Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture

Challenging Cultural and Literary Conventions

Mara E. Reisman

Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture: Challenging Cultural and Literary Conventions offers a critical analysis of British author Fay Weldon’s major novels from 1967 to the present and addresses how Weldon’s fiction engages with controversial moral, social, and political issues. This book provides an in-depth examination of the relationship between Weldon’s fiction and the contemporary feminist, cultural, and literary movements in Britain. Representative works from each decade speak to the multiple controversies and challenges to convention in which Weldon and her books played key roles. Drawing on Weldon’s personal history, fiction, and nonfiction as well as on historical, sociological, and literary documents, this book builds a cultural framework in which to understand Weldon’s work and the critical response to it. It shows that although Weldon’s battleground may change with the times, her ability and desire to provoke controversy remain constant as she continues to question and upset social, literary, and cultural conventions.

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8126-4 • Hardback • October 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-8128-8 • Paperback • August 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-1-4985-8127-1 • eBook • October 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women

Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture

Challenging Cultural and Literary Conventions

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Fay Weldon, Feminism, and British Culture: Challenging Cultural and Literary Conventions offers a critical analysis of British author Fay Weldon’s major novels from 1967 to the present and addresses how Weldon’s fiction engages with controversial moral, social, and political issues. This book provides an in-depth examination of the relationship between Weldon’s fiction and the contemporary feminist, cultural, and literary movements in Britain. Representative works from each decade speak to the multiple controversies and challenges to convention in which Weldon and her books played key roles. Drawing on Weldon’s personal history, fiction, and nonfiction as well as on historical, sociological, and literary documents, this book builds a cultural framework in which to understand Weldon’s work and the critical response to it. It shows that although Weldon’s battleground may change with the times, her ability and desire to provoke controversy remain constant as she continues to question and upset social, literary, and cultural conventions.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 208 • Trim: 6¼ x 9

978-1-4985-8126-4 • Hardback • October 2018 • $117.00 • (£90.00)

978-1-4985-8128-8 • Paperback • August 2020 • $47.99 • (£37.00)

978-1-4985-8127-1 • eBook • October 2018 • $45.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Women Authors, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Women

Author

Mara E. Reisman is associate professor of British literature and women's literature at Northern Arizona University.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Chapter 1: Feminism, Women’s Fiction, and The Fat Woman’s Joke
Chapter 2: Articulating the Concerns of Women’s Liberation
Chapter 3: Complicating a Feminist Reading of Fay Weldon’s Fiction
Chapter 4: Ethics and Morality: Fay Weldon as a Social Critic
Chapter 5: Fay Weldon’s Public Persona
Chapter 6: Art, Economics, and the Politics of Purity
Chapter 7: Challenging Narrative Truth
Conclusion
Bibliography
About the Author

Reviews

In a study of impressive scope and insight, Mara Reisman brings together cultural history and literary analysis. She does the almost-impossible, taking the reader through over fifty years of Weldon's writing, exploring its diversity, while maintaining a clear line of argument.

— Mary Eagleton, Independent Scholar, UK

In the first comprehensive overview of Weldon’s major novels from the Sixties to the new millennium, Mara Reisman examines the challenges posed and controversies ignited by one of Britain’s most entertaining, inventive and provocative writers. This book offers an important and valuable account of Weldon’s relationship to gender and sexual politics, social concerns and literary culture over six decades.
— Emma Parker, University of Leicester