Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions (31 page)

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BOOK: Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions
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Page 93
"Energy and Brashness" and Fay Weldon's Tricksters
Julie Nash
And the woman said, "The serpent beguiled me and I did eat."
The Book of Genesis
Not my fault that what is true can also be ridiculous.
Fay Weldon,
Life Force
In her novels
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
(1983) and
Life Force
(1992), Fay Weldon invites us to reconsider traditional conceptions of the trickster figure to reflect and even improve female experience, specifically the experience of the restless, unhappy housewife. Rather than portraying the trickster as a naturally male-centered, preconscious being, Weldon uses the archetype to expose the trickster as an artificial creation of restless women.
The trickster figure in myth and literature is a marginalized creature who functions outside society's accepted norms and values. Given the trickster's inherent marginalized position, it is curious that C. G. Jung and other archetypal critics closely associate the trickster figure with masculinity, whereas women have more typically existed on the cultural fringes where the trickster operates. As Estella Lauter and Carol Schreier Rupprecht point out in
Feminist Archetypal Theory,
early archetypal criticism, while valuing feminine behaviors in males, "did not value the actual experiences of women themselves" (p. 7). Lauter and Rupprecht discuss the findings of critics such as Naomi Goldenberg, who "pointed out that Jung's followers had come to see archetypes as 'unchanging and unchangeable'" (p. 7). Obviously, women writers such as Fay Weldon, Alice Walker, and
 
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Louise Erdrich, who consciously use myth to frame their works, must revise this rigid conception of archetypes to make them reflect more accurately the experiences of women. As Lauter and Rupprecht write, "In the case of feminist theory, if we regard the archetype not as an image whose content is frozen but ... as a tendency to form and reform images in relation to certain kinds of repeated experience, then the concept could serve to clarify distinctly female concerns that have persisted throughout human history" (p. 14).
Fay Weldon accomplishes this "forming and reforming" of formerly rigid archetypal patterns in her novels and short stories. In a 1989 interview, Weldon denies using any direct literary or mythological sources for her novel
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil,
"although she said she was of course familiar with European folktales and classical myths. She suggested we consider the book in terms of psychoanalysis instead" (Johnson). Yet, despite Weldon's assertion that
She-Devil
is not a modern retelling of an ancient story or myth, the novel clearly operates within a mythological framework. The trickster figure, particularly, offers a key to understanding
She Devil
's complex, angry heroine, Ruth, whose dual impulses to destroy and redeem correspond to the outrageous behavior of the trickster figure.
According to Jung, the archetype of the trickster reflects a primitive stage of human consciousness, "corresponding to a psyche that has hardly left the animal level" (p. 260). Jung characterizes the trickster by his "fondness for sly jokes and malicious pranks, his powers as a shape-shifter, his dual nature, half-animal, half-divine, his exposure to all kinds of tortures andlast but not leasthis approximation to the figure of a savior" (p. 255). In
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil,
Ruth consciously creates herself as a trickster figure (or ''she-devil"), deliberately deciding to abandon her role as a dutiful wife and mother. As opposed to the traditional trickster whose consciousness is "naturally" in a predeveloped or nonexistent state, Ruth's efforts to lose her social consciousness (and conscience) are deliberate and painstaking; for example, she admits to being "wounded" when she first leaves her children (p. 87). But despite this important deviation from the traditional archetype, Ruth's description of the she-devil closely resembles that of a trickster figure: "There is no shame, no guilt, no dreary striving to be good. There is only, in the end, what you
want
. And I can take what I want. I am a she-devil!" (p. 48). Perhaps Ruth's adoption of the archetype seems so unnatural and difficult because most famous tricksters (Brer Rabbit, Bugs Bunny, Stagolee, Satan) are male, and Ruth distinctly attributes her power and "success" to her womanhood. As Ruth embarks on her pursuit of revenge, Weldon writes,
 
