Abstract
Fay Weldon’s reputation as a ‘woman of letters’ is itself a measure of how our picture of such a personage has been changing, and how far niceness has fallen out of fashion. She writes in a survivalist spirit (anger, hate, bitterness, laughter taken as signs of life), and if her characters frequently moralise about ‘us’, the tone is bleak:
We shelter children for a time; we live side by side with men; and that is all. We owe them nothing, and are owed nothing. I think we owe our friends more, especially our female friends.1
If thine eye offend me take a good look at yourself. If thine I offend thee, change it.
(Fay Weldon, The Cloning of Joanna May, 1989)
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Notes
Fay Weldon
Fay Weldon, Praxis (1978), London: Coronet, 1980, p. 163.
Fay Weldon, Female Friends, London: Heinemann, 1975, p. 249.
Fay Weldon, Down Among the Women (1971), Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973, p. 83.
Fay Weldon, Remember Me (1976), London: Coronet, 1979, pp. 76–7.
Fay Weldon, Watching Me, Watching You (1981), London: Coronet, 1982, p. 171.
Fay Weldon, The Life and Loves of a She-Devil (1983), London: Coronet, 1984, p. 56.
Fay Weldon, The Cloning of Joanna May, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1989, p. 202.
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Atwood, Lady Oracle (1976), London: Virago, 1982, p. 313.
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing (1973), London: Virago, 1977, Introduction by Francine du Plessis Grey p. 3; p. 6.
Coral Ann Howells, Private and Fictional Words, London: Methuen, 1987, p. 4; p. 55.
Margaret Atwood, Cat’s Eye, London: Bloomsbury, 1989, p. 411.
Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard’s Egg (1987), London: Virago, 1988, pp. 231–2.
Margaret Atwood, Surfacing (1973), London: Virago, 1979, p. 176.
Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), London: Virago, 1987, pp. 83–4.
Margaret Atwood, Life Before Man, London: Jonathan Cape, 1980, p. 48.
Margaret Atwood, Bodily Harm (1982), London; Virago 1983, p. 300.
Margaret Atwood, ‘An end to audience?’ in Second Words, Toronto: Annansi, 1982, pp. 334–57.
Angela Carter
John Berger, Ways of Seeing, London: BBC/Penguin, 1972, p. 47.
Angela Carter, The Magic Toyshop (1967), London: Virago, 1981, p. 33.
Angela Carter, Heroes and Villains (1969), Harmondsworth: King Penguin, 1982, p. 137.
Angela Carter, Love (1971), revised edition London: Chatto & Windus, 1987, p. 2.
Angela Carter, Love, London: Hart-Davis, 1971, p. 84.
Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve, London: Gollancz, 1977, p. 75.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality (La Volonté de Savoir, Paris; Editions Gallimard, 1976), Volume One: An Introduction, tr. Robert Hurley, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981, p. 93.
Angela Carter, The Sadeian Woman, London: Virago, 1979, p. 11.
Angela Carter, ‘Notes From the Front Line’ in Gender and Writing, ed. Michelene Wandor, London: Pandora Press, 1983, pp. 69–77, p. 71, p. 76.
Angela Carter, The Passion of New Eve, London: Gollancz, 1977, p. 191.
Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus, London: Chatto & Windus, 1984, p. 25.
‘On to the female body have been projected the fantasies and longings and terrors of generations of men and through them of women… a constant exchange takes place between images and reality.’ Marina Warner, Monuments and Maidens (1985), London: Picador, 1987, p. 37.
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987), London: Picador, 1988, pp. 272–3.
Toni Morrison, Tar Baby (1981), London; Triad Panther, 1983, p. 166; p. 168.
Toni Morrison Song of Solomon (1977), New York: Signet/New American Library, 1978, p. 224.
Toni Morrison, Sula (1974), London: Triad Grafton, 1982, p. 78.
Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea (La Nausée, 1938), Harmondsworth: Penguin 1963, p. 252.
Joyce Carol Oates
Janice Doane and Devon Hodges, Nostalgia and Sexual Difference, London: Methuen, 1987, pp. 9–10.
Charles Newman, ‘The Post-Modern Aura’, Salmagundi, Nos 63-4, 1984, pp. 3–199, p. 99.
Joyce Carol Oates, New Heaven, New Earth, London: Gollancz, 1976, pp. 118–19.
Joyce Carol Oates, Do With Me What You Will (1973), London: Gollancz, 1974, p. 373.
Vladimir Nabokov, The Annotated Lolita, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1970, p. xxxii.
Joyce Carol Oates, The Edge of Impossibility (1972), London: Gollancz, 1976, p. 8.
Joyce Carol Oates, Childwold, London: Gollancz, 1977, p. 60.
Joyce Carol Oates, New Heaven, New Earth, London: Gollancz, 1976, pp. 126–7.
Joyce Carol Oates, Bellefleur, London: Jonathan Cape, 1981.
Joyce Carol Oates, Mysteries of Winterthurn, London: Jonathan Cape 1984, p. 25.
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© 1992 Lorna Sage
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Sage, L. (1992). Divided amongst Ourselves. In: Women in the House of Fiction. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22225-4_5
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