Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions (40 page)

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Authors: Regina Barreca

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

BOOK: Fay Weldon's Wicked Fictions
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falls sick and dies. Bobbo had long since ceased to love her, and with that her love for him grew fiercer every day. Mary made the fatal mistake of loving at all, and lost the power she had. She had power and wealth because she could commit adultery and not care, take the children's father and not care, tell lies to a hundred hundred women and not care. Ruth took Mary's "ruthlessness" away from her. Mary became as much "ruth" as Ruth ever was.
Now, what does the film make of these themes? First of all, Ruth never really falls out of love with Bobbo. We can surmise this by seeing that she may accept him back in the end. Such a decision stretches the plausibility of the story even within the context of high farce. If you love someone, would you really put them in prison for years? In the book, Ruth has permitted herself to hate Bobbo, and therefore her revenge knows no bounds. The revenge of a woman who still loves would be far meeker by comparison. Second, how do we explain Ruth's transformation within the film? There is no point at which her entire relationship to either her husband, her society, or her world changes. When Bobbo calls Ruth a she-devil, what happens? This moment, as crucial as it is to the story, is dealt with in a slapstick manner. In rendering the "she-devil" moment as a cartoon, and not as a momentous transformation for Ruth's character, the film loses its ability to engage us in the story. The definition of Ruth as a she-devil needed to be serious, if only for a moment, in order to make us believe in Ruth's cataclysmic change. Instead, we have the following: As Bobbo builds up to dubbing Ruth a "she-devil," she sits in garish blue light, crying while Bobbo screams at her. When he leaves, she turns to the magnified side of a mirror and views a grotesque rendering of her already blunt features. Then comes the requisite lightning, which if it were not such a tired cliché, might at least pass for an attempt to signal some kind of "elemental'' change on the planet, and, finally, we hear Ruth's piercing scream. Cartoon images, all of them. It is not coincidental that all the film's pyrotechnics take place
outside
Ruth, the blue light, the lightning, the mirror's reflection. Her scream of rage is also mechanical, not human and yet not the devil eitherjust another overused effect: the reverberation button in a sound studio. In using these literally "unrealistic" effects, the film interprets Ruth's transformation as a passage from real to unreal, or human to inhuman. In fact, it should be the reverse. When Ruth becomes the devil, she becomes real, she confronts her "real" nature. She is not an abused housewife, she realizes, she is a she-devil for whom anything is possible. The change is psychic: it is a journey within Ruth's consciousness, a progression in her image of herself. It signals a progression from the unreality of people's view of her to the powerful reality of her recog-
 
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nition of herself. The film reverses this essential order, showing the change to be outside her, to be as superficial and shallow as a momentary reflection in a mirror, or a disco-blue light.
In the film, Ruth's scream is a scream of rage and frustration. In the book, this is a calm moment for Ruth, a happy one. Remember: "... the spirits rise. There is no shame, no guilt, no dreary striving to be good" (p. 43). Ruth is finally
not
frustrated, she is uplifted and ready for action. Roseanne Barr shrieking on her doorstep gives anything but this impression. Roseanne's "Ruth" doesn't ever really changeon the insideand therefore we want to ask
what
can propel her from victimized housewife to successful (and still forgiving) businesswoman? It is a basic question of story-telling. How does this character change? What motivates her? In the book, it is clear: hate and jealousy motivate her. Armed with the forces of evil, and its attendant lack of guilt, Ruth in the book can quite believably do anything. She has removed herself from the obligations of society and family. The Ruth in the film is never free. She never truly separates from her children (she is with them at the end), and we are given to believe that she ultimately forgives Bobbo as well.
Without her transformation, her subsequent journey seems unbelievable, and even tedious. In the film, her revenge takes the form of a list, to be executed by a lifeless mannequin. Her character is static, and the world she moves in is drearily familiar. In the book, it is Ruth's point of view that is interesting, her developing relationship to herself and to the world. She allows us to see the world differently, and her perspective is wildly engaging. In isolation from the book's view of humanity and society, Ruth's path of revenge is simply not very funny. You cannot change a black comedy into a white oneit doesn't work.
Finally, we can see Weldon's novel as a feminist
Faust
. In Weldon's conception, Ruth does not make a pact with the devil (who is, after all, a man), she
becomes
the devil. This is in keeping with Weldon's insistence on empowering the female through her own abilities. "She [Ruth] said she was taking up arms against God Himself. Lucifer had tried and failed, but he was male. She thought she might do better, being female" (p. 83).
Ruth has reason to be angry. She has not, when she considers it, been treated so very well by God's world. She has every reason to try something else. "His ways are far too mysterious for me to put up with them anymore" (p. 146). "We are here in this world to improve upon his original idea. To create justice, truth, and beauty where He so obviously and lamentably failed" (p. 115).
For her first competitive act with God, Ruth, as we have seen, re-creates herself, taking even the act of creation away from him. This is, not coin-
 
