Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions (38 page)

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Authors: Regina Barreca

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BOOK: Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions
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Page 115
In the film adaptation, titled
She-Devil,
the main character, Ruth, has altogether different aims: in the short term, she wants to ruin her husband's home, family, career, and freedom. Please note that she doesn't, as she does in the book, want these things for herself. In the long term, we will see, she wants happiness, acceptance, love. She never stops loving her husband, she is simply very angry with him. She wants shallow revenge and cinematic apologies. She wants, it ultimately seems, to save her marriage. She never separates herself from the society and the world that imprisons her, and therefore never attains freedom or power. The film's Ruth never breaks free of her stereotypical status as a woman in a man's world and therefore constitutes no threat to its institutions. The film chooses to ignore the novel's irreverent view of society and people, and in so doing, it fails as a comedy. The story of this sanitized Ruth simply isn't funny.
Without Ruth's moment of transformation from housewife to she-devil, so explicit in the book, her ability to pull off elaborate plans for revenge seems entirely implausible, even in a comedy. When the film chooses to disregard the most pivotal moment in the bookwhen Ruth renounces the world and no longer lives by its rulesher subsequent attempts to destroy Bobbo's life seem hard to believe, difficult to understand, and, finally, not very funny. Ruth's transformation is the key to the book's meaning. In removing this element, and simply portraying Ruth as a pitiable and abused housewife (who gets very upset), the most important underpinning of the story's meaning is utterly destroyed. The book comments scathingly on the role of women in society, the effect of true love on women, and, finally, on the nature of humanity. The film insists on simplifying the characters and, moreover, it attempts to make Ruth more acceptable and likable. The result is dilution to the point of distortion. In trying to keep the movie on a light comic level, the film was forced to abandon the darker forces of evil which help to explain Ruth's re-creation into a she-devil.
I would like to compare the novel
The Life and Loves of a She-Devil
and the film
She-Devil
with regard to three basic themes: first, the Weldon claim that "not loving" is the first step to freedom; second, that once freed of the chains of love, a woman can entirely
re
-create her identity (we will see this to be true not only of the "heroine," Ruth, but also of her rival, Mary Fisher); and, finally, that it is necessary to interpret the novel as a feminist
Faust,
a deeply black comedy about the forces of good and evil. The film refused to acknowledge the evil component in the novel, and therein lies its final failure. Weldon's tightly bound universe can't be randomly dissected and ransacked for the "funny parts." It's all or nothing,
 
Page 116
or nothing works. As we will see, it is impossible to separate Weldon's comedy from her social satire.
The Plot: The Novel
A brief synopsis of the complicated plot of the novel will guide us through this analysis. The main character, Ruth, is tall (too tall to "look up to men"), heavy, and unattractive. She is married to handsome Bobbo, who was forced into the wedding because Ruth became pregnant. They have two troublesome children, a suburban house, and several pets. Bobbo is extremely unhappy with his domestic situation, and Ruth is constantly humiliated by her attempts to please him. The book opens by finding Bobbo falling in love with beautiful (and small) Mary Fisher, an extremely successful romance author. When Bobbo goes to live with Mary, having violently dubbed Ruth a "she-devil" upon his departure, Ruth's transformation takes place. First, she burns down the house and leaves the children with Mary and Bobbo. Second, she ensures that Mary Fisher's mother gets turned out of her nursing home, thereby sending old Mrs. Fisher back to live with Mary. In this way, Ruth brings domestic pressure into Mary Fisher's life, something Mary had avoided by remaining childless, hiring people to care for her aging mother, and employing servants to clean and cook. Third, Ruth ruins Bobbo's business and has him sent to jail for embezzling funds from his clients. She accomplishes this by starting an employment agency for women and planting an employee in Bobbo's office who deliberately alters his books. Next, Ruth goes to live with the judge in charge of Bobbo's case, and as she wields more and more influence over the judge, she manages to convince him to give Bobbo a severe jail sentence. As a mere side effect, Ruth manages to destroy Mary's career (after all, who can write romance novels with an unfaithful live-in boyfriend, two noisy children, a bitter old mother, etc....?). Mary's fortunes are depleted by hiring lawyers to free Bobbo. Mary ultimately gets cancer and dies. Alone. Just when we think that Ruth has gotten the revenge that she wanted, she uses the money she has earned to have drastic plastic surgery. She has her legs made six inches shorter (so she can, finally, look up to men) and her entire body and face restructured. She ends up looking exactly like Mary Fisher. When Bobbo's prison term is up, she picks him up and takes him to Mary Fisher's tower by the sea, which Ruth has bought, and they live together once more. Bobbo is confused and docile, and Ruth is sometimes nice to him, and sometimes not.
At the end of the book, Weldon calls her story: "A comic turn, turned
 
