every bit of love but he has given her nothing – no love, no affection, no sex, nothing. When she asks him about Susan, he tries to avoid the answer and both of them exchange very hard words. As he tries to strangle her, Esther leaves him and their son Peter, and shifts to the basement flat where she enjoys her freedom consuming food, and drinks as she desires. On the other side of the story, Phyllis Frazer, Esther’s friend, goes to see Alan for she comes to know that he is ill and needs help. He traps her making her believe that her husband, Gerry fancies Esther, and then Alan makes love to her. Later she comes to know that she has been deceived by him. Meanwhile, Susan also comes to know that Alan is using her for pleasure and he is not serious in his relations with her. Deceived by him, she pays visit to Peter, Alan’s son who is living with his girlfriend, Stephanie. Susan is fascinated by his nature and his views that women are people, and she offers herself to him. One day, Alan comes to Esther, who is ill, in her basement apartment when Phyllis is there with her. He requests Esther to return home for their son Peter, who is emotionally immature and unstable, and needs her. But she wants to stay in her own apartment because no one nags her there. As she comes to know that he is not serious about Susan, finally, she agrees to go with him. 2.2.2 Summary in Detail Esther Wells tells an account of her going on a diet, in flashback, to her friend Phyllis Frazer. Esther decided to go on a diet four weeks before as has been

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suggested by her husband Alan. They want to fight against the middle age and want to look younger and active in sex. Esther is living alone in a basement apartment in Earls Court. She tells Phyllis how she has been tortured during the period of the diet. Alan who insists on going on a diet, on the very first day of the diet falls in love with his secretary, Susan Pierce, who is just 24. Esther and Alan start following the diet sheet as per the plan. Both Esther and Alan start losing their temper because of hunger. They are not accustomed to live without eating and drinking, keeping their stomach empty. Esther suspects that her husband has developed relations with Susan, who is twenty years younger to him. During the period the diet, Alan enjoys the company of Susan in the advertising office as well as outside in the park. Susan thinks that Esther has ruined his career as a painter and made him work in an advertising company. But later, she is shattered to know that Alan is using her for pleasure and he is not serious in his relations with her. Susan tells her account of the love relations with Alan to her friend Brenda who is living with her in her flat. Susan has a boy friend called William Macklesfield who is a poet. As she is now interested in Alan, decides to end her relations with William. She tells Brenda that he will not feel afraid because he has patience and has understanding nature. Brenda, on the other hand, meets a person from abroad, who does not speak and understand English, in the pub. He follows her and comes to the flat where Brenda lives and they make love. Brenda feels that she has sincerely in love with the man. She does not know even his name and nationality. In the morning when he is about to go, he puts two pound notes in her hand and leaves the flat. She accepts them and does not ask the reason behind giving her notes. Phyllis goes to see Alan for she comes to know that he is ill and needs help. Alan deceives her by saying vaguely that her husband Gerry fancies Esther. She falls in his trap and makes love with him. Later she comes to know that she has been deceived by Alan by making a story of her husband’s relation with Esther. Susan, deceived by Alan, goes to visit Peter, Alan’s son who is living with his girlfriend, Stephanie. Stephanie has gone to office and he has just returned from his school when Susan comes there. Peter says to her that she looks like Stephanie who

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is like his mother. Susan fascinated by his nature, and his view that women are people, offers herself to Peter. On the evening of the final day of the diet, Alan finds Esther eating a biscuit in a corner of the kitchen. He becomes angry and calls her cheat and throws the biscuit away. She accuses him saying that he gives her nothing – no love, no affection, no sex, nothing. On the other hand, she has given him everything, all her life, every bit of love. When Esther asks him about Susan, he moves towards the door to go out but she interrupts him. They exchange very hard words to each other. When he tries to move her from the door she spreads her arms against it. He slaps her in face, and she tears at his cheek with her nails. Then he puts his hand around her neck and tries to strangle her. She sinks down to the floor and he goes out. Then she leaves the house and starts living in a basement apartment alone consuming food as per her desire. One day Alan comes to Esther in her basement apartment. Phyllis is there with Esther. Alan asks Phyllis what she is doing there and what mischief she is making. But she tells him that she is there to help Esther who is ill. Alan, then, asks Esther to come home for Peter needs her as he is emotionally immature and unstable. He requests her again and again to come home and forget all things happened. She tells him that she wants to stay there because no one nags her and she can breathe better for the swelling on her throat has gone. Alan tells her that she made him to strangle her throat. Esher asks Alan about Susan. He says that at that time he was on a diet and was very upset having terrible business with the agent and the publisher which was very humiliating to him and Esther did not help him at all. Otherwise Susan is nothing. Alan requests Esther, again, saying there is no point in staying there wasting money where she cannot be happy. In the end, Esther appears defeated and agrees not to waste money and she might as well be in the house as there. She says that it doesn’t make much difference where one is. Phyllis begins to cry complainingly but Alan asks her shut up and tells her not to interfere with other people’s family quarrels. At last Esther goes with Alan who is looking with amazement into the food cupboards.