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cidentally, something women are also better at. "I do not put my trust in fate, nor my faith in God. I will be what I want, not what He ordained. I will mold a new image for myself out of the earth of my creation. I will defy my Maker, and remake myself" (p. 162).
As with all Faustian bargains, Ruth understands that she must pay a price in order to take on God. She lives a low and seamy life in preparation for her future. A servant in a nursing home, a housekeeper/mistress to the sexually sadistic judge, a nurse in a mental hospital. Finally, she undergoes years of excruciating pain for her plastic surgery.
She also gives up her children, her feelings, her identity, and, most of all, her ability to love. In return she gets power, money, revenge, and the ability to be loved without returning ither original demands. But Not Loving ultimately limits her. As she grieves, in her own way, for Mary Fisher's death, she says: "She [Mary] is a woman: she made the landscape better. She-devils can make nothing better, except themselves. In the end, she wins" (p. 231).
And so this "comic turn, turned serious" (p. 241) delivers its own comeuppance. Without loving, you cannot live a full and happy life. If you love, you must accept its attendant misery. Ruth knowingly trades love for power. Weldon's novel is mired in irony, grief, and, mostly, the blackest, blackest humor.
Any story must bring with it certain rules. Weldon's novel shows a spiritual journey from helplessness to power, a transformation of Ruth as victim, to Ruth as the avenger, and she creates an ordered universe in which this change makes sense. Weldon's choice was to observe the rules of Faust. You cannot sell your soul to the devil (or become the devil) without paying a price. The price for Ruth is her humanity and, ironically, her womanhood.
In the film, Ruth pays no price. She ruins her husband's life, it seems, to teach him a lesson which he all too willingly learns. By the end, everything seems back on its way to being "normal." The drama is flat and stale. Nobody changes. Taken out of its spiritual context, Ruth's revenge is dull and plodding. Having abandoned the fictional logic of Weldon's story, the filmmakers failed to replace it with anything else.
In the film, Ruth merrily whips through her plans for revenge, succeeds, and then quite as merrily brings her children to visit Bobbo in prison. In Weldon's own words: "It was as if they were saying that all she had to do was put on a bit of lipstick, and all would be well." But you can't get something for nothing. Ruth must pay a price for her transformation or the story has no dramatic depth.
What was the film trying to do? Better put, perhaps, what did it
have
 
