British Feminism the Fat Woman's Joke by Fay Weldon Contents

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 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 1 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 novels written by Fay Weldon, a British feminist 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 an all-female household. She was educated at Girls’ 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 so she went through psychoanalysis which 2 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. 3 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 her 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 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 4 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 a 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 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 living 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 5 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 boyfriend called William Macklesfield who is a poet. As she is now interested in Alan, decides to end her relations with William.

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