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Check your progress 1 A. Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence: i. Why does Alan make Esther to go on a diet? ii. Who is a son of Esther and Alan? iii. What is the name of Peter’s girlfriend? iv. Where does Esther live after leaving Alan? v. Where does Brenda meet a person from abroad? B. Complete the following sentences choosing the correct alternative. i. Susan is ………..years younger than Alan. A) 15 B) 20 C) 10 D) 7 ii. Esther leaves Alan and Peter because ……………… . A) Alan does not love her B) Alan loves Susan C) Alan tries to strangle her D) She wants to live alone iii. Phyllis Frazer’s husband is ……………… . A) Gerry B) William C) Alan D) Peter iv. A person from abroad gives ……………… to Brenda. A) a present B) two pound notes C) his hand D) his address v. In the end Alan comes to see Esther in …………….. . A) a park B) in the basement apartment. C) in the theatre D) at the police station

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1.3 Characters in The Fat Woman’s Joke After studying the novel in detail, we will discuss the characters in the novels. 2.3.1 Major Character Esther Wells is a protagonist as the plot of the novel moves around this character. She is a fat and middle aged woman who enjoys eating. Her husband Alan makes her, along with himself; go on a diet to look younger and active in sex. But from the very first day of their diet, their married relationship shatter as Alan falls in love with his secretary Susan Pierce. One day when Alan finds Esther eating a biscuit, he calls her cheat as she has broken their plan of diet. They exchange hard words and there is a quarrel between them. Alan tries to strangle her so she decides to leave him and their son Peter. She starts living in a basement apartment in Earls Court. While living there Esther eats food voraciously and enjoys her independent life where nobody there to disturb her life. But in the end, she appears defeated as she accepts Alan’s request to return their home for the sake of Peter and their family. Alan is a painter turned a writer, a novelist. It is he who makes his wife Esther to go on a diet to fight against their middle age. He cannot bear to keep himself away from food and is so disturbed that he falls in love with his secretary Susan who is 24 and twenty years younger than him. He develops his relationship with Susan in the advertising office. They even make love more than once. Alan also develops relations with Phyllis by making a story that her husband Gerry fancies Esther. She falls in his trap but later it is revealed to her that she has been deceived by Alan. In the end he goes to his wife Esther in the apartment and asks her to come back for the sake of their son Peter who is emotionally immature and unstable. He even requests her to forget whatever happened in the past. Esther succumbs to his request and agrees to go back with Alan. In the novel Alan is portrayed as a patriarchal figure who believes in using women for his pleasure. 2.3.2 Minor Characters There are many minor characters in the novel viz. Susan Pierce, Phyllis Frazer, Brenda and so on. Phyllis Frazer is Esther’s friend. In the novel Esther tells her story to Phyllis in a flashback her going on a diet. Esther tells her how she has been tortured by her husband Alan during the diet. Once Phyllis goes to see Alan thinking that he is ill and needs help. But Alan tells her lie that her husband Gerry fancies