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to "do" to the book in order to get made as a big-budget commercial film? I make the following suggestions:
Create a more acceptable Ruth
: Is it even a coincidence that the film's star is short? Size is often a visual equivalent for power, and Roseanne's Ruth has neither. The film systematically creates a less threatening Ruth for the screen. This smaller Ruth doesn't sleep around (in the book, her subsequent sexual exploits are detailed, lurid, and seamy), therefore she is more virtuous; doesn't ultimately abandon her children, so she is still a responsible mother; nor finally, does she cease to love and desire her husband, so she doesn't attack the fabric of society. Please notice specifically that she takes her children back, which does not happen in the book. The movie-going audience apparently cannot be expected to identify with a woman who truly abandons her childrenor, for that matter, her husband, with whom she is now on congenial terms. She returns to the hearth (even if it's Bobbo's prison yard) and reunites the family. She comfortably fulfills our deepest (or what Hollywood assumes are its audience's deepest) feelings about mothers and wives. At the end of the film, just after Bobbo has offered to come cook dinner after he gets out of prison, we hear Ruth in voice-over: "People can change. That's why you can't give up on them." Female forbearance defined.
This need to make Ruth a conventionally "heroic" heroine takes several forms, not only with regard to her feelings about Bobbo and her children, but also her subsequent business. In the book, Ruth's employment agency is clearly a means by which she interferes in Bobbo's business. In the film, they try to make this a more politically correct establishment: In voice-over we hear Ruth say: "I would start an employment agency for the unloved, and the unwanted. Women ... the world had thrown away. And I knew just where to find them.... All these women needed was a little support and encouragement to turn their lives around." We then see pictures of Oprah Winfrey, Mother Teresa, Gloria Steinem, and Jane Fonda. Without commenting on the simplicity of this message, we can safely say that the book makes no pretense about Ruth's commitment to the agency: "The agency also organized day-care facilities for the babies and young children ..., and shopping and delivery service for their convenience.... For these privileges they paid dearly, but were pleased to do so.... Nurse Hopkins ran the day-care center on the top floor of the agency building, and if from time to time she used tranquilizers on the more obstreperous children, she was at least trained and qualified to do so" (p. 122).
The film's Ruth doesn't have the frightening desires of Weldon's Ruth. Remember the beginning of the book: Ruth wants revenge, power, money,
 
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and much, much more. The film's more timid Ruth simply wants to ruin Bobbo's
HOME, FAMILY, CAREER, AND FREEDOM
. By the end, it even seems she may give all of this back to him. This More Acceptable Ruth still identifies herself with her husband. She desires nothing for herself.
Create a more evil Mary
: In keeping with the movie's tendency to simplify the story, as Ruth is made more "
GOOD
," Mary by extension must be made more "
BAD
." This simpler setup keeps the story in a more conventional genre.
GOOD GIRL/BAD GIRL
always works. Whereas the book ends with Bobbo and Ruth, the film ends with Mary Fisher in a scene Ruth describes in voice-over. This strengthens the notion of one woman against the other.
The film's Mary leaves Bobbo when she thinks that he tried to steal her money. But if Mary didn't truly love Bobbo, she wouldn't have put up with his kids and other troubles for such a long time. She would have thrown him out long ago. Her relationship with him made no sense if she were not senselessly in love with him. Her ability to dump him when she "really" gets mad invalidates all that went before in the film. But by showing money (and not love) as the most important thing in her life, Mary can be comfortably dubbed a truly "bad" woman. An adulteress, on film in any case, must be evil by definition, and the filmmakers went to great lengths to make sure we don't miss this point.
The book gives us no such easy outs. The book does not pit one woman against the other, but, rather, it shows love itself to be against a woman's best interest. And yet, in the end, "Mary wins." Because she loves. And only true love could make her castle crumble. In the book, she dies, penniless and powerless, and we are not allowed to simply hate her. We can sympathize with women who are ruined by love. So love is at once the "evil" force in the book, woman's enemy, and at the same time, it is the only way we can make the "landscape better." Such a complex point is impossible to make within the context of the film's simple rendition.
In the film, it was necessary to be utterly against Mary Fisher. She is an evil, greedy adulteress, no more, no less. Easily digestible.
Create a happy ending
: The final simplification of the plot is, of course, the film's abbreviated ending. Perhaps this can be defended as a cut merely for the purpose of time constraints, but it fits in so perfectly with the film's other choices that this plea would seem hardly credible. The book's ultimate message was too complex and too confusing for Hollywood. In the film's effort to simplify, simplify, they throw out the part of the story that is ironic and confusing. In the book, Ruth's physical transformation into

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