Page 117
serious" (p. 241). In the end, Ruth and Bobbo are back together. But not on any kind of conventional termsshe has altered herself to exactly resemble his mistress, and now she plays at the kind of cruelty he used to practice. The real Mary Fisher is dead. The children have grown up, left, and forgotten their parents. Weldon wreaks havoc with the conventions of good and evil, morality and immorality, and especially with the fanatical desire audiences have for a "happy ending." Here are all the broad ingredients for a happy endinghusband and wife reunited, virtuous wife triumphant, etc.and yet it delivers the bleakest and blackest of messages.
The Plot of the Film
Take this black humor and just try lightening it up for a mass audience. Take short Roseanne Barr to play the mythically tall Ruth, leave out the really gritty parts, skip the plastic surgery because it's frankly too weird, and take what's left of the story. Then you will have the film:
She-Devil
.
The movie begins with Ruth as a pathetic, loving, cuckolded housewife. She doesn't know how to dress, or speak properly at pretentious receptions, or handle herself at a domestic dinner party. No wonder Bobbo falls in love with Mary Fisher, the glamorous romance novelist played by ever-glamorous Meryl Streep. Bobbo's affair is open and, needless to say, hurts Ruth very much. Bobbo lists his assets, terms Ruth a liability, calls her a she-devil, and leaves. Quite upset, she sits down to make a written list of Bobbo's "assets," as he called them: It goes like this: "
HOME. FAMILY. CAREER. FREEDOM
." (This is, presumably, what the filmmakers see as a literal translation of the novel's list mentioned earlier.) And quite industriously, Ruth follows the list: Ruth plugs in all the appliances, and burns down the house. She drops off the kids at Mary's, and goes her way. She goes to the nursing home, and sends Mary Fisher's mother back home. She changes Bobbo's books, and then starts an employment agency for women. She employs a woman to work for Bobbo who then changes the books further, and eventually Bobbo is caught and goes to jail. When Mary Fisher discovers that it appears Bobbo was trying to steal her money, she dumps him. (Not, as in the book, where she goes broke and dies for him.) Basically, the film ends there: Bobbo in jail, Ruth triumphant, and Mary Fisher going back to her old life. (With the small twist that Mary Fisher becomes a "serious" writer.) If we are looking closely, we will see a passing nod to the last third of the book, which concerns Ruth's extensive and ironic plastic surgery: a mole is at some point removed from Ruth's cheek. She also dresses better. In the final scene of the film, Ruth is seen bringing the
 
Page 118
children to visit Bobbo in prison. He is more subdued now and asks to come visit Ruth when he is freed. Perhaps, he offers, he can cook dinner for them. "Yes," she says. "That would be nice."
These are glaring plot differences to say the least. But to our three themes:
First,
not loving is the first step to freedom and power
. This point is clearly made in one line from the novel: "I sing a hymn to the death of love and the end of pain" (p. 163). Weldon shows how Ruth's progression begins with her recognition of love as a destructive force in her life. Before this revelation, she is miserable. Early in the book, we find Ruth dismal and unhappy as Bobbo prepares to leave her for Mary.
"Mary Fisher writes about nothing but love. All you need is love. I assume I love Bobbo because I am married to him. Good women love their husbands. But love compared to hate, is a pallid emotion. Fidgety and troublesome and making for misery." [P. 10]
Having discovered the relationship between love and misery, Ruth is on her way. By page 24, Ruth's freedom is only just beginning:
"I look inside myself: I find hate, yes: hate for Mary Fisher, hot, strong, and sweet: but not a scrap of love, not the faintest, wriggling tendril. I have fallen out of love with Bobbor!" [P 24]
And from this moment on, Ruth finds the energy and ability within herselfthe strength to fight Bobbo and his unfair desertion, the nerve to abandon her domestic obligations as wife and mother, the rebelliousness to defy society's demands upon her feelings. When Bobbo calls Ruth a "she-devil," he inadvertently gives her the key to her freedom and, simultaneously, his own destruction.
"This is exhilarating! If you are a she-devil, the mind clears at once. The spirits rise. There is no shame, no guilt, no dreary striving to be good. There is only, in the end, what you want.... I am a she-devil!" [P. 43]
Bobbo freed her. Released from the prison of her love for him, she can do as she pleases. This psychological transformation is the book's most crucial moment. The moment he calls her a "she-devil," Ruth begins immediately to change her identity and her relationship to the world. This transformation is not instant, or painless. Old habits are hard to break. Leaving her children, perhaps, is the hardest.
"I am a woman learning to be without her children. I am a snake shedding its skin.... I twist and squirm with guilt and pain, even knowing that the quieter I stay the quicker I will heal, slip the old skin, and slither off renewed into the world." [Pp. 7778]

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