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Esther. She falls in love with Alan but later she comes to know that she has been deceived by Alan by making a story of Gerry’s relationship with Esther. In the end of the novel Alan asks her not to interfere in the quarrel between Esther and Alan. Susan Pierce is Alan’s secretary who is 24 years old. She develops lover relationships with Alan on the first day of his diet. She is twenty years younger than Alan and enjoys his company in the advertising office as well as outside in the park. But she comes to know that he is not serious in their relationship and is using her for pleasure. Susan has a boyfriend, William Macklesfield, who is a poet. She decides to end her relations with William for the sake of Alan. When Alan deceives Susan, she goes to visit Peter, Alan’s son who is living with his girlfriend Stephanie. She likes his views and falls in love with Peter and enjoys his love. Brenda is Susan’s friend and lives with Susan in her flat. Susan tells her account of loving Alan to her. One day, Brenda meets a person from abroad in a pub. He does not speak and understand English. That man follows her up to her flat where both of them make love. She does not know his name or country. In the morning, when he leaves her flat, he puts two pound notes in her hand. She accepts them but does not ask the reason behind giving her notes. She continues her relations with the man then after also. Check your progress 2 A. Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence: i. Why do Esther and Alan go on a diet? ii. Who requests Esther to come back to their home? iii. Where do Alan and Susan enjoy each other’s company? iv. Why does Phyllisgo to visit Alan? v. What does the man do while leaving Brenda’s flat? B. Complete the following sentences choosing the correct alternative. i. The protagonist of the novel is …………….. . A) Stephanie B) Alan C) Esther D) Phyllis ii. Alan falls in love with …………… .

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A) his secretary B) his girlfriend C) his agent D) his doctot iii. Alan represents …………… character in the novel. A) honest B) intelligent C) cynic D) patriarchal iv. Phyllis falls in love with Alan because ……………. . A) Alan makes a story that her husband fancies Esther B) Esther has deceived her C) Alan tortures Esther D) Esther and Alan go on a diet. v. Susan decides to end her relations with her boyfriend because ….... A) he does not love her B) she falls in the love trap of Alan C) she hates him being a poet D) None of the above 2.4 Themes Fay Weldon comments on various issues through her literary work. In The Fat Woman’s Joke , she expresses her feminist views on various themes directly and symbolically. It is worth studying how she has explored various themes in the novel. Following are some of the major themes we find in The Fat Woman’s Joke . Advertising/Patriarchal Image of Women: In the beginning, Esther becomes a victim of the advertising or patriarchal image of women which expects women to be slim and energetic in sex. This image negates women both physically as well as psychologically. As Esther and Alan’s marriage is cemented with food, they cannot control their rages caused by empty stomach. Their diet lasts just for eight days which results in creating adultery and infidelity in their marital life. Esther’s leaving her house is an outcome of her awareness of exploitation. She revolts not only against her husband but also advertising image of women which conditions women to become slim and young for men’s sake.

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While Esther rebels against the patriarchal notions about women, Phyllis allows her body to be tampered by cosmetic surgeon in order to satisfy her husband’s sexist views about female beauty by making her breasts larger. Esther tells her that she ought to be ashamed of doing such a degrading thing which conforms to a wholly masculine notion of what a woman’s body ought to be. Esther strongly argues, ‘It is a fearful thing to be a woman in a man’s world accepting masculine values and aping masculinity. It would be perfectly acceptable being a woman if only men didn’t control the world. If only it were possible to gracefully and gratefully accept their seed to create children, yet feel obliged neither to accept their standards nor their opinion of womankind, which is . . . conditioned by fear, resentment and natural feeling of inferiority’. Esther is of the view that men do not make women happy but they rather make them unhappy. Any woman who struggles to be accepted in a man’s world makes herself ridiculous because ‘[i]t is a world of folly, fantasy and self-indulgence, and it is not worth aspiring to. We must create our own world’. She, thus, challenges patriarchal norms of femininity. Esther, in the end of the novel, seems to be successful in her attempt to shatter the advertising image of women because her husband Alan finds no satisfaction in extra-marital relations so requests her to come home. Marriage: Weldon make a critique of marriage institution in which women are considered subordinate to men. Marriage is an institution which provides women a social identity. Women are mainly treated as an object for procreation, and men exploit them by manipulating their unpaid labour in the household. Esther comes with strong argument in The Fat Woman’s Joke against marriage which confines women to their family and houses. She is disillusioned in her life with her husband Alan, so reacts sharply against marriage institution: ‘Marriage is such a falling away. It hurts. When you go to the pictures you remember a time you used to hold hands. You go to bed in your curlers and remember a time you used to sleep in each other’s arms. Nothing is ever as it was, in marriage’. Esther tells Phyllis that after her marriage she adjusted herself to the demands of her husband and did household duties. Esther thinks that running a house is not a sensible occupation for a grown up woman. According to her, dusting and sweeping,