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"she laughed and said she was taking arms against god Himself. Lucifer had tried and failed, but he was male. She thought she might do better, being female" (p. 94).
Throughout the novel, Weldon draws parallels between Ruth and Satan. If Ruth is indeed a female Lucifer figure, it follows that she embodies characteristics of the trickster as well; the serpent in the garden is certainly a classic embodiment of the archetype, with his malicious, seductive behavior and his talents as a shape-shifter. In
She-Devil,
Ruth consciously aligns herself with Satan's power, knowing that as a woman, she may succeed where her predecessor has failed. Ironically, Ruth sees her womanhood as an advantage. After all, her misery largely centers around her powerless position as a suburban housewife. But Ruth subverts the stereotypical drawbacks of female existencesubmissiveness, powerlessness, helplessness, dependencelocating these "weaknesses" as the source of her power.
Ruth possesses the trickster's shape-shifting abilities, regularly changing identities in order to enact her revenge; and years of mistreatment and humiliation by Bobbo prepare her for the various personae she adopts as a she-devil. Weldon implies that Ruth, as a former housewife, has been "trained" in menial and degrading tasks, training that becomes essential when Ruth needs to integrate herself anonymously into a household or business. As Weldon's narrator points out,
There is always a living to be earned doing the work that others prefer not to do. Employment can generally be found looking after other people's children, caring for the insane, or guarding imprisoned criminals, cleaning the public rest rooms, laying out the dead, or making beds in cheap hotels. [P. 125]
Ruth moves effortlessly from one menial position to another. As a nursing home orderly, she gains access to Mary Fisher's mother; as a nanny, she moves into a judge's household and influences her husband Bobbo's prison sentence. Ruth's plans require that she remain marginalized and unnoticed. By placing herself in a low social position, she is virtually guaranteed anonymityand as a woman, Weldon implies, Ruth is automatically halfway there. Despite her large, unusual appearance, Ruth is so successful as a shape-shifter that even Bobbo fails to recognize her when he passes her on the street.
Ruth thought that that was not at all strange: they now inhabited different worlds. Hers was unknown to him: those on the right side of everything like to know as little as possible about those on the wrong side. The poor, exploited, and oppressed, however, love to know about their masters, to gaze at their faces in the paper, to marvel at their love affairs, to discover their foibles.... So Ruth would recognize Bobbo, lover and accountant Bobbo would not recog-
 
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nize Ruth, hospital ward orderly and abandoned mother. Convenient, indeed essential, as it was to her plans, still she resented it. [P. 134]
If it weren't for her gender-specific experiences (housework, caretaking, etc.), Ruth would be unable to blend so easily into the "wrong" side of society. Ironically, success as a trickster depends not on the adoption of
male
behavior, but on the emphasis of conventional
female
conduct such as humility and servitude. The trick lies in Ruth's usage of these behaviors for her own empowerment.
"Creative by nature, in some ways a helper to humanity" (Leeming, p. 163), the trickster traditionally combines his misdeeds with productivity. Though Ruth's motives are almost always completely self-serving, she is the only character in the novel who leaves a positive legacy. Warwick Wadlington explains this apparent contradiction as the trickster's embodiment of two antithetical human experiences: "On the one hand, a force of treacherous disorder that outrages and disrupts, and on the other hand, an unanticipated, usually unintentional benevolence in which trickery is at the expense of inimical forces and for the benefit of mankind" (p. 15).
Ruth's most cunning motives unintentionally lead to her most benevolent actions. When she opens the Vesta Rose employment agency for women, she does so with the intention of infiltrating Bobbo's office with two of her clientsone who agrees to tamper with his financial records, and another whose subsequent affair with Bobbo and later disappearance implicate him in his criminal case. Although the Vesta Rose employment agency exists solely to execute Ruth's revenge, it also benefits hundreds of women who use its services:
The women on its booksand they emerged out of the suburbs on bus and train by the hundredswere grateful, patient, responsible, and hardworking; and for the most part, after a little training by Ruth, regarded office work as simplicity itself; as should anyone who has dealt daily with the intricacies of sibling rivalry and the subtleties of marital accord, or discord. Vesta Roses, as they came to be called, were soon in great demand by employers throughout the city. [P. 139]
Not only has Ruth provided jobs for these women, she has also enhanced their opportunities and self-esteem. As Vesta Rose, Ruth tells Nurse Hopkins that "we can tap our own energies and the energies of women like uswomen shut away in homes performing some menial tasks, sometimes graceful women trapped by love or duty into lives they never meant" (p. 137). Ruth's own miserable experience as a housewife has opened her eyes to the plight of other women, but Weldon emphasizes that it is by no means Ruth's central concern, merely a fortunate product of her plan. As she explains, "Each woman for herself, I cry!" (p. 192).

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