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cooking and washing up – it is work for the sake of work, an eternal circle which lasts from the day you get married until the day you die. Alan, her husband always searches for flaws she makes, and if he does not find any, then he is disappointed. So she thinks it is not right to imprison themselves in their home but find their happiness in separate houses. Esther’s servant Juliet alerts her saying that if she loses her weight, she will ruin her health, and she will also lose her husband. When Esther tells her that her husband himself has told her to lose her weight, Juliet replies sternly when she says, ‘That’s husbands all over. Ungrateful pigs. You do everything for them . . . and at the end of it all, what happens? They find someone else they fancy more. Someone young some man hasn’t had the chance to wear out yet. Marriage is a con trick. A girl should marry a rich man, then at least she’d have a fur coat to keep her warm in her old age’. Here Juliet appears more practical in her attitude towards marriage. She is for financial stability of women in their old age if in any circumstances husbands leave them. Womanhood: Weldon in the novel talks about the theme of womanhood. The conversation between Esther and Phyllis explores their views about womanhood. Esther, who is frustrated with her husband, says to Phyllis, ‘I am a woman and so I am an animal. All women are animals. They have no control over themselves. They must have children – there is no merit in it.’ But Phyllis does not agree with her and tells her that she is not an animal, upon which Esther replies harshly, ‘You’re an animal. You said to me once you were chained to your bed. Well, so you are. Because you’re a female animal, and your brain and your mind and all your fine feelings are no help to you at all. You are just a female body, fit to bear children and then thrown away. And if you don’t have children, you’ll be on the rubbish heap all the sooner.’ Thus Esther wants to emphasise that women are assigned the job of procreation by men and nothing else. She also discards her mother’s view when her mother Sylvia comes to see her in the basement and advises her to stay married to Alan because according to her, it is a folly to throw away her security, status and the respect of the world accords her as a married woman and a mother, and her husband’s income. Esther tells her that ‘women of [her] generation seem to regard men as meal tickets. It’s not very nice.’ But Esther declines her mother’s advice and becomes happy in the end.

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Alan’s views about women are totally patriarchal. When Esther and Alan go to the Frazers for dinner, Gerry finds faults with Phyllis’s cooking. Esther tells him to appreciate her. At that time Alan says, ‘Women are what their husbands expect them to be; no more and no less. The more you flatter them, the more they thrive.’ On the other hand Juliet, a maid servant is more progressive. She tells Esther that there is no need to control size in order to look attractive. According to her, dieting ruins the health. Men like women nice and cosy, particularly, their wives. Esther wishes she had born a man because she tells that men are always accusing women of being unfeminine, and at the same time making sure that the feminine state is as unendurable as possible. Esther tells Phyllis that women should maintain their own identity by behaving differently from men. They should not imitate them. She further remarks that there must be apartheid between the sexes. Men and women should unite for the purpose of rearing children. Any woman who struggles to be accepted in a man’s world makes herself ridiculous. So they must create their own world. Esther’s feminist views are explored when she asks Phyllis if she is not ashamed of making her breasts larger for the gratification of a man, conforming to a wholly masculine notion of what a woman’s body ought to be. It is also a degrading thing to do, according to her. She further says that it is a fearful thing to be a woman in a man’s world accepting masculine values and aping masculinity. It would be perfectly acceptable being a woman if only men didn’t control the world. Thus Fay Weldon, from the beginning of the novel to the end, critically comments on the institution of marriage and the role of women in relation to their husbands or men. Extra-marital Relationships: The novel displays variety of man-woman relationships among male and female characters, the prominent being the extra-marital relationships. Alan Wells, Esther’s husband develops love relations with Susan who is his secretary twenty years younger than him. She is quite serious in her love with him but he uses her to fulfil his own physical desires and in the end deceives her. Alan also makes Phyllis love him when she comes to see him when he is ill. He deceives her making a story of Esther’s relations with Gerry, Phyllis’s husband. Later she comes to know that she has been deceived.

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Susan Pierce has more than one love relations with men. She has a boyfriend called William Mackles field who is a poet. Then in her office she develops love relations with Alan, and then his son Peter. Peter, after his mother left the house, goes to live with his girlfriend, Stephanie in her flat. He has no intention to marry her for she is older than him. He even makes love with Susan, his father’s mistress. This is a kind of incestuous love relationship where a son loves his father’s mistress. Stephanie has also a boyfriend whom she visits on every Wednesday. Brenda, Susan’s friend comes across a Siamese gentleman in a pub who follows her up to her flat. Even though the man does not speak and understand English, Brenda falls in love with him and offers herself to him. Esther’s mother, Sylvia Susan also goes with someone else in the South of France on her medically recommended holidays. When Sylvia accuses Esther that her father has died because of her, Esther tells her that he has died because of her frequent holidays with someone else. After analysing the characters, both male and female, we may say that these persons are not serious about their love relations with each other. Even female characters easily fall in love with men and allow using them for their pleasure. Thus almost all characters have extra-marital relations with one or other. Check your progress 3 A. Answer the following questions in one word/phrase/sentence: i. Whatis Esther’s view about running a house? ii. What is Juliet’s alert to Esther regarding losing her weight? iii. How does Alan deceive Phyllis to love him? iv. Where does Peter live after his mother left the house? v. Who is Sylvia Susan? B. Complete the following sentences choosing the correct alternative. i. Marriage is an institution which provides women …………. . A) a security B) a financial support B) a social identity D) self-respect

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ii. According to Esther, marriage is ………… circle which lasts from the day you get married until the day you die. A) an eternal B) an expected circle C) a disturbed circle D) None of the above iii. According to Juliet, all husbands are ……………… . A) loyal B) sincere lovers C) honest supporters D) ungrateful iv. Esther thinks that women are assigned the job of ……………. . A) procreation B) secretary C) maid servant D) financer v. Love relationship between Susan and Peter can be called ……. . A) well-developed B) sincere C) Platonic D) incestuous 2.5 Humour, Wit and Irony The Fat Woman’s Joke is a comedy abundant in humour and wit. The incident which initiates the development of the novel, itself is comic. Esther and Alan, a middle-aged couple decide to go on a diet in order to be young and energetic. But as the diet starts it comes with a disastrous quarrel between the two, and at last Esther runs away from the house leaving behind her husband and a son, Peter. Nobody can convince her to come back to her house again with Alan. Phyllis, her mother Sylvia, Peter and even Susan cannot change her mind to return home. But it is ironical that she is convinced by her husband who has tried to strangle her. He convinces her without much effort to return to their home. Weldon creates number of comic situations arising out of irony and wit. Susan says to Brenda while remarking about her that it’s a pity that her legs are so heavy, otherwise she would stop the traffic in the street. In reality Brenda has long legs and she is almost as slim as Susan herself. So this is an ironical statement which creates humour.

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There is a humorous witty remark about poets when Brenda comes to know that Susan is deserting her boyfriend William, a poet. Brenda says that unless she compromises and marries, she might become a poet’s wife. ‘But poets are often rather dull. They are in the habit of expressing themselves through the written words, and not through their bodies.’ While commenting about the secretaries, Alan says to Susan, ‘Secretaries, however, temporary, should maintain the illusion of being either virgins or well-married. Otherwise, the mind begins to envisage possibilities. The girl takes on flesh and blood. You are a bad secretary.’ There is a comic scene when Peter and Esther try to tell their son Peter to control his food not to get fat. Peter neglects his parents’ suggestion and says: ‘Why is it … that people who are quite wilfully spoiling their own enjoyment cannot rest there but also obsessively anxious to spoil other people?’ Then Peter tells them that Stephanie and he is going down at Frampton for a biological war-fare for sit-in. In the end, he tells both of them that they are getting fat, cosy and confortable; and they believe. The scene Esther visiting a doctor in Wimpole Street is one of the most comic scenes in the novel. She goes to the doctor because she is feeling sick. But he talks about her size and makes fun of her. When she is about to leave, he asks her who has recommended her his name. She tells it is by Phyllis Frazer. Then he tells her that Phyllis has done a plastic surgery on both her breasts. Now Esther comes to know that he is a cosmetic doctor. She asks him after looking the show-biz pictures of the cropped noses, the lifted faces, and the enlarged or diminished breast, why they do it. The doctor tells her that they do it to please men. Then she asks him if he does not feel degrading to take money for doing it and making his living like that. He replies, ‘the thing is … her husband does appear to fancy her more big-breasted. So I have added to the sum of human happiness.’ Esther wishes she has never left her basement and come to the doctor. There are some witty statements and remarks in the novel: “Old ugly pans are like old ugly people. Once the children are grown up, they’re no use to anyone.” “… artists are not like other people. The ordinary rules of morality do not apply to them.” “Lies are never dangerous, not by comparison with the truth.” 16

There are so many incidents in the novel which are very humorous. The conversation between Esther and her maid servant Juliet is always comic. The incident when Phyllis goes to see Alan in the end turns comic when he takes advantage of her. But in the end he accuses her of making love to him to take revenge on her husband. Brenda’s falling in love with a Siamese gentleman who does not speak or understand English is altogether humorous. After their first love encounter, he puts the notes on Brenda’s hand and leaves her flat. It also creates a delightful joke. 2.6 Symbolism in The Fat Woman’s Joke In the novel a lily flower plant appears symbolic. The lily plant which Alan gives to Susan is a symbolic representation of Alan’s love. It does grow in the hands of Susan. Later she gives it to Esther when she comes to see her and tries to convince Esther to return to Alan. Esther waters it with lukewarm water. In the end of the novel Esther wants to leave that pot plant there in the apartment. She tells Alan that she will not take that stupid pot plant with her. But Phyllis shows her that the plant is growing and asks her whether she can have it. Esther sees a little sprig of green disturbs the dusty surface. She is pleased to see it. Esther asks Phyllis in surprise if it is growing for her. Thus the plant symbolizes love in the novel. 2.7 Answers to check your progress Check your progress 1 A. i. to look younger and active in sex. ii. Peter iii. Stephanie iv. in an apartment v. a pub B. i. B) 20 ii. C) Alan tries to strangle her iii. A) Gerry iv. B) two pound notes

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v. B) the basement apartment Check your progress 2 A. i. to fight against the middle age, and look younger and active in sex. ii. Alan iii. in the office and park vi. because she comes to know that he is ill and needs help. v. gives two pound notes to her. B. i. C) Esther ii. A) his secretary iii. D) patriarchal iv. A) Alan makes a story that her husband fancies Esther v. B) she falls in the love trap of Alan Check your progress 3 A. i. According to Esther running a house is no a sensible occupation for a grown up woman. ii. Juliet alerts Esther that if she loses her weight, she will ruin her health and also her husband. iii. Alan deceives Phyllis to love him by making a story of Esther’s relations with Phyllis’s husband, Gerry. iv. Peter lives with Stephanie in her flat after his mother left the house v. Sylvia Susan is Esther’s mother. B. i. B) a social identity ii. A) an eternal iii. D) ungrateful iv. A) procreation v. D) incestuous

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2.8 Exercises A. Answer the following question in detail: i. Why do Esther and Alan go on a diet and what is its effect on their marital life? ii. Explain in detail love relationship between Alan and Susan. iii. How does Brenda fall in love with the Siamese gentleman? iv. What are the views of Esther regarding marriage? v. How does Fay Weldon comment on the advertising image of women through her novel? B. Write short notes on the following: i. The theme of man-woman relationship ii. Symbolism in the novel iii. Alan as a patriarchal character iv. Esther, the protagonist of the novel v. Esther: a feminist character 2.9 References Alexander, Flora. Contemporary Women Novelists . London: Edward Arnold, 1989. Olga Kenyon, Women Novelists Today: A Survey of English Writing in the Seventies and Eighties . Brighton, Sussex: The Harvest Press, 1988. Palmer, Paulina. Contemporary Women’s Fiction: Narrative Practice and Feminist Theory . London: Harvester Wheat sheaf, 1989. Weldon, Fay. The Fat Woman’s Joke . Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1995. Weldon, Fay. Interview with John Haffenden, Novelists in Interview , ed. John Haffenden. London: Metheun, 1985. JJJ

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